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That is so mistaken I’m not sure where to start. I agree there should be accountability, but to say it should be commensurate with compensation is absurd. What

by jm4 7y ago

That is so mistaken I’m not sure where to start. I agree there should be accountability, but to say it should be commensurate with compensation is absurd. What happens around here is the engineers are never to blame and it’s always management. Even when it’s specifically an engineering problem it’s the managers’ fault for not preventing the engineers from making a mistake.

bsder 7y ago
> That is so mistaken I’m not sure where to start. Then you disagree with practically every military on the planet. So, you're going to to have to provide at least a little bit of counterexample to support your position. > Even when it’s specifically an engineering problem it’s the managers’ fault for not preventing the engineers from making a mistake. There are VERY few times when engineering results in the failure of the project--Citicorp center, Tacoma Narrows, Therac-25, maybe I'll even give you Three Mile Island (the teletypewriter was producing bad data because it didn't have the capacity and got further behind as time went) ... I'm having to work hard after that but I'm sure I could come up with a few more. This is normally true because engineers almost always add a safety margin just in case something they can't account for goes wrong. By contrast, most of our worst disasters have all been management failures. Chernobyl was a management-driven disaster. Fukushima was a management-driven disaster (spraying water on a core to prevent it melting down was a ferociously stupid management decision). The Navy Pacific fleet collisions are management-driven disasters. The first Johnstown Flood was a management-driven disaster. I can go on and on.
- bumby 7y ago
  I agree that management is generally to blame but also think many (most?) mishaps have engineering related proximate (and potentially root) causes. For example, I think I remember hearing part of the Fukushima disaster is attributed to the engineering decision to place the diesel pump batteries in an area that could flood. The fact that these engineering risks weren’t adequately managed is why people blame management. I think one reason the original claim is weird is that leadership should own the blame irrespective of their compensation. (E.g., if a manager has $1 salary they aren’t magically off the hook). It’s one of the core tenets of good leadership. I think engineers sometimes are quick to jump on management because of 1) a hindsight bias and 2) because engineers often have a myopic view of risk. For example, a software engineer tends to only focus on software risks, while management must balance software risks, hardware risks, customer risks, labor risks, etc.
  - bsder 7y ago
    Well, one thing that research into engineering disasters shows is that these things are almost always chains of things going wrong. Generally because managers do something with no engineering justification--either cutting safety margins, continuing in the face of evidence that is indicating operating outside normalcy, or doing something to "save money" with zero thought to the implications. You will note that I specifically chose the spraying of water at Fukushima as a management failure (we can argue about the lack of failsafe for the cooling ponds)--because some idiot counting dollars decided to try to "save the core" they caused a hydrogen explosion which made things orders of magnitude worse. In both Fukushima and Three Mile Island, for example, if everybody had simply SAT ON THEIR HANDS AND DONE NOTHING, the situation would have turned out far better than it eventually did. Yes, the Fukushima core would have still melted down, but it wouldn't have sprayed radioactive material all over the place.
    - bumby 7y ago
      Yes, James Reason's "swiss cheese" model that is often used to portray mishaps that occur as a string of subsequent latent failures. My point is that engineering failures are often part of this chain. To the parent comments broader point, many on HN are quick to dismiss the engineer's culpability. Engineers are one of the few professions that have an ethical obligation to society and their role in the process shouldn't be minimized. In my experience, the result of bad decisions is usually due to incomplete information and risk assessments, whether by an engineer or management. Management usually has more risks to balance than the engineer. Engineers are typically only concerned with technical risk while management has both technical and programmatic risks to balance. When the balance tips towards programmatic risks, it may be due to a poor understanding of the technical risks as well as a bad incentive structure. When the technical risks aren't well understood, it's generally not because management is too dumb to grasp it. It's more likely the culture and organizational structure don't foster good communication or accurate assessments of those risks. For example, if you look at the Challenger disaster, neither the engineering staff or management has great estimates about the risk. (However, the engineers were much closer to the true risk probabilities). It came down to a concrete schedule risk vs. a somewhat nebulous technical risk and the absolute risk won out in the management decision process. In your Fukushima example, I'd bet the "idiot" probably didn't have an assessment (in terms of a failure-modes-effects-analysis or hazards analysis) to properly gauge the risk of their action. (Or there were likely communication failures of that risk, or both.) I think the important point is that to really fix these issues, they have to be addressed as part of a process failure rather than pointing fingers distilling it down to a simplified notion that it's somehow the fault of an "MBA mindset"

by jm4 7y ago

bsder 7y ago

> That is so mistaken I’m not sure where to start. Then you disagree with practically every military on the planet. So, you're going to to have to provide at least a little bit of counterexample to support your position. > Even when it’s specifically an engineering problem it’s the managers’ fault for not preventing the engineers from making a mistake. There are VERY few times when engineering results in the failure of the project--Citicorp center, Tacoma Narrows, Therac-25, maybe I'll even give you Three Mile Island (the teletypewriter was producing bad data because it didn't have the capacity and got further behind as time went) ... I'm having to work hard after that but I'm sure I could come up with a few more. This is normally true because engineers almost always add a safety margin just in case something they can't account for goes wrong. By contrast, most of our worst disasters have all been management failures. Chernobyl was a management-driven disaster. Fukushima was a management-driven disaster (spraying water on a core to prevent it melting down was a ferociously stupid management decision). The Navy Pacific fleet collisions are management-driven disasters. The first Johnstown Flood was a management-driven disaster. I can go on and on.

bumby 7y ago
I agree that management is generally to blame but also think many (most?) mishaps have engineering related proximate (and potentially root) causes. For example, I think I remember hearing part of the Fukushima disaster is attributed to the engineering decision to place the diesel pump batteries in an area that could flood. The fact that these engineering risks weren’t adequately managed is why people blame management. I think one reason the original claim is weird is that leadership should own the blame irrespective of their compensation. (E.g., if a manager has $1 salary they aren’t magically off the hook). It’s one of the core tenets of good leadership. I think engineers sometimes are quick to jump on management because of 1) a hindsight bias and 2) because engineers often have a myopic view of risk. For example, a software engineer tends to only focus on software risks, while management must balance software risks, hardware risks, customer risks, labor risks, etc.
- bsder 7y ago
  Well, one thing that research into engineering disasters shows is that these things are almost always chains of things going wrong. Generally because managers do something with no engineering justification--either cutting safety margins, continuing in the face of evidence that is indicating operating outside normalcy, or doing something to "save money" with zero thought to the implications. You will note that I specifically chose the spraying of water at Fukushima as a management failure (we can argue about the lack of failsafe for the cooling ponds)--because some idiot counting dollars decided to try to "save the core" they caused a hydrogen explosion which made things orders of magnitude worse. In both Fukushima and Three Mile Island, for example, if everybody had simply SAT ON THEIR HANDS AND DONE NOTHING, the situation would have turned out far better than it eventually did. Yes, the Fukushima core would have still melted down, but it wouldn't have sprayed radioactive material all over the place.
  - bumby 7y ago
    Yes, James Reason's "swiss cheese" model that is often used to portray mishaps that occur as a string of subsequent latent failures. My point is that engineering failures are often part of this chain. To the parent comments broader point, many on HN are quick to dismiss the engineer's culpability. Engineers are one of the few professions that have an ethical obligation to society and their role in the process shouldn't be minimized. In my experience, the result of bad decisions is usually due to incomplete information and risk assessments, whether by an engineer or management. Management usually has more risks to balance than the engineer. Engineers are typically only concerned with technical risk while management has both technical and programmatic risks to balance. When the balance tips towards programmatic risks, it may be due to a poor understanding of the technical risks as well as a bad incentive structure. When the technical risks aren't well understood, it's generally not because management is too dumb to grasp it. It's more likely the culture and organizational structure don't foster good communication or accurate assessments of those risks. For example, if you look at the Challenger disaster, neither the engineering staff or management has great estimates about the risk. (However, the engineers were much closer to the true risk probabilities). It came down to a concrete schedule risk vs. a somewhat nebulous technical risk and the absolute risk won out in the management decision process. In your Fukushima example, I'd bet the "idiot" probably didn't have an assessment (in terms of a failure-modes-effects-analysis or hazards analysis) to properly gauge the risk of their action. (Or there were likely communication failures of that risk, or both.) I think the important point is that to really fix these issues, they have to be addressed as part of a process failure rather than pointing fingers distilling it down to a simplified notion that it's somehow the fault of an "MBA mindset"