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Start from the assumption that things are shitty for a reason Problematic when the shit is something safety-critical, a large chemical plant, the 737-MAX, even

• bsder 7y ago
  I'm glad you cited the 737-MAX, because that's a PRIME example of "things are shitty for a reason." If you tried to move the system and it conflicted with "we will not recertify this plane under any circumstances" you were DOOMED. At that point, you have to leave or become a whistleblower as you are fighting legions of managers united around a common purpose.
• kaitai 7y ago
  To me, starting with the assumption that things are shitty for a reason doesn't mean "start with the assumption that it is ok that things are shitty", but instead, "start with the assumption that the 737-max is shitty because letting it be so is serving someone's interest". Indeed, if someone with technical and political savvy and the talent to think ahead had figured out what interests in Boeing were prioritizing shittiness over safety, that someone might have been able to intervene effectively. If the engineers or statisticians at the FAA who wrote the buried report [1] had had the political savvy to understand why management was burying it and understood how to escalate it, they might have been able to get it out before the second plane crashed. There is often a (political or human) reason why things are shitty, and if you can understand and game that, you can be more effective in changing the shitty stuff. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/internal-faa-review-saw-high-risk-of-737-max-crashes-11576069202 https://www.wsj.com/articles/internal-faa-review-saw-high-ri...