3 ms·

Hey a story from the USCSB! Fun anecdote the company I worked a few years at was investigated and audited by them. We were handling a lot of polyisobutylene

Hey a story from the USCSB! Fun anecdote the company I worked a few years at was investigated and audited by them. We were handling a lot of polyisobutylene type chemicals and had a few small fires and near misses in the plant. (Its used in diesel detergents.). We reached out to them before anything serious went wrong based on our environmental engineers recommendation Anywho the uscsb did a spectacular job writing up a whole book of protocols and recommendations that made the plant safer and quieter. They even helped coordinate annual response events from the local PD and FD and helped with our annual report to the city.

cowthulhu 3y ago
Stuff like that is really heartwarming… org identifies they aren’t safe enough and reaches out to an agency with experience in the area, then the agency coming in and helping make stuff safer instead of just writing a bunch of stuff up, charging some fines, and then leaving.
- samtho 3y ago
  Building inspection is actually like this in my city. If they get a tip about unpermitted work, they just bring the permit application, will waive a few fees so it costs $7.50, and they electronically send it to the office wheee someone approves it immediately. This also enables the owner-builder to request they come by for a pre inspection or for advice. They actually want to keep buildings safe and most of the inspectors were formerly working in the construction industry and hated working with bad inspectors.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    That needed some serious political effort to pull off. In many places, fine and fee income is a fixed part of the budget, so it incentivises everyone to optimize for "most amount of fines" instead for "best experience for builders and public safety".
    - lostlogin 3y ago
      This mentality sounds similar to Peels principles of policing. Get people on side and work to keep them there, ignore minor transgressions when there is a larger goal etc. The devil is in the detail though and achieving compliance is far from easy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles
    - samtho 3y ago
      It is my understanding that the get most of their revenue (>95%) from fees charged to larger contractors and developers who all have access to a self serve portal (you just need a contractor license # which is not hard to get). As they build up a history with the city, they do not require as many inspections throughout the construction process (but they are on the hook to fix it if anything is found after the fact). The bare minimum for new construction would be the slab pour or pier/beam foundation setup, electrical, plumbing, framing, and final. For a reno, it’s just final. For owner-builders there was a series of homeowners insurance claim denials in the 1990s and 2000s because unpermitted work was observed by the adjuster. This resulted in the former occupant simply abandoned the house, leaving a subpar structure, contributing to blight, and lower property values. The city building department made very easy and inexpensive for these people and to get a permit. For minor work, $30 out the door and for major work $87 (assuming you don’t get the discount). This fee includes two free inspections (pre and final) from professionals at the building department, usually same day. I bought a fixer-upper in 2017, did a full rewire, repiped water supply lines, gas to electric range conversion, trenched 30ft to my detached garage (for 240V/125A power, data, and water), and installed a mini split system. They got to know me well and just instructed me to do a video walk through as they did not have any problems with my work prior. This was only possible because they care more about public safety than fines. One theory I have is that policy dictates that they cannot issue a fine right away, they must leave a notice of some sort that they owner must respond to (usually by getting a permit, sometimes by arguing it’s not required) or will face a fine. They just cut out the junk in between by helping them the permit right there, which ends up being a good enough experience that most people just get the permit next time.
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
I wish there were good companies like that in software, but honestly it feels like it's a lot of consultants that only add more workload and headache over the span of years, or ones that just throw some recommendations from books like Clean Code or Google's SWE book or worse, SIG your way. Mind you, I'm a consultant myself so in many ways it feels like we're the ones that are supposed to do that kinda thing. Supposed to, in practice we put down overcomplicated solutions that the company in question cannot do on their own, locking them into consultancy / freelancers just to keep things afloat.
- doctor_eval 3y ago
  I’m a consultant, but I’m confused by what you said. What do you mean “put down”? Fwiw, generally speaking we try to train and mentor our clients so that they don’t need to depend on third party contract work.
  - withinboredom 3y ago
    I don't blame consultants for this. I blame clients. I can't even count the number of times I've brought solutions to clients that were 'too expensive' for them, only to be asked to make it less expensive... and less expensive. Until the solution is so cheap, it's more expensive than the original solution (Tech Debt). I generally show two costs for any multi-solution estimate these days: 1. The upfront cost (in time) 2. The maintenance cost (in +/-% of all maintenance) I generally inform my clients they want to keep maintenance costs <100% (meaning adding any new features requires refactoring due to tech-debt). Most clients generally want to keep it around 20% (meaning 1 out of 5 tickets requires refactoring code before implementation) but are willing to go up to 50% for a strong push. I also provide a dashboard where they can see the "maintenance cost" in real-time (essentially refactor + bugfix PRs divided by feature PRs where a divide by 0 is 100% -- aka, maintenance mode).

cowthulhu 3y ago

Stuff like that is really heartwarming… org identifies they aren’t safe enough and reaches out to an agency with experience in the area, then the agency coming in and helping make stuff safer instead of just writing a bunch of stuff up, charging some fines, and then leaving.

samtho 3y ago
Building inspection is actually like this in my city. If they get a tip about unpermitted work, they just bring the permit application, will waive a few fees so it costs $7.50, and they electronically send it to the office wheee someone approves it immediately. This also enables the owner-builder to request they come by for a pre inspection or for advice. They actually want to keep buildings safe and most of the inspectors were formerly working in the construction industry and hated working with bad inspectors.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  That needed some serious political effort to pull off. In many places, fine and fee income is a fixed part of the budget, so it incentivises everyone to optimize for "most amount of fines" instead for "best experience for builders and public safety".
  - lostlogin 3y ago
    This mentality sounds similar to Peels principles of policing. Get people on side and work to keep them there, ignore minor transgressions when there is a larger goal etc. The devil is in the detail though and achieving compliance is far from easy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles
  - samtho 3y ago
    It is my understanding that the get most of their revenue (>95%) from fees charged to larger contractors and developers who all have access to a self serve portal (you just need a contractor license # which is not hard to get). As they build up a history with the city, they do not require as many inspections throughout the construction process (but they are on the hook to fix it if anything is found after the fact). The bare minimum for new construction would be the slab pour or pier/beam foundation setup, electrical, plumbing, framing, and final. For a reno, it’s just final. For owner-builders there was a series of homeowners insurance claim denials in the 1990s and 2000s because unpermitted work was observed by the adjuster. This resulted in the former occupant simply abandoned the house, leaving a subpar structure, contributing to blight, and lower property values. The city building department made very easy and inexpensive for these people and to get a permit. For minor work, $30 out the door and for major work $87 (assuming you don’t get the discount). This fee includes two free inspections (pre and final) from professionals at the building department, usually same day. I bought a fixer-upper in 2017, did a full rewire, repiped water supply lines, gas to electric range conversion, trenched 30ft to my detached garage (for 240V/125A power, data, and water), and installed a mini split system. They got to know me well and just instructed me to do a video walk through as they did not have any problems with my work prior. This was only possible because they care more about public safety than fines. One theory I have is that policy dictates that they cannot issue a fine right away, they must leave a notice of some sort that they owner must respond to (usually by getting a permit, sometimes by arguing it’s not required) or will face a fine. They just cut out the junk in between by helping them the permit right there, which ends up being a good enough experience that most people just get the permit next time.

Cthulhu_ 3y ago

I wish there were good companies like that in software, but honestly it feels like it's a lot of consultants that only add more workload and headache over the span of years, or ones that just throw some recommendations from books like Clean Code or Google's SWE book or worse, SIG your way. Mind you, I'm a consultant myself so in many ways it feels like we're the ones that are supposed to do that kinda thing. Supposed to, in practice we put down overcomplicated solutions that the company in question cannot do on their own, locking them into consultancy / freelancers just to keep things afloat.

doctor_eval 3y ago
I’m a consultant, but I’m confused by what you said. What do you mean “put down”? Fwiw, generally speaking we try to train and mentor our clients so that they don’t need to depend on third party contract work.
- withinboredom 3y ago
  I don't blame consultants for this. I blame clients. I can't even count the number of times I've brought solutions to clients that were 'too expensive' for them, only to be asked to make it less expensive... and less expensive. Until the solution is so cheap, it's more expensive than the original solution (Tech Debt). I generally show two costs for any multi-solution estimate these days: 1. The upfront cost (in time) 2. The maintenance cost (in +/-% of all maintenance) I generally inform my clients they want to keep maintenance costs <100% (meaning adding any new features requires refactoring due to tech-debt). Most clients generally want to keep it around 20% (meaning 1 out of 5 tickets requires refactoring code before implementation) but are willing to go up to 50% for a strong push. I also provide a dashboard where they can see the "maintenance cost" in real-time (essentially refactor + bugfix PRs divided by feature PRs where a divide by 0 is 100% -- aka, maintenance mode).