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I like the essay. Unfortunately, too many people think “blameless” means no accountability for doing bad work.

sshine 3y ago
> too many people think “blameless” means no accountability for doing bad work No, that's still somewhat blameful. If you had stuck with "blameless does not mean no accountability", I think you're right. But the emphasis of the article specifically does not assume people do bad work on purpose: > assume the individuals involved had the best of intentions, and either they did not have the correct information to make a better decision, or the tools allowed them to make a mistake. I'd like to hear other takes on how accountability plays into blameless culture.
ExoticPearTree 3y ago
Not really. Blameless helps with figuring out issues faster and helping people learn something from an incident. Blameless does not mean "you scan screw up as much as you want". If you start being careless, you will be shown the door.
aftoprokrustes 3y ago
Would you mind elaborating? In particular, do you refer to the technical people ("no need to take care, even if I mess up no one will blame me") or the managers ("those cowards just want to avoid being accontable for their mistakes by blaming the process")? My last company had a culture of blameless post mortems, and also a strong culture of accountability, so definitely no one would fit the first definition. And the company was too small to have non technical managers. My current company (big corporation) officially supports blameless reaction to incidents, but internally has a strong culture of cover-up and blame ping-pong, but I still cannot think of anyone who would believe "blameless means no accountability". It just comes from deeply ingrained habits (lots of people do their whole career inside the company, lots of them even getting their masters at the company's own "university". Behavior is hard to change when everyone comes out of the same mould). I also think it comes from inadequate processes: where in the previous company the postmortem was mostly a meeting done by and for the technical team, my new company has a strong culture of "escalation meetings", where the highest managers quickly get drafted in, which obviously has a strong influence on the capacity to conduct an open and blameless process.
BirAdam 3y ago
I find most “philosophies” regarding work to be BS. Honestly most teams just get too big. People don’t know each other and this allows things to go unseen for too long. When people know one another and work together in real time, and have healthy relationships, they can then evaluate each other’s work, rely on each other, and generally get the job done with a minimum of fuss. I fully understand that some people are not looking for that kind of thing at all. Many would rather be nameless cogs, and some would simply rather not do the work (technical or soft skills). That’s fine too. For that latter group, whatever the management buzz words de jour are are likely to be employed where you work sooner rather than later.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  Ye when org. and team size grows "accountability" is not practical anymore since the decision makers have no clue who to blame in all but obvious cases. And the workers start to do what they get paid for, not what the nominal culture dictates. My take is that it is probably better to accept bad workers in big orgs rather than trying to reach some kind of competence utopia, to get the incentives right.

> too many people think “blameless” means no accountability for doing bad work No, that's still somewhat blameful. If you had stuck with "blameless does not mean no accountability", I think you're right. But the emphasis of the article specifically does not assume people do bad work on purpose: > assume the individuals involved had the best of intentions, and either they did not have the correct information to make a better decision, or the tools allowed them to make a mistake. I'd like to hear other takes on how accountability plays into blameless culture.

ExoticPearTree 3y ago

Not really. Blameless helps with figuring out issues faster and helping people learn something from an incident. Blameless does not mean "you scan screw up as much as you want". If you start being careless, you will be shown the door.

aftoprokrustes 3y ago

Would you mind elaborating? In particular, do you refer to the technical people ("no need to take care, even if I mess up no one will blame me") or the managers ("those cowards just want to avoid being accontable for their mistakes by blaming the process")? My last company had a culture of blameless post mortems, and also a strong culture of accountability, so definitely no one would fit the first definition. And the company was too small to have non technical managers. My current company (big corporation) officially supports blameless reaction to incidents, but internally has a strong culture of cover-up and blame ping-pong, but I still cannot think of anyone who would believe "blameless means no accountability". It just comes from deeply ingrained habits (lots of people do their whole career inside the company, lots of them even getting their masters at the company's own "university". Behavior is hard to change when everyone comes out of the same mould). I also think it comes from inadequate processes: where in the previous company the postmortem was mostly a meeting done by and for the technical team, my new company has a strong culture of "escalation meetings", where the highest managers quickly get drafted in, which obviously has a strong influence on the capacity to conduct an open and blameless process.

BirAdam 3y ago

I find most “philosophies” regarding work to be BS. Honestly most teams just get too big. People don’t know each other and this allows things to go unseen for too long. When people know one another and work together in real time, and have healthy relationships, they can then evaluate each other’s work, rely on each other, and generally get the job done with a minimum of fuss. I fully understand that some people are not looking for that kind of thing at all. Many would rather be nameless cogs, and some would simply rather not do the work (technical or soft skills). That’s fine too. For that latter group, whatever the management buzz words de jour are are likely to be employed where you work sooner rather than later.

rightbyte 3y ago
Ye when org. and team size grows "accountability" is not practical anymore since the decision makers have no clue who to blame in all but obvious cases. And the workers start to do what they get paid for, not what the nominal culture dictates. My take is that it is probably better to accept bad workers in big orgs rather than trying to reach some kind of competence utopia, to get the incentives right.