3 ms·

Thomas J. Watson famously said: Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I ju

• freddie_mercury 5y ago
  This quip never made much sense. Mistakes almost certainly follow some kind of pareto distribution instead of it being evenly distributed. That's why 2% of doctors are responsible for 39% of malpractice lawsuits. If your doctor cut off the wrong leg and you sued (and won) $2 million, would go back to the same doctor and just chalk it up as "well, now he's got $2 million of training"?
  • hatware 5y ago
    > This quip never made much sense. I see it as: Your employee just learned a valuable lesson, and you definitely don't want to hire another new employee to make that same mistake again. Ultimately, it's the owner taking responsibility for the fuck up because they hired the employee, but still standing behind their decision to hire the employee. If your employee is an idiot and makes up 39% of mistakes, of course you won't keep them around when they make a big one. But most employees are not fuck-ups, as you alluded to with 2% of doctors making a majority of malpractice suits.
• ramraj07 5y ago
  Lol do you should keep an idiot who shot a (looks at notes for what’s as cheap as 600k in the army) a javelin missile while drunk? It’s prudent to apply the concept of nuance. If some intern deleted all these accounts you should fire the guy responsible for letting things free enough for the intern to do it but you should fire them. Whatever lesson learned could be learned from a wiki page detailing the incident.