alt Hacker NewsGenerally, you don’t want to punish people for making decisions. At least I don’t. I value people who are willing to try things and I generally believe any decision made in good faith is better than no decision. My litmus test is was it a reasonable decision given the information available at the time in service of a greater goal. I can live with the consequences of that. If it turns out to be a not so great decision then we can fix it. I’m not going to fire someone for the result when the process was sound.
That said, this application of AI was profoundly stupid from the outset. You don’t necessarily fire people for a bad result from a reasonable decision making process, but you do fire them for poor judgment and reasoning. There’s nothing that can fix that except for not letting those people make decisions anymore.
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While I agree that you don't want to punish people for making bad decisions, I do think there should be a carveout for when those decisions impact people's lives.
IMO that’s what used to be “accountability”, especially for decision makers.
It's easy to take that stance in jest .. when it has no material impact on you. But if your life was uprooted by the decision of an executive because they made what was a "good faith" decision for the benefit of the shareholder, then I'd wager you may feel differently.
> Generally, you don’t want to punish people for making decisions.
riff-raff cogs get fired for making bad decisions all the time. also if not punished for making decisions. how do execs ever get punished because all they do is make decisions.
Society is incredibly inconsistent on this point. If a CEO shit-cans 500 people who sacrificed future career prospects for the company and end up destitute, society say's that's capitalism and they need to learn to code in a month or something. If a stay at home wife gets "bored" and divorces her husband of 20 years, he commonly owes her a decade+ of alimony to "make up for the sacrifice and time to get on her feet" or some such.
As usual it's communism for the plebs and something entirely different for the capital wielding class.
Even from the selfish perspectives of these executives, it can be quite bad to isolate people from the consequences of bad decisions. It will prevent learning from mistakes, and lead to more bad decisions.
Which I guess is getting at another thing. The failure was predictable. People shouldn't be rewarded for failing to avoid obvious predictable failures. Maintaining their status quo could also be seen as rewarding them.