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throwaway219450today at 1:17 AM4 repliesview on HN

The article sounds like a company with toxic blame culture. If critical aerospace can be no-blame, software can too.

Sure, try not to be useless, but if the company doesn’t have guardrails that’s not on them. If an intern deletes something: why did they have access in the first place? Why wasn’t there a backup?


Replies

projektfutoday at 10:23 AM

Where is it no-blame in aerospace? Specifically JPL or something? I've been spending a lot of time studying aviation and there's almost always blame when things go wrong, even though there is also a lot of systems thinking. There are many complaints as well that the system is likely to formulate a rule because of a mistake, rather than just acknowledging that mistakes happen, or that a specific facility, company, or individual needs to do something differently.

Eridrustoday at 4:50 AM

This sort of process over responsibility culture is one way to drive incidents to zero, but it's also a way to wrap yourself in so much process and bureaucracy that you move at the speed of aerospace.

Of course, many companies are far away from the pareto frontier, but there are often tradeoffs for safety and people have to use judgement about when to go slow and when they can go fast.

Zarathustra30today at 3:02 AM

> You will send out some C signals. That’s inevitable. We all did. Never, never send out the same C signal twice. And make sure the balance of the signals are that you are a B.

This bit is important. It's not great if a new hire nukes production, but it doesn't preclude them from being a B or A.

Additionally being considered a C isn't necessarily a blame game. If an employee nukes production multiple times, they may not be in the right headspace to work at that company, through no fault of their own.

Negitivefragstoday at 1:45 AM

I get the sentiment, but it's possible to go too far with the "It's always the process's fault" direction.

It's trendy in buisness culture right now to erase the individual. Zero accountability can also mean zero growth. I don't think it's honestly the most enjoyable situation to be in.