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The right tool, for the right job. If you watch an expert arborist (tree man) at work, you’ll notice that they’ve removed every single safety guard from their

The right tool, for the right job. If you watch an expert arborist (tree man) at work, you’ll notice that they’ve removed every single safety guard from their chainsaws. Every now and then, there’s a nasty accident, but most of them respect their tools, and just make a lot of money (which you’ll understand, if you’ve ever hired one). Same goes for pretty much any vocation. That said, manufacturers have learned that there’s a lot of money to be made, selling professional tools, to insecure fools with money. There’s a big ego hit, in LARPing a highly-experienced engineer, when you’re not one, yourself.

cinntaile 1y ago
> If you watch an expert arborist (tree man) at work, you’ll notice that they’ve removed every single safety guard from their chainsaws. You can say that about everything that has some form of guardrails. It goes faster without them. That doesn't necessarily mean it's the right decision to remove them. People tend to change their minds after they have an accident, which to me is an indication that they can't seem to properly assess the risk and the outcome beforehand.
- pm215 1y ago
  It might alternatively be an indication that they can't properly assess the risk and the outcome afterwards.... (More likely both: we are as a species absolutely terrible about assessing low-probability risks.)
  - cinntaile 1y ago
    Yes, that is a valid point you make!
  - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
    I've benefitted from modern "safe" languages. I cut my teeth on things like Machine Code, ASM, and ANSI C. I don't miss them, at all. Nowadays, I write primarily in Swift, and I absolutely love not testing for leaks, anymore.
    - cinntaile 1y ago
      How does this support your original position? Now you're saying you want the guardrails, I don't get the point you're trying to make.
      - franktankbank 1y ago
        I think he's happily retired.
    - bluGill 1y ago
      I enjoy the non safe parts and proving with code in production for decades it works... it is sort of like code golf. however I use everytrick I tan to get memory safety when possible.
  - darkerside 1y ago
    It can also mean they properly assessed the risk and got incredibly unlucky
    - pm215 1y ago
      In that case they would not change their mind, though.
      - ptero 1y ago
        Not necessarily. Having a painful accident often leads people to a position of "even if I know a mishap is very unlikely I am not doing this again".
        pm215 1y ago
        I think that falls into the "did not correctly assess the risk beforehand" bucket (and as you say and as the post I was replying to said, this is quite common). If they had correctly assessed "this is going to be really awful if it happens such that want to rule out even an unlikely possibility of it" they ought to not want to do it the first time.
        ptero 1y ago
        In this definition I think virtually no one assesses the risk correctly. It is a human nature to overreact (post-factum) to an unlikely event to the extent that most languages have a dedicated saying ("having burned yourself on hot milk, one now blows on water" is the non-English version I heard as a kid). No offense intended, but I also yours is not a good definition of "correctly assessing the risk". If it were followed, an extremely unlikely possibility of a horrible outcome would stop people from doing most optional things. For example, a risk of a horrible disease while on travel will lead to no travel. Personalities differ and there are daredevils and scaredy cats that differ in pre-event risk assessments, but post (unlikely and traumatic) event assessment change is pretty universal. My 2c.
        1y ago
- jiggawatts 1y ago
  I've repeatedly heard the anecdote (to the point that I suspect it's now data) that inexperienced users of chainsaws are terrified of them, experienced users are comfortable with them, and very experienced users are even more terrified of them.
  - the_af 1y ago
    I've heard this of driving: that very novice drivers are terrified and extra careful, as you gain confidence you lose your fear and make dangerous mistakes, and when you're truly experienced the rate of accidents decreases again. Don't know if it's true. I can say I know cases of extremely good people committing very dangerous mistakes due to disabling safety checks, thinking they don't apply to them...
    - potato3732842 1y ago
      I throw these sort of quips the internet love into the same mental bucket (the trash can, tbh) as tabloid health advice. Even if the general rule is right it likely comes with caveats that make it inferior to applying situation specific information or qualifiers that make it little better than chance or a coin toss.
- gwd 1y ago
  A couple of years ago we bought a 50-year-old-house and gutted it. We had professionals do the stuff that required expertise or a lot of time / skills (electricians, plumbers, plasterers, etc), and did most other things ourselves. At some point I'd come in to do something within my remit while the electricians were here. I'd put in earplugs to do some masonry drilling, because I've only got one set of ears and I'd like to be able to hear things when I'm 80. One of the electrician's assistants, probably in his late 20's commented on it, something like, "Got your ear condoms on, huh?" I'm at a stage in my life where I don't really care about that sort of thing, so just blew it off. A few months later, that same guy came in to do the final wiring on something. He'd lost the end of his thumb -- had an accident with some tool or other and cut it off. It's hard for me not to think that his attitude toward earplugs and his accident were related. Nobody deserves to be maimed for life, but we live in a universe which can be pretty unforgiving.
  - Mtinie 1y ago
    Quite possibly. In my experience, the people who make unsolicited comments about others’ risk mitigations have incorrectly learned that safety precautions indicate weakness or inexperience, when experience teaches the opposite. Seasoned professionals know that tools and environments don’t care about your skill level. A tool will injure anyone who doesn’t respect its inherent dangers. The mockery typically comes from those who’ve either been lucky so far or selectively absorbed workplace cultures that prioritize appearing tough over staying whole.
    - potato3732842 1y ago
      On the other hand, there's the people who make a big song and dance ritual over putting their eye and ear pro on just to impact off one bolt that'll be maybe a couple clacks of the hammer. It's not realistic to do that for every single transient noise or tap on something, the safety is just performative at that point. I have no problem letting those people and behaviors be ridiculed.
      - Mtinie 1y ago
- potato3732842 1y ago
  Opinions like yours are wildly popular on the white collar internet because they "feel good" to people who are far removed from actual danger and productivity. But if you go to a part of the internet where many are self employed such naïve and un-nuanced opinions will be laughed at and ridiculed because they completely ignore the benefit side of the equation. We all only get so much time on this earth and on some level quality and quantity are fungible, if inefficiently and imprecisely with some element of chance. How much is a life worth? What's a finger worth? What's a crippling accident worth? And so on and so on. Once you define these terms numbers can be crunched and it can be determined whether you are right or wrong in any given case, and I assure you, there will be cases where your attitude computes so poorly it is farcical. Is the retired carpenter with 10 fingers really better off than the one with 7? Sure the guy with 7 wished he'd not made that foolish mistake but the lifetime productivity gains of habitually moving fast likely show in his quality of life. More complex benefit calculations simply make the problem more complex, but they do not change the fundamental nature of the tradeoff. Depending on what an injury is worth, the compensation structure, etc, etc, it may very well be the right decision to disable all the safeties on everything and work fast for 10yr before losing a finger and moving on to something else because the faster man can command the higher labor rate, etc, etc. Likewise, often times it's more valuable to write crap software in a week that solves a transient need for a year rather than spending 7mo spec'ing out and developing the arc of the goddamn covenant. Yeah it might shit all over your production database but if you're smart about the details it won't be much more likely to do that than "good" software and you can be on to the next value producing task.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
    Unfortunately, this is pretty much exactly the view of many pros. Time is money, and they will shave off things that may cost time (sometimes, that's Quality). I mentioned that they removed the safety guards, but I never said it was good. Myself, I would not do that. I enjoy having some of the safety features that modern languages offer. I can work very quickly, indeed. I probably work faster (and safer) than I ever did, because of this. A big danger of seasoned pros, is that they get casual with extremely dangerous things, and remove the safety stops, in order to accelerate their workflow. One day, they are too casual, and you end up with a smoking pair of shoes on the floor.
roenxi 1y ago
> Every now and then, there’s a nasty accident... That may just be they aren't very good at risk assessment. Nasty accidents with a chainsaw are in a different league of damage for the person involved compared to, eg, accidentally deleting a database or upsetting a manager. A software engineer is all but guaranteed to walk away from deleting a DB with their limbs intact. Even if their manager gets really angry a dev is almost certainly going to survive the encounter.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  Deleting a DB could have life-changing ramifications, depending on what's in the DB. I used to write a lot of hardware-interfacing software. The cool thing about writing things like device drivers, is that you can have some really kinetic bugs.
  - withinboredom 1y ago
    You have bad catastrophe management if deleting a database causes issues. I've seen databases accidentally deleted in production ... we just restored from a backup losing only a few ms of writes. This stuff happens; sure it causes downtime, but it shouldn't have any real ramifications.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
      True. That's what good process and risk management gives you. I have blown up $40,000 receivers, though. Hard to restore from a backup.
- s_dev 1y ago
  This doesn't account for safety critical systems or databases containing highly personal information or those in highly regulated industries. The software engineer might walk away with their limbs but others will fall to suicide or life changing financial circumstances. I can't help but think of the software engineers who followed exactly what their Volkswagen bosses were instructing and are now in prison.
closewith 1y ago
> If you watch an expert arborist (tree man) at work, you’ll notice that they’ve removed every single safety guard from their chainsaws. I've never seen an expert arborist remove any safety feature from a chainsaw and they'd be off site in a heartbeat if they did. You're imagining a scenario to support your opinion, no basis in fact.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  Actually, I have several friends that are arborists. It's a fairly common vocation, hereabouts. It's not nice to be not nice...
  - XorNot 1y ago
    What safety features are they removing from their chainsaws to speed the job up?
    - Jedd 1y ago
      I would imagine the spark arrestor is the first and least dangerous 'feature' to be removed by regular chainsaw users. It's a small oblong of fine stainless steel mesh that sits at the exhaust, prevents any large hot particles escaping, but also gradually impedes the operation of the motor. It can clog up fairly quickly, especially if you run a slightly higher oil:petrol ratio, which you may have very sensible reasons for doing. And because it's bothersome to remove (especially when the engine is hot) and clean (you need a toothbrush, some petrol, a small container, etc) or replace (you need to carry a spare, and different models have different sizes) - a lot of people just remove it. None of my chainsaws still have theirs, f.e. It's a calculated risk, but I'm very careful with where and when I use a chainsaw, and also cautious about monitoring fire risks.
      - bluGill 1y ago
        I won't give up my electric chainsaw... no spark arrestor.
thrown-0825 1y ago
race car drivers are the exact opposite of what you are describing and they compete in a sport where every gram matters.
- bluGill 1y ago
  Race cars have special rules - safety equipment in general does not count against some track limits so winners are looking for ways to hide something that makes them go faster in safety equipment. Every gram matters but there are things that matter more than grams.
- bee_rider 1y ago
  I disagree with the original poster about arborists, but I don’t think racing is a better example. Racing is a sport with rules (limitations) specifically designed to promote some type of fair competition. It is a game designed around wanting to drive cars really fast, it looks nothing like “getting a task done as fast/easily as possible.” If the goal was just to get from point A to point B as fast as possible without and constraints, I guess they would launch the guy out of a cannon or something. If the goal was to do something useful, like move a lot of people/stuff from one point to another, we’d end up looking at solutions that look nothing like a race car; public transit, stuff like that.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
    Well, I made a couple of mistakes in the post. One, is that line about LARPing. I think that's what's really gotten folks upset, and rightly so. I sincerely apologize. It came across as snide. It was a poor choice of words. The other, is that I gave the impression that I approved of the practice of removing safety gear. It was an observation; not an approval. I've watched "cowboy" arborists at work, and find it terrifying (and, TBH, impressive, as well). I think they are accidents waiting to happen. But it still goes on, in many industries, including software development. Another poster talked about the calculations that people make, taking risks, in order to move faster. Their post seemed unpopular, but they were absolutely correct. A big problem with experienced folks demonstrating reckless behavior, is that it gets aped by folks that may not be able to manage things safely, and that's where the real danger lies.
tristramb 1y ago
And what do their insurance companies think about this?
mdiesel 1y ago
The old saying "they've forgotten more about X than you'll ever know" is very true. A professional quite often has forgotten what it was like to be a beginnner, making them both very knowledgeable about a topic but also very likely to give dangerous advice to a beginner.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  This is absolutely correct. I must confess that I have done exactly that.
moron4hire 1y ago
Having grown up in a rural environment and nearly having my own catastrophic accident while using a circular saw with all of its safety features intact and myself being in an alert and mindful state, I can only describe the scenario you've outlined as, "typical idiot-class behavior". You see this kind of stuff amongst the petty-criminal working class who chain smoke and binge drink and steal tools off the work site and complain about never being able to get ahead. I've had numerous uncles and neighbors who have life-long debilitating injuries because they showed up to work drunk and fell of a ladder or dropped a running chainsaw on their foot. Every single one of them thought they were a bad ass who "knew what they were doing". My own accident occurred because I was over-using the tool. I did not have the best tool for the job. The tool was generally appropriate, but I also didn't have the best work space set up for it. The work space wasn't uncomfortable, but I didn't give myself room for error. I thought I had all of the safety features in place and was "being extra careful" while I used it at an awkward angle. Then, halfway through the cut, I noticed the off-cut drooping and knew it was going to damage the piece I was cutting if it dropped too far. I reached to support the droop with my off-hand, which given my angle meant I had to cross under my arm pushing the tool. In a moment I still don't completely understand, the path I sent my hand on did not go directly towards my armpit as I knew I would need to do to keep clear of the tool and instead went under the saw directly. I ended up touching the running saw blade sticking out of the bottom of the piece I was cutting. A half-dozen different things could have been done differently to avoid the mistake, any one of which is not all that dangerous in isolation, but combined created an incredibly narrow error envelope. What I didn't consider is that "being extra careful" can change in an instant. One little bump in balance, one little fleeting distraction, one little change of thought as you are mid-task and don't immediately stop to re-evaluate and you blow right on out of your after envelope. Luckily, I only cut the tips of two fingers. I was able to get them stitched up and they have healed almost completely (there is some thick scar tissue right where my fingers hit keys in my keyboard that serves as a daily reminder). You don't see this behavior amongst the professionals in the trades who successfully build their businesses from the ground up. Professionals over design their safety envelope. And they still occasionally get hurt. Just not as catastrophicly so.
- Gud 1y ago
  Well put!
bluGill 1y ago
It isn't experts who remove it. It is professionals whothink they know. I've been trained on chainsaws by USFS experts - they used the safety gear and demonstraighted that used correctly things work just as fast. In fact they were often faster than the professionals who thought they were faster - because the planning and communication steps (6 steps) often saved more time than was gained by jumping in) safety gear doesn't cost much time to put on. Checking the safety gear also finds not safety things wrong with it.
1970-01-01 1y ago
>If you watch an expert arborist (tree man) at work, you’ll notice that they’ve removed every single safety guard from their chainsaws. What are you actually talking about here? Tree surgeons may remove some of them some of the time, but all of them would either kill them, get them fired, or both. Here is an old quote to put into perspective: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2022/06/06/old-bold/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2022/06/06/old-bold/
Gud 1y ago
Although I've never worked as an arborist, I supervise the installation of high voltage equipment for a living. I work with all kinds of contractors. Our equipment weighs tens of tonnes. If I would see somebody removing the guardrails from their tools, I would send them off site immediately. There will be no nasty accidents.
beacon294 1y ago
> There’s a big ego hit, in LARPing a highly-experienced engineer, when you’re not one, yourself. There's a big ego hit in punching up, down, and sideways, and it's far too popular among engineers these days. I wish that engineers overall were more humble with each other, but it's not going to change quickly. And regrettably it is the human condition. Humility is also unprofitable.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  That's a good point. I didn't mean it to be taken as so, but I guess that I should have anticipated it. I'm pretty sure that line is the real reason for the animosity. My sincere apologies. I'll leave it there, as a lesson to others.
Zanfa 1y ago
In my experience it's the other way around. It's typically the bottom of the barrel contractors who sabotage their own (and others) safety for a quick buck. The same way a senior engineer is more likely to use version control, backups and automated testing rather than YOLOing vibe coded applications to prod.
- infecto 1y ago
  Agree. I am really surprised this posters opinion or the linked article is anywhere on the radar of professionals. There is a time and a place for everything. Maybe in an emergency it makes sense to get write access to a prod DB but even as a “professional” I want a second pair of eyes with me or have a backup ready to go.
infecto 1y ago
This is a really bad take. Professional arborists don’t “rip every guard off their saws”, there aren’t even that many guards to begin with, and the ones that exist (chain brake, hand guard, throttle lock) don’t slow anyone down. They’re there so you don’t bleed out in a tree. The “LARPing” angle makes even less sense. What’s the software equivalent, saying that keeping engineers out of direct prod access is just an ego hit? That’s not LARPing, that’s risk management. Same way arborists keep the guards on because downtime from losing a hand costs more than any pretend efficiency. Bad tools don’t make you a pro, and pretending guardrails are just for “fools with money” is an incredibly bad take. It’s like those YouTube get rich folks that never mention how much of the success is luck.
- sidewndr46 1y ago
  I guess the equivalent would be compiling rm without the '--no-preserve-root' option? Realistically I know a professional arborist. Not only does he have all the safety equipment on his saws, all his crews have full PPE available and use it. The only piece of safety equipment I've ever seen that was dubious is the "sawstop" for table saws, primarily because it false triggers so often.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  Well, I made a couple of mistakes, when writing the post[0]. It was misinterpreted, but that was entirely my fault. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45027284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45027284
the_af 1y ago
In Argentina, a well known case (well known within the industry) of fatal radioactive poisoning from an experimental nuclear reactor happened because an extremely experienced and well regarded operator was used to disabling safety measures of the reactor to speed things up. After all, he understood it perfectly and knew what was and wasn't actually safe to do. Until he made a mistake, got a dose of radiation (he may have splashed himself with water, actually), and he instantly knew he was dead. And he was, within days, if my memory serves. Experts make the dumbest mistakes because they are sure safety doesn't apply to them, because they know better.
HankStallone 1y ago
I wouldn't call myself an expert arborist, but I cut the firewood that provides all my heat in the winter. The safety features (mainly the goofy guard they put on the end of the bar) are good if you're a homeowner cutting some shrubs a couple times a year, but you have to take that off to drop a tree or cut pieces wider than your bar, so they aren't practical for serious work. Fortunately, a chainsaw isn't a very dangerous tool, since it stops as soon as you release the trigger. The danger in dropping trees is from the tree itself: having one fall the wrong way or crack loose at the base before you expect it. I don't drop anything large when I'm working by myself, for that reason. I've been mildly injured by some surprisingly small trees, when something happened to bounce where I wasn't expecting.
- relaxing 1y ago
  If you’re regularly cutting pieces of wood wider than your bar, for god’s sake invest in a bigger saw. It will serve you better in many ways, safety included.
scarface_74 1y ago
And if they cut their hands off as an independent worker, the only person who gets hurt will be themselves. But I bet if they start a business and have employees they will have rules against removing safeties and fire anyone who gets caught because now they have to worry about insurance premiums, lawsuits, and their business going under.
bee_rider 1y ago
Although, loggers have specialized vehicles (harvesters and whatnot) that look more like construction vehicles with giant saws and grabbers on the front. I think there’s something interesting in the pick of arborist (somebody specialized in coming in and dealing with troublesome trees) vs some kind of logger (specialized in the at-scale harvesting of trees). I bet there’s more room for modified consumer gear in the previous case, because the whole job is to figure out weird situations (like taking down or cleaning up a too-big tree in somebody’s back yard with poor access and lots of things you don’t want to hit) that might preclude the use of the ideal equipment. But, it isn’t obvious to me which is more like software engineering. Ideally, the software company is a cultivated environment optimized for productivity, more like a logging forest. Part of the engineer’s job is to help cultivate the nice orderly rows of correct-sized trees so that they can just rip through them at scale, right? Maybe the arborist is more like some high-end consultant that you hire when things go wrong.

cinntaile 1y ago

> If you watch an expert arborist (tree man) at work, you’ll notice that they’ve removed every single safety guard from their chainsaws. You can say that about everything that has some form of guardrails. It goes faster without them. That doesn't necessarily mean it's the right decision to remove them. People tend to change their minds after they have an accident, which to me is an indication that they can't seem to properly assess the risk and the outcome beforehand.

pm215 1y ago
It might alternatively be an indication that they can't properly assess the risk and the outcome afterwards.... (More likely both: we are as a species absolutely terrible about assessing low-probability risks.)
- cinntaile 1y ago
  Yes, that is a valid point you make!
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  I've benefitted from modern "safe" languages. I cut my teeth on things like Machine Code, ASM, and ANSI C. I don't miss them, at all. Nowadays, I write primarily in Swift, and I absolutely love not testing for leaks, anymore.
  - cinntaile 1y ago
    How does this support your original position? Now you're saying you want the guardrails, I don't get the point you're trying to make.
    - franktankbank 1y ago
      I think he's happily retired.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    I enjoy the non safe parts and proving with code in production for decades it works... it is sort of like code golf. however I use everytrick I tan to get memory safety when possible.
- darkerside 1y ago
  It can also mean they properly assessed the risk and got incredibly unlucky
  - pm215 1y ago
    In that case they would not change their mind, though.
    - ptero 1y ago
      Not necessarily. Having a painful accident often leads people to a position of "even if I know a mishap is very unlikely I am not doing this again".
      - pm215 1y ago
        I think that falls into the "did not correctly assess the risk beforehand" bucket (and as you say and as the post I was replying to said, this is quite common). If they had correctly assessed "this is going to be really awful if it happens such that want to rule out even an unlikely possibility of it" they ought to not want to do it the first time.
        ptero 1y ago
        In this definition I think virtually no one assesses the risk correctly. It is a human nature to overreact (post-factum) to an unlikely event to the extent that most languages have a dedicated saying ("having burned yourself on hot milk, one now blows on water" is the non-English version I heard as a kid). No offense intended, but I also yours is not a good definition of "correctly assessing the risk". If it were followed, an extremely unlikely possibility of a horrible outcome would stop people from doing most optional things. For example, a risk of a horrible disease while on travel will lead to no travel. Personalities differ and there are daredevils and scaredy cats that differ in pre-event risk assessments, but post (unlikely and traumatic) event assessment change is pretty universal. My 2c.
        1y ago
jiggawatts 1y ago
I've repeatedly heard the anecdote (to the point that I suspect it's now data) that inexperienced users of chainsaws are terrified of them, experienced users are comfortable with them, and very experienced users are even more terrified of them.
- the_af 1y ago
  I've heard this of driving: that very novice drivers are terrified and extra careful, as you gain confidence you lose your fear and make dangerous mistakes, and when you're truly experienced the rate of accidents decreases again. Don't know if it's true. I can say I know cases of extremely good people committing very dangerous mistakes due to disabling safety checks, thinking they don't apply to them...
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    I throw these sort of quips the internet love into the same mental bucket (the trash can, tbh) as tabloid health advice. Even if the general rule is right it likely comes with caveats that make it inferior to applying situation specific information or qualifiers that make it little better than chance or a coin toss.
gwd 1y ago
A couple of years ago we bought a 50-year-old-house and gutted it. We had professionals do the stuff that required expertise or a lot of time / skills (electricians, plumbers, plasterers, etc), and did most other things ourselves. At some point I'd come in to do something within my remit while the electricians were here. I'd put in earplugs to do some masonry drilling, because I've only got one set of ears and I'd like to be able to hear things when I'm 80. One of the electrician's assistants, probably in his late 20's commented on it, something like, "Got your ear condoms on, huh?" I'm at a stage in my life where I don't really care about that sort of thing, so just blew it off. A few months later, that same guy came in to do the final wiring on something. He'd lost the end of his thumb -- had an accident with some tool or other and cut it off. It's hard for me not to think that his attitude toward earplugs and his accident were related. Nobody deserves to be maimed for life, but we live in a universe which can be pretty unforgiving.
- Mtinie 1y ago
  Quite possibly. In my experience, the people who make unsolicited comments about others’ risk mitigations have incorrectly learned that safety precautions indicate weakness or inexperience, when experience teaches the opposite. Seasoned professionals know that tools and environments don’t care about your skill level. A tool will injure anyone who doesn’t respect its inherent dangers. The mockery typically comes from those who’ve either been lucky so far or selectively absorbed workplace cultures that prioritize appearing tough over staying whole.
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    On the other hand, there's the people who make a big song and dance ritual over putting their eye and ear pro on just to impact off one bolt that'll be maybe a couple clacks of the hammer. It's not realistic to do that for every single transient noise or tap on something, the safety is just performative at that point. I have no problem letting those people and behaviors be ridiculed.
    - Mtinie 1y ago
potato3732842 1y ago
Opinions like yours are wildly popular on the white collar internet because they "feel good" to people who are far removed from actual danger and productivity. But if you go to a part of the internet where many are self employed such naïve and un-nuanced opinions will be laughed at and ridiculed because they completely ignore the benefit side of the equation. We all only get so much time on this earth and on some level quality and quantity are fungible, if inefficiently and imprecisely with some element of chance. How much is a life worth? What's a finger worth? What's a crippling accident worth? And so on and so on. Once you define these terms numbers can be crunched and it can be determined whether you are right or wrong in any given case, and I assure you, there will be cases where your attitude computes so poorly it is farcical. Is the retired carpenter with 10 fingers really better off than the one with 7? Sure the guy with 7 wished he'd not made that foolish mistake but the lifetime productivity gains of habitually moving fast likely show in his quality of life. More complex benefit calculations simply make the problem more complex, but they do not change the fundamental nature of the tradeoff. Depending on what an injury is worth, the compensation structure, etc, etc, it may very well be the right decision to disable all the safeties on everything and work fast for 10yr before losing a finger and moving on to something else because the faster man can command the higher labor rate, etc, etc. Likewise, often times it's more valuable to write crap software in a week that solves a transient need for a year rather than spending 7mo spec'ing out and developing the arc of the goddamn covenant. Yeah it might shit all over your production database but if you're smart about the details it won't be much more likely to do that than "good" software and you can be on to the next value producing task.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  Unfortunately, this is pretty much exactly the view of many pros. Time is money, and they will shave off things that may cost time (sometimes, that's Quality). I mentioned that they removed the safety guards, but I never said it was good. Myself, I would not do that. I enjoy having some of the safety features that modern languages offer. I can work very quickly, indeed. I probably work faster (and safer) than I ever did, because of this. A big danger of seasoned pros, is that they get casual with extremely dangerous things, and remove the safety stops, in order to accelerate their workflow. One day, they are too casual, and you end up with a smoking pair of shoes on the floor.

roenxi 1y ago

> Every now and then, there’s a nasty accident... That may just be they aren't very good at risk assessment. Nasty accidents with a chainsaw are in a different league of damage for the person involved compared to, eg, accidentally deleting a database or upsetting a manager. A software engineer is all but guaranteed to walk away from deleting a DB with their limbs intact. Even if their manager gets really angry a dev is almost certainly going to survive the encounter.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
Deleting a DB could have life-changing ramifications, depending on what's in the DB. I used to write a lot of hardware-interfacing software. The cool thing about writing things like device drivers, is that you can have some really kinetic bugs.
- withinboredom 1y ago
  You have bad catastrophe management if deleting a database causes issues. I've seen databases accidentally deleted in production ... we just restored from a backup losing only a few ms of writes. This stuff happens; sure it causes downtime, but it shouldn't have any real ramifications.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
    True. That's what good process and risk management gives you. I have blown up $40,000 receivers, though. Hard to restore from a backup.
s_dev 1y ago
This doesn't account for safety critical systems or databases containing highly personal information or those in highly regulated industries. The software engineer might walk away with their limbs but others will fall to suicide or life changing financial circumstances. I can't help but think of the software engineers who followed exactly what their Volkswagen bosses were instructing and are now in prison.

closewith 1y ago

> If you watch an expert arborist (tree man) at work, you’ll notice that they’ve removed every single safety guard from their chainsaws. I've never seen an expert arborist remove any safety feature from a chainsaw and they'd be off site in a heartbeat if they did. You're imagining a scenario to support your opinion, no basis in fact.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
Actually, I have several friends that are arborists. It's a fairly common vocation, hereabouts. It's not nice to be not nice...
- XorNot 1y ago
  What safety features are they removing from their chainsaws to speed the job up?
  - Jedd 1y ago
    I would imagine the spark arrestor is the first and least dangerous 'feature' to be removed by regular chainsaw users. It's a small oblong of fine stainless steel mesh that sits at the exhaust, prevents any large hot particles escaping, but also gradually impedes the operation of the motor. It can clog up fairly quickly, especially if you run a slightly higher oil:petrol ratio, which you may have very sensible reasons for doing. And because it's bothersome to remove (especially when the engine is hot) and clean (you need a toothbrush, some petrol, a small container, etc) or replace (you need to carry a spare, and different models have different sizes) - a lot of people just remove it. None of my chainsaws still have theirs, f.e. It's a calculated risk, but I'm very careful with where and when I use a chainsaw, and also cautious about monitoring fire risks.
    - bluGill 1y ago
      I won't give up my electric chainsaw... no spark arrestor.

thrown-0825 1y ago

race car drivers are the exact opposite of what you are describing and they compete in a sport where every gram matters.

bluGill 1y ago
Race cars have special rules - safety equipment in general does not count against some track limits so winners are looking for ways to hide something that makes them go faster in safety equipment. Every gram matters but there are things that matter more than grams.
bee_rider 1y ago
I disagree with the original poster about arborists, but I don’t think racing is a better example. Racing is a sport with rules (limitations) specifically designed to promote some type of fair competition. It is a game designed around wanting to drive cars really fast, it looks nothing like “getting a task done as fast/easily as possible.” If the goal was just to get from point A to point B as fast as possible without and constraints, I guess they would launch the guy out of a cannon or something. If the goal was to do something useful, like move a lot of people/stuff from one point to another, we’d end up looking at solutions that look nothing like a race car; public transit, stuff like that.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  Well, I made a couple of mistakes in the post. One, is that line about LARPing. I think that's what's really gotten folks upset, and rightly so. I sincerely apologize. It came across as snide. It was a poor choice of words. The other, is that I gave the impression that I approved of the practice of removing safety gear. It was an observation; not an approval. I've watched "cowboy" arborists at work, and find it terrifying (and, TBH, impressive, as well). I think they are accidents waiting to happen. But it still goes on, in many industries, including software development. Another poster talked about the calculations that people make, taking risks, in order to move faster. Their post seemed unpopular, but they were absolutely correct. A big problem with experienced folks demonstrating reckless behavior, is that it gets aped by folks that may not be able to manage things safely, and that's where the real danger lies.

tristramb 1y ago

And what do their insurance companies think about this?

mdiesel 1y ago

The old saying "they've forgotten more about X than you'll ever know" is very true. A professional quite often has forgotten what it was like to be a beginnner, making them both very knowledgeable about a topic but also very likely to give dangerous advice to a beginner.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
This is absolutely correct. I must confess that I have done exactly that.

moron4hire 1y ago

Having grown up in a rural environment and nearly having my own catastrophic accident while using a circular saw with all of its safety features intact and myself being in an alert and mindful state, I can only describe the scenario you've outlined as, "typical idiot-class behavior". You see this kind of stuff amongst the petty-criminal working class who chain smoke and binge drink and steal tools off the work site and complain about never being able to get ahead. I've had numerous uncles and neighbors who have life-long debilitating injuries because they showed up to work drunk and fell of a ladder or dropped a running chainsaw on their foot. Every single one of them thought they were a bad ass who "knew what they were doing". My own accident occurred because I was over-using the tool. I did not have the best tool for the job. The tool was generally appropriate, but I also didn't have the best work space set up for it. The work space wasn't uncomfortable, but I didn't give myself room for error. I thought I had all of the safety features in place and was "being extra careful" while I used it at an awkward angle. Then, halfway through the cut, I noticed the off-cut drooping and knew it was going to damage the piece I was cutting if it dropped too far. I reached to support the droop with my off-hand, which given my angle meant I had to cross under my arm pushing the tool. In a moment I still don't completely understand, the path I sent my hand on did not go directly towards my armpit as I knew I would need to do to keep clear of the tool and instead went under the saw directly. I ended up touching the running saw blade sticking out of the bottom of the piece I was cutting. A half-dozen different things could have been done differently to avoid the mistake, any one of which is not all that dangerous in isolation, but combined created an incredibly narrow error envelope. What I didn't consider is that "being extra careful" can change in an instant. One little bump in balance, one little fleeting distraction, one little change of thought as you are mid-task and don't immediately stop to re-evaluate and you blow right on out of your after envelope. Luckily, I only cut the tips of two fingers. I was able to get them stitched up and they have healed almost completely (there is some thick scar tissue right where my fingers hit keys in my keyboard that serves as a daily reminder). You don't see this behavior amongst the professionals in the trades who successfully build their businesses from the ground up. Professionals over design their safety envelope. And they still occasionally get hurt. Just not as catastrophicly so.

Gud 1y ago
Well put!

bluGill 1y ago

It isn't experts who remove it. It is professionals whothink they know. I've been trained on chainsaws by USFS experts - they used the safety gear and demonstraighted that used correctly things work just as fast. In fact they were often faster than the professionals who thought they were faster - because the planning and communication steps (6 steps) often saved more time than was gained by jumping in) safety gear doesn't cost much time to put on. Checking the safety gear also finds not safety things wrong with it.

1970-01-01 1y ago

>If you watch an expert arborist (tree man) at work, you’ll notice that they’ve removed every single safety guard from their chainsaws. What are you actually talking about here? Tree surgeons may remove some of them some of the time, but all of them would either kill them, get them fired, or both. Here is an old quote to put into perspective: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2022/06/06/old-bold/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2022/06/06/old-bold/

Gud 1y ago

Although I've never worked as an arborist, I supervise the installation of high voltage equipment for a living. I work with all kinds of contractors. Our equipment weighs tens of tonnes. If I would see somebody removing the guardrails from their tools, I would send them off site immediately. There will be no nasty accidents.

beacon294 1y ago

> There’s a big ego hit, in LARPing a highly-experienced engineer, when you’re not one, yourself. There's a big ego hit in punching up, down, and sideways, and it's far too popular among engineers these days. I wish that engineers overall were more humble with each other, but it's not going to change quickly. And regrettably it is the human condition. Humility is also unprofitable.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
That's a good point. I didn't mean it to be taken as so, but I guess that I should have anticipated it. I'm pretty sure that line is the real reason for the animosity. My sincere apologies. I'll leave it there, as a lesson to others.

Zanfa 1y ago

In my experience it's the other way around. It's typically the bottom of the barrel contractors who sabotage their own (and others) safety for a quick buck. The same way a senior engineer is more likely to use version control, backups and automated testing rather than YOLOing vibe coded applications to prod.

infecto 1y ago
Agree. I am really surprised this posters opinion or the linked article is anywhere on the radar of professionals. There is a time and a place for everything. Maybe in an emergency it makes sense to get write access to a prod DB but even as a “professional” I want a second pair of eyes with me or have a backup ready to go.

infecto 1y ago

This is a really bad take. Professional arborists don’t “rip every guard off their saws”, there aren’t even that many guards to begin with, and the ones that exist (chain brake, hand guard, throttle lock) don’t slow anyone down. They’re there so you don’t bleed out in a tree. The “LARPing” angle makes even less sense. What’s the software equivalent, saying that keeping engineers out of direct prod access is just an ego hit? That’s not LARPing, that’s risk management. Same way arborists keep the guards on because downtime from losing a hand costs more than any pretend efficiency. Bad tools don’t make you a pro, and pretending guardrails are just for “fools with money” is an incredibly bad take. It’s like those YouTube get rich folks that never mention how much of the success is luck.

sidewndr46 1y ago
I guess the equivalent would be compiling rm without the '--no-preserve-root' option? Realistically I know a professional arborist. Not only does he have all the safety equipment on his saws, all his crews have full PPE available and use it. The only piece of safety equipment I've ever seen that was dubious is the "sawstop" for table saws, primarily because it false triggers so often.
ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
Well, I made a couple of mistakes, when writing the post[0]. It was misinterpreted, but that was entirely my fault. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45027284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45027284

the_af 1y ago

In Argentina, a well known case (well known within the industry) of fatal radioactive poisoning from an experimental nuclear reactor happened because an extremely experienced and well regarded operator was used to disabling safety measures of the reactor to speed things up. After all, he understood it perfectly and knew what was and wasn't actually safe to do. Until he made a mistake, got a dose of radiation (he may have splashed himself with water, actually), and he instantly knew he was dead. And he was, within days, if my memory serves. Experts make the dumbest mistakes because they are sure safety doesn't apply to them, because they know better.

HankStallone 1y ago

I wouldn't call myself an expert arborist, but I cut the firewood that provides all my heat in the winter. The safety features (mainly the goofy guard they put on the end of the bar) are good if you're a homeowner cutting some shrubs a couple times a year, but you have to take that off to drop a tree or cut pieces wider than your bar, so they aren't practical for serious work. Fortunately, a chainsaw isn't a very dangerous tool, since it stops as soon as you release the trigger. The danger in dropping trees is from the tree itself: having one fall the wrong way or crack loose at the base before you expect it. I don't drop anything large when I'm working by myself, for that reason. I've been mildly injured by some surprisingly small trees, when something happened to bounce where I wasn't expecting.

relaxing 1y ago
If you’re regularly cutting pieces of wood wider than your bar, for god’s sake invest in a bigger saw. It will serve you better in many ways, safety included.

scarface_74 1y ago

And if they cut their hands off as an independent worker, the only person who gets hurt will be themselves. But I bet if they start a business and have employees they will have rules against removing safeties and fire anyone who gets caught because now they have to worry about insurance premiums, lawsuits, and their business going under.

bee_rider 1y ago

Although, loggers have specialized vehicles (harvesters and whatnot) that look more like construction vehicles with giant saws and grabbers on the front. I think there’s something interesting in the pick of arborist (somebody specialized in coming in and dealing with troublesome trees) vs some kind of logger (specialized in the at-scale harvesting of trees). I bet there’s more room for modified consumer gear in the previous case, because the whole job is to figure out weird situations (like taking down or cleaning up a too-big tree in somebody’s back yard with poor access and lots of things you don’t want to hit) that might preclude the use of the ideal equipment. But, it isn’t obvious to me which is more like software engineering. Ideally, the software company is a cultivated environment optimized for productivity, more like a logging forest. Part of the engineer’s job is to help cultivate the nice orderly rows of correct-sized trees so that they can just rip through them at scale, right? Maybe the arborist is more like some high-end consultant that you hire when things go wrong.