4 ms·

I used to judge banks until now I run a company that handles deposits. On the third day of launch I ran into a small bug that allowed some rogue users to drain

by majani 5y ago

I used to judge banks until now I run a company that handles deposits. On the third day of launch I ran into a small bug that allowed some rogue users to drain all the money in our account at the time (which was about $400 only at least). Right then and there I fully understood why an organization dealing with money needs red tape as more of a safety harness than anything

kqr 5y ago
This is empirically a false dichotomy. You can have flexibility and safety. It just takes the right culture. You have to do away with hierarchy, blame, etc. In fact, I believe flexibility can ultimately lead to even greater safety than bureaucracy, which is, as Graeber put it, active stupidity. And while aiming for stupidity might rule out some classes of errors, it definitely introduces even more of them.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  I think I disagree. In security (not just financial), security and user convenience are almost always at war with each other. And "culture" doesn't seem to fix it.
  - kqr 5y ago
    Have you read anything by e.g. Sidney Dekker or Nancy Leveson on "human error"? It sounds like you're picturing fully automated systems in which case you're right; flexibility is at conflict with security (as far as we know now, anyway.) But once you throw humans into the loop, allowing them to be autonomous and not rule-bound, command-obeying robots can improve security a lot.
  - elliekelly 5y ago
    There’s a really interesting book called “Black Box Thinking” about the culture of safety & reducing errors. The author uses the airline industry (highly focused on the end-result of safe operations and expressly avoids placing blame) to illustrate how culture can indeed have a huge impact on these things. The “fatal” errors often aren’t just one big point of failure but many small issues in combination. A culture where employees aren’t afraid to speak up about the small issues is really valuable because often many of the big problems could have been solved by preventing just one or more of the smaller underlying problems.

by majani 5y ago

kqr 5y ago

This is empirically a false dichotomy. You can have flexibility and safety. It just takes the right culture. You have to do away with hierarchy, blame, etc. In fact, I believe flexibility can ultimately lead to even greater safety than bureaucracy, which is, as Graeber put it, active stupidity. And while aiming for stupidity might rule out some classes of errors, it definitely introduces even more of them.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
I think I disagree. In security (not just financial), security and user convenience are almost always at war with each other. And "culture" doesn't seem to fix it.
- kqr 5y ago
  Have you read anything by e.g. Sidney Dekker or Nancy Leveson on "human error"? It sounds like you're picturing fully automated systems in which case you're right; flexibility is at conflict with security (as far as we know now, anyway.) But once you throw humans into the loop, allowing them to be autonomous and not rule-bound, command-obeying robots can improve security a lot.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  There’s a really interesting book called “Black Box Thinking” about the culture of safety & reducing errors. The author uses the airline industry (highly focused on the end-result of safe operations and expressly avoids placing blame) to illustrate how culture can indeed have a huge impact on these things. The “fatal” errors often aren’t just one big point of failure but many small issues in combination. A culture where employees aren’t afraid to speak up about the small issues is really valuable because often many of the big problems could have been solved by preventing just one or more of the smaller underlying problems.