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After having introduced an Easter egg and being called out for it, the author states: I became a cautionary tale though and would occasionally warn off th
by AdieuToLogic 1y ago
After having introduced an Easter egg and being called out for it, the author states:
I became a cautionary tale though and would occasionally
warn off the new hires who might have had an inkling to do
something similar. And true to my word, I would tread very
carefully from that day on with an eye to what Apple HQ
would think about any of my actions — and potential
consequences (intended or not).
It is very likely that management weighed the author's value to the organization against the cost, real or perceived, to rectify this particular situation. An additional potential value which was ultimately realized is the author became an extension of organizational policy "at ground level."
IMHO, this is an optimal resolution and should be applauded. Management reaped a 20-year reward and the author kept his job.
- SoftTalker 1y agoReminds me of a story (which I've heard in slightly varying versions) that happened in the early days of IBM. A man had made a costly mistake, but Thomas Watson didn't fire him, saying "we just spent all that money educating you!" People learn by screwing up, and those can be the best lessons.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoI did. In one of my early jobs, I spammed a bunch of the company customers, trying to promote my music. This was before the Internet (1987 or so), and before spam, so I was a “proto-spammer.” It became a watershed in my life, and I took my work and career, very, very seriously, after that.
- cperciva 1y ago[flagged]
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoIt was a joke.
- charcircuit 1y agoThat's a classic case of the sunk cost fallacy. Just because you spent a lot educating someone doesn't mean that you shouldn't get rid of them.
- hnfong 1y agoIt does sound like the classic sunk cost fallacy. But it also implies that the would-be-fired person has become better after being "educated", and probably better than the average newly-hired person replacing them if they are fired...
- ajb 1y ago"all that money" here refers to the money they lost due to the mistake. The sunk cost fallacy refers to money you intended to spend...
- PunchTunnel 1y agoYou may want to refresh yourself on the definition. Sunk cost is resources already spent, which cannot be recovered - the inability to recover it is what drives the reluctance in the case of the fallacy.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- PhasmaFelis 1y agoWhen a generally smart person makes a humiliating million-dollar mistake, then you can trust that person, more than any of their coworkers, to never make that specific mistake again. That's the "expensive education" here.
- charcircuit 1y agoDepending on the mistake it could also mean that they are more likely to make the same mistake. Especially after the memory of the event fades, they may regress to the old way they acted.
- AdieuToLogic 1y ago> Reminds me of a story (which I've heard in slightly varying versions) that happened in the early days of IBM. A man had made a costly mistake, but Thomas Watson didn't fire him, saying "we just spent all that money educating you!" > People learn by screwing up, and those can be the best lessons. Precisely. Had the author been fired for his actions, the only people who could learn from the situation would be those employed at that time. As each cycled out of the company, this lesson would be lost. By addressing the error in judgement while retaining the author, the organization ensured the lesson would be passed on to each new generation of engineers without having to prescribe the policy dictatorially.
- whstl 1y agoThis is also a much better way of handling the problem than OP's blunder on the article. Berating in an office might teach one person. Not berating and admitting process failure in public can be educational for the whole company. Reminds me of Gitlab's database deletion thing a few years ago. Not only they spent money educating the one engineer, by making the story public they also educated their other employees, and dare I say the whole industry. I still hear people referring to that story from time to time.
- bigstrat2003 1y agoI wouldn't say it's an optimal resolution, because it was a complete overreaction by management in the first place. The optional resolution would have been that the author was gently but firmly told "that isn't acceptable here, don't do it again". There was no need for his manager to tear him a new one over such a minor incident.
- tptacek 1y agoIt was probably not an overreaction: if they'd had to pull millions of CDROMs off the shelves, that would be a very big deal.
- PhasmaFelis 1y agoBut they didn't have to, and a bit of thoughtful consideration would have (and presumably did) make that clear. This is less of a "caught driving drunk" situation and more a "caught driving with one taillight out" situation. You want to make sure it doesn't happen again, but there was no real danger from this single instance.
- tptacek 1y agoIf he'd actually caused a recall, he'd probably have been fired. Instead, he got chewed out. Sounds about right.
- bigstrat2003 1y agoNo, it would still be an overreaction in that case. When someone makes their first mistake, even if it's an expensive mistake for the company, you don't start with the kind of berating that the author related. Certainly you might have to escalate to that level of intensity if the person doesn't improve, but you don't start there.
- tptacek 1y agoI get that in cases where, like, you accidentally drop a database table. Deliberately adding unauthorized code to a build in 1995 was much less OK than that. Regardless: he wasn't fired. I really think these reactions come down to people not having working in shrink-wrap software in the mid-1990s. You weren't missing much, though.