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I don't think entrepreneurs or developers can look back on their mistakes with the same regret as surgeons or medical people. Watching a startup fail or a compl

by s_dev 11y ago

I don't think entrepreneurs or developers can look back on their mistakes with the same regret as surgeons or medical people. Watching a startup fail or a complete failure of a payment system is probably nothing compared to the opportunity cost involved when its someones life. I barely have the emotional maturity to handle a breakup -- never mind a mistake that cost someone their life or even a finger. Certain structural engineers or medical device engineers might face such decisions but the vast majority of devs and tech people don't.

joshvm 11y ago
Developers are less likely to be directly responsible for the sort of things that surgeons are, unless you write mission-critical software. However, if you write any kind of software that a lot (millions) of people depend on, there is a very good chance that you've ruined people's lives or even caused death. I dread to think how many people's relationships have been destroyed because the developers of Facebook, Whatsapp, Telegram et al decided to implement read notifications/"last seen" on their instant messaging apps.
- DanBC 11y ago
  There are some cases in England of post office managers going to jail because the Post Office software audit trail made it look like those managers were defrauding the post office. It turns out there might be severe bugs causing these errors http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23233573 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23233573 Suicide is complex and I don't want to ascribe a simplistic reason to suicide, but at least one post office manager died by suicide after a wrongful accusation. A bungled software update left many people in the UK without access to their money for weeks. At least one person was imprisoned for that - they had to pay a fine by a certain date; they tried to pay but couldn't; even though this was totally outside their control the system wasn't flexible enough to cope. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21280943 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21280943 British Gas allows some people to make weekly payments as part of a payment plan scheme. But you have to pay exactly that amount on exactly the agreed day or their software does not recognise the payment as part of the plan. EG you agree to pay £10 every Friday. On Wednesday you start by paying £20, then on Wednesday you pay £12, and you continue to pay £9 or £12 every Wednesday. You're always actually paid more than your plan agreement; and your actual balance is in credit; but you'll be getting aggressive "red" letters from British Gas telling you that you have not kept up to date with your plan and that your account is in arrears. British Gas, and I say this as politely as I can, are fucking scum.
  - arethuza 11y ago
    "At least one person was imprisoned for that" - I initially thought you meant someone at RBS was imprisoned, which would have been interesting...
    - pascalmemories 11y ago
      Sadly, the RBS debacle led only to knighthoods, bail-outs and taxpayer money being spent on bonuses so they could "retain world-class talent". Apparently, firing their asses would have been a Bad Thing due to their stellar performance to date (and since). The very idea of prison time for RBS re-cycling the Enron ideas of debt vehicles is laughable. Enron people went to jail and the banks (like RBS) then had regulators permit exactly the same debt-swap bullshit that killed Enron. Banks went on to trade in debt - an eventual cause of the financial meltdown. RBS was a major culpable party but their chairman, Fred Goodwin, managed to get away with returning the knighthood and a fraction of his pension, while protected by a super-injunction making it illegal to reveal to the public he was a banker[1]. He continues to enjoy 'Royal Family' level police protection, has his properties removed from Street View [2] and is granted a level of establishment protection no-one else could dream of if they had been responsible for any catastrophe of even a fractional proportion. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/mar/10/fred-goodwin-superinjunction-banking http://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/mar/10/fred-goodwin... [2] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/20/fred-goodwin-house-removed-from-google-street-view http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/20/fred-goodw...
      - arethuza 11y ago
        Not long after he left RBS I was crossing a zebra crossing on George Street Edinburgh and I noticed a chap in a convertible Ferrari waiting for me to cross and I thought the driver looked rather familiar. Took me a few moments to realise it was our very own "Fred the Shred" out for a quick spin.... [95% certain it was him]
- knodi123 11y ago
  > However, if you write any kind of software that a lot (millions) of people depend on, there is a very good chance that you've ruined people's lives or even caused death. I've written code that computes performance bonuses for thousands of employees, and I'm confident that it's about 85% accurate. Took me a while to come to peace with that, since the workers my code is evaluating have a high ratio of bonus to base pay. But eh, I can only do my best.
  - g10r 11y ago
    Are decision makers aware of your 85% confidence level?
    - knodi123 11y ago
      I'm 100% confident that it's 85% accurate. The problem is that our sampling rate was too low. I can only make so many statistical interpolations before it starts to look like guesswork. Yes, management was aware of the issue. Luckily, the people whose bonuses were affected could not possibly have enough information to dispute my results. :-P
ska 11y ago
One of the interesting things about developing medical devices is the formal recognition of this process. During development, you must perform and document risk analysis - some of this is pretty dry, but part of it is a session of what-if where you need to look at the worst possible outcomes for you system, used properly or not. Often this is quite eye opening. If there is an adverse event, or interaction reveals that one is possible, you'll do corrective-action/preventative-action analysis and depending on the severity you may need to inform you entire user base. At first this sort of thing can feel process heavy and unwieldy, but I quickly came to appreciate the way in improved the actual engineering and made you think about system design in particular, useful ways.
3pt14159 11y ago
In 2008 I left the structural engineering field. I have 0 deaths due to my actions. The decisions weigh on you, but not like medicine. Almost always your structure will survive and when it doesn't it will almost always give warning of its failure.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

by s_dev 11y ago

joshvm 11y ago

Developers are less likely to be directly responsible for the sort of things that surgeons are, unless you write mission-critical software. However, if you write any kind of software that a lot (millions) of people depend on, there is a very good chance that you've ruined people's lives or even caused death. I dread to think how many people's relationships have been destroyed because the developers of Facebook, Whatsapp, Telegram et al decided to implement read notifications/"last seen" on their instant messaging apps.

DanBC 11y ago
There are some cases in England of post office managers going to jail because the Post Office software audit trail made it look like those managers were defrauding the post office. It turns out there might be severe bugs causing these errors http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23233573 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23233573 Suicide is complex and I don't want to ascribe a simplistic reason to suicide, but at least one post office manager died by suicide after a wrongful accusation. A bungled software update left many people in the UK without access to their money for weeks. At least one person was imprisoned for that - they had to pay a fine by a certain date; they tried to pay but couldn't; even though this was totally outside their control the system wasn't flexible enough to cope. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21280943 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21280943 British Gas allows some people to make weekly payments as part of a payment plan scheme. But you have to pay exactly that amount on exactly the agreed day or their software does not recognise the payment as part of the plan. EG you agree to pay £10 every Friday. On Wednesday you start by paying £20, then on Wednesday you pay £12, and you continue to pay £9 or £12 every Wednesday. You're always actually paid more than your plan agreement; and your actual balance is in credit; but you'll be getting aggressive "red" letters from British Gas telling you that you have not kept up to date with your plan and that your account is in arrears. British Gas, and I say this as politely as I can, are fucking scum.
- arethuza 11y ago
  "At least one person was imprisoned for that" - I initially thought you meant someone at RBS was imprisoned, which would have been interesting...
  - pascalmemories 11y ago
    Sadly, the RBS debacle led only to knighthoods, bail-outs and taxpayer money being spent on bonuses so they could "retain world-class talent". Apparently, firing their asses would have been a Bad Thing due to their stellar performance to date (and since). The very idea of prison time for RBS re-cycling the Enron ideas of debt vehicles is laughable. Enron people went to jail and the banks (like RBS) then had regulators permit exactly the same debt-swap bullshit that killed Enron. Banks went on to trade in debt - an eventual cause of the financial meltdown. RBS was a major culpable party but their chairman, Fred Goodwin, managed to get away with returning the knighthood and a fraction of his pension, while protected by a super-injunction making it illegal to reveal to the public he was a banker[1]. He continues to enjoy 'Royal Family' level police protection, has his properties removed from Street View [2] and is granted a level of establishment protection no-one else could dream of if they had been responsible for any catastrophe of even a fractional proportion. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/mar/10/fred-goodwin-superinjunction-banking http://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/mar/10/fred-goodwin... [2] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/20/fred-goodwin-house-removed-from-google-street-view http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/20/fred-goodw...
    - arethuza 11y ago
      Not long after he left RBS I was crossing a zebra crossing on George Street Edinburgh and I noticed a chap in a convertible Ferrari waiting for me to cross and I thought the driver looked rather familiar. Took me a few moments to realise it was our very own "Fred the Shred" out for a quick spin.... [95% certain it was him]
knodi123 11y ago
> However, if you write any kind of software that a lot (millions) of people depend on, there is a very good chance that you've ruined people's lives or even caused death. I've written code that computes performance bonuses for thousands of employees, and I'm confident that it's about 85% accurate. Took me a while to come to peace with that, since the workers my code is evaluating have a high ratio of bonus to base pay. But eh, I can only do my best.
- g10r 11y ago
  Are decision makers aware of your 85% confidence level?
  - knodi123 11y ago
    I'm 100% confident that it's 85% accurate. The problem is that our sampling rate was too low. I can only make so many statistical interpolations before it starts to look like guesswork. Yes, management was aware of the issue. Luckily, the people whose bonuses were affected could not possibly have enough information to dispute my results. :-P

ska 11y ago

One of the interesting things about developing medical devices is the formal recognition of this process. During development, you must perform and document risk analysis - some of this is pretty dry, but part of it is a session of what-if where you need to look at the worst possible outcomes for you system, used properly or not. Often this is quite eye opening. If there is an adverse event, or interaction reveals that one is possible, you'll do corrective-action/preventative-action analysis and depending on the severity you may need to inform you entire user base. At first this sort of thing can feel process heavy and unwieldy, but I quickly came to appreciate the way in improved the actual engineering and made you think about system design in particular, useful ways.

3pt14159 11y ago

In 2008 I left the structural engineering field. I have 0 deaths due to my actions. The decisions weigh on you, but not like medicine. Almost always your structure will survive and when it doesn't it will almost always give warning of its failure.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]