Piaw Na

cause and effect are not what they seem, in one sense there have never been managers and employers, they have all been sailing to the same wind, not caused by any of them - Gregory Lent

perfect answer...there's a solution we can all try...LOL - Susan Beebe (Santa Claus)

Very cool. A couple of interesting articles about W L Gore and its unique work culture from Fast Company : http://www.fastcompany.com/mag... , http://www.fastcompany.com/mag... - Vikram Shenoy

This rings true on so many levels. In particular, we easily spend half the price of our product just on selling it to the people who want it. - Gabe

Piaw, car manufacturers don't have to build multiple instances of a production ready vehicle and crash-test it for *every* change, nor do non-critical changes (paint colors, UI changes) ever have to be crash-tested. Frequently, software developers are forced to get approval for things that could be released immediately, or at least tested on the live system with A/B testing. This forces systems to be built for graceful recovery from failures, a more robust approach. - Michael R. Bernstein

Oh, and in any case, PG's post was about disproportionately expensive tests and tests with hidden costs, like approval processes. I'm pretty sure the developer group he was talking about have a comprehensive test-suite for their system, so it's not like they were talking about immediately releasing untested code, just *unapproved* code. - Michael R. Bernstein

off-topic quote ;-) 'If you want to build a ship, don‘t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.' -Antoine de Saint-Exupery - Adriano

Just about everyone working at a software company of any size would agree that this is a real phenomenon, and Graham does a good job of pointing out why it occurs, and what purpose it serves (i.e. it's important to weigh both benefits and costs of process). I believe the only way to avoid unnecessary process is for everyone in the company to push back, and to have a culture where asking for forgiveness rather than permission is acceptable. - Joel Webber

Mike, I'm not proposing that dot coms start having massive approval processes, just that it's not appropriate for software when people's lives (or financial balances) are involved. Intel's recall for a floating point problem cost way more than having effective testing would have. Of course, I'm an anachronism these days --- concern about reliability is so old fashioned. - Piaw Na

Small companies generally have small development teams and small numbers of users, both of which make it easy to ship quickly. - Gabe

I think costly checks grow when one group of people is affected by another group's errors. That tends to happen when groups insist on ownership of critical facilities (both infrastructural, like networking, and organizational, like PR) and set themselves up as gatekeepers. "Us and them" dynamics set in on both sides, and the problems make the gatekeepers be even more gatekeepery. - ⓞnor

Agree with @nor about multiple groups. If my group pays the cost but your group benefits from some change, I have an incentive to say No to your change. And you have an incentive to say Yes, because you're not paying the cost but you get all the benefit. This also happens if you take your kids Christmas shopping… - Amit Patel

Right, and if a single group bears both costs and rewards, they can make intelligent tradeoffs, and have an incentive to develop efficient safeguards. But developing the kind of partitioning, self-service infrastructure, and chargebacks necessary for that has its own costs (in many cases defeating the economies of scale that make big companies successful in the first place!). - ⓞnor

"If you're hard enough to sell to, the people who are best at making things don't want to bother. The only people who will sell to you are companies that specialize in selling to you." - j1m

Piaw, as far as I understand it x-ray machines were in "unstable beta" hurting people's health longer than most web sites... http://www.museumofquackery.co... - Philipp Lenssen

one problem is that although thorough testing may cost less than a recall, the thorough testing has to happen every time & the recall may only happen one in 10 or more, so it may still not be cost efficient :-( what programmers hate (in my experience, anyway) is the idea that the work they're doing is not used or, even worse, causes more work for others. We like to think we make the world better ;-) *crosses fingers* - immaterial

The people responsible for developing new features don't necessarily have to be the ones productionizing and handling all the details of running the live service, although of course they need to be connected to their users to make a decent product. I think the open-source model might have some benefits here—random people might throw out innovative but half-baked pieces of code, then others might develop them into a finished product. - Jim Norris

The irony is that DRM is much worse for publishers/record labels than it is for the manufacturers. DRM songs didn't hurt ipod sales (and Kindle DRM isn't hurting Kindle sales). But what happens is that consumers who buy in are now tied to the manufacturer's store. This eventually ensures that one manufacturer (Apple) gets all the customer's future money for content, which then leads to lower bargaining power for the record labels/publishers. - Piaw Na

@Piaw Na- Unfortunately the logic behind that reasoning is not immediately apparent to a greedy record label, motivated by the short-term desire to retain distributive control. If only record labels were as logical as you :-( - David Adam

David --- I'm surprised the EFF hasn't been making that argument better known. - Piaw Na

When the economy's good, we can afford tax cuts. When the economy's bad, we need tax cuts to stimulate the economy. - Jim Norris

First, make a commitment, passed into law, to keep all income-tax rates were they are now, effectively making current tax rates permanent." So we should fix the tax rates at a fairly regressive level, as opposed to Obama's existing proposal to give permanent tax cuts to those in the middle class most likely to spend? - Joel Webber

Power politics -- some people are just pawns, others have dirt on others, some want favours in return. - Shey

Because the people who are deciding if they get to keep their jobs, board members and (to a pretty big extent these days) the United States Congress, are ALSO not competent. Duh. ;) (That's the difference. Your boss is probably MUCH better at his job than, say, Lindsey Graham.). - James Williams (willia4)

They have friends in high places - it's not what you know it's who you know I guess :-/ - Flippity

And they still have loads of money and money talks. - Jill, Superhero Librarian

It seems to me, if we, the taxpayers, are going to have to bail them out, we should be on the board... And get rid of them... - Lindsay Donaghe

friendship. Loyalty. Know where the bodies are buried. CEO or Board know them and give them a pardon because the decisions can be traced back to them. - L0GiX

It takes time to get rid of bad decision makers at the top of corporations - look how long Jerry Yang hung on. - Brian Sullivan

Lindsay, your talking too much sense. That does not compute in Corporate Bottom Line beliefs. Easier to fire tons of people so you can continue to fund the rest of the budget. - L0GiX

It makes me hope that Karma is real. - Lindsay Donaghe

i think a couple of factors play into this - 1) the complexity of the problem and the fact that so many different factors are complicit has made it difficult enough for people to comprehend what exactly caused the crisis 2) i think that the fragility of the economy as a whole, the depth of the problem and the size of these institutions caused those who would have had a megaphone large enough to assign blame to specific individuals to temper their criticisms for fear of causing further damage to the economy - Marco (aureliusmaximus)

If they want a bail out, I want to see that all the Execs cut their own salary, Lose the extravagant extras (Cars, Limos, Planes, Exec Suites, etc...) then re-evaluate projects and come to congress with a business plan as to what will happen with proof of how they will pay back the money. Ya know like every other small business person has to do with the banks. - L0GiX

I think it is a combination of fear and pragmatism - these are the people who have dug us into the mess, but they (and their management staffs) hold the wealth of institutional knowledge. The fear is that if you ousted them, they'd take their golden parachutes and senior staff with them, leaving an even larger mess for a transitional team to tackle. This goes more to morale and administrative ends than the financial ones, but it can be pretty significant. - Jennifer Dittrich

Meh, off with their heads. I'm sure we could do some research and point to specific factors that could have been controlled to avoid this. At this point, though, I just say off with their heads. - ♫ Rahsheen ™ ★

Why was companies allowed to borrow money for their General Fund at all?? Isn't that just stupid business practices? I can understand for projects, products, and expansions, but if you can't pay for those things after a while or they don't pay back, the company should take a loss and deal with the pain in that. Its basically part of the free market. - L0GiX

I wonder why I have to keep paying on my credit cards. I want a bail out!!!! - Lori Reed

@Jennifer - They shouldn't be allowed to keep their parachutes. That's part of the penalty of screwing over the rest of us. They should definitely have to give up their perks and bonuses. They can keep their jobs as long as they take a huge paycut in an effort to fix the financials of the company itself. - Lindsay Donaghe

From The Wire: “Carver: You know, this is why I think we can’t win this. Hauk: How come? Carver: They screw up, they get beaten. We screw up, we get a pension. “ - Louis Simoneau

I guess meritocracy is dead. And we wonder why kids are so entitled these days. - Victor Ganata

This does not teach children anything good. If you become big enough and connected enough you can get away with anything, then be paid to keep on doing it. - Chris W

I've wondered the same thing about many politicians. - Jason Kaneshiro

The theory is that these people can perform executive work better than anyone else. Kinda the same reason that you generally see the same head coaches in sports leagues, over and over and over. In addition, some of these people have signed contracts specifying compensation and bonus levels, and the companies have agreed - again, because they figure they can't get anyone better. If a board of directors were to refuse to pay a previously negotiated bonus, a nasty lawsuit would probably result. - Ontario Emperor

Ontario Emperor, The company could ask the Government to release them from the contract as part of the bail out or the Govt could make those contracts null and void since the companies only other alternative was to close where the exec would receive nothing. - Chris W

Or the executives could give up the bonuses voluntarily. - Ontario Emperor

Turns out that back in June, Lehman's two top executives (CEO Dick Fuld and President Bart McDade) offered to do just that. http://www.marketwatch.com/new... Not sure if they followed through. - Ontario Emperor

@Ontario - Contracts are valid only if both sides live up to them. If you don't do your job or do it poorly then the contract should be null or void unless you somehow got it worked in that you're not responsible for your performance. I don't get that argument. And it's obvious that these people can't do their jobs better than anyone else... because I'm sure there is someone else that could have done it better or they wouldn't all be in this mess. - Lindsay Donaghe

I still think it's Canada. - tehKenny

Capitalism is for the little people. If you're rich and a CEO, you get to get socialism and government bailouts. - Piaw Na