6 ms·

The guy that produces that last line definitely wears a suit.

fixitfixit 7y ago
Oh no. I work with very trendy Silicon Valley folks and it’s always someone in shorts and a t-shirt. Which is to say: it’s definitely a culture issue, but it doesn’t have to be a PHB doing it. I know a lot of really smart people who are under a lot of pressure, and combined with a lack of AWS knowledge, “just make it public” is surprisingly common.
- 1000units 7y ago
  And it's worth noting a nonnegligible percentage of high-achieving businesspeople would torture small animals for the right price. Being a little lax with security policies under pressure isn't so shocking.
  - hinkley 7y ago
    How much do you think they'd pay to get to torture small animals? I had a boss who brought up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mask_of_Sanity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mask_of_Sanity and organizational sociopaths about twice a month. He must have been doing a better job of shielding us from his bosses than I thought, or I've had more crazy bosses than I thought, because a lot of it seemed like normal bureaucratic pathology to me, if a little more intense than usual.
    - 1000units 7y ago
      There's only one known remedy and it costs 15 cents, so that mask is precious. It's a special gift to be able to see these things clearly, but it comes at the cost of close acquaintance, and you'll always be more watchful than the innocent of mind. It's grimly amusing how common and relevant psychological aberrance is relative to the average person's perception of it (cf. downvotes). It's tiring and unpleasant to examine the world antagonistically from a place of comfort but luckily others on the fringes don't have an option and force us to pay for prisons and so forth.
      - alexanderdmitri 7y ago
        This is a rather cryptic comment. Are you saying there's some sort of group or club where you pay 15 cents for a mask and then put it on to get well-acquainted to psycologically aberrant individuals from a comfortable distance before they go prison?
        new_guy 7y ago
        It's not cryptic, just completely OT in a tech forum. He means the price of a bullet.
        1000units 7y ago
        Not so! A .22LR cartridge is less than three cents when purchased in any reasonable quantity.
        1000units 7y ago
        Fifteen cents is roughly the cost of a small informational pamphlet (likely more if printed with color and laminated but I have taken some artistic liberty in my previous comment), and prison is just one solution to a wider class of social impairments of which sociopathy is just one instance. Other instances of solutions share the quality of being unpleasant but necessary things any civilized society devotes energy to by learned necessity and include a functioning constitution, military, legislature, courts, police, and more. I thought this was clear but on rereading I see maybe I have failed; thanks for asking.
deadmutex 7y ago
This seems like a bias
- lowdose 7y ago
  It is and Nassim Taleb has frame it as the expert aka the empty suit problem.
  - deadmutex 7y ago
    To be clear, I didn't say the bias was with the person wearing the suit.
missingcolours 7y ago
Nah. "Move fast and break things" usually has an implicit "and bypass all the security, we'll fix it later"
atoav 7y ago
As much as I dislike the typical suit wearer, the industry as a whole would be much better if IT-people wouldn’t blame everything on them and just tell them you won’t do it. If you are a welder and you boss wants you to weld a gas tank that hasn’t been emptied you tell him that he has no idea what the thing he asks for means, explain why and wait till the gas tank is emptied and everything is checked. I worked as a Camera guy in film and I am known to be very fast – yet I had directors who wanted things even faster. Bit there is a natural limit to how fast you can get something done without having worthless garbage as a result. You can take certain risks, skip certain advisable steps, focus on the most essential thing etc, but below that there waits literally nothing. In my experience taking a step back, breathing in, out, and then proceed to doing it properly is in most cases faster than following your boss into panic and ditching common sense. It is your responsibility as a professional to say “No” or “Stop” in certain circumstances. And if they really want you to do it, write down the possible consequences of what they force you to do and make them sign that they take the full responsibility. There is so much talk about IT security with people frowning upon silly behaviour, yet any other craft would bend over backwards before you could force them into unsafe behaviour. If engineers would build bridges like we in IT operate, we would have many collapses a day.
- thegeomaster 7y ago
  >If engineers would build bridges like we in IT operate, we would have many collapses a day. Maybe a bit offtopic at this point, but whay you said reminded me of this: https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks
  - jackcodes 7y ago
    I really enjoyed this, thanks. Do you have any other similar ones, or tangentially related bookmarks you could share?
    - ygra 7y ago
      It reminded me a bit of James Mickens’ writings. Not quite as weird and insane as him, but close.

Oh no. I work with very trendy Silicon Valley folks and it’s always someone in shorts and a t-shirt. Which is to say: it’s definitely a culture issue, but it doesn’t have to be a PHB doing it. I know a lot of really smart people who are under a lot of pressure, and combined with a lack of AWS knowledge, “just make it public” is surprisingly common.

1000units 7y ago
And it's worth noting a nonnegligible percentage of high-achieving businesspeople would torture small animals for the right price. Being a little lax with security policies under pressure isn't so shocking.
- hinkley 7y ago
  How much do you think they'd pay to get to torture small animals? I had a boss who brought up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mask_of_Sanity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mask_of_Sanity and organizational sociopaths about twice a month. He must have been doing a better job of shielding us from his bosses than I thought, or I've had more crazy bosses than I thought, because a lot of it seemed like normal bureaucratic pathology to me, if a little more intense than usual.
  - 1000units 7y ago
    There's only one known remedy and it costs 15 cents, so that mask is precious. It's a special gift to be able to see these things clearly, but it comes at the cost of close acquaintance, and you'll always be more watchful than the innocent of mind. It's grimly amusing how common and relevant psychological aberrance is relative to the average person's perception of it (cf. downvotes). It's tiring and unpleasant to examine the world antagonistically from a place of comfort but luckily others on the fringes don't have an option and force us to pay for prisons and so forth.
    - alexanderdmitri 7y ago
      This is a rather cryptic comment. Are you saying there's some sort of group or club where you pay 15 cents for a mask and then put it on to get well-acquainted to psycologically aberrant individuals from a comfortable distance before they go prison?
      - new_guy 7y ago
        It's not cryptic, just completely OT in a tech forum. He means the price of a bullet.
        1000units 7y ago
        Not so! A .22LR cartridge is less than three cents when purchased in any reasonable quantity.
      - 1000units 7y ago
        Fifteen cents is roughly the cost of a small informational pamphlet (likely more if printed with color and laminated but I have taken some artistic liberty in my previous comment), and prison is just one solution to a wider class of social impairments of which sociopathy is just one instance. Other instances of solutions share the quality of being unpleasant but necessary things any civilized society devotes energy to by learned necessity and include a functioning constitution, military, legislature, courts, police, and more. I thought this was clear but on rereading I see maybe I have failed; thanks for asking.

deadmutex 7y ago

This seems like a bias

lowdose 7y ago
It is and Nassim Taleb has frame it as the expert aka the empty suit problem.
- deadmutex 7y ago
  To be clear, I didn't say the bias was with the person wearing the suit.

missingcolours 7y ago

Nah. "Move fast and break things" usually has an implicit "and bypass all the security, we'll fix it later"

atoav 7y ago

As much as I dislike the typical suit wearer, the industry as a whole would be much better if IT-people wouldn’t blame everything on them and just tell them you won’t do it. If you are a welder and you boss wants you to weld a gas tank that hasn’t been emptied you tell him that he has no idea what the thing he asks for means, explain why and wait till the gas tank is emptied and everything is checked. I worked as a Camera guy in film and I am known to be very fast – yet I had directors who wanted things even faster. Bit there is a natural limit to how fast you can get something done without having worthless garbage as a result. You can take certain risks, skip certain advisable steps, focus on the most essential thing etc, but below that there waits literally nothing. In my experience taking a step back, breathing in, out, and then proceed to doing it properly is in most cases faster than following your boss into panic and ditching common sense. It is your responsibility as a professional to say “No” or “Stop” in certain circumstances. And if they really want you to do it, write down the possible consequences of what they force you to do and make them sign that they take the full responsibility. There is so much talk about IT security with people frowning upon silly behaviour, yet any other craft would bend over backwards before you could force them into unsafe behaviour. If engineers would build bridges like we in IT operate, we would have many collapses a day.

thegeomaster 7y ago
>If engineers would build bridges like we in IT operate, we would have many collapses a day. Maybe a bit offtopic at this point, but whay you said reminded me of this: https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks
- jackcodes 7y ago
  I really enjoyed this, thanks. Do you have any other similar ones, or tangentially related bookmarks you could share?
  - ygra 7y ago
    It reminded me a bit of James Mickens’ writings. Not quite as weird and insane as him, but close.