4 ms·

Why shouldn’t the contractor and junior IC also lose their jobs for this level of fuck up? This is literally someone’s kids’ food on their table. Why does anyon

by abduhl 3y ago

Why shouldn’t the contractor and junior IC also lose their jobs for this level of fuck up? This is literally someone’s kids’ food on their table. Why does anyone in the chain get a pass? Fire them all. For cause.

stalfosknight 3y ago
Juniors by definition need closer supervision. I would say the same for contractors too.
lxgr 3y ago
Because firing people at random isn't likely to prevent future errors. Errors of this magnitude are either a symptom of some deep-running problem with an organization, or (much less likely) freak accidents. In the former case, random firings aren't very likely to improve the organization; in the latter case, you'd be firing the people best qualified to do a post-mortem and making sure the same or a similar failure never happens again.
- abduhl 3y ago
  What part of this is random? Did you push prod code that contributed? You’re fired. The rest of your post is more of the same “it can’t possibly have been me!” This isn’t a the website went down problem. People didn’t get paid here.
  - lxgr 3y ago
    Have you ever worked with large-scale, historically grown systems? More likely than not, the people that have actively made the wrong decisions (or have, through inaction, allowed an initially-working system to degrade) are long gone. Dilution of responsibility is a real problem, but harsh punishment of everybody that, under some (your?) metric that made an error is definitely not the solution. If you're truly interested in this (and not just angry and looking for somebody to take it out on, even though the root cause here is probably systemic – which is not the same thing as "inevitable!"): The aviation industry and its culture of failure analysis and prevention is a great place to start, in my view. We have a lot to learn from that in our industry.
    - stonogo 3y ago
      "Large scale, historically grown systems" get like that because there wasn't sufficient accountability in the first place. Things like this don't happen in the aviation industry because there are regulatory bodies holding people accountable, something almost entirely missing from the software industry. That was the original point made in this thread.
      - jen20 3y ago
        > Things like this don't happen in the aviation industry because there are regulatory bodies holding people accountable Important to note that this has been largely diluted in the US via regulatory capture, leading to things like the 737 Max disasters - so looking at the aviation industry a few decades ago is probably the way to go.
iamwpj 3y ago
The reason we have hierarchy in business is to ensure the burden of error is shared. Bosses and managers are there to ensure their employees are providing a reliable service (among other duties). Was a process of sign-offs implemented to prevent errors like this? Was there a process by which the employee circumvented processes that lead to a disruption of the service? Or did the boss/manager not keep tabs on what was happening within their purview?

by abduhl 3y ago

stalfosknight 3y ago

Juniors by definition need closer supervision. I would say the same for contractors too.

lxgr 3y ago

Because firing people at random isn't likely to prevent future errors. Errors of this magnitude are either a symptom of some deep-running problem with an organization, or (much less likely) freak accidents. In the former case, random firings aren't very likely to improve the organization; in the latter case, you'd be firing the people best qualified to do a post-mortem and making sure the same or a similar failure never happens again.

abduhl 3y ago
What part of this is random? Did you push prod code that contributed? You’re fired. The rest of your post is more of the same “it can’t possibly have been me!” This isn’t a the website went down problem. People didn’t get paid here.
- lxgr 3y ago
  Have you ever worked with large-scale, historically grown systems? More likely than not, the people that have actively made the wrong decisions (or have, through inaction, allowed an initially-working system to degrade) are long gone. Dilution of responsibility is a real problem, but harsh punishment of everybody that, under some (your?) metric that made an error is definitely not the solution. If you're truly interested in this (and not just angry and looking for somebody to take it out on, even though the root cause here is probably systemic – which is not the same thing as "inevitable!"): The aviation industry and its culture of failure analysis and prevention is a great place to start, in my view. We have a lot to learn from that in our industry.
  - stonogo 3y ago
    "Large scale, historically grown systems" get like that because there wasn't sufficient accountability in the first place. Things like this don't happen in the aviation industry because there are regulatory bodies holding people accountable, something almost entirely missing from the software industry. That was the original point made in this thread.
    - jen20 3y ago
      > Things like this don't happen in the aviation industry because there are regulatory bodies holding people accountable Important to note that this has been largely diluted in the US via regulatory capture, leading to things like the 737 Max disasters - so looking at the aviation industry a few decades ago is probably the way to go.

iamwpj 3y ago

The reason we have hierarchy in business is to ensure the burden of error is shared. Bosses and managers are there to ensure their employees are providing a reliable service (among other duties). Was a process of sign-offs implemented to prevent errors like this? Was there a process by which the employee circumvented processes that lead to a disruption of the service? Or did the boss/manager not keep tabs on what was happening within their purview?