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That's not a sunk cost fallacy. A sunk cost fallacy depends on expected future cost still being higher than future benefit. In that anecdote, the implication
by Taywee 4y ago
That's not a sunk cost fallacy. A sunk cost fallacy depends on expected future cost still being higher than future benefit.
In that anecdote, the implication is that the employee gained insight or learned from that mistake. In fact, firing them might not be justified from a business perspective, because you're firing somebody even though they are less likely to make such a mistake in the future. It's not really logical to fire somebody for a mistake unless it's reasonable to assume it indicates ongoing liability. You have to decide and plan for the present and future, not the past.
- charcircuit 4y ago>A sunk cost fallacy depends on expected future cost still being higher than future benefit. And that manifests as keeping the employee as opposed to replacing him with a more experienced person who already knows how to not make expensive mistakes. In the context of SWE, specifically with a blameless culture, these expensive mistakes aren't training for people, but training for the business as new checks and protocol get established to reduce the change of the same thing happening again. Someone making an expensive mistake is independent to whether they get to stick around. In the example this expensive training is a reason to keep the guy around.