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> When you get a speeding ticket, do you blame the cop, the car, the state, anyone but yourself? Or do you say "yup, I am the one behind the wheel so I am respo

> When you get a speeding ticket, do you blame the cop, the car, the state, anyone but yourself? Or do you say "yup, I am the one behind the wheel so I am responsible" If you admit you're the one who was behind the wheel and thus responsible, then you DEAL WITH THE PENALTY, which includes paying a fine, points on your license, potential driver's ed, etc. These CEOs aren't facing any actual consequences here. They're just parroting the empty words "I take responsibility". > or: We had a prod outage, I was the code reviewer. "yup, I am the one who fucked up. It's my responsibility". Doesn't mean I am going to forego salary for the next 10 years to make the company whole for the outage. Complete red herring. I'm struggling to believe that you're arguing in good faith here, actually. You really can't see any difference between thousands of people being laid off and making a bug in a code review??

xyzelement 4y ago
>> you really can't see any difference between thousands of people being laid off and making a bug in a code review?? Thank you for engaging. I intentionally picked something small like a production outage because - unlike hiring/firing 10k+ people - it's something more of us can relate to. The topic at hand is - what does it mean to say "I am responsible?" I am using the relatable examples to explain it - it means as an adult I am saying "I am not blaming someone else, I am the one in charge here, and this happened on my watch / I made the decision." This is in contrast to saying things like "the market is forcing our hand, I am powerless here" or "people under me made bad hiring decisions, I had no idea" - you are acknowledging that what happens on your watch, good or bad, is ultimately on you. It's a separate concept from punishment. If you keep making bad decisions, your employees can chose to punish you by quitting, your boss (the board/shareholders) can punish you by asking you to resign, etc. Acknowledging responsibility over the decision doesn't imply you have to fire yourself.

xyzelement 4y ago

>> you really can't see any difference between thousands of people being laid off and making a bug in a code review?? Thank you for engaging. I intentionally picked something small like a production outage because - unlike hiring/firing 10k+ people - it's something more of us can relate to. The topic at hand is - what does it mean to say "I am responsible?" I am using the relatable examples to explain it - it means as an adult I am saying "I am not blaming someone else, I am the one in charge here, and this happened on my watch / I made the decision." This is in contrast to saying things like "the market is forcing our hand, I am powerless here" or "people under me made bad hiring decisions, I had no idea" - you are acknowledging that what happens on your watch, good or bad, is ultimately on you. It's a separate concept from punishment. If you keep making bad decisions, your employees can chose to punish you by quitting, your boss (the board/shareholders) can punish you by asking you to resign, etc. Acknowledging responsibility over the decision doesn't imply you have to fire yourself.