6 ms·

How to Deal with Complexity Like a Pilot (Part 1)

aphroz 5y ago
This is why pilots don't work in software. It is probably the opposite you should do, communicate with other team members about the problem, navigate to the issue and aviate to the solution. Developers who always focus on aviate solve the immediate problem but end up crashing the whole system at the end.
- Oswldoo 5y ago
  Pilots dont design complex systems. They are trained to use them. More apt to compare them with esports pros. The problem solving within a well defined game with fixed rules/moves etc is very different type of problem solving than when you play no rule games which is what software design is. Ofcourse the chimp troupe tries to impose rules on such a complex game, but the rules will always break down, cause of how easy they are, for anyone who is unhappy with them, to rewrite.
  - dijit 5y ago
    Sounds like pilots are closer to sysadmins. What ever happened to sysadmins?
    - bityard 5y ago
      We got tired of corporate BS and became pilots
- sugarkjube 5y ago
  >This is why pilots don't work in software. Some do. > It is probably the opposite you should do, Not really. "aviate" is the equivalent of keeping your servers up. Admittedly, a non-flying airplane will kill you, while server downtime only will loose you customers.
sokoloff 5y ago
SWE first and pilot second. It’s both a little sobering but also very mind-clearing to think that no one outside the airplane is going to bring the airplane safely to its next runway. I find it interesting that drivers could stand some more of this prioritization. (Texting is communicating; it can wait until the driving is done.)
- imoverclocked 5y ago
  Agreed. If drivers had to go through 1/10th of the training/certification a private pilot does, our society would look very different.
  - JKolios 5y ago
    We'd probably have far more investment in public transport, for one.
  - MaxBarraclough 5y ago
    In New South Wales most learner drivers require 120 hours on the road before they can take the test, far in excess of the 45 hour requirement for private pilots. Here in the UK, we have the Light Aircraft Pilot's Licence, with lower requirements than the ordinary PPL.
    - imoverclocked 5y ago
      The US also has a light sport aircraft (LSA) category and a sport pilot license with less requirements but more restrictions. While the 40 hours is a minimum, most people require more to complete their PPL training and pass their exam. Some aircraft do not require a pilot license but I’m hard pressed for good reasons to fly without prior training.
  - nicbou 5y ago
    I travel a lot by motorcycle. You can truly see the difference in driver training between countries. It goes from German to murderous. Unsurprisingly, German driving tests are fairly thorough.
lmilcin 5y ago
Analogies, analogies... "Aviate, navigate, communicate" is meant as a simple guide for pilots in distress. Distress on a plane can be extremely busy and demanding time and it may not be possible to think rationally - the situation may require the pilot to revert to rely on instincts and habit like the above rule. That is why training is so important for pilots. Our normal lives are rarely as busy. I don't think it is wise to rely on very basic instincts to drive what could more efficiently solved with high level reasoning. I would even go as far as to say that if you catch yourself to go a long time on what I call "autopilot" (doing things instinctively without stopping to think) you should stop and evaluate your situation. This sometimes happens to me, especially on a busy project towards the end. Not a good idea
- imoverclocked 5y ago
  Some of us are definitely as busy as to always be in a crunch. Stopping to think is exactly what might prevent this situation but it’s also excruciatingly difficult once there. I think that applies as a pilot too.
  - lmilcin 5y ago
    > Stopping to think is exactly what might prevent this situation but it’s also excruciatingly difficult once there Which is exactly the reason to stop and think. Even during most damaging outages I took part in there was never a situation where I couldn't stop and reassess what is going on. > I think that applies as a pilot too. Most pilots will never meet a situation like that. But the training is aimed to prepare pilots to handle even worst possible situation where there isn't time to think and it is not just the choice of the pilot -- the the conscious part of human brain isn't able to process stuff that fast. I personally do not fly but I sail. To become a skipper you must learn to handle your boat and manage your crew. Full HALF of the training is devoted to just one maneuver, which is man over board situation. Yes, I repeat, half of the training is so that you can make a simple loop with your yacht and come back to rest just by the person that fell into water. There is lots of stuff to be done during that maneuver. On the type of yacht that I sail you will have to throw the person something floating, put MoB marker on your navigation, keep an eye on the person in water, manage the crew, prepare the deck for recovery, keep an eye on your boat so that you don't screw the maneuver, recognize the exact direction from which the wind blows so you know where you want to end up in relation to the person and execute complicated maneuver that will include at least one tack. Then you drop your sails at just the right moment so that the wind will slow down your boat as it comes to rest. During that time somebody would also be starting the engine to complete the maneuver. On a good day it takes about 10-20s for me with a crew that has at least been trained a little bit, over 20s on a worse day. There is absolutely no time to think then, you just go off "autopilot". But this is extremely rare, in most situations in life even in distress it is good to stop and think. I made it a point with my teams, whenever we have particularly stressful situation (like overruning an important project or an outage) to have a regular meeting devoted solely to stopping and thinking. Just to counteract the natural tendency of people to run on autopilot.
mannykannot 5y ago
This analogy breaks down in deprecating communication, in at least a couple of ways. Firstly, communication only comes last in a dire emergency, and otherwise, it is often key to avoiding dire emergencies, which is why communication is mandatory in class A, B and C airspace. Secondly, everything that makes aviation safe is a result of extensive communication between engineers, pilots, instructors, and everyone who has an administrative or regulatory responsibility for facilitating safety.
jimnotgym 5y ago
> Most people waste incredible amounts of time “statusing” people who can’t actually help I manage a large team of people. It takes 70 odd people to fly the company I work in. It is the immense privilege of the pilot to be able to have to prioritise their own work, and to have absolutes like fuel load and altitude. I have to negotiate priorities with the company. People constantly come to me for advice. Communication is key to an organisation. The other disadvantage us ground dwellers have is that everything is changing. A pilot knows the key performance metrics of their plane, and has a planned destination. Mine get modified during flite. My destinations get changed. Very little is set in stone. We attempt tasks that nobody in the world knows how to do. It is not much like flying a plane at all
- danielscrubs 5y ago
  I'll ask for forgiveness in advance for being grumpy. Communication is key is what is said by every manager with that as his primary skill. It's not that it isn't important, but if a doctor said that breathing is his skill you'd probably go to someone else but it is totally accepted by managers to not have any domain knowledge. I've seen examples of economists ruling over doctors & bartenders ruling over programmers but the people on the floor are never happy about that. What is worse, they seem to arrange companies to make communication more important. This includes having a matrix structure in the company, putting responsibility on everyone (which in practice means managers with good communication skills get away from responsibility, which wouldn't be the case with a clear responsibility chain) and making daily meetings even though they don't have anything to say (I've made a bingo card with the buzzwords). What can also happen is that because management knows they have zero domain expertise they make themselves more important by holding on to information that should really be passed on. Most communication is the empty calories of business management. Sorry for the rant, I don't believe you are that kind of manager because you are on this forum, just needed to get this off my chest.
bumbada 5y ago
Different environments have different priorities. And in some we really don't know what the priorities are and we need to discover them. Aviation is a mature technology in which almost anything is already known and we could fly above the clouds where atmosphere is stable. Those conditions were not met for a long time in Aviation History. In many environments the best thing you could do is communicate, like in a natural disaster like Tsunami, volcanic activity, Tornadoes. The sooner you can communicate and the better you can predict what will happen, the less damage. One of the best things I learned from my mentor in company building is that the best working companies are boring, because they could plan ahead(navigate) and avoid (most)emergencies. Some people just love emergencies because they make you feel alive, and if they don't have them on their lives they will just create them, because they need all the drama and rushing and adrenaline of being at the edge all the time. I prefer jumping of bridges with parachutes or diving 100 meters and leaving my company boring.
cybervegan 5y ago
That's great, but it seems to ignore the fact that lack of communication during difficult manoeuvres (like getting the website back online) is often seen as a critical failure by the client to not keep them updated on progress. Sometimes you have to fly solo, and then you have to provide the updates yourself. If you have the privilege of having a wingman, they can do the comms for you, but in many cases, you don't.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dredmorbius 5y ago
A pilot is an operator, not a designer, creator, coordinator, developer, marketer, or entrepreuneur. A professional pilot has a low maximum cap on active hours. When limits are exceeded (or will be exceeded for a planned flight), the flight does not happen. A pilot operates a system that's been carefully tuned and designed for maximum reliability and safety (within economic and performance constraints). A pilot operates in a largely uncontended space, with little need for unanticipated close coordination with others. Where coordination with others is required, that is virtually always managed through a third-party resource, air traffic control. Where direct pilot coordination with other craft is required (outside of combat, competition, or demonstrations), things are already going poorly. A pilot is specifically rated to the equipment they operate. A pilot's equipment is highly standardised and regulated, with safety top of mind. A pilot has a large team managing the logistics of fueling, prepping, staffing, maintaining, servicing, checking, and navigating their equipment, as well as managing cargo and/or passengers. A pilot spends more time in training and practice, specifically for rare-but-criticial emergency scenarios, than they do in actual operation of their aircraft. The more complex the craft and mission, the greater the training overhead. A pilot in professional capacity virtually always has fully-redundant staffing (a co-pilot), and often multiple fully-redundant staffing (relief and check pilots). A pilot has final say over destination and deadlines. When an emergency situation develops, the pilot has final say over whether or not the emergency exists, its nature, and the resolution. Other parties may advise. The pilot decides. A pilot does plan and communicate. Practices are governed by checklists, manuals, processes, procedures and training. Pre-flight and in-flight briefings are specifically indicated. It's possible for a previously unencountered circumstance to arise. It is very, very rare. When they do, in-cockpit communications ("cockpit resource management") is also actively trained and encouraged. Those conversations are recorded, on media which will survive all but the very most extreme adverse events, after which they will be studied exhaustively by multiple experts. The fine article is ... distressingly misleading.

This is why pilots don't work in software. It is probably the opposite you should do, communicate with other team members about the problem, navigate to the issue and aviate to the solution. Developers who always focus on aviate solve the immediate problem but end up crashing the whole system at the end.

Oswldoo 5y ago
Pilots dont design complex systems. They are trained to use them. More apt to compare them with esports pros. The problem solving within a well defined game with fixed rules/moves etc is very different type of problem solving than when you play no rule games which is what software design is. Ofcourse the chimp troupe tries to impose rules on such a complex game, but the rules will always break down, cause of how easy they are, for anyone who is unhappy with them, to rewrite.
- dijit 5y ago
  Sounds like pilots are closer to sysadmins. What ever happened to sysadmins?
  - bityard 5y ago
    We got tired of corporate BS and became pilots
sugarkjube 5y ago
>This is why pilots don't work in software. Some do. > It is probably the opposite you should do, Not really. "aviate" is the equivalent of keeping your servers up. Admittedly, a non-flying airplane will kill you, while server downtime only will loose you customers.

sokoloff 5y ago

SWE first and pilot second. It’s both a little sobering but also very mind-clearing to think that no one outside the airplane is going to bring the airplane safely to its next runway. I find it interesting that drivers could stand some more of this prioritization. (Texting is communicating; it can wait until the driving is done.)

imoverclocked 5y ago
Agreed. If drivers had to go through 1/10th of the training/certification a private pilot does, our society would look very different.
- JKolios 5y ago
  We'd probably have far more investment in public transport, for one.
- MaxBarraclough 5y ago
  In New South Wales most learner drivers require 120 hours on the road before they can take the test, far in excess of the 45 hour requirement for private pilots. Here in the UK, we have the Light Aircraft Pilot's Licence, with lower requirements than the ordinary PPL.
  - imoverclocked 5y ago
    The US also has a light sport aircraft (LSA) category and a sport pilot license with less requirements but more restrictions. While the 40 hours is a minimum, most people require more to complete their PPL training and pass their exam. Some aircraft do not require a pilot license but I’m hard pressed for good reasons to fly without prior training.
- nicbou 5y ago
  I travel a lot by motorcycle. You can truly see the difference in driver training between countries. It goes from German to murderous. Unsurprisingly, German driving tests are fairly thorough.

lmilcin 5y ago

Analogies, analogies... "Aviate, navigate, communicate" is meant as a simple guide for pilots in distress. Distress on a plane can be extremely busy and demanding time and it may not be possible to think rationally - the situation may require the pilot to revert to rely on instincts and habit like the above rule. That is why training is so important for pilots. Our normal lives are rarely as busy. I don't think it is wise to rely on very basic instincts to drive what could more efficiently solved with high level reasoning. I would even go as far as to say that if you catch yourself to go a long time on what I call "autopilot" (doing things instinctively without stopping to think) you should stop and evaluate your situation. This sometimes happens to me, especially on a busy project towards the end. Not a good idea

imoverclocked 5y ago
Some of us are definitely as busy as to always be in a crunch. Stopping to think is exactly what might prevent this situation but it’s also excruciatingly difficult once there. I think that applies as a pilot too.
- lmilcin 5y ago
  > Stopping to think is exactly what might prevent this situation but it’s also excruciatingly difficult once there Which is exactly the reason to stop and think. Even during most damaging outages I took part in there was never a situation where I couldn't stop and reassess what is going on. > I think that applies as a pilot too. Most pilots will never meet a situation like that. But the training is aimed to prepare pilots to handle even worst possible situation where there isn't time to think and it is not just the choice of the pilot -- the the conscious part of human brain isn't able to process stuff that fast. I personally do not fly but I sail. To become a skipper you must learn to handle your boat and manage your crew. Full HALF of the training is devoted to just one maneuver, which is man over board situation. Yes, I repeat, half of the training is so that you can make a simple loop with your yacht and come back to rest just by the person that fell into water. There is lots of stuff to be done during that maneuver. On the type of yacht that I sail you will have to throw the person something floating, put MoB marker on your navigation, keep an eye on the person in water, manage the crew, prepare the deck for recovery, keep an eye on your boat so that you don't screw the maneuver, recognize the exact direction from which the wind blows so you know where you want to end up in relation to the person and execute complicated maneuver that will include at least one tack. Then you drop your sails at just the right moment so that the wind will slow down your boat as it comes to rest. During that time somebody would also be starting the engine to complete the maneuver. On a good day it takes about 10-20s for me with a crew that has at least been trained a little bit, over 20s on a worse day. There is absolutely no time to think then, you just go off "autopilot". But this is extremely rare, in most situations in life even in distress it is good to stop and think. I made it a point with my teams, whenever we have particularly stressful situation (like overruning an important project or an outage) to have a regular meeting devoted solely to stopping and thinking. Just to counteract the natural tendency of people to run on autopilot.

mannykannot 5y ago

This analogy breaks down in deprecating communication, in at least a couple of ways. Firstly, communication only comes last in a dire emergency, and otherwise, it is often key to avoiding dire emergencies, which is why communication is mandatory in class A, B and C airspace. Secondly, everything that makes aviation safe is a result of extensive communication between engineers, pilots, instructors, and everyone who has an administrative or regulatory responsibility for facilitating safety.

jimnotgym 5y ago

> Most people waste incredible amounts of time “statusing” people who can’t actually help I manage a large team of people. It takes 70 odd people to fly the company I work in. It is the immense privilege of the pilot to be able to have to prioritise their own work, and to have absolutes like fuel load and altitude. I have to negotiate priorities with the company. People constantly come to me for advice. Communication is key to an organisation. The other disadvantage us ground dwellers have is that everything is changing. A pilot knows the key performance metrics of their plane, and has a planned destination. Mine get modified during flite. My destinations get changed. Very little is set in stone. We attempt tasks that nobody in the world knows how to do. It is not much like flying a plane at all

danielscrubs 5y ago
I'll ask for forgiveness in advance for being grumpy. Communication is key is what is said by every manager with that as his primary skill. It's not that it isn't important, but if a doctor said that breathing is his skill you'd probably go to someone else but it is totally accepted by managers to not have any domain knowledge. I've seen examples of economists ruling over doctors & bartenders ruling over programmers but the people on the floor are never happy about that. What is worse, they seem to arrange companies to make communication more important. This includes having a matrix structure in the company, putting responsibility on everyone (which in practice means managers with good communication skills get away from responsibility, which wouldn't be the case with a clear responsibility chain) and making daily meetings even though they don't have anything to say (I've made a bingo card with the buzzwords). What can also happen is that because management knows they have zero domain expertise they make themselves more important by holding on to information that should really be passed on. Most communication is the empty calories of business management. Sorry for the rant, I don't believe you are that kind of manager because you are on this forum, just needed to get this off my chest.

bumbada 5y ago

Different environments have different priorities. And in some we really don't know what the priorities are and we need to discover them. Aviation is a mature technology in which almost anything is already known and we could fly above the clouds where atmosphere is stable. Those conditions were not met for a long time in Aviation History. In many environments the best thing you could do is communicate, like in a natural disaster like Tsunami, volcanic activity, Tornadoes. The sooner you can communicate and the better you can predict what will happen, the less damage. One of the best things I learned from my mentor in company building is that the best working companies are boring, because they could plan ahead(navigate) and avoid (most)emergencies. Some people just love emergencies because they make you feel alive, and if they don't have them on their lives they will just create them, because they need all the drama and rushing and adrenaline of being at the edge all the time. I prefer jumping of bridges with parachutes or diving 100 meters and leaving my company boring.

cybervegan 5y ago

That's great, but it seems to ignore the fact that lack of communication during difficult manoeuvres (like getting the website back online) is often seen as a critical failure by the client to not keep them updated on progress. Sometimes you have to fly solo, and then you have to provide the updates yourself. If you have the privilege of having a wingman, they can do the comms for you, but in many cases, you don't.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dredmorbius 5y ago

A pilot is an operator, not a designer, creator, coordinator, developer, marketer, or entrepreuneur. A professional pilot has a low maximum cap on active hours. When limits are exceeded (or will be exceeded for a planned flight), the flight does not happen. A pilot operates a system that's been carefully tuned and designed for maximum reliability and safety (within economic and performance constraints). A pilot operates in a largely uncontended space, with little need for unanticipated close coordination with others. Where coordination with others is required, that is virtually always managed through a third-party resource, air traffic control. Where direct pilot coordination with other craft is required (outside of combat, competition, or demonstrations), things are already going poorly. A pilot is specifically rated to the equipment they operate. A pilot's equipment is highly standardised and regulated, with safety top of mind. A pilot has a large team managing the logistics of fueling, prepping, staffing, maintaining, servicing, checking, and navigating their equipment, as well as managing cargo and/or passengers. A pilot spends more time in training and practice, specifically for rare-but-criticial emergency scenarios, than they do in actual operation of their aircraft. The more complex the craft and mission, the greater the training overhead. A pilot in professional capacity virtually always has fully-redundant staffing (a co-pilot), and often multiple fully-redundant staffing (relief and check pilots). A pilot has final say over destination and deadlines. When an emergency situation develops, the pilot has final say over whether or not the emergency exists, its nature, and the resolution. Other parties may advise. The pilot decides. A pilot does plan and communicate. Practices are governed by checklists, manuals, processes, procedures and training. Pre-flight and in-flight briefings are specifically indicated. It's possible for a previously unencountered circumstance to arise. It is very, very rare. When they do, in-cockpit communications ("cockpit resource management") is also actively trained and encouraged. Those conversations are recorded, on media which will survive all but the very most extreme adverse events, after which they will be studied exhaustively by multiple experts. The fine article is ... distressingly misleading.