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I once worked with this awful third-party software that caused tons of trouble for our clients. We had an in-house solution on the works, but some people wanted

I once worked with this awful third-party software that caused tons of trouble for our clients. We had an in-house solution on the works, but some people wanted to renew the contract and keep using the same buggy software. Sometimes I would spend the whole day just fixing stuff on this system. I made sure all the tickets opened by our clients went to the people who wanted to keep the old solution. It worked, we moved to our system and we rarely have issues with it.

throwaway154 3y ago
I once worked with new awful in-house software that (thankfully) depended on 3rd party software. We had the legacy in-house system parallel running, which was even more awful. The legacy's awful came from it being unable to do anything it didn't already do without extensive re-wiring, and a team who believed if they don't share their knowledge of it they had a job for life. The replacement's awful came from it being inefficiently programmed with large DB latency due to the team's belief at throwing more CPU behind queries instead of re-writing queries. The teams sat next to each other but didn't speak. The legacy team called in a bomb threat to a package left under the IT director's desk. It was taken very seriously. While their cause was already lost, that didn't help them personally. The new system team eventually called Oracle, who came and re-wrote their queries.
- jl6 3y ago
  When you say called in a bomb threat, do you mean they reported a package as suspicious?
  - Aeolun 3y ago
    I think it means they call the police (from a payphone if they are smart), and tell them there’s a bomb under the IT directors desk that’ll explode in x minutes/hours.
  - throwaway154 3y ago
    The call-in was an anonymous, apparently, call to the company's switchboard stating a bomb package had been left in the vicinity of the desk. We were evacuated to a separate part of the building for a few hours while it was dealt with.
rjbwork 3y ago
I've found that the easiest way to effect change is by making the people who make decisions feel the pain of the problem. A lot of line levels do a lot of heroics in an attempt to keep pain from rolling up hill Instead of the organization just doing the work to stop the pain, they throw bodies like so much human analgesic at the problem - I hope you'll let me torture this metaphor some more - and become addicted to this state of affairs.
- josephg 3y ago
  Yeah I totally agree. I’ve met a lot of people who feel like a hero when they work crazy hours to “save the day”. But if the problem they fixed was caused by bad planning or bad decisions made by upper management, their heroics prevent the decision makers from learning how to run the company properly. Pain is an incredibly important signal. Our bodies need it to survive and companies are no different. Go above and beyond, sure. But never ever be an invisible martyr. If it’s management’s mistake, management needs to feel some heat or they won’t learn.
  - forinti 3y ago
    A colleague once said that if you sacrifice yourself to make up for the firm's inefficiencies, they will never get fixed. Which is basically what you've written. This concept should be discussed more often.
    - mablopoule 3y ago
      Tangent to this idea is the concept of 'back pressure' related to data flow, and the need to have a way to return feedback in a system.
      - hosh 3y ago
        I think reading this and other comments slid something in place for me about “Living Systems”.
    - granshaw 3y ago

throwaway154 3y ago

I once worked with new awful in-house software that (thankfully) depended on 3rd party software. We had the legacy in-house system parallel running, which was even more awful. The legacy's awful came from it being unable to do anything it didn't already do without extensive re-wiring, and a team who believed if they don't share their knowledge of it they had a job for life. The replacement's awful came from it being inefficiently programmed with large DB latency due to the team's belief at throwing more CPU behind queries instead of re-writing queries. The teams sat next to each other but didn't speak. The legacy team called in a bomb threat to a package left under the IT director's desk. It was taken very seriously. While their cause was already lost, that didn't help them personally. The new system team eventually called Oracle, who came and re-wrote their queries.

jl6 3y ago
When you say called in a bomb threat, do you mean they reported a package as suspicious?
- Aeolun 3y ago
  I think it means they call the police (from a payphone if they are smart), and tell them there’s a bomb under the IT directors desk that’ll explode in x minutes/hours.
- throwaway154 3y ago
  The call-in was an anonymous, apparently, call to the company's switchboard stating a bomb package had been left in the vicinity of the desk. We were evacuated to a separate part of the building for a few hours while it was dealt with.

rjbwork 3y ago

I've found that the easiest way to effect change is by making the people who make decisions feel the pain of the problem. A lot of line levels do a lot of heroics in an attempt to keep pain from rolling up hill Instead of the organization just doing the work to stop the pain, they throw bodies like so much human analgesic at the problem - I hope you'll let me torture this metaphor some more - and become addicted to this state of affairs.

josephg 3y ago
Yeah I totally agree. I’ve met a lot of people who feel like a hero when they work crazy hours to “save the day”. But if the problem they fixed was caused by bad planning or bad decisions made by upper management, their heroics prevent the decision makers from learning how to run the company properly. Pain is an incredibly important signal. Our bodies need it to survive and companies are no different. Go above and beyond, sure. But never ever be an invisible martyr. If it’s management’s mistake, management needs to feel some heat or they won’t learn.
- forinti 3y ago
  A colleague once said that if you sacrifice yourself to make up for the firm's inefficiencies, they will never get fixed. Which is basically what you've written. This concept should be discussed more often.
  - mablopoule 3y ago
    Tangent to this idea is the concept of 'back pressure' related to data flow, and the need to have a way to return feedback in a system.
    - hosh 3y ago
      I think reading this and other comments slid something in place for me about “Living Systems”.
  - granshaw 3y ago