3 ms·

I do sometimes wonder if the (American) culture of blamelessness has led to a general lack of a feeling of responsibility among software engineers, leading to g

I do sometimes wonder if the (American) culture of blamelessness has led to a general lack of a feeling of responsibility among software engineers, leading to general carelessness. The idea of responsibility that becomes opaque as you move up the hierarchy sounds good, but I also expect that also has a lot to do with Japanese culture.

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
The US has a very strange cultural approach to apologizing and accepting Responsibility. I know that part of it is lawyers and police. If you say "I'm sorry," in many contexts, that puts you on the hook, legally. Most lawyers will advise you to keep your mouth shut, and never, ever admit a thing. I was taught to promptly admit when I'm wrong; regardless of the consequences. Also, to not cop to stuff that I'm not responsible for. I have often had arguments with (American) people, where they are 100%, without-a-shred-of-doubt, wrong. Often, embarrassingly so, yet, they Will. Not. Admit. It. I could bring the spirits of Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking in, to show them they are wrong, and they will still never admit it. It's actually kind of sad. My ability to apologize worked extremely well, in the Japanese corporation. They respected it, and I was given a great deal of deference. On the other hand, the Americans tended to be pretty much dicks about it. If I apologized, they usually tried to use it to gain some leverage, and bully me.
- galangalalgol 3y ago
  Inability to admit wrongdoing is just one of many diagnostic criteria for antisocial personality (sociopaththy). In my experience its only mid level managers and up that are explicitly trained not to admit wrongdoing in the US. I've always felt free to do so and all the good engineers I've worked with have done the same.
tivert 3y ago
> I do sometimes wonder if the (American) culture of blamelessness has led to a general lack of a feeling of responsibility among software engineers, leading to general carelessness. I don't think there's some general "(American) culture of blamelessness," and I think your comment might misunderstand the point of it. My understanding about "blameless culture" is it's all about avoiding counterproductive things like scapegoating, blame-shifting, defensiveness, etc. Removing those things encourages the full cooperation of the team in resolving the issue, by removing the anxiety of punishment for being the guy who's being blamed. Everyone's supposed to take responsibility.
- pclmulqdq 3y ago
  I understand the point of blameless postmortems, thank you. I am suggesting that Americans in particular take it too far, to the point of excusing negligent behavior (which you should be trying to prevent) rather than just avoiding punishing people for mistakes. At the same time, we have made the words "you screwed up" almost a swear in the workplace. If you can normalize "you screwed up" so that everyone hears it (and let's face it, everyone screws up once in a while), those words don't hold nearly as much power. In a sense, the ideals behind giving every child a participation trophy have been extended into the workplace under the guise of avoiding counterproductive things like scapegoating, and I'm pretty convinced that's a bad thing.
  - Grambles 3y ago
    Using the literal words: "You screwed up." -- can you make an example of a way that would be helpful in an incident, either during the process, or after? I can't. There's no value in it. What did we, as a team, do that allowed the incident to happen? Yes, John Smith shouldn't have dropped the tables on production, obviously, but does he really not know that as part of the incident response that he's (presumably) also dealing with? If he's truly not aware that was a mistake, there's an underlying transparency issue that goes way beyond telling an individual they screwed up.
    - pclmulqdq 3y ago
      I can, in that given situation. Your assumption is that John Smith should be told "you screwed up" for dropping the prod tables. He shouldn't - he made a normal mistake. The negligent party here, who should hear the words "you screwed up," is Johnny's boss or tech lead, who decided that those tables should be droppable in the first place, despite the obvious risk. "Negligent" doesn't just mean "made a mistake." It means something more like "their carelessness led to a mistake." That person hearing "you screwed up" will cause significant behavior change. I daresay it will encourage them to make the prod tables very hard to drop, and since they are presumably a smart person, when combined with the postmortem of the incident, it will encourage them to look for and proactively fix similar problems, and generally align the team with good DevOps practices. It is important in all of this that the right person gets the message. I assume you expect that to not happen, since that is one of the theses of "blameless postmortems."
seadan83 3y ago
I don't know if there is an American culture of blamelessnes. Lots of variation, such a blanket statement needs more than confirmation bias. With that said, I think your comment describes kiss-up and corporate fiefdom culture. There are plenty of examples of that. I wonder if non-American cultures are different in that respect. One very key distinction is freedom to admit error vs "the baby is not ugly." I don't think blameless cultures are the norm, where people volunteer to write post portems and voluntarily submit after action plans..

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

The US has a very strange cultural approach to apologizing and accepting Responsibility. I know that part of it is lawyers and police. If you say "I'm sorry," in many contexts, that puts you on the hook, legally. Most lawyers will advise you to keep your mouth shut, and never, ever admit a thing. I was taught to promptly admit when I'm wrong; regardless of the consequences. Also, to not cop to stuff that I'm not responsible for. I have often had arguments with (American) people, where they are 100%, without-a-shred-of-doubt, wrong. Often, embarrassingly so, yet, they Will. Not. Admit. It. I could bring the spirits of Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking in, to show them they are wrong, and they will still never admit it. It's actually kind of sad. My ability to apologize worked extremely well, in the Japanese corporation. They respected it, and I was given a great deal of deference. On the other hand, the Americans tended to be pretty much dicks about it. If I apologized, they usually tried to use it to gain some leverage, and bully me.

galangalalgol 3y ago
Inability to admit wrongdoing is just one of many diagnostic criteria for antisocial personality (sociopaththy). In my experience its only mid level managers and up that are explicitly trained not to admit wrongdoing in the US. I've always felt free to do so and all the good engineers I've worked with have done the same.

tivert 3y ago

> I do sometimes wonder if the (American) culture of blamelessness has led to a general lack of a feeling of responsibility among software engineers, leading to general carelessness. I don't think there's some general "(American) culture of blamelessness," and I think your comment might misunderstand the point of it. My understanding about "blameless culture" is it's all about avoiding counterproductive things like scapegoating, blame-shifting, defensiveness, etc. Removing those things encourages the full cooperation of the team in resolving the issue, by removing the anxiety of punishment for being the guy who's being blamed. Everyone's supposed to take responsibility.

pclmulqdq 3y ago
I understand the point of blameless postmortems, thank you. I am suggesting that Americans in particular take it too far, to the point of excusing negligent behavior (which you should be trying to prevent) rather than just avoiding punishing people for mistakes. At the same time, we have made the words "you screwed up" almost a swear in the workplace. If you can normalize "you screwed up" so that everyone hears it (and let's face it, everyone screws up once in a while), those words don't hold nearly as much power. In a sense, the ideals behind giving every child a participation trophy have been extended into the workplace under the guise of avoiding counterproductive things like scapegoating, and I'm pretty convinced that's a bad thing.
- Grambles 3y ago
  Using the literal words: "You screwed up." -- can you make an example of a way that would be helpful in an incident, either during the process, or after? I can't. There's no value in it. What did we, as a team, do that allowed the incident to happen? Yes, John Smith shouldn't have dropped the tables on production, obviously, but does he really not know that as part of the incident response that he's (presumably) also dealing with? If he's truly not aware that was a mistake, there's an underlying transparency issue that goes way beyond telling an individual they screwed up.
  - pclmulqdq 3y ago
    I can, in that given situation. Your assumption is that John Smith should be told "you screwed up" for dropping the prod tables. He shouldn't - he made a normal mistake. The negligent party here, who should hear the words "you screwed up," is Johnny's boss or tech lead, who decided that those tables should be droppable in the first place, despite the obvious risk. "Negligent" doesn't just mean "made a mistake." It means something more like "their carelessness led to a mistake." That person hearing "you screwed up" will cause significant behavior change. I daresay it will encourage them to make the prod tables very hard to drop, and since they are presumably a smart person, when combined with the postmortem of the incident, it will encourage them to look for and proactively fix similar problems, and generally align the team with good DevOps practices. It is important in all of this that the right person gets the message. I assume you expect that to not happen, since that is one of the theses of "blameless postmortems."

seadan83 3y ago

I don't know if there is an American culture of blamelessnes. Lots of variation, such a blanket statement needs more than confirmation bias. With that said, I think your comment describes kiss-up and corporate fiefdom culture. There are plenty of examples of that. I wonder if non-American cultures are different in that respect. One very key distinction is freedom to admit error vs "the baby is not ugly." I don't think blameless cultures are the norm, where people volunteer to write post portems and voluntarily submit after action plans..