[HN Gopher] Solve your big problems by solving your real problem
___________________________________________________________________
Solve your big problems by solving your real problem
Author : zerocooled
Score : 169 points
Date : 2023-07-12 13:21 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jasonfeifer.beehiiv.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jasonfeifer.beehiiv.com)
| revskill wrote:
| No, you don't need to solve anything.
|
| Just try hard to please the recruitment team to join a company,
| then you'll be given problems to be solved.
| Olreich wrote:
| The vast majority of the time the reason your ideas are dismissed
| are because people don't see the value in them. Oftentimes, the
| easiest way to show the value is to build a vertical slice of
| that idea and show it to folks.
|
| In highly-regulated environments, this may not be an option, but
| for the vast majority of engineers, testing out different
| wordings, getting more seniority, or making allies will take a
| lot longer than producing a small prototype that can show the
| value.
|
| I think the analysis of why people don't like your idea should be
| saved for post-prototyping. The prototype should be a reasonable
| amount of effort, no 6 month projects ignoring the value you're
| being asked to produce, but more like a 1 or 2 day project when
| the workload is low.
|
| A good manager will encourage this sort of prototyping and not
| force you do it in secret. If you are having to build your
| prototypes in secret because people will prevent you from doing
| them, then you should be job hunting, because the place you're in
| doesn't trust you enough for you to thrive.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| This was framed really well IMO. I think you could take this much
| further. 'Problem sourcing' doesn't get the prominence it needs.
| mdorazio wrote:
| This seems kind of like a twist on the classic 5 Whys method of
| root cause analysis. I think 5 Whys would work just as well in
| most of the example scenarios.
|
| Example from the post: Engineer is thinking about doing a thing
| without permission. Why? Engineer thinks nobody accepts his
| ideas. Why? 5 possible answers. We could ask "Why?" again and get
| another step down (the author doesn't do this and instead
| proposes jumping into tests right away, which I think is still at
| least a level too high). One answer given: Engineer thinks his
| ideas are good, but they are bad. Why? Engineer probably isn't
| validating their ideas against feasibility, business outcome,
| maintainability, etc. Why? Engineer might be arrogant or
| inexperienced with real business settings vs. university/hobby
| projects. Now we have a root cause we can address and then move
| back up the chain.
|
| When you can't ask "Why?" anymore without it being silly, that's
| when it's time to run tests and propose solutions.
| fatnoah wrote:
| > When you can't ask "Why?" anymore without it being silly,
| that's when it's time to run tests and propose solutions.
|
| In the past year, I started a new role as a head of engineering
| for an existing team. I literally spent the first month asking
| "why" about nearly everything. The most common answers ended up
| being "I don't know, it's what we do", which was closely
| followed by some justification that boiled down to being a
| workaround for some anti-patterns. E.g. Q: "Why do we log this
| error at DEBUG level?" A: "It happens so often that it fills
| the logs when we log it at a higher level". Me: :(
| gunshai wrote:
| This should surprise basically no one. I do aspire to be in a
| role where I can endlessly ask people why it is exactly they
| do the thing that they do.
|
| All the while dodging the following scenario. "We just have
| to ask... What is it exactly that ya do here?"
| mcbutterbunz wrote:
| This is why its a good idea to tell new hires to not be shy
| about asking "Why?". They haven't had enough time to become
| numb to the idiosyncrasies of the organization. At some
| point, you start to live with all those little problems,
| forget they are actual problems, and you just live with them
| until someone asks "Why?" and you respond "yeah, why DO we do
| that?"
| wmidwestranger wrote:
| "Brenda came up with it, isn't she awesome?"
|
| Most common type of answer I've received, which is a bit of
| a bummer.
| fatnoah wrote:
| I'm literally dealing with that as we speak. Some
| architecture developed by the Staff Eng. on a team that's
| really not workable and was causing the team to run in
| circles. Ultimately, I had to jump in and ask a lot of
| questions about the implementation. i.e. Why was it built
| that way, along with the related questions about what
| goals of the implementation were (elegance, speed to
| delivery, future-proofing, ability to parallelize code
| effort, etc) and what app/business problems the code was
| solving.
| landemva wrote:
| Lucky you to have found a place that allows those inquiries.
| Not many exist anymore.
| hinkley wrote:
| One of my newer talking points is that logs are for new
| problems, existing ones get stats.
|
| In theory logging should be more efficient than stats, but in
| practice, we use logging frameworks that are fractionally as
| complex as our stats frameworks, and at any rate _nobody
| reads logs_ and probably haven 't for at least ten years.
| Once your cluster size is more than about 3 servers you need
| aggregated logs. What we read is the output of log
| aggregators, and log parsing libraries are doing a lot of
| work. Way more than the ingestion side of a telemetry
| service, which is parsing a very simple message schema.
|
| I'm always a little surprised how much engineers undervalue
| graphs until they see one that catches problems. I'm not
| entirely sure where that comes from, but I've known a few who
| have trauma from bad graphs causing drama. There's a lot of
| human factors around charting and most developers are largely
| blind to human factors concerns, even as they catch
| themselves making category errors with bad charts.
| agentultra wrote:
| 5 Whys, or as I like to call it, "Jumping to Conclusions."
|
| Viewing the world as a direct line of causal relationships is
| called, "making a story." You can take it all the way back to
| the beating of butterfly wings if you'd like. It's also quite
| ineffective at addressing systemic issues and connected
| relationships.
|
| An alternative approach to post-hoc rationalization is to look
| into the factors that contributed to a particular outcome (or
| recurring set of related outcomes) and determine relationships
| between them: there are often systematic reasons for particular
| outcomes and not a singular event. Systems are not set up like
| dominoes in neat rows. It's usually much more messy than that.
|
| You can follow such a causal chain a few steps and say, "look I
| found the root cause!" But you won't solve the problem if you
| don't identify the systemic factors that lead to such
| situations. Even if you apply a solution to that root cause,
| you may find the outcome happens again -- it just finds another
| way around your patch, sort of like a cartoon of character
| trying to fix a leak in their plumbing by covering it up. To
| really solve the problem they need to turn the water off at the
| entry point, reconsider the plumbing set up, and fix their
| budgeting so that they allocate funds to preventative
| maintenance. Instead we get to laugh as they get squirted in
| the face over and over as they try more elaborate schemes to
| plug all of the holes.
|
| An example of a common factor in software development:
| leadership that prefers features shipped on a deadline. They
| will do anything to ship by the deadline. There may be a right
| way to do things to prevent errors in the system but not
| acknowledging this when an issue comes up, by jumping to
| conclusions about root causes, means your team will be
| constantly fighting fires in your production environment
| instead of taking the time to write specifications and
| modelling them and properly testing things. You may feel good
| about finding that one line of code that caused the outage. You
| may apply the patch and be the hero of the week. But it's not a
| matter of _if_ another outage will happen but _when_ because
| you haven 't addressed the confounding factor that causes
| situations like that to happen again and again. If it doesn't
| get addressed then the leadership will find other post-hoc
| rationalizations for why these situations keep happening where
| the development team is, "getting slow."
|
| To take it back to the article: if people are ignoring your
| advice constantly, are you going to find out why by stepping
| back through a causal chain to a root cause? What if you did
| find a satisfying cause and you address that issue. Does that
| mean people will listen to you or will you only get that one
| idea through before you notice the pattern repeating?
|
| I like the idea the article suggests of trying several things.
| It could be an issue like discrimination: notice that all of
| your colleagues are young, white, and male presenting? Does
| anyone else on your team that doesn't fall into that
| demographic get their ideas through? Maybe that's only part of
| it though. It could also be true that your ideas need work as
| well. Trying a few things may make all the difference.
|
| Ask why, but also look at the surrounding environment and see
| if you notice any recurring patterns or relationships around
| the incident. After all, you don't find the source of disease
| by following the individual; you need to find the patterns that
| lead you to the wells.
| AndreasHae wrote:
| Might depend on the team or moderator, but in my experience 5
| Whys can help uncover the exact systemic issues you are
| talking about. The key is that it's not about how to make
| sure this specific problem cannot reoccur, but more broadly,
| how to make sure a problem of that kind can never happen
| again. Your last paragraph puts it really well. 5 Whys helps
| with that by making you go deeper.
| hinkley wrote:
| > An alternative approach to post-hoc rationalization is to
| look into the factors that contributed to a particular
| outcome
|
| That's... 5 Why's. If that's not happening for your 5 Why's,
| you can try to start steering things more assertively. The
| worst 5 Why's I've ever encountered looked a bit like
| children wearing mommy's dress shoes. I've had pretty good
| luck railroading such milquetoast RCAs into something at
| least moderately productive. There's always one person with
| an agenda but in my experience most people seem relieved that
| anyone else wants the reins. You don't even have to be in
| charge, you just have to keep drawing attention back to the
| person with the most coherent comments.
|
| You have a problem, what does it look like? Do we have other
| problems that look like this? Is there a concrete action we
| can take to reduce the impact of this problem moving forward
| (ie, what aspect of the 4th why can we actually fix)? Are
| there other actions that would be more effective? Or more
| timely? Can we split the difference and half-fix a problem
| instead and circle back the next time it happens?
|
| That's all 5 Why's. Or at least, the ones I attend.
| agentultra wrote:
| I don't think it's necessarily _wrong_ to use 5-Why 's in
| one's analysis. I am suggesting that it should not be the
| only tool one uses. If success requires several
| contributing factors that are necessary and jointly
| sufficient to enable it, then failure should not be limited
| to a single root cause.
| xpe wrote:
| See also "The problem with '5 whys'" by Alan J. Card [1] [2].
| I've included some quotations below. The discussion of "distal
| causes" is illuminating.
|
| [1] https://qualitysafety.bmj.com/content/26/8/671
|
| [2] http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2016-005849
|
| > The '5 whys' technique is one of the most widely taught
| approaches to root-cause analysis (RCA) in healthcare. Its use
| is promoted by the WHO, the English National Health Service,
| the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, the Joint Commission
| and many other organisations in the field of healthcare quality
| and safety. Like most such tools, though, its popularity is not
| the result of any evidence that it is effective. Instead, it
| probably owes its place in the curriculum and practice of RCA
| to a combination of pedigree, simplicity and pedagogy.
|
| > In terms of pedigree, '5 whys' traces its roots back to the
| Toyota Production System (TPS). It also plays a key role in
| Lean (a generic version of TPS) as well as Six Sigma,11 another
| popular quality improvement (QI) methodology. Taiichi Ohno
| describes '5 whys' as central to the TPS methodology: The basis
| of Toyota's scientific approach is to ask why five times
| whenever we find a problem ... By repeating why five times, the
| nature of the problem as well as its solution becomes clear.
| The solution, or the how-to, is designated as '1H.' Thus, 'Five
| whys equal one how' (5W=1H). (ref. 9, p. 123)
|
| > This quote also makes the case for the technique's
| simplicity. Asking 'why' five times allows users to arrive at a
| single root cause that might not have been obvious at the
| outset. It may also inspire a single solution to address that
| root cause (though it is not clear that the '1H' side of the
| equation has been adopted as widely).
|
| > ...
|
| > It is clear from the tree diagram that the causal pathway
| related to the wristband printer is neither the only relevant
| cause of the incident nor indisputably the most important. A
| serious effort to solve the myriad problems that gave rise to
| this incident would have to tackle a number of other causal
| pathways as well.
|
| > ...
|
| > There are many 'correct' ways a team might use '5 whys' to
| assess even this one incident. And it is unlikely that any two
| teams would independently arrive at exactly the same results.
| This subjectivity is critically important because '5 whys'
| focuses on only one root cause at the end of one causal
| pathway.
|
| > ...
|
| > Targeting only the most distal cause
|
| > Not only are users of '5 whys' limited to one root cause per
| causal pathway, but they are also limited to selecting only the
| most distal cause (conventionally, the fifth 'why'). There is,
| however, no logical reason to assume that this is always the
| most effective or most efficient target for intervention.
|
| > Actually, if it were possible to magically place a 100%
| effective risk control at any one point on the tree diagram, it
| would be best used on a proximate cause. For instance, making
| it impossible to administer medication without checking the
| wristband would render all the more distal causes moot for the
| purpose of preventing a recurrence.
|
| > And, while 100% effective risk controls are seldom available,
| an action plan that includes a proven26 (if certainly
| imperfect) intervention like a well-designed bar-code reader
| with a forcing function for patient identification (ID) is more
| likely to prevent another serious 'wrong patient' medication
| error than switching to a well-designed printer.
|
| > This is not to suggest that more distal causes are not
| appropriate targets for improvement efforts. In the example
| presented in figure 1, for instance, there is clearly a
| profound need to change the culture from one that is task-
| oriented and sometimes hostile to one that is outcomes-oriented
| and psychologically safe. The pervasive impact of such a
| culture change would be far more important than merely reducing
| the risk that this particular incident might recur; it would
| influence almost every quality and safety issue in the
| organisation.
|
| > And, in contrast to that powerful-but-difficult lever for
| shifting outcomes, sometimes more distal causes represent 'low-
| hanging fruit' that can be addressed while a more proximate
| solution is in the works. In figure 1, educating patients about
| why clinicians will be constantly asking them to identify
| themselves would be far from foolproof. But it would be fast,
| cheap and easy. And it might reduce an important barrier to
| best practice in verbal identification.
|
| > Appropriate targets for intervention may occur anywhere along
| the causal continuum and on any causal pathway. And efforts to
| improve safety and quality will often require more than one
| intervention targeting more than one underlying hazard. It is
| useful to identify all the key hazards that gave rise to an
| incident and ensure that each of these is either addressed or
| intentionally accepted. (See, for instance, the Options
| Evaluation Matrix.) But the use of '5 whys' makes this
| impossible.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| Thanks for pointing this out, I've never heard the 5Y before:
| https://www.mindtools.com/a3mi00v/5-whys
| jes wrote:
| If the Five Whys appeals to you, you might also like the
| "Thinking Process Tools" of Goldratt's Theory of Constraints.
|
| That being said, you always have to avoid fooling yourself
| when building logic diagrams. It's easy to do.
| a_c wrote:
| 5-whys is useful.
|
| 5-whys is a linked list. Sometimes, things don't have a
| single cause. One mental model I find useful, while harder to
| apply, is to see things as a web of dependency. What are the
| whys for this layer of problem. What other problems are also
| implicated by the "why". i.e. A graph
| hinkley wrote:
| What people often forget is that the goal of 5 Why's is to
| arrive at an actionable 5th Why. There's some chess that
| starts around the third Why, and good players end up at a
| useful 5th, bad players end up at 'git gud scrub'.
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| This is basically the methodology behind an Ishikawa
| (fishbone) diagram.
|
| It's a pretty useful way of representing things (although I
| personally prefer indented bullet points).
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Yeah, I was just about to reply about fishbone diagrams
| too. Those are an improvement on the right direction.
|
| But notice that they don't fit the GP's explanation at
| all. As strange as that may sound, causality is not
| unidirectional in a complex system. You are losing data
| by coercing it into that, and that data is quite often
| relevant to how you fix a problem, even if it's not
| commonly relevant for identifying the problem.
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| Although that's true, often something like a fishbone
| diagram will help to create a prioritised to-do list to
| fix whatever is broken (or at least understand what
| caused it to break if it's not fixable).
| xpe wrote:
| Not my tempo. If you feel the same, consider my attempt "rescue"
| the potential of the post by making two points:
|
| 1. Writing out a hypothesis in a sentence has a lot of value. It
| aids clarity, testability, and communicability.
|
| 2. Distilling each hypothesis down to one word, despite its
| risks, also called "chunking", has two major kinds of benefits:
| (a) information processing (sometimes referred to as neural
| efficiency or cognitive efficiency) and (b) learning & adaptation
| ilaksh wrote:
| I suspect that after "debugging" many types of real-world
| problems, you will find the root cause is poor relationships. Or
| more specifically, you are not really part of some group or
| community that you are trying to influence.
|
| I definitely am not good at being part of groups but my suspicion
| is that if you put time into trying to work on the exact things
| they are working on, then you may understand where they hang out
| and what their day to day problems are.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Too often symptoms get confused with problems. Symptoms are also
| not The Problem. But act, they do. In the end, it's more or less
| a riff on the Monkey & Pedestal syndrome (?).
|
| https://www.annieduke.com/newsletter-monkeys-and-pedestals-f...
| notyourav wrote:
| This is actually bad advice for the "marketing professional" case
| for two reasons in my opinion;
|
| * Author directs his client (?) to create hypothesis out of thin
| air and start testing them. This is how you loose time and money.
| The missing step in between is observation before hypothesis
| creation.
|
| * In a workplace setting, the #1 thing you should do is to ask
| for feedback from your supervisor, incase you feel something is
| wrong or you have a performance problem and don't know what's
| wrong.
| ajkjk wrote:
| > In DraftKing's case, Robins realized he had a relationships
| problem. DraftKings had no relationships with lawmakers, which
| meant no open dialog or opportunity to create common ground. So
| they invested in lobbyists, started meeting with local officials,
| and ultimately helped craft laws that made lawmakers happy but
| kept DraftKings in business.
|
| Ah yes. "Here's a tip to make the world worse."
|
| Not that they're wrong, but that's such a disappointing example.
| rocqua wrote:
| Reading the text literally, it just says that the CEO opened a
| dialog that helped pick laws the lawmakers liked but didn't
| harm draftkings. Lawmakers consulting with people with
| experience in what they are trying to regulate is generally a
| good thing.
|
| There is a reading of this story where draftkings helped
| lawmakers make better laws. It doesn't take much sceptisism to
| read it differently admitedly, but the plain text doesn't state
| that.
| ajkjk wrote:
| I... think that that is just a euphemism.
| wwweston wrote:
| People who engage lawmakers and public officials have a chance
| of shaping policy. Doing so is using the system as it's
| designed, so unless you have some specific criticism about the
| legitimacy of policy that came out of that engagement, it's not
| really clear to me how you could make a reasonable claim that
| will "make the world worse."
|
| Generally speaking, the major problem isn't that some people do
| this (though some do in bad faith). The larger problem is that
| most people don't (and even fewer do so as concrete problem
| solvers).
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Please explain how that makes the world worse.
|
| Everyone likes to rant about lobbyists and lobbying, which are
| strange names for something Thomas Jefferson chose instead to
| call "petitioning government for redress of grievances".
|
| Is it that you just dislike it when _other people_ exercise
| their rights? Is it that you don 't bother to exercise those
| same rights yourself, and so they shouldn't be allowed to do so
| either? Or maybe it's just that they're better at it and that
| seems unfair to you?
| hliyan wrote:
| It is definitely not the same thing when money acts as a
| multiplier of "rights".
| otikik wrote:
| Lobbying (especially US-style lobbying) is a shortcut around
| democracy for the rich and powerful.
|
| People should be electing their representatives based on what
| they will do for them. Instead they choose who gets bought.
| As a result, I have one vote but Charlie McBucks Inc. has 10
| million.
|
| > Is it that you don't bother to exercise those same rights
| yourself,
|
| It's a game only the extremely wealthy can play, and you
| can't lobby to abolish lobbying anyway.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| [dead]
| rmilejczz wrote:
| This is an extremely dishonest framing of modern lobbying
| practices
| canoebuilder wrote:
| In this case the "grievance" being inability to operate a
| fundamentally exploitative and degenerate enterprise. Upon
| being redressed on such matters the proper response from a
| politician would be, gfy. Not, "well, just how much money
| do you plan to give me?"
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| No, not the inability. Gambling prohibition never
| prevented gambling to any great degree (worse still, it
| definitely never prevented it for the people who have the
| most crippling gambling addictions).
|
| Gambling prohibition only prevents gambling regulation.
| You don't get to regulate illegal things.
|
| God save us from busybodies trying to protect us from
| ourselves.
| canoebuilder wrote:
| > _Gambling prohibition never prevented gambling to any
| great degree_
|
| You think there is no more gambling occurring in a world
| where you walk into a convenience store and there is a
| slot machine or whatever, or you watch a sporting event
| and 50% of the advertisements are for gambling, as
| opposed to a world where those things are not the case?
|
| > _You don 't get to regulate illegal things._
|
| Illegal things _are_ regulated, these things are not
| allowed, do them and you will punished. The regulation is
| very clear.
|
| > _God save us from busybodies trying to protect us from
| ourselves._
|
| I was once having a conversation with someone on this
| topic of gambling, and the problems it incurs to members
| of society, and by extension society as a whole. She had
| personal experience with a former spouse having a
| gambling problem.
|
| She said something to the effect of "Well yeah, it's not
| good, but you can't legislate morality."
|
| I kind of nodded in agreement like, yeah, fair point.
|
| But upon later reflection it occurred to me that what are
| laws if not the legislation of morality? That's literally
| what laws are.
|
| Should we not bother being busybodies having laws
| preventing theft and murder?
|
| After all people still commit these acts should we not
| bother with regulations against them, attempting to
| protect people from themselves, and society from the
| negative downstream effects?
|
| Ah but you say, it's a victimless act. Let people have
| their big gulps, let people gamble. It is a victimless
| act until it isn't, like speeding or drunk driving.
|
| If a father downloads an app and blows through his
| families monthly resources with a few button presses that
| creates problems not just for him but the rest of his
| family and other people are going to have to pick up the
| slack.
|
| These ventures being allowed into the system of capital
| creates incentives for as much of these problems in
| society as possible from the perspective of the
| proprietors of these ventures in order for them to
| extract the most capital profits that they can. ("Capital
| profits" meaning profit in the most narrowly defined
| sense in terms of numbers in a database. Is someone
| involved in this stuff profiting in anyway spiritually or
| emotionally in the way that comes from providing
| something of value to society?)
|
| That is why it is de-generate. Nothing good is being
| created / generated.
|
| It's an extractive, predatory venture.
|
| What is good for society?
|
| It used to be a chicken in every pot.
|
| Now a casino in every pocket?
|
| Come on....
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > Illegal things are regulated, these things are not
| allowed,
|
| No. They're not regulated. Everyone knows where to get
| them anyway, or knows someone who knows where to get
| them. And they do.
|
| But those things are more dangerous for everyone. You
| don't get to make them safe by demanding inspections. You
| don't get to make sure no one's cheating. It acts as a
| huge drain on revenue, instead of the taxable economic
| activity it should be.
|
| Your "regulation" is some delusional DEA Czar talking
| about protecting kids from drugs and winning a war
| against an abstract concept. Meanwhile those kids buy
| dirty street shit mixed with rat poison and elephant
| tranquilizer.
|
| I'm not a big fan of regulation, mind you, but I think I
| speak even for the pro-regulation folks when I say
| "that's not the kind of regulation anyone wants or that
| anyone means when they use the word".
|
| > But upon later reflection it occurred to me that what
| are laws if not the legislation of morality? That's
| literally what laws are.
|
| That's not what laws are for. It seems like it to naive
| people. But then they try to prohibit things people are
| going to do anyway, even when those things won't harm
| others if done.
|
| And, if any of this just rubs you the wrong way, you can
| go read up on the extensive real world experimentation
| where we discover just how awful those attempts go.
|
| Laws are for "making things better". It may be that
| people who rape toddlers deserve to be executed, but if
| you make that a law you don't make the world better...
| you just end up with more dead toddlers. Laws drafted
| badly create perverse incentives.
|
| > Ah but you say, it's a victimless act. Let people have
| their big gulps, let people gamble. It is a victimless
| act until it isn't, like speeding or drunk driving.
|
| No one said you can't prohibit drunk driving. Though,
| even for that, there are limits to how intense this
| prohibition can be. The thing you can't do without it
| being lunacy, is outlawing the drinking itself.
|
| > If a father downloads an app and blows through his
| families monthly resources with a few button presses that
| creates problems not just for him but the rest of his
| family and other people are going to have to pick up the
| slack.
|
| The teatotalers would've loved you. But then we prohibit
| something, and we get mobsters having machine gun fights
| on Main Street about black markets. No thanks.
|
| This isn't a gambling problem. It's a "why wasn't she a
| good enough judge of character to not have his kids". I'd
| like to solve that one too, but I don't know how. Not my
| problem. Not yours, feel free to not pick up their slack.
|
| > These ventures being allowed into the system of capital
| creates incentives for as much of these problems in
| society as possible from the perspective of the
| proprietors of these ventures in order for them to
| extract the most capital profits that they can.
|
| The initial prohibition (and the naivete of the
| legislators) caused that. Rather than digging deep and
| becoming subject matter experts on the regulation of
| gambling (and we have quite alot of history and learning
| materials for this), they passed the buck until it
| managed to be legalized in a half-assed manner.
|
| You elect bad legislators (so do I, there are no good
| candidates).
|
| > What is good for society?
|
| We're no longer in a "what is good for society" phase of
| civilization. Even if I agreed with you, I wouldn't waste
| political capital trying to be anti-gambling. It's just
| bad strategy.
|
| That ship sailed by 1980 or so. I was a kid then, and
| largely unaware of it at the time. If you invent time
| travel though, don't show up in 1978 or whatever, it'd
| need to be the 1950s or 1960s to have any chance at all
| of fighting that battle. The seeds of universal gambling
| in the United States were sown way back when.
|
| Long story short: undermining fundamental human rights to
| fight a war you lost before you started sounds like a
| fool's solution to a problem that doesn't even cause him
| any trouble.
| svnt wrote:
| > they're better at it
|
| Is that what paying others to do something makes me? Better
| at it?
|
| So then it follows Stan Kroenke is the best multi-sport
| athlete the world has ever seen.
| irrational wrote:
| Is gambling a grievance? There are lots of things the
| government rightly doesn't let us do, or, strongly
| discourages us from doing, because they are bad for us. Of
| course, this is the same government that supports gambling in
| the form of the lottery, so clearly they don't have people's
| best interests in mind.
| hammock wrote:
| My uncle, who is disabled, made $10000 in Vegas last month.
| My second cousin won the lottery 7 years ago and bought
| emission-free vehicles for her entire family. Was gambling
| bad for them?
| ajkjk wrote:
| As you are no doubt aware, if you're evaluating if a
| thing is good or bad you have to consider its net effect,
| not a couple isolated examples. This is just a "smoking
| feels good and well _I_ didn 't get lung cancer"
| argument.
| hammock wrote:
| My uncle plays at the Mirage, so excess profits benefit a
| forgotten community (the Seminole tribe) that was
| historically and brutally marginalized by the privileged
| 'society' whose net effect you are considering.
|
| The lottery proceeds fund public schools.
| plagiarist wrote:
| The uncle that won $10,000? So that little tidbit wasn't
| good after all, he was stealing money from a historically
| marginalized community. And the lotto winner was
| similarly taking money from public schools.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > The lottery proceeds fund public schools.
|
| Because a corresponding amount of general budget funds
| were diverted away from schools, the inference is untrue.
| hammock wrote:
| Darn can't get anything right. Just tell me who to vote
| for so I can get back to my shows
| ajkjk wrote:
| As with all things: if you ignore all the downsides, yes,
| the upsides look good.
| evanriley wrote:
| Someone in Las Vegas last month lost $10,000. For the
| last 7 years someone has religiously purchased lottery
| tickets, never winning. Was gambling good for them?
|
| See, we can all play this shit game.
| bezier-curve wrote:
| Exceptions don't make it good for the majority of
| society. Those exceptions are also what keeps people
| hooked, chasing a carrot until their bank account is
| empty.
| triceratops wrote:
| Yes. It taught them gambling pays, and makes them more
| likely to lose money in the future.
| raincole wrote:
| > Was gambling bad for them?
|
| Yes, without doubt.
|
| > who is disabled
|
| Even worse.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| How do you think it was bad for them, if you don't know
| them? And, why are disabled winners 'even worse'?
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| Obviously because reinforcing what is most likely a
| psychological addiction is not a good thing, especially
| amongst a population who in other legal contexts cannot
| typically give informed consent?
|
| Frankly you come off as purposefully obtuse for the sake
| of arguing.
| hammock wrote:
| My uncle is a triple amputee war vet with a Stanford
| degree and I'm not sure how he would take to your removal
| of his agency via accusations of inability to consent or
| safely gamble
| raincole wrote:
| I notice another comment already explained, so I'll just
| borrow it:
|
| > It taught them gambling pays, and makes them more
| likely to lose money in the future.
|
| By definition gambling is losing money in long terms
| (otherwise it's investing, not gambling). A disabled is
| less likely to recover after a financial disaster.
| aardshark wrote:
| So if their net worth only goes up for the rest of their
| lives, you would consider them to have successfully
| invested, rather than gambled?
|
| Seems to me your definition is a bit lacking.
| nicwolff wrote:
| How much has your uncle lost gambling, in his life?
|
| How much has your cousin spent on lottery tickets, in her
| life?
| feoren wrote:
| > Is it that you just dislike it when other people exercise
| their rights? Is it that you don't bother to exercise those
| same rights yourself?
|
| Do you think this works as well when you replace "exercise
| one's rights" with "bribe politicians"? Let's see:
|
| "Is it that you just dislike it when other people bribe
| politicians? Is it that you don't bother to bribe politicians
| yourself?" Hmm, not as punchy.
|
| Another way to put it is: "what's wrong with rich people
| having orders of magnitude more power than you? Is it that
| you don't bother to already be rich?"
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| There is a fundamental disconnect between people such as
| yourself, and the grievances about our broken system that we
| have today.
|
| I agree, in a vacuum, there is nothing wrong with the concept
| of lobbying. I would go out on a limb (well not quite a limb,
| I have family members that were lobbyists) and say the
| majority of lobbying that occurs in the US is actually good.
|
| But where it's bad, it's _really bad_. The loudest and most
| influential voices are the ones with the most money, and
| sometimes that 's good, but a lot of times thats bad. They
| promise golden parachutes and shower politicians with money
| so much so that even if the politician gets burned, they are
| promised a career at the lobbying firm or with one of the
| "hookups". Again this is bad, because now instead of being
| accountable to the constituency, our politicians are
| accountable to their benefactors.
|
| There's a lot more reasons this is wrong, but this is the
| primary gist. I hope we can all agree this is an issue.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| LOL, I'm sure Thomas Jefferson's redress of grievances was
| _all about_ the bribes and grift required to legalize
| gambling.
| ajkjk wrote:
| What do rights have to do with it? We'd prefer the world one
| way and one rich company would prefer it another way. Who
| wins? The rich company, turns out.
|
| These people -- the blogger, his friend, etc -- could easily
| 'exercise' their rights, as you say, in a good way, or a bad
| one. They choose a bad one, for greed. There's nothing better
| to dislike than "somebody did a bad thing on purpose."
| mandmandam wrote:
| I think the reference to Jefferson, as if modern lobbying is
| a foundation of US Democracy, is _extraordinarily_
| distasteful.
|
| Here are some entire books written by people who studied this
| issue in great depth: "The Business of
| America is Lobbying: How Corporations Became Politicized and
| Politics Became More Corporate" by Lee Drutman: In this book,
| Drutman explains how and why corporations became so invested
| in influencing politics, and what that means for the future
| of American democracy. "Republic, Lost: How
| Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It" by Lawrence
| Lessig: This book by a prominent legal scholar and activist
| provides a comprehensive analysis of the influence of money
| on politics and proposes innovative solutions for reform.
| "So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the
| Corrosion of American Government" by Robert G. Kaiser: A
| detailed look at the rise of the lobbying industry in
| Washington and its impact on American democracy.
|
| This shit is _killing people_ , no exaggeration. The rise in
| inequality over the last 50 years is rotting America's heart
| and soul out. US style lobbying is right at the center of it.
| nottorp wrote:
| He had a 'not bribing the right people' problem?
|
| Seems to be called lobbying in the US.
| BSEdlMMldESB wrote:
| absolutely: a very pragmatic approach to _" solving"_ the
| corruption problem. Let's call it _lobbying_ and make it
| legal and legitimate
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Let's call it lobbying and make it legal and legitimate
|
| And we can keep the overt cash payouts. We just launder the
| funds thru campaign chests and revolving-door, high
| salaried jobs (as a lobbyist, consultant, etc).
| plagiarist wrote:
| It's only natural that the campaign purchase several
| million copies of your self-published book to give out to
| influence voters! And of course the campaign should hire
| your brother-in-law's ad firm, you already know what
| their quality is like!
| alakin wrote:
| Pretty much everywhere else they pretend to not have lobbying
| or bribing, but just end up doing it behind closed doors.
| nottorp wrote:
| It may be a program to create jobs. I mean, there would be
| no lobbyist profession if the lawmakers would take the
| bribes directly.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Wait a minute... "made lawmakers happy" was said.
|
| Let's delve into this "problem" of addictive behavior and think
| about root-cause-problems.
|
| - people are unhappy in their lives and fall into addiction
|
| * they have too many opportunities for abuse
|
| * there's something really wrong in their lives that needs
| solving
|
| - lawmakers fail to make laws that reduce addiction
|
| * lawmakers are persuaded by lobbyists that act for profit,
| because the latter have good arguments or the former are easy
| to convince/bribe
|
| * they don't understand addiction because they are ill
| positioned for that job
|
| Above can be broken down further into core problems, that
| should be tackled. My point being, it's not necessarily a bad
| example.
| controlledchaos wrote:
| Yeah, I was just about to re-share this until I read that.
| mandmandam wrote:
| Pretending horrible bastards aren't 'lobbying' isn't going to
| fix the problem.
|
| The one-word problem here could be 'lobbyists' or 'lawmakers'
| or 'bribery' or 'exploitation'. It could even be just as the
| article said: 'relationships'... But it sure isn't this
| article, written after the fact, with no hint of actually
| condoning said behavior other than failing to pass moral
| judgment.
|
| If you think about it some more, you might be glad that the
| author reminded us about this. Our lawmakers sell us out to
| fossil fuels, big banks, corporate media, telecomms,
| polluters, etc, and then tell us it's raining.
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| All the while, normal well adjusted people, don't want to
| get "political" but wealthy special interests are happy to
| "open dialogs" and "find common ground" with elected
| officials we elect once every two years.
|
| Democracy is hard. If participation is limited to voting in
| an election, the public interest will be ignored.
| Qwertious wrote:
| Being able to participate more with _money_
| disproportionately benefits the rich.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Being able to participate more with money
| disproportionately benefits the rich.
|
| Fully true. The public is relegated to - at best - a veto
| vote on corruption, which they rarely use (and are rarely
| informed as to why they should. Thanks press!).
| raincole wrote:
| I personally think it's the only bit that makes this article
| worth reading.
|
| Instead of fantasizing a creative, insightful and genius
| solution, it shows a glimpse of how the real business world
| works.
| rolandog wrote:
| Kind of like those "small boy sells limonade so his bed-
| ridden father can buy artificially expensive treatment"
| articles that are meant to showcase community, but actually
| show the heartlessness of insurance and medical for-profit
| companies?
| riazrizvi wrote:
| Lobbying is cause promoting. You look for invested parties and
| plead your side. It's fundamental to running society where
| groups want representation. I think you're mixing lobbying with
| bribery. Bribery is illegal.
| ajkjk wrote:
| A widely-held stance is that lobbying needs to be a lot more
| illegal than it is, but the people who have the power to make
| it illegal are also the people who benefit from it.
| Nevertheless many of us random people who don't work in
| government would love to see this stuff made illegal.
| Qwertious wrote:
| >It's fundamental to running society where groups want
| representation.
|
| Groups which don't have a lot of people in them, but _do_
| have a lot of money, and can 't find anyone willing to
| voluntarily advocate for them.
|
| Bribery _ought to be_ illegal, but in practice it 's legal -
| e.g. corporate donations.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| Using saved up money to execute your agenda is a
| fundamental feature of civilized society. Before money,
| basic transactions had to have goods exchanged on the spot.
| Money is a simple debt agreement that has been written in a
| commoditized form so that the creditor can easily trade it
| at their convenience, with other parties who can delay
| their dues for longer. It is just commoditized social
| obligation. Some people have a lot of it, because in their
| or their ancestors past, they racked up a lot of social
| obligation. It's still just people who are due favors,
| calling them in.
| HardlyCurious wrote:
| Another term for lobbying is democracy. We don't need
| lobbyist to have democracy. So there existence must serve
| some purpose other then democratic action.
| bumby wrote:
| Petitioning your elected officials is fine in most people's
| eyes. I think a lot of people may have an issue when money is
| equated to petitioning through various mechanisms. It's
| exacerbated in a society with economic systems that tend to
| amplify wealth inequality, leading to political inequality.
|
| Counterpoint: savvy populist candidates can get traction
| without spending nearly as much money as their well-lobbied
| counterparts.
| slivanes wrote:
| No, lobbying becomes bribery when money or favors exchanges
| hands.
| [deleted]
| sarchertech wrote:
| If money actually goes to the candidate instead of the
| campaign to re-elect the candidate, it is literally bribery
| and is illegal.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > If money actually goes to the candidate instead of the
| campaign to re-elect the candidate, it is literally
| bribery and is illegal.
|
| True. Also if the money enriches the candidate thru means
| other than cash-in-hand, the bribery may be legal and is
| just as unethical.
| Mimmy wrote:
| Agreed, what a way to sour a decent message with an awful
| example.
|
| > Government, acting in the best interest of their citizens,
| were trying to curb an addictive substance. CEO of generic
| tobacco / drug / oil / gambling company, realizing that this
| would hurt their profits, decided that the best way forward was
| to effectively bribe those in power to put their company's
| profits over the well-being of society.
|
| If this is true, I'd like to thank the author for inadvertently
| pointing out the real source of the sports gambling problem:
| people like Jason Robins.
|
| We don't have a sports gambling problem, we have a greedy CEO
| bribing lawmakers problem.
| tilne wrote:
| I don't disagree with the sentiment, but I disagree that
| Robins is to blame. If the system enables this kind of
| behavior, there will always be someone willing to take
| advantage. If not Robins, then the next shameless profiteer.
| keiferski wrote:
| All this indicates is that the problem is at the system
| level. It doesn't mean the actor is somehow less culpable
| just because "someone else would have done it anyway."
| marcosdumay wrote:
| And anyway, the actions needed to fix the system are
| almost certainly punishing those people and the people
| that refuse to punish them.
| LoFiSamurai wrote:
| Correct. There are also plenty of people who realize that
| while things are possible within a system, they choose
| not to do them for moral / ethical reasons.
| scott_w wrote:
| Not to put too fine a point on it but we are talking
| about the CEO of a gambling company here...
| Tyrannosaur wrote:
| It is possible, and often appropriate, to simultaneously
| denounce both a system that is easily abused and people who
| abuse such systems.
| [deleted]
| acegopher wrote:
| Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. Not
| everything that isn't illegal is ethical.
| plufz wrote:
| I dont disagree that the main problem is systemic/political
| but all systems have flaws, people should always have a
| higher moral standard than simply following the law. Robins
| is to blame but not alone.
| hliyan wrote:
| There is something deeply troubling about the sentiment "if
| I'm incentivised to act a certain way, that is the way I
| will act". This is not how normal human beings think, and
| it is not the type of human being that society should be
| designed for.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| Ah yes, the famous "if it's not me someone else would do it
| therefore the system is to blame and not me". What a great
| logical fallacy. Your actions remain immoral even if there
| is plenty of other people ready to be as immoral as you
| are.
| bumby wrote:
| If we can agree that humans are imperfect, systems help
| nudge people towards more perfect.
|
| I sure wish I had perfect willpower to avoid bad foods.
| But, alas, I am imperfect in that regard so I create a
| system that prevents bad foods from being in my house.
| The end result is that my behavior trends toward more
| perfect than had that system not be in place.
|
| Moral philosophical discussions are fine and we can
| lament about the moral shortcomings of ourselves and
| others, but I think the systems argument is more
| pragmatic in creating real changes in behavior and
| outcomes.
| chromoblob wrote:
| This system _is_ implementation of your willpower,
| though.
| bumby wrote:
| What if the system is designed by somebody else?
| hiatus wrote:
| The feedback is only post-facto though. Laws don't
| prevent behavior, they only describe consequences.
| bumby wrote:
| FWIW, I think laws can be part of a system, but they're
| not the only implantation
| drewcoo wrote:
| Introducing morality is shifting the goalposts.
|
| Besides, complaining about immoral people doesn't fix the
| problem. Changing the law might.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| That's mixing cause and consequences. A society is shaped
| by its members not the other way round. The law can
| punish the most egregious transgressions. It won't set
| the global standard. Education and social behaviour set
| the standards. If you want behaviour to disappear, stop
| treating them as acceptable.
| ouid wrote:
| [dead]
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Both. We need both. Robins should be punished _and_ the
| system should be fixed. Obviously. It 's absolutely wild
| that we had to arrive here instead of starting here.
|
| Personal responsibility is a good principle to live by
| but a dogshit principle for system design. It's a
| transparent but common ploy by the corrupt: "let's not
| fix the system and instead toss a few scapegoats to the
| plebs while we continue to rob them blind."
| nonameiguess wrote:
| This doesn't seem like a fair characterization of what
| happened. I don't intend to shill for Draft Kings or
| anything, but lawmakers weren't bribed into changing
| anything. The Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on
| sports gambling, and that was based on a lawsuit brought by
| Chris Christie as governor of New Jersey, not on behalf of
| Internet gambling sites, but because he was pissed that
| Nevada casinos were allowed to host sportsbooks but Atlantic
| City casinos were not.
| Mimmy wrote:
| Are you sure?
|
| > Since 2016, FanDuel and DraftKings alone have donated
| more than $2.6 million to state politicians and political
| parties, according to data maintained by OpenSecrets, a
| campaign finance watchdog. The companies have spent another
| $114 million to try to influence state ballot measures to
| legalize sports betting.
|
| > Industry lobbyists, for example, dazzled lawmakers with
| projections about the billions of dollars that states could
| expect to collect in taxes from sports betting --
| projections that, at least so far, have often turned out to
| be wildly inflated, according to a Times analysis of state
| tax data.
|
| > "It is time for your state to add iGaming," Jason Robins,
| the chief executive of DraftKings, told lawmakers at a
| recent conference that his company sponsored. "Not in the
| future, but now."
|
| > "We needed a national strategy," Mr. Kudon said in an
| interview, recalling his thought process at the time. "We
| need to go out there and pass 10, 15 bills and get ahead of
| this."
|
| > Mr. Kudon and his clients assembled an all-star team of
| lawyers and former government officials, including Martha
| Coakley, who had been the attorney general of
| Massachusetts.
|
| > By the end of 2017, 19 states had passed bills legalizing
| fantasy sports. Almost all were written with help from Mr.
| Kudon's team.
|
| > Comments from the justices -- including Chief Justice
| John G. Roberts, who in private practice had represented
| the American Gaming Association -- suggested they were
| likely to overturn the federal ban.
|
| And before you move the goal-posts, I'll note that this is
| just part of what is openly available. We recently found
| out about Clarence Thomas illegally accepting gifts from
| wealthy individuals. To assume that these lawsuits win or
| lose in a purely ethical, academic way without outside
| influence seems contrary to the evidence.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/20/business/sports-
| betting-l...
| trogdor wrote:
| >We recently found out about Clarence Thomas illegally
| accepting gifts from wealthy individuals.
|
| No, we didn't.
|
| See https://reason.com/volokh/2023/06/22/justice-alito-
| shouldnt-...
| HardlyCurious wrote:
| Greedy CEO, greedy business owner, rich Nazis, foreign govt,
| there is no reason to focus the message on the variable in
| the room. The problem is greedy lawmakers who accept brides,
| full stop.
|
| Fix the lawmakers and you stop all the bad faith influence.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| >Fix the lawmakers and you stop all the bad faith
| influence.
|
| One-sentence simple solutions to one of the most
| complicated problems humanity faces. How do you propose to
| do that? Lawmakers are in charge of their own rules. There
| is no incentive to change their own incentive structure
| from within.
| HardlyCurious wrote:
| Well, it's a more limited scope then attempting to
| address every greedy person on earth with enough money to
| lobby.
|
| Potential solutions could include direct democracy, line
| item veto, or maybe both?
|
| I don't claim to have a solution, and that should be no
| reason to not address the topic of what problem society
| needs to solve.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| [dead]
| bumby wrote:
| > _The problem is greedy lawmakers who accept brides, full
| stop._
|
| Perhaps the problem is the system that makes such "bribes"
| legal.
| HardlyCurious wrote:
| Well, the brides aren't actually legal, they are just
| very difficult to prove.
|
| Unless we want to make political donations illegal, how
| do you prove a donation to a politician as a bride
| instead of support for the politician whose politics you
| agree with?
|
| One could make a claim that stuff like student loan
| forgiveness is unethical if it benefits those who voted
| for the party. Is it not illegal to use tax payer money
| to pay for votes? I think if any politician said,
| "anybody who votes for me will get a bonus in your tax
| refund this year" we would have no issue seeing how that
| is unethical.
| bumby wrote:
| I used quotations around the term bribe for a reason. By
| definition, if it's legal, it's not a bribe although it
| may walk like a duck and quack like a duck. One of the
| issues is an incentive problem: those who have the power
| to make it illegal are also those who benefit the most
| from it being legal.
|
| > _Unless we want to make political donations illegal_
|
| I think this is displaying dichotomous thinking. There's
| a lot of room between a political donation free-for-all
| and making political donations illegal. In between there
| are many proposals for a more mitigated approach. One
| being Lessig's idea of "Democracy Vouchers"[1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic%2C_Lost#Democr
| acy_vou...
| HardlyCurious wrote:
| I think any reform to the process such as democracy
| vouchers are just a shell game. Ok, that money can only
| go to candidates or issue campaigns. Meanwhile other
| money will be spent in multitude of ways to shape public
| opinion. Where do the DNC and RNC get money from? What
| can they spend on? Just to name one of many entities with
| skin in the game that can't be funded by the democracy
| vouchers.
|
| These reforms are going to end up just changing to rules
| to help one side or the other. Whether or not the ideas
| were formulated originally with that intent, by the time
| they get implemented they will be bent for that intent.
| bumby wrote:
| > _other money will be spent in multitude of ways_
|
| Sure, and other systems would be needed to provide the
| necessary guardrails. At no point did I allude to the
| idea that one simple approach would be a panacea.
| sublinear wrote:
| > We don't have a sports gambling problem, we have a greedy
| CEO bribing lawmakers problem.
|
| These are not mutually exclusive.
| spenczar5 wrote:
| I think its a joke; that sort of either/or reductionism is
| the entire point of the original article.
| nomaD_ wrote:
| There are a lot of theories out there but very few real life
| examples.
|
| If I tell facts about myself to 10 people, I am sure everyone
| draw their own lessons based on how they perceive the world. AND
| there is nothing wrong with that!
|
| People creating self help content think they are creating a rule
| book for everyone to follow. But I know for a fact based on my
| experiences that there is no such thing. These articles would
| sound much better if they phrase it like - I had X problem, I did
| Y to resolve them, and since then Z is my core belief in life.
| That I can respect even though I may not agree.
| neongodzilla wrote:
| Who else got the answer "Eat the rich"?
| gexla wrote:
| I skimmed the article, so not sure that it hit on this point. But
| "solve your problem" might be better understood as "join with
| people doing things, solve their pain points." You're making
| those pain points to be yours. Even better if you can join
| multiple teams of people over time doing roughly similar things
| and identify common pain points.
| devjab wrote:
| I think article would be more interesting if the author had
| actually solved the advertisement professionals problem, and not
| just made it into five or six possible problems and left it at
| that.
| slingnow wrote:
| Unfortunately for the author, it would then become apparent
| that this approach is just something that sounds great for a
| blog post and has little to no practical value.
|
| The advice isn't even consistent. He says that you need to
| break things down into a "one-word" problem, because anything
| bigger than that is too hard and abstract. And yet, his little
| template to fill out "I don't have a ___ problem, I have a ___
| problem" gets filled out with single words in each instance!
|
| "I don't have an acceptance problem. I have a communication
| problem".
|
| The latter is somehow preferred to the former. Why?
| sanitycheck wrote:
| I read it, and I feel now like I feel after watching a TED Talk.
| Which is to say, like I've just wasted a little chunk of my life.
|
| Most of the time, your "real problem" cannot be directly solved,
| which is why you have another big problem to worry about. The
| engineer in the story is not getting his ideas accepted. If he
| was the CTO, his ideas would be accepted. Therefore, he can solve
| the real problem of seniority by becoming the CTO! How does he do
| that (eventually)? Maybe by proving he has great ideas, and he
| does _that_ by implementing some of those ideas.
|
| Oops, we made a circle.
|
| So the real question is, how can we solve today's big problem
| _without_ solving the "real problem"? Going ahead and
| implementing the guy's idea without permission is actually not a
| terrible way for him to get noticed, if it's a very good idea
| (which the exercise will also provide some insight on too).
| gunshai wrote:
| Phrased another way. What feature (if changed) would describe
| the highest chance of improving the success rate.
|
| What are the features involved in success, which ones are
| levers that can be pulled.
|
| Realizing everything is an abstraction for another thing that
| is yet another abstraction is in a way a freeing realization.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| Is there a name for this kind of post? I've been calling it
| "abstract workplace philosophy"[0] in my head. I always feel like
| this sort of thing is too general to be applicable to me. My
| workplace problems are usually more of the "we got this bug
| report and looking at the code you're not sure if the feature
| ever worked to begin with" flavor.
|
| [0] Or banal workplace philosophy if I'm feeling uncharitable.
| slingnow wrote:
| I could think of a name for this kind of post, but it wouldn't
| be very charitable.
| mdorazio wrote:
| A lot of these seem to fall into the "Management Philosophy"
| category - applicable if you're a manager or if you are
| attempting to manage your own career as opposed to solving day-
| to-day task issues.
| yeahwhatever10 wrote:
| Ah so that's what my manager does all day.
| RajT88 wrote:
| A good manager is an "umbrella" and you have no idea what
| they do.
|
| A bad manager is a "funnel" and you know exactly what they
| do.
| andruby wrote:
| I think some transparency is good. I prefer to know what
| keeps my manager up at night, ie: what are the big
| problems they are solving. That way I can help or offer
| context etc.
|
| Likewise, I'll share some of the problems I'm working on
| with my reports. You don't hand these problems down
| though, you just talk about it and solicit feedback &
| ideas.
| raincole wrote:
| It's just a variation of self-help books/articles.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Did you never had a manager ask you how your workplace can be
| improved?
| sukilot wrote:
| [dead]
| BeetleB wrote:
| (Rant)
|
| The physical therapist example is horrible. As someone who has
| seen many, the majority are quacks who are unwilling to say "I
| don't know what the problem is."
|
| Especially those that probe and say "I feel a knot" after telling
| them where it hurts. I guarantee that if I'd gone in with forearm
| pain, but didn't tell them which arm, they would find the knot in
| the wrong arm about half the times.
|
| (/Rant)
|
| My beef with articles like these is it's not easy to find the
| right granularity when to stop. My _real_ problem often boils
| down to "I need to eat and have a roof over my head."
| xpe wrote:
| That is the ugliest, scariest, most wonderful hairball I've ever
| seen. [1]
|
| [1] https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-
| down,forma...
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