[HN Gopher] Giving a Shit as a Service (2022)
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Giving a Shit as a Service (2022)
Author : damir
Score : 432 points
Date : 2023-10-29 08:00 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (allenpike.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (allenpike.com)
| underseacables wrote:
| _I used to puzzle over why potential clients who reached out to
| me always seemed to get more interested in hiring us if I tried
| to dissuade them by asking challenging questions. I think the
| biggest reason is that pushing back demonstrated that I care._
|
| This seems bizarre. I work in sales, and I avoid making things
| too challenging for potential clients. Pushing back on the scope
| is one thing, but I think the way to show that you care about a
| potential client is to listen, identify their issue, and provide
| them with a solution that meets their budget. So many sales
| people try to push the envelope, to maximize the sale, for better
| or for worse, but I've never done that.
| petesergeant wrote:
| > I work in sales
|
| What are you selling? I imagine that would make a difference
| underseacables wrote:
| Networking equipment, but also a network monitoring service.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| Exactly - you're selling commoditized products, not bespoke
| pieces.
| pasc1878 wrote:
| Surely challenging means that you show that you are listening
| to the client and shows you understand.
|
| How does a client tell the difference between what you do and a
| salesman overpromises both of these salesmen listened and said
| that they could do it. Many people have experience of the bad
| salesperson and so will assume that they are all like that.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| Asking challenging questions isn't the same as making things
| challenging. I had the same experience as the author. It's not
| about asking questions that take up their time or are hard for
| the hell of it. It's about asking questions that show you're
| not only planning on making the sale, but on _doing the work_.
| If you're selling a product, it's the questions that show you
| want to make sure the product is successful for them. They're
| challenging in the sense there's a slight tone of "are you sure
| you really need this?" in them, and they often don't have top-
| of-mind answers.
| saargrin wrote:
| theres a line between giving a shit and not giving a shit eh
| sgarland wrote:
| There is probably a lot of bias with these two companies - one is
| a bespoke software company , and the other a bespoke woodcraft
| company. At a glance, the software company produces native apps
| for iOS and Android, rather than React Native, which to me seems
| indicative of attention to detail.
|
| People with that mindset tend to want it in others, and will
| believe it to be the cause of successful relationships. I say
| this as someone with precisely the same belief. I've no idea if
| it's causal, correlated, or simply a coincidence that my brain
| sees as a pattern, but for the moment I'm convinced it's at the
| very least correlated.
| Simon_ORourke wrote:
| > People with that mindset tend to want it in others
|
| Totally agree, but folks like that will run into the "it won't
| scale" types and get frustrated with their corner cutting ways
| for the sake of future scaling opportunities.
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| Aren't native Java apps on Android effectively deprecated? I
| feel last I looked Google just pushed Flutter/Dart. I was
| thinking to try to get a Clojure application ported to Android
| (it uses a lot of Java libs under the hood) and .. I got the
| impression nobody uses Java anymore!
|
| Though, to start with, it was bit unclear if Clojure still
| doesn't run on ART/Dalvik/whateveritscallednow
| Permik wrote:
| Nah, It's ART still underneath so anything that compiles to
| JVM will compile to ART, so Java is never dying.
|
| On the Flutter side, it's just another cross platform toolkit
| like React Native, but a la Google, and won't/can't replace
| the years and years of Java development.
|
| But the current and foreseeable future Kotlin will be the
| Java successor because of its JVM/Java compatibility,
| ecosystem and ease of use. For a while some of the new
| committed code in Android has been Kotlin.
| flutas wrote:
| Java and Kotlin are still the vast majority of apps, and
| what's being pushed the hardest in the industry.
|
| Kotlin especially with Jetpack Compose for UI.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Previously discussed here as well:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32071349
|
| Also maybe add 2022 to the title.
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! Macroexpanded:
|
| _Giving a shit as a service_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32071349 - July 2022 (152
| comments)
| foobarbecue wrote:
| > Was it because the furniture makers were experts? No.
|
| Weren't they?
|
| Weird line.
| arrow7000 wrote:
| They were indeed experts but that wasn't a sufficient reason
| for it to be such a smooth experience
| didibus wrote:
| For table making it might have been?
| foobarbecue wrote:
| I mean... if the point he's making is that expertise doesn't
| affect the quality of the product or experience then he's
| very wrong.
| vivekd wrote:
| I guess it's good for small businesses trying to distinguish
| themselves. But it seems like giving a shit doesn't really scale.
|
| It seems like at some point in growth all companies attract a
| critical number who don't really care. Maybe it's just hard for
| people to care when the numbers are big. Maybe that caring is
| hard to maintain as things get more institutionalized
| ano-ther wrote:
| If you are careful, then GAS can certainly scale.
|
| Examples:
|
| - Microsoft commitment for Windows to be backward compatible or
| their care about Excel (including using their own compiler,
| 1-2-3 compatibility in early years etc). Doesn't means that
| there aren't also examples of the clearly not-GAS.
|
| - Hospitality industry which trains their staff and makes
| extensive use of checklists and SOPs. Disney comes to mind or
| high-end hotels.
|
| - Most services in Japan, where it scales culturally
| gavinhoward wrote:
| Maybe you are right. I certainly haven't seen anything to
| contradict you.
|
| So this is the exact reason that my software business will only
| grow to the point that it provides enough for my wife and me.
|
| Why are people so obsessed with growth? They're like the
| businessman/tourist in [1], and I just want to be the
| fisherman.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anekdote_zur_Senkung_der_Arb...
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| I've noticed companies tend to sacrifice giving a shit for an
| increase in _perceived_ growth that often is not sustainable
| over the long term.
|
| There's honestly probably a lengthy blog post in this.
|
| Especially in the sector of managed/professional services or
| SaaS - companies try to scale up fast to have more customer
| acquisition (focus on net new), and tend to sacrifice the level
| of bespoke service that retains customers, leading to increased
| churn over time.
|
| This approach usually means that ARR will increase over the
| short term (3-5y), which is totally fine, but unless your
| service is really sticky or you gain market dominance, the
| growth curve will eventually plateau and enter a decline.
|
| You also see this outside of tech - in the service industry in
| general. Company expands rapidly, service deteriorates over
| time, eventually enters a decline phase.
|
| Maintaining quality of service is _hard_ over the long term to
| balance with growth, you really gotta put the work in.
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| > It seems like at some point in growth all companies attract a
| critical number who don't really care.
|
| Yes. Once a company is a clear contender in a space the ghouls
| start to show up. They're there for the easy win. With growth
| comes the need for more hands and the People who Give a Shit
| always end up covering for those that don't.
| pfix wrote:
| Not negating the sentiment that giving a shit helps, but table
| making is an old business and most of the challenges have been
| encountered over the centuries. So result and cost comes down to
| having an experienced craftsman. And I assume that someone making
| a living from it for let's say the 10,000 hours can make a table
| any way you want and be pretty accurate in estimating effort and
| material expense.
|
| Giving a shit makes for a more happy customer, but cutting a
| board oval shaped is what they do in a workshop for breakfast.
| okwhateverdude wrote:
| > Giving a shit makes for a more happy customer, but cutting a
| board oval shaped is what they do in a workshop for breakfast.
|
| Maybe. It could also be that the majority of their customers
| only want boring non-oval shit most of the time. So the chance
| to flex a bit on a "non-standard" order and getting to actually
| demonstrate those skills leads to a much better outcome for
| everyone including the craftspeople.
| vivekd wrote:
| You would think so, but I work in construction and I can
| confirm that finding a skilled builder is just as hard as
| finding a skilled coder. Probably more so because coders seem
| more intent on lifelong learning whereas construction types
| tend to act like they already know everything.
|
| Just look at the top comment, works in construction,
| electricity is over 100 years old, still had trouble finding
| people who care.
|
| Part of the challenge is that practicing construction is
| expensive so not everyone gets a chance to do so. Practicing
| code is easy and inexpensive. There's an accessibility to it
| that isn't there for building. I code stuff that doesn't work
| all the time and I don't care, I just start over because I
| didn't lose much. It's very different when dealing with
| expensive construction materials.
| shell_game wrote:
| "it depends on X and Y" and "here are things you should care
| about" is the most annoying thing ever IF you actually need to
| make a decision and IF the service provider doesn't give you a
| path forward. It's fine if you're just gathering information, but
| not when there is a business impact to delaying.
|
| This goes for people in a consulting capacity in internal roles,
| too. There are way too many "SMEs" who will show up to your
| meetings, tell you it's "complicated", and then leave, thinking
| they've made a contribution. If you raise issues but don't help
| your customer navigate this complexity, you are adding negative
| value.
| dudul wrote:
| Came here to say this. I think if as a customer you have some
| understanding of what you're trying to do, sure working with
| the folks who "give a shit" will be great. If you just want to
| get it done and don't have a clue about the details it feels
| like friction.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| I always carry a two dollar bill and fifty-cent piece, for when
| (e.g.) an entry-level store-clerk does something which most-
| other-clerks wouldn't resolve, I can say to them "Thank you for
| giving. a . shit."
|
| As a blue-collar electrician (although retired), I want to hire
| anybody that seems to give even the tiniest shit. While working,
| it took me a decade to realize that "if you're the only person
| that 'gives a shit,' YOU'RE GONNA HAVE A BAD TIME."
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > it took me a decade to realize that "if you're the only
| person that 'gives a shit,' YOU'RE GONNA HAVE A BAD TIME."
|
| Oh my goodness. That perfectly describes my last 5 years in
| academia. The last person on the deck of a sinking ship,
| directing panicking souls, after everyone smart and agile
| already jumped in the lifeboats.
|
| But I don't regret it. I helped a lot of kids into lifeboats,
| and even found a nice lump of driftwood for myself as the
| university system gave one final creaking groan then plunged
| into the darkness.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| My favorite former client [we're both retire now] is
| approaching 90 years old. Wow. She is a distinguished
| portrait artist from The Silent Generation, and she recently
| told me [upon her own best friend's recent death]:
|
| "Nobody wants to be the last one left at the party. You have
| to help clean up, then..."
|
| We ended our professional relationship over petty words when
| I felt like the only person giving a shit about maintaining
| her assets [as her maintenance guy]. Our personal
| relationship has outlasted any pettiness; but it still hurts
| seeing her squander her massive inheritance without
| maintenance.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Had to look up "The Silent Generation" and discovered the
| stereotype of my mum. Enlightening and funny, so thanks for
| that journey.
|
| "Last one out please turn off the lights..." seems a motif
| not just of the post-war generation, but the whole post-war
| culture and institutions.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| Fun factoid:
|
| 20% of men in this cohort lost their virginity via SWer,
| typically abroad during/before wartime.
|
| Just out there leaving messes everywhere, like they're
| paid to do it (or something).
| SturgeonsLaw wrote:
| Maybe the implication wooshed right over me, but what was the
| role of the note and the coin?
| zogrodea wrote:
| I believe it's a way to reward the person for going above and
| beyond of what is expected of them, and for caring enough to
| do a good job.
| jprd wrote:
| Indeed, additionally - these are not "common" currency
| pieces. It isn't the monetary value, but the novelty in
| acquiring such pieces to give out.
|
| "I gave a shit enough to go out of my way to get these, and
| carry them. Now I am giving one to you because you gave a
| shit enough to go out of YOUR way. Thank you."
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| Amen, my virtual brother.
|
| May a real $2.50 some-time-soon cross your path.
| Retr0id wrote:
| It's a strange and oddly specific amount. Being transferred
| any value less than about $10 feels like more of an insult
| than anything, to me. Might as well be handing out gold
| star stickers and a lollipops.
| jcpst wrote:
| It has nothing to do with the amount. It's an uncommon
| item with real value. Gold stars and lollipops are not US
| currency.
|
| Also, I hope most people don't believe a gift of less
| than $10 usd is an insult. It's not nothing.
| bmelton wrote:
| I would honestly be delighted to receive a free lollipop
| jcpst wrote:
| I think I would even enjoy someone handing me a gold star
| sticker.
| quaddo wrote:
| Once we get settled at our new house, I plan to send out
| some postcards with a quick note on them. It's been a
| pretty big move.
|
| I figure that's enough of a lost art that someone might
| actually think "oh cool" and either pin it to the cork
| board or add to a shoebox of keepsakes.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| it's a novelty, they're not super common, and it has
| nothing to do with the monetary amount. Gold stars don't
| have any value either, yet they can represent something
| really special to both the giver and receiver.
|
| You should try and look past the literal aspects of
| things.
| Retr0id wrote:
| Ah, the uncommonness aspect is completely lost on non-US
| audiences (such as myself)
| harimau777 wrote:
| To give another example: there was a small restaurant in
| my hometown that gave change in two dollar bills. It's
| sort of an easy way to be pleasantly quirky.
| simonw wrote:
| Two dollar bills are really cool. I haven't even seen a
| 50c coin myself, need to track one of those down.
|
| Looks like you can get $100 worth of half dollar coins
| for $147 from the US Mint
| https://catalog.usmint.gov/kennedy-2023-half-
| dollar-200-coin...
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| Pro tip: Go to your bank and you can order $100 worth of
| half dollars for $100.00.
|
| Pro-er tip: You can also do this with two dollar bills.
| LiquidPolymer wrote:
| yea - U.S. Mint is a ripoff
| toast0 wrote:
| If you order $200 worth of two dollar bills, you'll likey
| get uncirculated bills, in a strap so you can feel
| gangsta/baller/whateverthe cool kids are saying these
| days.
| codecutter wrote:
| Thank you for the wonderful tip. I am going to order
| these coins to handover to kids for Halloween. I am sure
| that they will love this unusual gift.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| I am offering each visitor two candies, and the option to
| instead receive a half-dollar for each rejected tooth-
| decayer.
|
| Yes, I'm the "full-sized candy guy" because I don't want
| the neighborhood kids vandalizing / stealing from my
| vehicles. Yes, I'm that old. Yes, my neighborhood is that
| sketchy.
|
| A price I'm willing to offer. So far, no burglaries (and
| I leave the doors unlocked).
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| If you are making $7.25 an hour serving several dozen
| people in that hour, $2.50 is a small but meaningful
| recognition of gratitude. It will not set one up for
| financial independence but should generate a moment of
| goodwill between two human beings.
|
| (As well, I'm a Canadian but I _believe_ those are
| unusual currency denominations so another little plus).
|
| I think for a lot of people, even some on the ever bubbly
| hacker news, amounts less than $10 are still not
| considered insulting (context depending).
| kylebenzle wrote:
| Ok agree. It makes no sense and is annoying for anyone to
| be given $2.50 as a tip.
|
| I did the same with silver dollars for a long time,. Gave
| them as tips eating out but it sucks if your not autistic
| because everyone is confused/overly excited.
|
| It's worth about $15 but people would think they won the
| lottery when I gave them a coin. That's why I stopped.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| Junk silver is selling at my local coin store for 21x
| nominal value.
|
| This makes leaving a Franklin half dollar all-the-more
| rewarding [to an observant recipient]. For reference, a
| Franklin half dollar is 90% silver. It is also, IMHO, the
| most-beautifully-surfaced US coin ever produced. It
| "tings."
|
| ----
|
| It is in my fantasies that I had reason to celebrate a
| grand-enough "night on the town" as to leave just a
| single golden buffalo coin as payment [about $2000USD].
| derrikcurran wrote:
| In the US, $2 bills and 50 cent coins are uncommon so it
| feels more special when you get them.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| From an autistic POV: it allows me to more-greatly
| acknowledge goodness, per dollar spent [because of
| perceived rarity -- I get bills free from bank].
| kylebenzle wrote:
| Ahhh. That makes sense :(
| sophacles wrote:
| The fact that you have to go to the bank to get them (vs
| say from the ATM), also shows that you put thought and
| effort into the gift. So you way of saying "thank you for
| giving a shit" in itself rings more true, you gave a shit
| about thanking someone rather than an empty "hey thanks".
| oh_sigh wrote:
| What's your bank? Mine always charges me $2 for mine
| I_cape_runts wrote:
| Yep. I carry a few of them in my glove compartment and use
| them whenever I see lemonade stands in the summer. The kids
| go crazy when they see them
| kylebenzle wrote:
| But why $2.50. Seems like an cheap tip.
|
| A $5 would be 2x better
| diarrhea wrote:
| The math checks out.
| Mtinie wrote:
| It's the recognition, not solely the value, which it is
| being conveyed. $2.50 is still worth more than $0.00.
|
| Does that distinction matters to the person who the $2.00
| and $0.50 is handed to? That's an exercise left up to the
| reader to try.
|
| Addendum: I interpreted the OPs comment to be regarding
| appreciation of people who work in roles not typically
| tipped in the course of their service.
| hotnfresh wrote:
| Tipping with $2 bills was a "cool" thing oldsters would
| do, because the bills are a novelty but not actually that
| hard to get. They'd also give them for birthday money and
| such (I have a bunch in an envelope somewhere for that
| reason).
|
| You're right that at this point you'd need to be giving
| out a lot of them each time for it to count for much.
| Dollars are worth so little that we're beyond "let's get
| rid of pennies" and approaching "WTF is the point of
| coins smaller than the quarter?"
|
| [EDIT] That first bit comes off as harsher than I meant.
| I just mean that this was a more common thing years back,
| lots of folks of a certain generation (or couple of
| generations) did it, and at this point I can definitely
| see how giving out $2 bills, which was once novel (though
| when the eighth older person did it in a year, not so
| novel...) and also a decent amount of money, is getting
| into "yeah, thanks for the _two_ whole quarters, grandpa,
| I 'll be sure to buy a candy bar with them when I get
| several more" territory, thanks to inflation.
|
| [EDIT EDIT] I'm struggling with internalizing new prices,
| too, incidentally. I've finally learned that when my kids
| get $10 it _is not_ worth getting them excited about
| going to get a toy with it. They 'll need, bare minimum,
| double that amount, and even then there won't be a lot of
| options after tax. There's almost nothing they can get
| with $10 but candy or shitty collectible (ahem, kiddy
| gambling) card crap.
| quaddo wrote:
| At the risk of going too far OT, here's a story of how I
| did something different that wasn't expensive but was
| still seen fondly by all concerned.
|
| So ~15 years ago our son had been invited to his best
| friend's birthday party. Unsurprisingly, the birthday boy
| had a list of electronic toys on his gift list, as had
| become tradition.
|
| While my wife and I were out shopping for said gift, she
| located one of the electronic items. Probably a game cart
| for whatever was popular at the time.
|
| Meanwhile, I had come across something that had stirred
| up fond memories of my own: a sleeping bag + flashlight
| (+ some other related item) combo. Woo :)
|
| We decided to get both the game and the sleeping bag
| combo, just in case the latter wasn't well-received.
|
| At the birthday party, I think literally every other gift
| was for his gaming system. Once he opened the sleeping
| bag gift, he, his mom, and at least a few of the other
| kids had a "wait - okay that's different and kinda cool"
| reaction.
|
| Even if he never went camping with them, I hope he got
| many hours of use out of that sleeping bag and
| flashlight. I know I did with mine.
| spacecadet wrote:
| 1000%, Ive left teams and jobs over people "not giving a shit".
| One of the quickest path to burn out.
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| Likewise, and have been burned enough times that I can
| _usually_ recognize the patterns within my first few weeks at
| an org (assuming they were clever enough to "hide" the
| institutional level problems during the interview process.)
|
| A sample of my "Giving a shit" checklist includes: Do they
| not utilize metrics or care when they tank? Do the rank and
| file engineers have a general malase and use terms like "not
| my problem" with impunity? Does management continually
| deprioritize critical "keep the lights on" work eg security
| patches WHEN they are fully aware of the repercussions (this
| knowing is key.) List of red flags goes on.
|
| No org is perfect, but why endure the pain when it can be
| avoided. Especially so when it can easily be recognized early
| enough in many cases.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| During my IBEW apprenticeship, I worked at two several-MW
| datacenters. One was a public agency, the other a private
| enterprise.
|
| Recently the private data center was sold to some
| international holding company, and it brought a smile to my
| face recollecting a conversation I had once with [now-
| former] CEO:
|
| "The data center is just a trick pony show we use to sell
| our real product."
|
| Glad they did well on the sale to new foreign owners.
| Definitional evil.
| Geezus_42 wrote:
| Zix/Appriver?
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| My company uses metrics and I hate it. The best way to
| improve metrics? Decrease vertical height so you can fit
| more shit on the page. Is this actually good for anyone?
| Probably not.
| Bjartr wrote:
| Actually giving a shit means you care about whether or
| not you're pursuing the right metrics
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| Either you're not measuring anything useful with your
| current metrics or you fall into not giving a shit
| category
| spacecadet wrote:
| Duuude, I bailed on a startup a year ago that gas lit the
| shit out of me during interviews (I had red flags but
| stupidly ignored them) and left in the first 2 weeks when
| all of the red confirmed true. 8 months later, lay offs.
| captainmuon wrote:
| > Does management continually deprioritize critical "keep
| the lights on" work eg security patches WHEN they are fully
| aware of the repercussions (this knowing is key.)
|
| One variant is when Management punishes you for bringing
| something up by making it your task to then fix it. I think
| they don't do this on purpose, they often just don't think
| about it. And it leads to a culture of "don't tell the
| boss". I've seen some really dire problems swept under the
| carpet because of this.
| rubslopes wrote:
| I thought you were talking about Jony Ive for a second.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Ditto. Kinda. Most ppl do give a shit. The disconnect comes
| from what they give a shit about. For example:
|
| Head of agency only gives a shit about billable hours, not
| sustainable revenue.
|
| CTO gives a shit about shiny new tech objects, not how
| appropriate they are for the news of the client.
|
| Manager gives a shit about over-committing and shipping gawd-
| awful soltions, and not the integrity and esteem of the team.
|
| Team members give a shit about not making waves, and bad
| processes and lack of growth (i.e., learning new things)
| persist.
|
| Designer gives a shit about the aesthetics of the design, not
| about how it's going to compromise the UX.
|
| And so on.
|
| I've left more than one job because I'm not wired to be
| complicit (in someone else self-destructive shit giving), and
| because I give a shit about clients and users, as well as
| being able to look at myself in the mirror.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| >as well as being able to look at myself in the mirror.
|
| This is so tantamount to "living a good life."
|
| I have two attorney brothers, and the things they fight
| for... jfc.
|
| Hired bullies. Hound dogs. At the mercy of [well-]funding.
| qaisjp wrote:
| This is so wise. I'm gonna ask my teammates next week about
| what it is in their job that they give a shit about.
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| Personally, a large part of my job is telling folks _why_ they
| should give a shit; providing data on how not giving a shit
| will affect them or their company's bottom line. If they don't
| listen and it hits the fan anyways, they may have learned
| something and give a little more of a shit going forward. If
| they don't, I move on. Those that don't learn from their
| mistakes will continually supply the fan with further shit to
| spray.
|
| In general, people largely filter out the "caring" of what
| won't directly affect them personally or their tribe in the
| short term, blind to the longer term repercussions until they
| are pointed out with concrete details AND actionable options.
| Someone doing the "right things" for the current situation,
| either has foresight or prior knowledge. Those that aren't,
| either have neither, can't learn, or the options' positive net
| ffects do not outweigh the momentum of "doing nothing."
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| >a large part of my job is telling folks _why_ they should
| give a shit
|
| Some sort of "change management consulting" or something?
|
| ----
|
| I'm looking for some sort of intellectual career which will
| allow me to capitalize on my inherent "glass half empty"
| perspectives. I used to do residential home inspections [as
| primary income, post IBEW], but during recent no-inspections
| home-buying... my services were required less-and-less.
|
| I have enough runway to last about a decade unemcumbered...
| but got tired of feeling like the only guy on jobsites that
| cared about not delivering _turds_ to well-paying customers.
| CityOfThrowaway wrote:
| Not OP, but if you love working on things that are
| important, hard, and an up-hill battle... try working in
| InfoSec!
| squarefoot wrote:
| > "if you're the only person that 'gives a shit,' YOU'RE GONNA
| HAVE A BAD TIME."
|
| Not only that (which is 100% true) but also you're raising the
| bar in required work quality for everyone else to get on par
| with you, therefore expect to make a few friends and many
| enemies, especially among colleagues.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| >expect to make a few friends and many enemies
|
| The older I get, the less I'm willing to help disaster
| scenarios.
|
| "A lack of planning on your behalf, does not constitute an
| emergency upon mine."
| dvt wrote:
| > "A lack of planning on your behalf, does not constitute
| an emergency upon mine."
|
| Agreed. Imo, having "on call" rotations is a clear red flag
| and bad software practice that has somehow made it in the
| mainstream.
|
| I understand the idea of "mission critical" when you're
| running software on the Moon or something, but if your
| Earthbound software has so many potential bugs that you
| need to have dedicated people being on call every weekend
| to fix bugs or restart servers, you just built it poorly.
| somsak2 wrote:
| If you work at a company on a team with a user-facing
| surface, you need to have an on-call rotation. Consumer
| expectations of uptime are extremely high and there's no
| way to build software that ensures 100% reliability
| without any human intervention.
| dvt wrote:
| Fundamentally disagree with this. In fact, most of human
| technology has worked without on-call rotations. From the
| complicated movements of mechanical watches, to the
| still-ticking heartbeats of the Voyager probes.
|
| Most software engineers just happen to be bad engineers.
| On-call rotations are a band-aid for poor planning and
| development (to be fair, often imposed by tech-delinquent
| middle managers or executives).
| dasil003 wrote:
| Obviously the truth is somewhere in between, there is no
| engineer so talented that they can produce a 100%
| reliable and available system, and the percentage goes
| down the more complex the system gets. The decision of
| whether to have a on-call rotation should be based on the
| consequences of downtime, not on some kind of moral
| stance on human fallibility.
| Gud wrote:
| Let's get rid of on call firemen while we're at it they
| shouldn't really be required.
|
| Let's all plan our emergencies to 8am to 5pm, Monday to
| Friday. And don't forget the scheduled lunch break at
| 1pm!
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| They can be scheduled on shifts instead of being on call.
|
| It just requires spending more money hiring more people.
| _kblcuk_ wrote:
| Being on call is firemen job, and they do have shifts. In
| most of the companies you have something akin to
| construction workers that work from 9 to 5 and then also
| are expected to be available to do casual firefighting
| from 5 to 9 because it's "easier".
| dasil003 wrote:
| At a certain scale mature software companies do in fact
| have dedicated incident managers, and dedicated SREs who
| work primarily on stability from a more systematic
| perspective. However they still need support from the
| application developers due to the nature of software.
|
| In the old days operations tended to be very isolated in
| much the way you are proposing. The problem with this is
| that stability depends very much on the software, so over
| time operations folks would be extremely defensive and
| impose all kinds of constraints on what software could
| do, and the software engineers would be frustrated that
| they couldn't do things efficiently. Imagine how
| firefighters would feel if construction workers had a
| tendency to randomly leave explosives and gas cans hidden
| throughout new construction and then waltzed off to the
| next job while the firefighters had to deal with the
| consequences.
|
| At the end of the day, devs need to have some skin in the
| game or it's a recipe for disaster.
| sirclueless wrote:
| I don't really understand the analogy. Mechanical watches
| have created an industry of skilled practitioners trained
| to fix them because they often need diagnosis and repair.
| NASA has a room full of oncall personnel available for
| many hours any time they launch anything, and they launch
| things much less frequently than your average tech
| company.
|
| Oncall rotations are part of defense-in-depth against
| bugs and unforeseen circumstances: Most of the companies
| that survive without a formal one only do so by
| outsourcing this for the most common cases; to
| Cloudflare, to Amazon, etc. -- if there's an opportunity
| cost to being down someone needs to be able to pick up
| the phone when there's an outage or critical issue.
| efitz wrote:
| Couldn't disagree more.
|
| Nobody engineers software like spacecraft companies- that
| doesn't mean that no one else gives a shit, it just means
| that cost constraints are real things.
|
| Also, the demands on spacecraft software are trivial
| ("move the camera once a month", "do a correction burn
| after a planetary encounter", "watch this sensor and do
| this if it changes") compared to a modern web application
| at a Fortune 500 company.
| infecto wrote:
| Fundamentally disagree with this but I can see how
| someone who thinks at the level of "Most software
| engineers just happen to be bad engineers" would see it
| that way.
|
| I have worked at firms of various sizes and there is
| always a point where things usually become complex at
| some point. Software is as much or more so about managing
| the humans than it is the software. This becomes
| especially true as the firm grows in size. Like all
| fields there are certainly some individuals that perform
| better/worse than others but even for the best engineers
| out there, mistakes happen, edge cases pop up especially
| as the potential complexity grows. Of course these
| mistakes can pop up more frequently depending on the
| imposed deadlines. Deadlines to me are a healthy
| balancing act between the different parts of the
| business. Sometimes they are arbitrary but I think in a
| healthy relationship it helps to have that
| pushback/friction to figure out how much effort is
| required.
|
| That was a long way of saying I think its a pretty naive
| and dismissive view to just hand wave and say this is
| both due to bad engineers and tech-delinquent middle
| managers. You are not asking for it either but I think
| this also comes down to social ability/skills. If your
| worldview is that most software engineers I can only
| imagine this shows up in the workplace.
| coding123 wrote:
| You can't compare a mechanical watch to a modern web app.
| If you told the people building the modern web app were
| allowed to make one release per decade and not allowed to
| "maintain it" you would see the feature list drop off,
| the release date shoot out.
|
| If you have different constraints, you get a different
| result.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| In a vacuum, technology does not need people on-call. The
| problem is when you're iterating on technology (E.g.
| SaaS).
|
| Shipping things has the highest risk of breaking
| something. I worked with an SRE team responsible for
| managing incidents for a few months, they told me that
| ~80% of incidents are caused by bad code being shipped,
| and I saw that happen as well.
|
| Modern software applications are complex and
| interconnected. It's pretty easy to unintentionally break
| something in a different part of the application, or ship
| subtly bad code because you aren't intimately familiar
| with that part of the codebase.
| 8note wrote:
| John Deere sells tractors because of their oncall process
|
| When you're in the middle of harvesting and your tractor
| breaks down, you want it fixed now, not at somebody
| else's convenience.
|
| Mechanics and tow trucks also form an oncall for broken
| down cars.
|
| There's oncalls all over the place for tech of all kinds.
| I think the biggest difference with software is
| intellectual property - we've made it so nobody else is
| allowed to fix whatever's broken, so of course, we need
| oncalls to fix the problems instead of letting customers
| go to their preferred mechanic
| overgard wrote:
| I only had one experience with this early in my career,
| but I remember it wasn't good. Basically, we had a 5-6
| person team that had to support like 10 important legacy
| services. One person essentially ended up being on call
| for a week, having to wake up early to debug issues with
| a thing you didn't build in the first place and only
| vaguely understood.
|
| Do you think this company had good CI/CD and automated
| tests? They did not. There was fortunately a lot of
| monitoring so at least you knew when the service was in a
| bad state, but absolutely nothing else other than a
| ticket and an angry customer.
|
| I would much rather have extensive test coverage, very
| good CI/CD, make sure not to do releases on weekends and
| holidays, and have a few people whose job is to do the
| monitoring and escalate to the right people rather than
| just putting a target on a random engineer's back and
| hope they can fix things quickly.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| You think that, but when Github is down, or AWS-East is
| down, everyone just kind of endures it, waiting until
| it's back up. And life goes on.
| alwa wrote:
| Of course, when a hospital's IT systems go down, people
| do indeed have to endure it, but life does not always in
| fact go on [0]. Horses for courses, I guess.
|
| [0] https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/27/22696097/hospital-
| ransomw...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Hospital IT systems failures are are mostly going to
| cause problems with scheduling, record-keeping, and
| billing.
|
| By far, the most likely thing to kill you in a hospital
| is not the IT system but errors by the doctors and
| nurses. Or that you're too sick to save no matter what
| they do.
| j45 wrote:
| On call rotation is one thing.
|
| Everyone being motivated to develop in a way that isn't
| resulting in brittle software and breaking and maybe even
| use boring tech for stability so even if an on call is a
| real thing, it's relatively benign. It's not a bad thing
| to rely on the genius of smart people who have been at it
| for decades and are decades ahead in some realizations.
|
| Having software that self reports and logs multiple
| occurrences of the same errors and escalating errors that
| start in the app are one great way to stay ahead of
| issues.
|
| By the time someone reaches out it's easy to find the
| error, session, user, and say ok we see it and are on it.
| Acknowledgement at this depth upfront quite often let's
| the customers to say it's ok take a look on Monday. It's
| reassuring. Also easy to forward such an issue to a
| distributed team.
| CityOfThrowaway wrote:
| Most of the time, this is a useful frame.
|
| With that said, there are some types of software that
| exist to deal with complexity external to itself.
| External systems (integrations, screen scraping systems,
| etc.) can break without fault internally, but need to be
| fixed ASAP.
|
| One might say, "You built it poorly by deciding to build
| this at all." And sometimes that's true. But I've been in
| plenty of situations where the options were 1) don't
| solve the customer problem, don't pass go, don't collect
| $200. Or, 2) build finicky software that works but needs
| to be babied... and hire engineers that don't mind doing
| this type of work.
|
| That last bit is critical. Some engineers _like_ the
| heroics and drama of it. Some people can 't help but run
| headfirst into the fire... and there's jobs for them
| there :-)
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| I didn't mind staying late some days to see whether or
| not my migration would blow up production or not. But
| oncall suuuuucks. Cleaning up my own mess is one thing,
| cleaning up some one else's nonsense is another.
| goldenkey wrote:
| Oncall done right will involve a feedback mechanism to
| the originators of the root cause.
| j45 wrote:
| Things happen all the time.
|
| So lending a hand with emergencies that even could have
| been avoided is ok to help someone new to it.
|
| Caring via software or infrastructure for users is often
| about effort as you have described.
| tragic wrote:
| At my last job, there was an incident (thankfully
| discovered in working hours) caused by a supplier
| accidentally deleting the country of Austria from some
| crucial database. You can't anticipate everything like
| that, but the show must go on ...
| d_tr wrote:
| > Imo, having "on call" rotations is a clear red flag and
| bad software practice that has somehow made it in the
| mainstream.
|
| "Just throw more humans at it!"
| aksss wrote:
| I used to run IT operations for a telecom, hundreds of
| physical servers, facilities, 24x7 operators. Hey, shit
| happens. Problems with hardware, facilities, software
| jobs, COTS software, homegrown software. There's a lot of
| benefit to having someone on call in each domain of
| concern rather than letting problems fester or go
| unresolved all night, particularly if the issues are
| customer-facing. It's easy to say "just build your crap
| to anticipate every failure mode", but that's not
| realistic for large operations, especially if you aren't
| sitting on an Apple-size pile of cash and talent.
| rendall wrote:
| > _Imo, having "on call" rotations is a clear red flag
| and bad software practice that has somehow made it in the
| mainstream._
|
| I thought so too until I gigged for a SaaS company that
| absolutely needed it. No, it was not moon-shot rocket
| control software, but it was a money printer with
| literally thousands of clients around the globe paying
| six figures for the service. The on-call SWE duty was not
| onerous: about 2 hour shifts every 2 months, and your job
| was to attempt to handle it and then escalate it to staff
| if you couldn't. There were so many CI tests on the way
| to production that nothing ever happened, until it did,
| and then you needed to make sure that money printer go
| brrr.
| organsnyder wrote:
| If your on-call responsibilities are always "fixing bugs
| or restarting servers", then indeed you built it poorly.
| But on-call shifts can also be used for responding to
| novel situations that couldn't be planned for in advance.
|
| The best on-call rotations are the ones where you're
| rarely paged, but when those pages happen they're for
| important urgent work where your involvement is vital
| (even if your role only needs to be channeling the work
| to the right person). Ideally you're also compensated for
| being available, even when nothing happens (my current
| team gets a day off [in addition to normal PTO] for every
| week of on-call time).
| andrewaylett wrote:
| The expected number of alerts for my team in a normal
| week on-call (which is out-of-hours only, a different
| team member covers working hours) is zero. If one of us
| _is_ paged, there 's a good chance it's because of
| something my team has control over, and we'll try to make
| sure it doesn't happen a second time.
|
| My experience is that a dedicated team running a follow-
| the-sun rotation (so the team doesn't need much if any
| "out of hours" because it's always in hours for at least
| one of them) actually leads to flakier services and more
| alerts. Without the visibility of the impact of the flaky
| services, fixes are lower priority and also more
| difficult to validate.
|
| In this manner, on-call is not a lack of planning, nor an
| emergency, but deliberately ensuring we _have_ a plan in
| place to triage out-of-hours incidents, mitigate those
| that need mitigating, and leaving anything else to be
| fixed in-hours.
|
| On the other hand, _unpaid_ on-call is unacceptable.
| j45 wrote:
| One of my favourite quotes.
|
| It can be made more or less direct to great resonance.
|
| "If you want my help, plan for it and understand I'm not
| able to help last minute when there's no planning"
| j45 wrote:
| The "don't work too hard" crowd when you might be working
| harder than them and "must be nice" when you are relaxing
| more than them can both be avoided.
|
| People who don't like anyone working more than them or
| enjoying life more than them are usually haters who are busy
| not doing much themselves.
|
| Raising the bar doesn't mean having to make it more work for
| everyone.
|
| Those doubt worshipping and self-sabotaging enemies aren't
| worth having in your life but it is nice to give a bit of
| shit about them too.
|
| Move at your pace to wearers what you want and you will find
| like minded people.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| You've inspired me to start doing this. (Don't think I'll carry
| around that exact denomination, but the point is, giving a $%^&
| is a really good thing to financially incentivize.)
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| Ordering "a thousand dollars in two dollar bills, please" is
| a baller move that, at my local credit union, only costs
| $1000.00USD.
|
| And then you get to walk out [usually a few days later] with
| five straps of Jeffersons, feeling like a baller...
|
| This lasts me about one year of "appreciation" for others'
| "giving a shit"s.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > While working, it took me a decade to realize that "if you're
| the only person that 'gives a shit,' YOU'RE GONNA HAVE A BAD
| TIME."
|
| Glad I'm not the only one who thinks this. When I was a
| teenager trying to decide what to do with my life, I dropped
| professional programming because every developer I knew at the
| time just didn't give a shit. Sometimes I wonder if I made the
| right decision. Recently someone posted an article here about
| disenchantment in the software industry, after reading it and
| the comments the feelings of doubt quickly went away.
| vjk800 wrote:
| > Unix (/'ju:nIks/, YOO-niks; trademarked as UNIX) is a family
| of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that
| derive from the original AT&T Unix
|
| Yes. This is why people stop giving a shit.
|
| I think new people, fresh out of school, mostly give a shit,
| but slowly figure out that their lives are a lot easier if they
| don't.
| deanCommie wrote:
| Depending on which state this is in, this tip is equivalent to
| between 10-20mins of their paid work.
|
| Maybe this is reductive of me, and certainly any $ amount is
| better than zero $, but I sort of feel like by putting a
| financial value on your compliment you are devaluing it.
|
| A super heartfelt "Thank you for giving a shit. You truly made
| my day and inspired me to have faith in humanity. I know your
| job is hard and noone expects you to go the extra mile, and I
| genuinely appreciate that you did" in your own words would be
| meaningful.
|
| A financial tip of significance (e.g. 20$ - several HOURS of
| worth) would also be meaningful.
|
| That 2-dollar bills and fifty-cent pieces are rare is going to
| interesting to some, but I think to most the only thing they'll
| perceive is that you valued their extra mile at $2.50. I don't
| think that's what you're intending, so I thought I'd offer that
| alternative perspective.
| xyzelement wrote:
| It's the same on every level. Past some entry bar, the difference
| between employees, spouses, etc that are happy and succeed vs
| miserable and fail is that attitude.
| NarcisMirandes wrote:
| I am from a small country in Europe. When I first read the
| article I was confused. A clarification for people who do not
| have English as a first language: "give a shit" about something,
| it means they care deeply or are genuinely interested in that
| particular thing.
|
| So, in essence, "giving a shit" in this context means being
| highly dedicated, passionate, and attentive to the details, which
| often leads to a better outcome and a more satisfying experience
| for the customer
| qwertox wrote:
| > It was because they gave a shit.
|
| I did stop reading there. I was 100% convinced that this meant
| that they couldn't care less about what they were doing, yet
| their homepage seemed to indicate that they'd give a lot of
| dedication to detail.
|
| In German "drauf scheissen" (to shit on something) means to not
| care at all about a given thing.
| nmstoker wrote:
| You are misreading how this phrase is used! It means they
| _do_ care.
|
| If they didn't give a shit that would mean they didn't care
| and this is the opposite.
| sambeau wrote:
| It's not surprising. English has a load of this weirdness. We
| can, especially in American English, shit on something
| (normally an idea or plan for some reason) with the same
| meaning. "I don't mean to shit on your idea out of hand,
| but..." No doubt it's a direct import from the German.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| We say this in the UK too. Also "to shit all over", e.g. "I
| didn't go see that movie because I read some reviews that
| shat all over it."
| sambeau wrote:
| I'm from the UK. Maybe I'm older, but I know these
| phrases as American imports.
| lioeters wrote:
| The phrase exists in English too, "to shit on something". It
| means to talk bad about something, to criticize, to make it
| (or someone) look bad.
|
| I think "shit" in English is one of the most linguistically
| flexible words, used in various ways, from very positive
| ("It's the shit!") to negative ("It's shit") meanings.
|
| As another commenter said, the positive meaning of "shit"
| often seems to be the result of reversing a common phrase. "I
| don't give a shit" means I don't care at all, not even a
| shit; and later the opposite phrase started to be used, "I
| give a shit" to mean I do care about it.
|
| It's one of many confusing and illogical things about
| English.
| projektfu wrote:
| Another one I found funny is we Americans usually say "He
| thinks he's hot shit" while the Brits say "He thinks he's
| shit hot."
|
| I feel the Brits had it the right way and the Americans
| oddly reversed it.
| bratwurst3000 wrote:
| I think "shit" here is synonymous for "a little" or
| "something". At least I give you anythin.
|
| But honestly shit and fuck can fill any English sentence.
| sambeau wrote:
| It's one of those interesting phrases that, I believe, came
| about from its opposite. "I could not give a shit about that,"
| literally, "I wouldn't even pay one shit to buy that," or
| similar (no doubt with some mixing up with non-english words),
| has gradually added people who _would_ give a shit -- which
| only makes sense if they are giving a "shit-ton" of money for
| it. Showing your enthusiasm for something by handing over a
| turd is a strange way to show your gratitude. :)
| sambeau wrote:
| Here's an interesting discussion on Reddit
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/etymology/comments/2rgl7i/how_did_i.
| ..
|
| Further down is the suggestion that "give" in the phrase,
| means "care". Which it does, in part, but as the way language
| goes, so many words and phrases have double meanings that
| merge to make one subtle meaning.
|
| "I couldn't give a toss," is a common variant. As is, "I
| couldn't give a flying fuck." But neither has the positive
| version in the same way -- you don't normally give a toss
| about something specific, and a flying fuck is never
| positive. But, interestingly, you _can_ give a toss in
| general.
|
| English, as you have realised, has layers of weirdness and
| subtle traps.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| > "I couldn't give a toss," is a common variant.
|
| Not in the US - this is _very_ British.
| sambeau wrote:
| Yes. I should have said that.
| notahacker wrote:
| One that amuses me is how the popular "I couldn't care less"
| (I really really don't care) got converted by people who
| couldn't care less about syntax and meaning into "I could
| care less"
|
| That and "literally" being so frequently abused it now has a
| dictionary entry to explain that it can also be used to
| emphatically refer to non literal stuff.
|
| If you think showing enthusiasm for stuff by handing over a
| turd is weird, you'd also love the (nineties) British habit
| of complimenting something by saying it's "the dogs
| bollocks", as if canine testes were renowned for their
| desirability...
| Nursie wrote:
| The dog certainly seems to spend a lot of time licking
| them!
|
| (I believe this is the origin of the saying)
| bee_rider wrote:
| I have always interpreted "I could care less" as something
| like "Well, it is technically possible for me to care
| less." Like, if you ask someone "how was your food" and
| they said "it was edible" or how their trip went and they
| responded "we made it back in one piece," they don't seem
| to be saying something good.
|
| Describing a very low lower-bound doesn't technically say
| anything negative, but it sure implies it.
| ralferoo wrote:
| The important thing about those other phrases is that
| they originated in the UK where we use understatement as
| a form of humour, but it's important to understand the
| relationship between the speaker and listener and hidden
| shared context.
|
| E.g. your example "how was your food" ... "it was
| edible".
|
| If you've just been to a fairly average restaurant, that
| would be understood to mean it wasn't terrible but you
| didn't really enjoy it.
|
| If you're at a close friend's house for dinner and they
| served something amazing, and you replied "it was
| edible", it would be understood to mean that it was
| really good and far better than anything you could have
| made yourself. If you said the same thing to a mutual
| friend who didn't know about their cooking skills, it
| would be interpreted negatively.
|
| Another example would be replying to "How are you?" with
| "I'm not dead yet!" could mean anything without context,
| but most likely would be said to someone who knew your
| situation and that there'd been bad stuff going on, and
| would probably mean you were actually doing better than
| might be expected.
|
| As for "I could care less", I think it was probably just
| misheard as the negative is very weak "I could'(n) care
| less". Coupled with the end of "could" and start of
| "care" being the about the same position in the mouth,
| and the (n) requires the tongue to quickly block and
| release the air in the mouth whilst also nasalising the
| sound that lasts a fraction of a second, it would be easy
| for a lazy speaker to not make it clear and/or omit it,
| and then if the listener never bothered to think about
| the meaning, they could repeat it wrongly. The
| deliberately inverted meaning only really makes sense if
| it was followed by "but" that later got omitted. To me "I
| could care less, but ..." (and then just stopping) would
| have about the same effect as "I couldn't care less".
| maxbond wrote:
| There's a phrase for this too; damning with faint praise.
| rfrey wrote:
| This one isn't exactly the opposite though, in the same way
| that "could care less" is literally the opposite of what is
| meant. Bring the only one who would give a shot implies
| nobody else there meets even that incredibly low bar.
| mzi wrote:
| A finn doing a standup comedy skit about this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igh9iO5BxBo
| sambeau wrote:
| It's absolutely perfect.
|
| Thanks for posting this. I'd seen it before and was looking
| for it recently, so it's now safely bookmarked.
| scrollaway wrote:
| I had never heard of him until a friend invited me to see
| him live in Antwerp last week. He of course performed this
| sketch. Fun seeing it pop up again.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| This is highly re-watchable.
| rapnie wrote:
| Some good shit. He missed 'turning to shit' and (recently)
| how that relates to 'enshittification'.
| edrxty wrote:
| Also, holy shit, and the fact that shit gets worse both
| when it's expanding and reducing in size, ie being a
| little shit or a huge shit.
|
| English is such a weird language...
| alluro2 wrote:
| I didn't even need to open the link - Ismo is the shit :)
|
| I can also highly recommend the one about eating and children
| in Africa - my favorite :)
| NarcisMirandes wrote:
| Great! I feel identified with his problems with the language.
| Where is he from?
| flashback2199 wrote:
| Finland
| count wrote:
| Fantastic - it's like he's channeling George Carlin!
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Love that.
|
| Reminds me of Rob Schneider's "Dude" bit (He's not usually my
| fave, but this was fairly good):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfI4cjGiJGE
| arrowsmith wrote:
| This is why I try to avoid idioms, figures of speech and
| uncommon words when I'm writing something aimed at software
| engineers, such tutorials or technical documentation. Most
| coders aren't native English speakers, and I want my writing as
| clear as possible.
|
| Because I give a shit.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| My last W2/work performance review indicated that
| "ProllyInfamous swears too much in normal interactions." Upon
| the customary raise and pleasantries, the obvious-acusor sat
| with arms-folded (upset). Finally she brought up her written
| words, in public.
|
| I responded with one of my favorite [passive aggressive] formal
| responses: "From now on I won't 'give a shit,' anymore.
| Instead, I'll start 'giving a hoot'."
|
| ----
|
| English is weird. The language of exceptions [similar to
| chemistry].
| gavinhoward wrote:
| Thank you for giving me an alternative! I've been searching
| for one.
|
| I hate it when the best version of a phrase has a swear word;
| I don't blame you for using it.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| I have found that increasing wordiness while using
| profanity lessons the stun-factor. For example:
|
| "Thank you for at least SEEMING to give a shit about your
| job."
|
| or,
|
| "Thank you for giving the impression that you might
| actually give a shit about this place."
|
| Hoot hoot.
| gavinhoward wrote:
| Lol. Good idea.
|
| Unfortunately, I'm one of few people nowadays that just
| don't swear at all.
|
| Yes, I'm peculiar. Oh well.
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| The word is "care". Act like you care about the
| product/client.
| gavinhoward wrote:
| I mean, yes, and I use that, but sometimes, a phrase is
| more punchy.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Douglas Adams had a nice turn on giving "a rancid dingo's
| kidney". Similar variations I've heard include a "monkey's
| left testicle" and so on. But they're negative imagery,
| whereas you can't beat "giving a shit" for expressing
| positive enthusiasm.
| ralferoo wrote:
| Interesting. In the UK (or at least where I grew up), we
| wouldn't "not give a hoot", we would "not care a hoot".
| jccalhoun wrote:
| I would guess that "Give a hoot" in the USA might have been
| popularized by an anti-littering campaign in the 1970s
| where an owl would say "Give a hoot! Don't pollute!"
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodsy_Owl
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| This is where I know it from.
|
| Reduce, Re-use, Recycle [from same era marketing].
| bratwurst3000 wrote:
| Haha german here. I was confused for a second too. I just woke
| up and wasn't that awake.
| xtiansimon wrote:
| I like reading posts like this, because I'm always hopeful I
| might learn about other $#!t phrases, such as, "You ain't
| shit." What TF does that even mean? /rant
| ralferoo wrote:
| "You're actually quite good."
| guitarbill wrote:
| That is the literal translation/interpretation, "you ain't
| shit" = "you are not shit". It could mean that, "i expected
| you to be shit, but you are unexpectedly good", depending
| on tone/context.
|
| But the much more common interpretation "you ain't shit" =
| "you are less than shit" = "you are worthless/nothing". See
| also "it don't mean shit".
| CharlesW wrote:
| That would be "You're _the_ shit".
|
| If you hear "You _ain't_ shit", the speaker does not hold
| you in high regard.
| ralferoo wrote:
| Maybe in the US. I've never heard "You ain't shit" used
| that way myself. Could also be generational, I guess.
|
| And for the other one, I've heard "It's the shit" for
| good (although to me, that's definitely an Americanism
| that became popular in the UK in the 90s), but never
| "You're the shit" on its own. But just to show how random
| this is, "You're the shit who did this!" definitely isn't
| positive!
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _I 've never heard "You ain't shit" used that way
| myself._
|
| Cool, here's a good example: https://youtu.be/HCm_jfLmBEE
|
| > _But just to show how random this is, "You're the shit
| who did this!" definitely isn't positive!_
|
| For sure. In my experience, in the U.S. that use is
| almost always preceded by "little":
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx_giDzTkeg
|
| Another variant you may not have heard is "shitass", used
| a lot in _Reservation Dogs_ :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYMG0Guy5WI
| ralferoo wrote:
| I've not even heard of any of these shows before, but
| certainly in that first clip in British English it'd be
| more normal to say "You ain't worth shit".
|
| > For sure. In my experience, in the U.S. that use is
| almost always preceded by "little":
|
| Yeah, we often say "little shit" in the UK if we want to
| emphasis how unimportant we thing they are.
|
| That said, I've since thought of some almost counter
| examples to my original comment. I know "shizzle" derives
| from "shit", and I have heard "It's the shizzle" before
| (but again originally from US sources, it became a
| popular phrase in the UK around the late 90s, but largely
| disappeared now). Thinking back, I've also heard "It's
| the m** _f**_ g shit man!" but it was always done in an
| over-the-top way, also rarely, and usually as a parody.
|
| Maybe it's just the intensifier in that. I think "It's
| good shit" and "It's bad shit" mean the same as without
| "shit". And I still don't think I've ever just heard
| "It's the shit" on its own, other than that source you
| cited and that's from the US not the UK.
|
| Even "That's the shit" to me would just mean "this is the
| stuff" with an implication that there's something wrong
| with it, maybe illegal, maybe broken, whatever.
|
| In the UK, "the shits" also refers to diarrhea, so maybe
| that's why we don't use "the shit" in a positive sense
| here. Of course, maybe the younger generation do, and
| I've just never noticed it.
| omoikane wrote:
| Related, example of "the shit" versus "shit":
|
| https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/07/02/garbage-is-
| too...
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| Opposite. You aint shit means you do not even amount to a
| pile of shit. You are even less than feces.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I'm most certainly not a prude, but I worked for a company that
| had literal "Gives a shit" as a core value, and DID live it,
| but I always found it a little vulgar to say in unknown
| company, and you've also reinforced it doesn't translate
| globally. I swear a lot in private circles but would never say
| "shit" in a public forum; I guess I'm not "edgy"
| robertlagrant wrote:
| It does feel a little like a kid who still thinks it's cool
| and novel to swear.
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| It is not even being highly desirable or passionated - just
| caring. I work daily with people who sling code just for a
| paycheck, they do not give a shit, just as long as they get
| paid the end product can be whatever and that really pisses me
| off
| blauditore wrote:
| The autor deliberately used it to gain more attention with
| because of the title. It annoys me, not because of the bad
| language (I do the same), but because of the clickbaitiness.
| m0rissette wrote:
| Absolutely.
| gavinhoward wrote:
| Yes, absolutely.
|
| I'm starting a business, and _this_ is my real product.
|
| Most everybody will see my FOSS code as my product, but that's my
| loss leader.
|
| My real product, the stuff people will actually pay for, is doing
| stuff such as responding to bug reports like [1].
|
| In other words, my product is caring about _your_ needs and
| meeting them.
|
| On the flip side, I want customers who care too. I think one
| reason those furniture people did so well is because they had a
| customer who cared, and it was refreshing.
|
| When you do something day in and day out, you either become
| careless, or obsessed.
|
| As a customer, you want to seek out the latter, but as a vendor,
| when you _are_ the latter, getting a customer who cares is not
| just refreshing, it 's enormously _fun!_
|
| [1]: https://github.com/gavinhoward/bc/issues/66
| actionfromafar wrote:
| To be clear, do you have paying bc customers? I guess not, but
| I wanted to absolutely sure! :-)
| gavinhoward wrote:
| No, absolutely not!
|
| bc is my gift to the world. It will remain that way.
|
| I'm writing other software, upon which my business will be
| based.
|
| You could say bc is how I advertise my services. :)
| kahnclusions wrote:
| Then he wouldn't be giving a shit, he'd be selling some shit.
| darkwater wrote:
| You are a wonderful person, Gavin!
| gavinhoward wrote:
| Thank you for the compliment and encouragement! I've been
| feeling down lately, and it's helped.
| mtlynch wrote:
| > _My real product, the stuff people will actually pay for, is
| doing stuff such as responding to bug reports like [1]._
|
| But that's not something anyone has paid you for, so it's
| actually a counterexample.
|
| Boasting about your clever business strategy when you have no
| paying customers is like boasting about your excellent fishing
| technique when you've never visited a body of water.
| gavinhoward wrote:
| I mean, I could have qualified it with "the stuff _I hope_
| people pay me for, " but eh.
|
| And you're kinda wrong; I've been paid for bc, kind of.
|
| I've been paid by people adopting it, an obscure alternative
| to an obscure command-line tool that nobody uses.
|
| And yet, my bc is in FreeBSD and Mac OSX.
|
| Perhaps the reason I'm confident is because this little thing
| of mine managed to replace entrenched competitors in a few
| places. Why can't I do it again?
| mtlynch wrote:
| > _Perhaps the reason I 'm confident is because this little
| thing of mine managed to replace entrenched competitors in
| a few places. Why can't I do it again?_
|
| It's much harder to get people to pay you for a product
| than it is to convince them to use your product for free.
|
| As a fellow founder, I wish you success, but I think you're
| assuming success based on things that don't really
| correlate with success from my experience running indie
| businesses for the last five years.
|
| I've fallen into the exact same trap myself, so maybe I can
| save you some time.[0, 1] Before you have money safely in
| your bank account from real, paying customers, all the
| indicators you see are highly noisy.
|
| Non-paying users can be a good sign, but they can also lead
| you astray. You could have 1,000 non-paying open-source
| users actively engaged with your product, and that does
| nothing for your business if none of them are willing to
| pay. You're better off finding 10 users willing to pay
| $40/month and letting their feedback guide your work.
|
| I recommend testing customer's willingness to pay ASAP. If
| nobody's willing to pay for what you're offering, it's a
| sign that your product hypothesis was wrong and you need to
| gather more feedback about what customers want and pivot.
|
| [0] https://mtlynch.io/shipping-too-late/
|
| [1] https://mtlynch.io/keep-growing-never-profit/
| gavinhoward wrote:
| Fair enough.
| hinkley wrote:
| "People don't buy a product, they buy a story."
|
| For most companies most of the time, this is true.
| BOOTRACER wrote:
| Girlfriend As A Service pays better
| RA2lover wrote:
| I wonder how someone could create a jig to plot such a table for
| arbitrary exponents.
| okwhateverdude wrote:
| The furniture people probably also had the same question and
| were excited to figure it out.
| maroonblazer wrote:
| At least for me, 'giving a shit' (GaS) is not a static feature. I
| have great respect for people who GaS and they inspire me to want
| to GaS too. Most days I take pride in my work and so try very
| hard to GaS. However there are days when my workload has exceeded
| my capacity and the priority is simply to get things 'out the
| door', in which case the degree to which I can GaS begins to
| vary.
| bratwurst3000 wrote:
| "Giving a shit" I love the American language because of things
| like this.
|
| "Fucking shit" Sex with poop.
|
| Bukowski and the Cohen brothers made those words art
| rob wrote:
| > Was it because they charged a lot of money? No.
|
| I'm sure that plays into it, yes.
|
| In most cases, the more money you give the more they will "give a
| shit."
| marban wrote:
| Welcome to Japan.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| It comes down to incentives. If you're the owner of a small
| business that relies on a good reputation and repeat customers,
| you're going to care about quality of service because it directly
| impacts your bottom line.
|
| As companies grow, they might choose to hire employees and
| managers who are paid flat wages regardless of whether the
| company does a lot of business or a little. If the employees work
| hard and the business flourishes, but they see no reward of any
| kind, this fosters resentment and they stop caring about quality
| of service.
|
| Intelligent business owners recognize this reality and offer
| incentives that reward employees if business is good - e.g.
| commissions on sales in the retail world, stock options in the
| startup world, wage increases in the manufacturing sector, etc.
| Greedy shortsighted owners ignore this dynamic, so their
| employees are incentivized to do the least amount of work
| possible, just enough to avoid being fired.
|
| Where things get really bad is when monopolization grows and
| markets end up controlled by very few players, so customers have
| nowhere else to turn to (Comcast etc.).
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I remember this article from here, a while back.
|
| I enjoy it, but am keenly aware that "giving a shit" often gets
| severely punished, these days.
| schmichael wrote:
| The Forks episode of The Bear is one of my favorite stories on
| giving a shit: a fork polisher at a fancy restaurant learns you
| don't work in food service because you love polishing forks. You
| do it because you want to bring people joy and polishing the
| forks is one of many steps to that end. You can find purpose in
| fork polishing through both excellence and empathy for your
| customers. There's a lot of days the code I write is about as
| exciting as fork polishing, but you do it for your teammates and
| users.
| SergeAx wrote:
| 2022, discussed then (120+ comments):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32071349
| btbuildem wrote:
| The corollary here is that giving a shit doesn't scale.
|
| The furniture makers that inspired this article can afford to
| give a shit because 1) they're expert at what they do and 2) they
| charge a lot of money.
|
| These are constraints on both ends: on the supply of labour and
| on the demand for it. This is also why most people can't afford
| to give a shit -- they're not good enough to charge enough for
| that rare commodity.
| schmichael wrote:
| I don't think that is necessarily true.
|
| Sure it may be "easier" to give a shit when you're an artisan
| charging a premium for your craft.
|
| However you can still give a shit if you're a designer for
| IKEA. You can take joy knowing the more you minimize price
| while maximizing durability you not only bring joy to the
| majority of people who can't afford hand crafted tables, but
| your efficiency can have major waste and ecological
| ramifications that an artisan shop can't hope to copy.
|
| What you give a shit might change, but giving a shit absolutely
| scales.
| willi59549879 wrote:
| why is everybody so obsessed with scale? the good things in
| live don't scale, like relationships. the dream of scaling
| everything to a 1 billion business is just greed talking.
| caring about a craft and building relationships will be more
| fulfilling than a billion in the bank
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Exactly. Once you have met your needs why the fuck are you
| trying to get more money? You've maxed out on money, you
| fool! Work on another dimension of life!
| jaggederest wrote:
| Like the story of the businessman meeting the fisherman -
| "once you've built a business you can retire and do a
| little fishing" - "but I already do that"
| travisjungroth wrote:
| Not everyone is obsessed with scale, but news.ycombinator.com
| biases that way.
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| I've read this sentiment in the thread multiple times, but it
| just feels backwards to me.
|
| At scale you can afford to not give a shit. I don't think you
| get to scale by not giving a shit, do you?
|
| But once you're there? Well the money is just rolling in and
| well you can't care about _everything_ , can you? So you let
| some stuff slip and before you realize it you're halfway down a
| slippery slope, claiming giving a shit doesn't scale and
| forgetting in your panicked slide that it was your choice to
| stop giving a shit in the first place.
| anonu wrote:
| I glanced over the title and for a moment I thought this was
| going to be an article about the SaaS-ification of sites like
| https://www.shitexpress.com/
| hardkorebob wrote:
| Indeed as a Hospitality pro with 25+ yrs of expertise, seeing
| someone be present in a heart for excellence is rare. Excellent
| service is an art.
| snmx999 wrote:
| In my experience caring too much is often perceived as a
| negative, especially if the other party does not care that much
| but just wants to get the job done. Asking questions and god
| forbid, pushing back just makes you a difficult person.
| cryptoegorophy wrote:
| How do you motivate your employees to give a shit. Even with good
| salary.
| wizerdrobe wrote:
| Stepping beyond the obvious, pay them a good wage.
|
| Filter at the door, look for people who give a shit, have a
| passion for the work, etc. Hire them, look to avoid people who
| got into it simply because it's a fat paycheck. I wouldn't
| confuse this with "I spend all day everyday in my off time
| coding," but seek out people who have a reasonable articulable
| love for a tool, a language, or something and or can articulate
| why they don't like a thing. I have opinions on, say, Java over
| NodeJS and can speak at length with passion about why I feel
| the way I do.
|
| Understand and manage them as human beings. I've been hired on
| to companies that experienced radical change within the first
| days, weeks, and months of accepting the job. I've walked into
| jobs such that what I interviewed for literally did not exist
| when I started on Day 1. I've worked at companies that have had
| serious pivots around product-market-fit such that the job I
| accepted radically changed, i.e. from Full-Stack SE to AWS
| DevOps. Those companies just offered no honest conversation or
| explanation around circumstances, just managers magically
| started assigning random tickets one day. Coincidentally, I
| hated those jobs and couldn't have given less of a shit if they
| succeeded or failed. I'm not a cog, a fungible unit, or a
| human-resource. I'm a human, full-stop. The firms I've worked
| with that suffered turmoil but offered me the basic human
| decency of a conversation, however, earned loyalty out of me
| and enabled me to continue giving a shit.
| xyst wrote:
| GaSaaS would be a great product for a large majority of Fortune
| 500. Oh wait that already exists, it's called "consulting firms".
| And they are useless most of the time.
|
| Unfortunately for this to work, ALL parties need to "give a
| shit". Sure this might work for a small "boutique" firm working
| with another small "boutique". But at the end of the day, big
| firms are probably farming the work down to a low level employee
| or contractor (think VP -> Executive VP of Acquisitions ->
| Managing Director -> Director -> Manager -> Lead Project Manager
| -> Project Manager -> some person working with project manager)
| with a set of requirements.
|
| Initially it was to be completed in 4 weeks. But in order to
| impress their boss, one or more of these people kept reducing the
| deadline and suddenly it's a project that's wanted to be
| completed over the weekend.
|
| Low level person doesn't give a shit. As long as it meets min
| spec, it's Gucci. The further questions asked by the 5th vendor
| will probably get ignored.
|
| Upon completion, everyone is "happy" it's delivered before their
| anticipated deadline.
|
| Except upon delivery the product is "half assed". Nobody is
| really happy but they keep their mouth shut and accept it anyways
| so they can pump their numbers.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Consulting firms aren't useless, they're just not useful in the
| straightforward way one would presume their value would
| manifest.
|
| They're great catalysts for change, they're fantastic
| scapegoats, etc.
| nativeit wrote:
| This has been the model for my largely solo IT consultancy for
| the last several years. I offer ultimate accountability, I take
| ownership of every project, and I demonstrate fierce loyalty to
| my clients and their interests. It's not the easiest way to make
| money, but I am proud of everything I do, I hardly ever lose a
| client, and when I do it's generally without any bad blood or
| acrimony.
| tornato7 wrote:
| I'm currently looking for a good IT consultant after going
| through a few bad ones that for lack of better words didn't
| give a shit. Want to chat?
| reubenswartz wrote:
| I didn't realize how rare (and precious) a commodity giving a
| shit is. I expected it to be the default state, but it's not. I
| remember calling a customer to apologize for a bug and having
| them console me with something like, "all my apps have bugs and
| irritations, but you're the only one who seems to care enough to
| call me and fix it promptly."
| neilv wrote:
| > _If you email 4 software studios for a quote and 3 say "Sure,
| here's a quote" but the 4th says "Hm, we certainly could build it
| but we can't be sure about cost without knowing X and Y, and here
| are some other concerns we'd have" then the 4th is going to seem
| like they give a shit._
|
| I usually end up responding like that, having started to think
| about the problem and approach. But I just know what the takehome
| message will be for some.
|
| Now it'll be someone's CRM startup feature: responds to RFQs with
| an LLM prompted to give the _appearance_ of thoughtful
| consideration of the problem. Because, one time, a blogger said
| you should ask questions like that, to make a better impression,
| was the takehome message they got.
|
| Or it'll become a mnemonic for remembering the mix of kinds of
| questions on an RFQ you should ask, for the sake of appearances,
| and you'll fail an interview for not hitting each letter of the
| mnemonic exactly once, and in order. ("Sorry, bro, I was really
| hoping you'd pass, but you forgot the R in SCROT. You're not
| Amazoogle caliber yet, but take some more interview prep classes,
| and you can try again in a year.")
| klabb3 wrote:
| Yes, there's a constant arms race between the authentic and the
| impersonators. Happens in every field. Look at how much the
| "artisanal" and "rustic" aesthetic became completely colonized
| over the 2010s to the point of being "the new bland" today.
| That's also why I liked this article. It doesn't propose an
| excessively precise definition of "giving a shit". It requires
| paying attention and being vigilant - the impersonators are
| always around the corner, watching and learning.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| This is the same as the old metrics-as-targets failure mode. Or
| the stock market - as soon as something is public knowledge
| it's already priced in.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| People praise professionals who give a shit but nobody seems to
| value them. When you care, it is soul destroying to watch people
| who don't give the slightest shit make metric fucking tons more
| money than you. It's sociopathic and it's extremely common.
|
| When I was a teenager I actually quit professional programming as
| a career because I felt that I would be miserable in this field.
| I felt that way because every single developer I met at the time
| simply did not give a shit about stuff, they just wanted their
| paycheck at the end of the month. Well I wanted to give a shit
| and so I turned it into my hobby.
|
| It's not without its problems, of course. Giving too much of a
| shit turns you into an obsessive perfectionist which can be
| paralyzing. Can spend days thinking about the best way to do
| something instead of just doing it. Thankfully I have no
| deadlines.
| zubairq wrote:
| Really love this, yes I always pay top dollar for people who give
| a shit
| amzn-throw wrote:
| I know a lot of people here are writing about how this can be
| done for small consulting companies, but I also saw it in Big
| Tech.
|
| Amazon until 2022 really genuinely exemplified this. I saw it for
| more than a decade leading up to this. Just an unbelievable
| collection of people that truly Gave A Shit. Publicly we called
| it "Customer Obsession" and through that lens you could move
| mountains around here in the pursuit of Doing The Right Thing.
|
| The first sign of trouble was 2021. Salaries skyrocketed in the
| industry. Amazon didn't keep up. A lot of great people left
| because they got obscene offers, and you know, who could blame
| them? Our core of "intermediate" engineers (L5 here) got
| decimated - why bust your ass for a promotion when you can just
| get a Senior offer from one of 100 over-funded Unicorns for more
| money than you would've made here. Sensible.
|
| Then in 2022 the stock price dropped in half and a bunch of folks
| who seems like were only putting up with the bullshit as long as
| the stock grew indefinitely left too.
|
| Then 2023 brought layoffs.
|
| There's still a lot of us around that Give A Shit, but I feel
| like we are outnumbered more and more by those that just want to
| punch in and out and no longer Make History. I get it. I can't
| blame anyone individually. But I miss it.
| d0gsg0w00f wrote:
| Trust me. We as the customers can tell. It's really sad.
|
| Everything that gets released today seems cobbled together and
| half baked. The "this is something we bought and slapped an API
| and product umbrella on top of" is glaringly obvious.
|
| Back in 2018 we used to get strong "give a shit" vibes from all
| the product teams we talked to. Now it's more "this is what
| we're going to build, isn't it going to be great?".
|
| I skip all the product meetings we get invited to now.
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _Amazon until 2022 really genuinely exemplified this._
|
| I remember Amazon from 2002 -- that felt like they really gave
| a shit. There are occasionally times where it feels that way
| now, as a customer. But most of the time the customer service
| experience is slow, impersonal, and painful.
|
| I understand they're a big company, and I don't expect it to be
| as good as when they started out. But I wouldn't say that
| Amazon "genuinely exemplified" giving a shit up until last
| year. Apple might fit that bill, but even they have fallen off
| recently (apparently you now have to make appointments to buy
| products in-store?!).
| fuzztester wrote:
| Watch "Gary Vaynerchuk: Rails Conference Keynote | 2010" on
| YouTube
|
| https://youtu.be/ZIaLTuaK1-k?si=rkic-7X67KrZvwmf
|
| Saw it some years ago. IIRC, somewhere in the video, he yells,
| almost groans, "give a fuck" (about things you do), meaning the
| same as "giving a shit", the title of this HN thread. The overall
| talk is a bit funny to watch, including him strutting around the
| stage.
| ezekiel68 wrote:
| "See, I met a man who told me once, 'Sincerity's the key. And
| once you learn to fake it son, you're gonna be home free!'"
|
| -Dennis DeYoung, Styx, "Fallen Angel" (Anecdotally, may have been
| referring to a quote by comedian George Burns)
| avg_dev wrote:
| i would call this "paying attention".
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