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0 pointsgrey-area4y ago0 comments

People are often willing to sacrifice any amount of development velocity to avoid being seen to make mistakes.

IMO that attitude never makes sense - it can make sense to avoid certain mistakes at all costs (self-driving car), but it never makes sense to try to avoid blame for them (company refuses to admit their car isn't good enough).

This is a problem of culture, not individuals.

Does the culture at a company openly admit mistakes, try to learn from them, and put systemic fixes in place to address them, or do they punish people for mistakes?

If the latter, you end up with nobody admitting to mistakes and a terrible culture, it's not about the people, it's about the situation you have put them in and the incentives given to them.

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isolli4y ago

No, it's also a matter of personality. One manager used to urge me to do things in half the time at 90% of quality, and stop chasing the remaining 10% at such high opportunity cost. To this day, I try, but it's hard to overcome a natural, obsessive tendency.

pjc504y ago

> it can make sense to avoid certain mistakes at all costs (self-driving car), but it never makes sense to try to avoid blame for them

Eh? As you say, it's a culture thing, and the culture of a lot of humans is that the mistake only matters if you take blame for it. Plenty of people and organisations put more effort into avoiding blame for things than the thing itself.

Blame-free culture is great, but it has to be actively maintained.

grey-areaOP4y ago

Plenty of people and organisations put more effort into avoiding blame for things than the thing itself.

Blame is pointless (particularly directed at humans), learning from mistakes is invaluable. What I'm saying is it is a terrible mistake to put more effort into avoiding blame than avoiding mistakes.

Blame-free culture is great, but it has to be actively maintained.

I agree.

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