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I'd say we just don't have enough information. It's possible someone deserves to be fired for this - e.g. if the alarm was intentional or negligent. It's also

I'd say we just don't have enough information. It's possible someone deserves to be fired for this - e.g. if the alarm was intentional or negligent. It's also possible it was a misclick, confusing UI, etc, in which the person or people who should be fired are those who designed the system such that a simple mistake could set it off. There is a third possibility too - that some unpredictable alignment of factors means that ultimately nobody is too badly at fault, in which case the system should just be adapted and improved. I generally agree with the sentiments of this thread - you shouldn't fire people for the kinds of mistakes that all humans frequently make. However, I also think that this was a severe and costly incident - a large number of people thought for a while they were in significant danger, and investigating who is responsible, and making corrections with regards to their employment, may be reasonable depending on the exact circumstances.

ghaff 9y ago
That's fair and I'm not suggesting that every screw up should just be shrugged off with an "to err is human" and it must be a systems problem. But for a one-off error, the person responsible probably already feels terrible and if they didn't grossly violate established protocols or did something as a joke or whatever, the result should be more along the lines of "Don't do this again!" and making it harder for it to happen.
ben_jones 9y ago
To add to this, I've read more then a few stories already of people mass texting and calling their loved ones because they thought they might never see them again. This is a tragic human toll that needs to be acknowledged and appreciated for what it really is. It wasn't just a smoke alarm going of accidentally.
- ghaff 9y ago
  Then there's the person I know in Hawaii who posted on Facebook that people were getting alerts and went on with her spin class :-) I don't dispute it was a serious error. On the other hand, I'm not sure the consequences of the mistake should factor too much into whether they need to sacrifice someone because of optics. It does of course but that doesn't mean it should.
  - ImSkeptical 9y ago
    The consequences of the error matter to the extent that the consequences of the error are predictably extreme. I'll give an example. I work in an office building with many floors that have exact same layout. One day I was on a floor that wasn't mine, and went to where my desk should be, and tried to sit down. I was shocked, for a moment, to discover my coworkers had all been replaced by strangers. In this case, I made an absentminded mistake of not paying enough attention to my current location - but the consequences were trivial, so the mistake itself is no big deal. Now, on the other hand, suppose while driving down the road, I absentmindedly ignore a red light, plow through an intersection, and kill a family of five. This is also an absent minded mistake, but the predictable consequences of being absent minded while driving are a lot more extreme than being absent minded while walking about an office building. To apply the logic of my example to the case at hand - imagine that in one scenario an employee is, during a boring moment, cleaning his keyboard with his chat application open. This results in that employee sending a nonsense message to a coworker. Silly mistake, and no big deal. Now, suppose that same employee has the "Missile Alert" app open and decides to clean their keyboard. This is a similar mistake, but with potentially bigger consequences. I think it's fair to treat these two actions differently.
    - ghaff 9y ago
      I did specifically say "because of optics." Certainly, I don't think there shouldn't be different expectations for acceptable errors under different circumstances. Of course, the circumstances affect what the reasonable standard of care is. Oopsies by ship captains, surgeons, and even drivers are held to a different standard than me making a typo on some random thing I'm writing or a simple program. In your example, running a red light is commonly taken as one of those things you just don't screw up on (and that can't be eliminated through automation at this time).
cm2187 9y ago
But there are certain jobs where the job is to get it right 100% of the time. This sort of mistake is extremely damaging in the unlikely scenarios that there would be an actual alert. A significant proportion of the population will ignore it next time because of this. You can’t take the “shits happen”, “break often and break fast”, “it doesn’t matter because we learn from our mistakes” attitude with everything. And in general with anything that has to do with nuclear energy & weapons. Or take a swat team to take another recent example of a really bad mistake. https://www.xkcd.com/1428/ https://www.xkcd.com/1428/
- marcosdumay 9y ago
  > But there are certain jobs where the job is to get it right 100% of the time. No there aren't. There are certain activities that must be always correct, you implement those by making a reliable system out of unreliable jobs, not by making the people 100% reliable.
  - ithkuil 9y ago
    So, the people who are in charge of designing such a system need to do a good job. What if that too inevitably fails? You can either improve the system/process by learning from mistakes or blindly firing the culprits and replacing them with somebody who might well make the same mistake again

ghaff 9y ago

That's fair and I'm not suggesting that every screw up should just be shrugged off with an "to err is human" and it must be a systems problem. But for a one-off error, the person responsible probably already feels terrible and if they didn't grossly violate established protocols or did something as a joke or whatever, the result should be more along the lines of "Don't do this again!" and making it harder for it to happen.

ben_jones 9y ago

To add to this, I've read more then a few stories already of people mass texting and calling their loved ones because they thought they might never see them again. This is a tragic human toll that needs to be acknowledged and appreciated for what it really is. It wasn't just a smoke alarm going of accidentally.

ghaff 9y ago
Then there's the person I know in Hawaii who posted on Facebook that people were getting alerts and went on with her spin class :-) I don't dispute it was a serious error. On the other hand, I'm not sure the consequences of the mistake should factor too much into whether they need to sacrifice someone because of optics. It does of course but that doesn't mean it should.
- ImSkeptical 9y ago
  The consequences of the error matter to the extent that the consequences of the error are predictably extreme. I'll give an example. I work in an office building with many floors that have exact same layout. One day I was on a floor that wasn't mine, and went to where my desk should be, and tried to sit down. I was shocked, for a moment, to discover my coworkers had all been replaced by strangers. In this case, I made an absentminded mistake of not paying enough attention to my current location - but the consequences were trivial, so the mistake itself is no big deal. Now, on the other hand, suppose while driving down the road, I absentmindedly ignore a red light, plow through an intersection, and kill a family of five. This is also an absent minded mistake, but the predictable consequences of being absent minded while driving are a lot more extreme than being absent minded while walking about an office building. To apply the logic of my example to the case at hand - imagine that in one scenario an employee is, during a boring moment, cleaning his keyboard with his chat application open. This results in that employee sending a nonsense message to a coworker. Silly mistake, and no big deal. Now, suppose that same employee has the "Missile Alert" app open and decides to clean their keyboard. This is a similar mistake, but with potentially bigger consequences. I think it's fair to treat these two actions differently.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    I did specifically say "because of optics." Certainly, I don't think there shouldn't be different expectations for acceptable errors under different circumstances. Of course, the circumstances affect what the reasonable standard of care is. Oopsies by ship captains, surgeons, and even drivers are held to a different standard than me making a typo on some random thing I'm writing or a simple program. In your example, running a red light is commonly taken as one of those things you just don't screw up on (and that can't be eliminated through automation at this time).

cm2187 9y ago

But there are certain jobs where the job is to get it right 100% of the time. This sort of mistake is extremely damaging in the unlikely scenarios that there would be an actual alert. A significant proportion of the population will ignore it next time because of this. You can’t take the “shits happen”, “break often and break fast”, “it doesn’t matter because we learn from our mistakes” attitude with everything. And in general with anything that has to do with nuclear energy & weapons. Or take a swat team to take another recent example of a really bad mistake. https://www.xkcd.com/1428/ https://www.xkcd.com/1428/

marcosdumay 9y ago
> But there are certain jobs where the job is to get it right 100% of the time. No there aren't. There are certain activities that must be always correct, you implement those by making a reliable system out of unreliable jobs, not by making the people 100% reliable.
- ithkuil 9y ago
  So, the people who are in charge of designing such a system need to do a good job. What if that too inevitably fails? You can either improve the system/process by learning from mistakes or blindly firing the culprits and replacing them with somebody who might well make the same mistake again