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I wish stupid decisions that end up quickly reversed came with post-mortem write-ups the way downtime does. How could anyone think that rolling this out withou

I wish stupid decisions that end up quickly reversed came with post-mortem write-ups the way downtime does. How could anyone think that rolling this out without warning would go smoothly?

lazystar 4y ago
end-of-the-quarter deployments are always high-risk, high-reward. you either get promoted, or you end up front page on the NYT.
mrtksn 4y ago
In "tech" its often forgotten that they are dealing with real people, individuals. They don't realize that their decisions cause real pain to people and do decision making purely through the formula derived to optimize profits. It's likely done by some mid level manager to improve the personal numbers to get promotion. I guess, at some point the analytics noticed that large number of files is suboptimal and they ran a simulation to see what percentage of the users are affected at what number of files limit and found out that >5M files impacts smaller number of paying customer revenue than the costs generated and they said just put the limit. Negative social media attention probably changed the outcome of the formula, so they lifted the limit.
- justsomehnguy 4y ago
  > In "tech" its ofta forgotten that they are dealing with real people, individuals. Don't attribute to tech that could be adequately explained by a management incompetence. I've seen stupid things done by a techy people. I've seen way more way stupider things demanded by management [and implemented by tech or whoever at the bottom of the food chain].
  - mrtksn 4y ago
    Sure. However tech is obsessed with data and optimisations, if they run a hospital and the data showed that obese people are less profitable they will put a scale on the entrance and triage by BMI or someone will calculate that some drug which kills in the long run gives enough time to propel their career through saving pennies.
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      You're misattributing things to "tech". This all happened long before computers were invented.
      - mrtksn 4y ago
        I don't see your point. Did I say that tech is the only one doing it? What's special about tech, is that they have the means to take it to another level because they are very capable to collect and analyse data and quickly deploy changes and almost never face the consequences. Low touch high scale is the name of the game and they are completely disconnected from the people impacted. 10K people losing their children's baby photos is just a blimp in the analytics and its "fixable" by an apology tweet, they will never understand the pain those impacted will suffer because they don't have a contact with the customer besides some charts.
        robertlagrant 4y ago
        > Did I say that tech is the only one doing it? It seems so, although possibly you did it accidentally. When you say "if tech controlled hospitals then it'd do it this way" then you're definitely attributing this mindset to "tech" people, rather to any people who address customer populations in the millions.
        mrtksn 4y ago
        I'm definitely attributing that mindset to "tech" people but I don't say it's exclusive to them.
        robertlagrant 4y ago
        I think it's reasonable for a reader to assume that if you're making a category error (I've seen some people I call "tech people" do this, therefore all "tech" people do this), you aren't being sophisticated about your categories, and that you are attributing it exclusively. A correct (and not exclusive to tech people) mindset would be "some people think like this. Some of those people work in tech." And you'd be right. Others work in the NHS, to decide what medicines get paid for for the most good.
  - gbin 4y ago
    Or simply "management by metrics", it is pervasive. VP's OKR/KPI is met, the bonus is paid and who cares if the company collapses the next morning!
- okamiueru 4y ago
  They could easily determine the exact extent of impact by such a change. Before effecting it.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
> How could anyone think that rolling this out without warning would go smoothly? They had numbers on the percentage of users that would be affected by this change as well as content to tell these users what they should do to fix things on their side and someone decided the number of people affected was small enough to not bother to warn people in advance.

I wish stupid decisions that end up quickly reversed came with post-mortem write-ups the way downtime does. How could anyone think that rolling this out without warning would go smoothly?

lazystar 4y ago

end-of-the-quarter deployments are always high-risk, high-reward. you either get promoted, or you end up front page on the NYT.

mrtksn 4y ago

In "tech" its often forgotten that they are dealing with real people, individuals. They don't realize that their decisions cause real pain to people and do decision making purely through the formula derived to optimize profits. It's likely done by some mid level manager to improve the personal numbers to get promotion. I guess, at some point the analytics noticed that large number of files is suboptimal and they ran a simulation to see what percentage of the users are affected at what number of files limit and found out that >5M files impacts smaller number of paying customer revenue than the costs generated and they said just put the limit. Negative social media attention probably changed the outcome of the formula, so they lifted the limit.

justsomehnguy 4y ago
> In "tech" its ofta forgotten that they are dealing with real people, individuals. Don't attribute to tech that could be adequately explained by a management incompetence. I've seen stupid things done by a techy people. I've seen way more way stupider things demanded by management [and implemented by tech or whoever at the bottom of the food chain].
- mrtksn 4y ago
  Sure. However tech is obsessed with data and optimisations, if they run a hospital and the data showed that obese people are less profitable they will put a scale on the entrance and triage by BMI or someone will calculate that some drug which kills in the long run gives enough time to propel their career through saving pennies.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    You're misattributing things to "tech". This all happened long before computers were invented.
    - mrtksn 4y ago
      I don't see your point. Did I say that tech is the only one doing it? What's special about tech, is that they have the means to take it to another level because they are very capable to collect and analyse data and quickly deploy changes and almost never face the consequences. Low touch high scale is the name of the game and they are completely disconnected from the people impacted. 10K people losing their children's baby photos is just a blimp in the analytics and its "fixable" by an apology tweet, they will never understand the pain those impacted will suffer because they don't have a contact with the customer besides some charts.
      - robertlagrant 4y ago
        > Did I say that tech is the only one doing it? It seems so, although possibly you did it accidentally. When you say "if tech controlled hospitals then it'd do it this way" then you're definitely attributing this mindset to "tech" people, rather to any people who address customer populations in the millions.
        mrtksn 4y ago
        I'm definitely attributing that mindset to "tech" people but I don't say it's exclusive to them.
        robertlagrant 4y ago
        I think it's reasonable for a reader to assume that if you're making a category error (I've seen some people I call "tech people" do this, therefore all "tech" people do this), you aren't being sophisticated about your categories, and that you are attributing it exclusively. A correct (and not exclusive to tech people) mindset would be "some people think like this. Some of those people work in tech." And you'd be right. Others work in the NHS, to decide what medicines get paid for for the most good.
- gbin 4y ago
  Or simply "management by metrics", it is pervasive. VP's OKR/KPI is met, the bonus is paid and who cares if the company collapses the next morning!
okamiueru 4y ago
They could easily determine the exact extent of impact by such a change. Before effecting it.

Cthulhu_ 4y ago

> How could anyone think that rolling this out without warning would go smoothly? They had numbers on the percentage of users that would be affected by this change as well as content to tell these users what they should do to fix things on their side and someone decided the number of people affected was small enough to not bother to warn people in advance.