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> These "issue traced to staffer" stories sound like management cover up for management/system shortcomings to me. At some point you need to strike a balance b

> These "issue traced to staffer" stories sound like management cover up for management/system shortcomings to me. At some point you need to strike a balance between freedom/flexibility and stupid proofing. HN goes real hard on the "people are idiots and we should design things that no matter what buttons get mashed it all works out fine" side of things but in the financial world the balance is struck a little further on the "train our employees to not be idiots" side of things. Furthermore, it's usually better optics to blame things on people because people can easily and cheaply alter their behavior cheaply (per incremental change). If you blame the outage on systems it raises questions of when it will be fixed and how much $$. As an aside, it was almost certainly not individual error. At places like NYSE you pretty much always have 2-3 people who should be in a position to catch a mistake like this.

mcherm 4y ago
> it was almost certainly not individual error. At places like NYSE you pretty much always have 2-3 people who should be in a position to catch a mistake like this. That's exactly the point that is being made here. Either the message being put out by the NYSE claiming this was an error by one individual is true -- in which case, NYSE leadership is to blame for setting up a process that allows catastrophic consequences for a single individual's error, OR the message being put out by the NYSE is a fabrication designed to redirect blame at some scapegoat, in which case NYSE leadership is to blame for putting out a false or misleading statement. [Edit: It seems I misunderstood -- attributing this to an individual was done by reporters and rumors, not by a formal statement from NYSE.]