[HN Gopher] Is it better to fail spectacularly?
___________________________________________________________________
Is it better to fail spectacularly?
Author : hasheddan
Score : 97 points
Date : 2024-10-21 12:37 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (danielmangum.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (danielmangum.com)
| BubbleRings wrote:
| Ha, "burn the ships", I love it. Congrats, great blog and amazing
| running!
|
| I'm facing a huge moment soon where I will see whether I have
| made a big mistake that will result in the biggest fail of my
| life. But I'm still optimistic that it will be the biggest win of
| my life. My ships are burned!
| hasheddan wrote:
| I appreciate the kind words! Best of luck on your leap of faith
| -- it takes courage to attempt it in the first place!
| marmaduke wrote:
| Was your path towards the decision point a sudden one or a slow
| burn?
| wsintra2022 wrote:
| In the upcoming preview for Slow Horses new season. "At least my
| lot fail spectacularly, your lot just fuck up" - Jackson Lamb
| gcanyon wrote:
| Shout out for Slow Horses, one of the best shows on TV.
| "So you're in charge of the rejects." "They don't like
| being called that." "What do you call them?"
| "The rejects." -- Jackson Lamb
| croes wrote:
| Better than what?
| mistrial9 wrote:
| survival is overrated
| andai wrote:
| Succeeding boringly?
| TomMasz wrote:
| At a company I once worked for failure was anything but a barrier
| to getting offered newer, bigger opportunities. Those who did
| well often get stuck in the same place without further
| advancement.
| blitzar wrote:
| Ahh failing upwards - seeing this concept up close and so often
| early in my career really messed with my head.
| xedrac wrote:
| I have come to expect it in politics, but I was surprised to
| see it in engineering.
| adityamwagh wrote:
| Can you share some examples?
| snovv_crash wrote:
| IC has terrible technical skills --> make them a manager
| so they stop screwing up the codebase.
|
| Project is behind schedule because of mismanagement -->
| give them a bigger team because that's what they claim
| they need to get back on track.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Then they move on to the next sucker, I mean, company
| claiming they were in charge of a huge team, so they
| deserve a bigger raise.
|
| Team size (the number of people under you) is a big
| determiner of compensation.
| netdevnet wrote:
| Engineering has humans in it. Same as politics. All with
| human brains using the same architecture full of biases.
| It's not very surprising to be honest
| blitzar wrote:
| "We have to get them off the shop floor, they get
| everything wrong, break things and are costing us millions
| - lets promote them to management."
| dbcurtis wrote:
| Ha ha, yes, that does happen. Usually with poor results.
| But... I have seen the opposite case, a person who had
| great organizational and people skills, and bench skills
| that were an utter disaster -- but was self-aware enough
| to realize they needed to be more "hands-off". It turns
| out that they were self-aware enough to appreciate those
| bench skills in other people, and good at doing the other
| things needed to keep a shop productive. I admit, though,
| this is not guaranteed to happen.
| TomMasz wrote:
| It's often a case of becoming (or believed to be) so
| essential to a product that moving them is considered to be
| dangerous. It really feels like being _just_ competent
| enough is your best bet for career growth.
| LtWorf wrote:
| I've observed that also being completely incompetent
| doesn't hurt. But you must continuously demo your
| completely trivial achievements (or demo someone else's
| achievements before they are ready and can do it
| themselves).
| theturtletalks wrote:
| Now that's one way to counteract the Peter Principle!
| jeffreportmill1 wrote:
| That may be the wrong question, though that might help avoid the
| sunk cost fallacy ("It's better to burn out, than fade away!").
| On the other hand, sticking with things has its benefits, with an
| eye towards a pivot. The right question may have more to do with
| speed than scale. Best to try and find partners in your endeavor.
| Then you can succeed or fail twice as fast, and try more things.
| And have more fun along the way.
| ramenlover wrote:
| Amazing story the climax to me felt like the moment just before
| ...Go! in the cages. Congrats!
| 6510 wrote:
| My best advice is to not listen to anyone, you know damn well
| what you should do.
|
| But since you've gone there... Marathoning... okay... stop
| looking at the ground in front of you and look at the horizon.
| This marathon is unimportant, the goal is much further away,
| think of the next race and the one after that. Where do you plan
| to go with this?
| butlike wrote:
| "Oh that's a cool bird in that tree. Dang, they have an odd
| gait. Would my shoes have been 20% off at that other place? Oh
| I forgot to get shampoo at the store today."
|
| "Oh wow, the race is done. Fancy that"
| king-wavy wrote:
| This guy marathons.
| 6510 wrote:
| I hate it when I get caught up in earthly matters.
| jbreckmckye wrote:
| So that's what it takes to run a sub 3hr marathon... Basically
| eight 20 minute 5Ks, back to back!
| have_faith wrote:
| Cool, now I just need to run one 20 minute 5k and I'll be on
| track!
| n4r9 wrote:
| A British Olympian recently performed this feat despite having
| a stress fracture in her hip:
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0kj07d5gmzo
|
| Some people seem to be built differently!
| butlike wrote:
| > As I sit just under two weeks out from the race, I can't help
| but think I haven't done enough. I didn't make enough sacrifices,
| I wasn't disciplined enough in my training plan, I -- the list
| goes on.
|
| Why do you have to sacrifice anything? The greats are great
| because they enjoy the activity and would probably be doing it if
| no one was around or cared that they were. Do it for the fun, not
| the glory
| 0xFF0123 wrote:
| While I agree with the sentiment, I doubt any of the greats
| would say their achievements hadn't required _some_ sacrifices
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| It really depends whether or not by "sacrifice" someone is
| just saying "opportunity costs." There are trade offs in all
| actions/inactions.
| wholinator2 wrote:
| Well i mean if your natural talents and interest are enough
| to get you to, say 5th place on some stage how likely are
| you really to just give up at that and not push to place
| higher, what if you got second and knew you'd have a chance
| again next year. I bet sacrifice could describe a lot of
| the consequences of attempting to place higher.
|
| Also, isn't literally every sacrifice just an opportunity
| cost? That kinda what makes it a sacrifice. Sacrifice your
| first born and give up the extra productivity possible.
| Sacrifice a lucrative but over taxing job and lose out on
| the money. Sacrifice a meal for someone and you go hungry.
| Sacrifice is always about the opportunity cost of the thing
| you're sacrificing. If it doesn't hurt, if it doesn't cost
| you something, it's not a sacrifice.
| treflop wrote:
| You can't go back on some sacrifices.
|
| e.g. if you overtrain or don't wait long enough after an
| injury, you may permanently damage something forever.
| Speaking from personal experience and knowing a lot of
| people who have done the same. There's also some
| documentaries about athletes doing it and losing it all.
| Go the extra mile but don't look back and have regret
| about that one time.
| RobRivera wrote:
| Synonyms really. Sacrifices just have a more explicit call
| out that the opportunity cost is something important
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| Yes, exactly!
|
| And since "important" is relative to the person making
| the sacrifice, it's easy for a person to declare
| something a sacrifice when what they were giving up was
| not especially important to them, or on the other hand
| for someone to dismiss a "real sacrifice" that someone
| else has made as unimportant.
|
| Not that this matters, really. But I think it's important
| not to use them synonymously. In the case of an
| opportunity cost, you are acknowledging that there were
| things given up. In the case of a sacrifice, you are
| saying there were things given up _and it hurt_.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| denotation and connotation. They have the same literal
| meaning (denotation) but certainly not the same
| implication and tone (connotation). Choosing to eat a
| turkey sandwich vs roast beef is an opportunity cost. I'm
| forgoing the roast beef. But it isn't really a sacrifice.
| I could say that it, and it would be true in some sense
| (denotation) but it would be very hyperbolic of me.
| legacynl wrote:
| But that is just confirmation bias. You cannot infer valid
| conclusions by just looking at the success stories. By that
| same logic you can conclude that eating food leads to
| becoming one of the greats, because they all ate food.
|
| Fact is that most failures and sacrifices don't lead to great
| success. But of course most of them don't result in some
| humble-brag grind-set blog post either.
|
| So those sacrifices and failures are under-represented, and
| this leads to people who are not well versed in statistics,
| to conclude that therefore sacrifices and failures are
| somehow a necessary step in the way to success.
|
| But that's false. There are loads of people with good ideas
| and talent who have made plenty of sacrifices but still have
| never seen success, and there are loads of people who gain
| success without any meaningful sacrifice at all.
|
| Another point is that I don't think those sacrifices were
| difficult decisions for those 'greats'. Because another
| overlooked difference between people is an inherent ability
| to relentlessly pursue a singular goal. So even though they
| might have felt bad about giving up on something at the time,
| they did so because it was standing in the way of what they
| truly wanted.
|
| I this way, could you really say they have sacrificed
| anything at all? If you really care about productivity and
| don't care so much about comfort, is it really a sacrifice to
| spend the night at the office?
|
| It's the people who don't really care about all that who have
| to make the hardest sacrifices, in which case maybe better
| advice is to tell them to not make the sacrifice.
|
| Just living your life without wanting to attain status is a
| perfectly valid go to try to achieve.
| munificent wrote:
| I think you have your statistical inference backwards.
|
| _> By that same logic you can conclude that eating food
| leads to becoming one of the greats, because they all ate
| food._
|
| No your logic is wrong. The data you have is that "All
| people who are successful eat food." That _does not_ imply
| that "If you eat food, you will be successful."
|
| But it _does_ imply "If you do not eat food, you will not
| be successful." And that's certainly a true fact. Starving
| to death and being dead is not a viable path to success, or
| at least not any kind of success you will be around to
| experience.
|
| If you see that all people in category X have a certain
| property Y, that's good data that you'll need to have Y
| before you can be an X. But it does not imply that having Y
| _will_ make you an X. It 's a necessary but not sufficient
| condition.
|
| To the original point, it seems that nearly all successful
| people have to make some difficult sacrifices to get there.
| So, yes, you probably will also have to make difficult
| sacrifices to be successful. But even so, that's no
| _guarantee_ of success. It 's just that _not_ making any
| sacrifices is a guarantee of _not_ being successful.
|
| I'm ignoring, of course, that "success" is highly
| subjective and individually determined. But certainly when
| it comes to marathon runners, you won't find any successful
| ones that didn't have to make real sacrifices to get there.
| Long distance running is hard.
| Swizec wrote:
| > The greats are great because they enjoy the activity and
| would probably be doing it if no one was around or cared that
| they were. Do it for the fun, not the glory
|
| Dude is aiming for a 3h marathon so he's already there purely
| for fun. The greats are pulling 2:01 marathons these days.
|
| And while Phelps was certainly a great, I doubt he would've
| spent 6 hours per day training like a maniac if he was just
| swimming for fun. That's a lot of hard work.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| > The greats are great because they enjoy the activity and
| would probably be doing it if no one was around or cared that
| they were
|
| That's not true. Enjoyment of the game got them there, but
| succeeding at anything often requires long periods of bleeding
| for it every day. Amateurs wait for inspiration, professionals
| show up to the studio and work.
|
| Furthermore, with running suffering is an inescapable part of
| it. On some days, it hurts bad, but on other days it hurts
| really good. It's a blissful spiritual form of suffering but to
| get it you have to grind through the bad parts.
| ErikAugust wrote:
| "I hated every minute of training, but I said, 'Don't quit.
| Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion." -
| Muhammad Ali
| pessimizer wrote:
| This sounds like "they're successful because it's easy for
| them."
| nonameiguess wrote:
| It's amusing how much discussion this provoked. Does anyone
| here actually run? There is plenty you have to decide whether
| to sacrifice or not and consequences of that. He's talking
| about a margin of 34 seconds over the course of nearly 3 hours.
|
| I enjoy the fuck out of running and don't even compete, but
| it's still something you think about all the time. What
| sacrifices do I make and which do I not? I'll give you
| examples. I wake up between 3 to 4 AM every morning to run. I
| enjoy it. I'm a natural morning person. This isn't some CEO
| grindset. But it entails not being to do other things that
| involve staying up late or going out. That's fine for where I
| am in my life right now. I doubt I'd have done it in my early
| 20s when I had more of a night-oriented social life.
|
| I prepare all my own food and weigh and measure everything I
| eat. I also weigh myself each morning. This allows me to enter
| everything into a logging app that estimates TDEE and gives you
| a target. I can't say for sure this is absolutely necessary,
| but I don't do it universally 100% of the time, and when I'm
| home I tend to gradually lose a bit of weight because I'm not
| eating enough. When I'm traveling and eating out, I tend to
| gradually gain a bit of weight. So it seems that sticking to
| the strict tracking as often as I can is the best way to go. I
| enjoy this as well. I have no problem with it. But it means I
| don't eat out much and prepare everything from raw ingredients
| so the estimates are actually accurate. That sacrifices
| convenience.
|
| There are other sports I enjoy. I lift weight. I rock climb. I
| surf and skateboard. Every minute spent training to run is a
| minute I could spent training for another sport. In the lifting
| case, at a high enough volume aerobic training and trying to
| gain muscle pretty directly conflict with each other. It's not
| realistic to expect any particularly high volume of leg work in
| particular. I'm sacrificing squat performance for sure to be
| better at running.
|
| What am I not sacrificing? Well, I still travel. I still go off
| script for a few weeks here and there. I don't try to stick to
| either a diet plan or a training plan when on vacation. I still
| run and eat reasonably good foods, but I have no doubt I'd
| perform better if I never let up at all. To me, this isn't
| worth it. But if I cared badly about qualifying for a world
| major and was 34 seconds off, maybe I would.
|
| Nobody is saying you need to sacrifice joy or fun. But you have
| finite hours in the day and your body has a finite capacity for
| recovery and training adaptation. Every bit of effort you
| devote to running is a bit that could have been something else.
| rozap wrote:
| Erm, you have to practice, prepare, whatever in order to do
| anything apart from sitting on the couch. I participate in
| motor racing, which is about as type 1 fun as it gets.
| Seriously, racing other people at the limit of your ability for
| a whole weekend is about as fun as it gets. But goddamn is
| there a lot of preparation that goes into building the car,
| wrangling the team, etc, etc. Yea, I like building the car, but
| I'd be lying if I said I was absolutely stoked about rebuilding
| two engines that we blew up in the last race. And all this
| stuff takes time, and that time has to come from somewhere,
| which is a sacrifice.
| 23B1 wrote:
| Yes and besides its rude to keep adventure waiting.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I've noticed that I take much bigger "risks" on really
| meaningless projects, and get more interesting outcomes as a
| result. That's my gut take here as well, I guess he did a
| slightly riskier marathon strategy, but in the end nobody cares
| about his time other than himself, and even there, there isn't
| any downside to missing it other than that he might feel slightly
| bad about his performance.
|
| But, I also can't help but wonder if the world would be a better
| place if we did all our projects like hobby side projects, rolled
| the dice, and failed spectacularly where it matters. But, what to
| do about self driving cars?
| jacobr1 wrote:
| It is all about variance. Higher variance activities have both
| more potential upside and more potential downside. Risk
| management is all about figuring out how to improve average
| upside. In investment, that probably means placing a variety of
| bets. In one's personal life, nearly everyone I know has a
| story about how they benefited from being talked into trying
| something they wouldn't have otherwise presumed interest in. Be
| that a hobby, a blind date, a job, going to talk/meetup. Even
| just listening to a song/album.
| youoy wrote:
| Run to fail, run for success, run to waste time, run for fun. I
| don't care.
|
| You can live every experience while running, that's the beauty of
| it.
| legacynl wrote:
| Yes, it's better to fail spectacularly, like in the case of Lane-
| merging on the highway, parenting your children, or when cooking
| for an allergic friend.
|
| /s
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| What would be a spectacular way to fail a marathon, though?
| Because you can aim to win, but pretty much all versions of "not
| winning" are just... not winning? That's not particularly
| spectacular.
|
| Maybe accidentally forgetting you're in a marathon and
| bootstrapping a billion dollar startup sometime between starting
| and forgetting to finish?
| ChrisGammell wrote:
| Spontaneous combustion, for sure
| legacynl wrote:
| There is no way to spectacularly fail a marathon. Hell even if
| you didn't finish in the alloted time you still did something
| healthy.
|
| The author is just trying to inflate his personal goal, to
| achieve some self set time, big enough so he can turn it into a
| self serving post that he can post to HN.
|
| I don't really blame the author to be fair, nowadays this is
| kinda the thing people do, but I do get tired of the constant
| hyperbole.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| It's spectacularly failing at his goal of under 3 hours. It's
| not an objective, absolute measure. It's a subjective, relative
| one. I'm guessing he'd consider finishing with a time of 3:15 a
| spectacular failure.
| julianeon wrote:
| There is a disconnect between what most people imagine
| spectacular failure to be (probably something publicly
| humiliating and/or financially ruinous) and this, where even a
| spectacular failure when running a marathon wouldn't be noticed
| unless you told other people about it.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Spectacular failing doesn't need to be humiliating or
| ruinous, but it _does_ need to be a spectacle. An incredibly
| obvious, public showing of failure that needs no additional
| explanation for people to recognize it as such. Even if the
| additional explanation makes it even better.
|
| This is just "failing a personal goal", sans spectacle.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| > My pre-race fueling strategy of not increasing the total
| intake, but trying to eliminate everything but carbs seemed to
| pay off. I felt like I had plenty of energy, and my stomach felt
| good the entire race, which is extremely rare for me
|
| But maybe eating just carbs led to low minerals, hence the
| cramping? You could try to bank by eating oysters and a potassium
| supplement two days before?
| hasheddan wrote:
| Good suggestion. I think that my pre-race fueling strategy was
| better than previous races, but certainly lots of room for
| further improvement!
| ebiester wrote:
| It all comes down to the consequences of failure.
|
| If failure means homelessness, avoid failure.
|
| If failure means you lose your one chance in your life of
| completing a marathon, be conservative.
|
| If the difference between failing and succeeding is minimal in
| your life, burn the bridges! This was not his first marathon, and
| even if he bonked, he'd likely still be able to finish it, albeit
| slowly.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| The question of consequences is real. I graduated in 2008 at
| the beginning of the great recession, and I watched some of my
| classmates go off and do startups. I asked them 'Dude, what if
| you fail?!' and one of them just shrugged his shoulders and
| said he'd move back home with his parents, and get a job at his
| dad's company. No big deal.
|
| That's when I realized it was much easier to take those risks
| when you _knew_ you had a safety net to fall back on and you
| didn 't have to worry about winding up homeless sleeping under
| an overpass.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| I did some real estate deals with guys from wealthy families
| a long time ago. We failed but the difference in consequences
| was enormous. I lost my savings of 10 years and struggled
| getting out of the situation. The other guys got bailed out
| by dad, did more deals and are now very successful business
| people.
| jbs789 wrote:
| Sorry to hear. For the benefit of others, I read this as
| the importance of sizing the bet relative to your portfolio
| and nobody else's, and is broadly applicable.
|
| If someone bets a million bucks on stock A, but is worth a
| billion bucks, then that's not $1m conviction, it's <1%
| conviction. And that information is then factored into the
| size of my bet.
|
| Unfortunately I also learned this the hard way.
| wadadadad wrote:
| I really like the word conviction here for this concept
| and this use is new to me; has this been used before? A
| casual search for me doesn't term up anything.
| jbs789 wrote:
| I really appreciate this comment! (I think that word just
| popped into my head given some professional experience
| recently rather than being sourced from the field.)
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| 41 Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings
| were put and watched the crowd putting their money into
| the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large
| amounts. 42 But a poor widow came and put in two very
| small copper coins, worth only a few cents.
|
| 43 Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, "Truly I
| tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury
| than all the others. 44 They all gave out of their
| wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything--
| all she had to live on."
| rqtwteye wrote:
| Problem is that your bets have to be of a certain size to
| make a difference. Making 100% on $100 is not doing much
| good for you. So the guy with less money has to take much
| higher relative risks if he wants to get somewhere.
| packetlost wrote:
| Family is easier, but you can also build up a support network
| with close friendships too. It doesn't necessarily come for
| free, but it's certainly possible. That isn't to say it's
| equal, especially when it comes to money.
| LtWorf wrote:
| I think failure at a marathon can involve death.
| LtWorf wrote:
| I love the downvotes... when the very story of the marathon
| is that the 1st person to do it died right after :D
| jumping_frog wrote:
| Yet many people attempt K2 summit knowing the probabilities of
| death. Homelessness pales in comparison to death.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jw8GHgyiqw
| ndileas wrote:
| I wouldn't state that unequivocally. I think for many people,
| homelessness (really, the pain, shame, and indignity
| associated with it) is worse than a "glorious" or meaningful
| death. Certainly, many people's actions show this to be true,
| if you believe to the idea of revealed preferences.
| delusional wrote:
| Certainly objectively, but I think we have an odd misjudgment
| when it comes to death. Surely nothing I get out of skiing is
| worth the increased risk of death it also imposes. Yet I do
| it anyway, without any hesitation.
| ghaff wrote:
| Unless you do fairly extreme stuff I suspect the risk is
| more about driving to ski areas in winter on a regular
| basis
| jacobr1 wrote:
| While we can compare tail-risks (some lower probability
| risks and many orders of magnitude more likely than others)
| I think most people, intuitively, use something like a 1 in
| a 100 risk of a death (over a lifetime) or 1 in 10,000
| acute chance. Anything over the floor is fair game, and the
| specifics are more around what is culturally acceptable.
| For comparison the lifetime risk from driving is something
| like 1 in 100, and from skiing (1 in 2000) making some
| assumption of average participation in both.
| jumping_frog wrote:
| Compare that to society's extreme definition of safety.
| Vehicles will be allowed on road only if it results in less
| than 100 deaths per year. Yet, we as a soceity has decided
| that certain risks are worth taking compared to the
| benefit.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb7Fi8I-qOk
| chrsig wrote:
| yeah, getting people to think through consequences is like
| pulling teeth.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > If the difference between failing and succeeding is minimal
| in your life, burn the bridges!
|
| The author's analogy was about burning ships, not bridges, but
| your quote about burning bridges reminds me of related scenario
| I'm seeing more frequently among young people I've mentored:
| The idea that burning bridges is not a big deal because there
| are always more opportunities.
|
| I'm in a big Slack where people come to ask for advice on tech
| careers. An alarming number of questions in recent years are
| from people who want to leave their jobs with a bang: Quitting
| without notice, intentionally making things difficult for their
| successor, unloading their grievances with specific people as
| they leave, posting big angry messages on the company Slack on
| their last day, and other ill-advised ideas.
|
| They're always disappointed when the Slack unanimously tells
| them it's a bad idea to intentionally burn bridges like that. I
| guess it's not until later in your career that you realize the
| value of being able to call on old managers and coworkers for
| referrals or job opportunities. They see leaving a job as the
| last time they'll ever see any of those people. We have to
| remind them every time that networking is important and
| therefore they don't want to leave a lasting negative
| impression on a place where they spent years building a
| reputation. Just do your two weeks notice and quietly exit.
|
| Tangential, but it comes up enough in these scenarios about
| taking on new risks that I thought I'd mention it.
| ebiester wrote:
| You're right, though in this case I was just typing quickly
| and didn't double check the analogy after reading the post.
| :)
|
| I have found that a bad network is often worse than no
| network in that the type of people that work in a way you
| hate will lead you to jobs that are not right for you. Going
| back to the point above, this all depends on your risk
| capacity. I speak that as someone with a high risk capacity.
| For someone who has not built up reserves, that is terrible
| advice.
| baxtr wrote:
| But if the difference is minimal, does it really qualify as
| failure?
| tetha wrote:
| This is pretty much the framework I teach admins at work:
|
| - What impact does the change have?
|
| - How do you get out of that change, and how long does that
| take?
|
| - And what is your confidence into the change, and the bail-out
| plan?
|
| And honestly, if you have a high-confidence, fast bailout plan,
| you can be downright brazen/#yolo about changes. We've recently
| had to update a central and critical IDP, but we eventually
| realized: We have the old docker images, and it has a 200MB
| sized DB. We can dump + restore that in 2 minutes. So if the
| upgrade goes wrong, we have high confidence to rollback in like
| 5 minutes. At such a point.. why not just go with it?
|
| Similar things are developing with Postgres upgrades. Setup 1
| leader + 3 replicas, upgrade 2 replicas, failover, see how much
| explodes and at worst, fall back. If we can test beforehand,
| alright.
|
| Other teams plan complicated upgrades requiring coordinated
| actions of 6 other teams. And like 3 know how to possibly take
| back that change? And like 4 know what to actually do? Ugh,
| this ended up in a fun weekend.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| I think people are using the word "fail" a little too much. Not
| getting your marathon time may hurt your ego a little but
| ultimately it's not a big deal. I would use the word "fail" for
| things that have real consequences.
| eddd-ddde wrote:
| "Fail" is by definition to be unsuccessful on one's goal.
|
| It can literally mean my cake burned in the oven or my company
| loses millions of dollars.
|
| Consequences are irrelevant.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > I think people are using the word "fail" a little too much.
|
| The issue is when it's combined with "spectacularly".
|
| As in: _" I spectacularly failed at boiling my eggs. I let them
| boil for 7 minutes instead of 6 minutes 30. What a spectacular
| fail"_.
|
| But nobody gives a flying f--k about my failed eggs.
| Xymist wrote:
| I would envision a "spectacular failure" at boiling eggs to
| mean the pot boiled dry and the eggs caught fire, burning
| down your kitchen.
| margalabargala wrote:
| I interpreted the "spectacular" part of the fail a bit
| differently.
|
| The author had options to either 1) try for right at 3 hours,
| and either succeed or fail, or 2) push harder, get a much
| better time, and perhaps succeed but risk putting himself in a
| state where he did not finish at all. The failure to finish at
| all due to the extra reach is the spectacular fail referred to.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Terrific blogpost. Enjoyed reading.
| anothername12 wrote:
| In life, I can't even manage to fail spectacularly. I get more of
| a like warm limbo of misery
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| Not sure I understand the "qualifying time" aspect. Does hitting
| 2:55 guarantee you entry into the Boston Marathon, whereas
| achieving the "cutoff time" gets you into the lottery for one of
| the remaining spots?
| ErikAugust wrote:
| They call that a "BQ" or Boston Qualified.
|
| But it actually doesn't guarantee you entry because for that
| age group (Male 18 - 30?) there ends up being too many
| qualified entrants so they have to shave down the actual time
| required for entry.
|
| When I was running, it was 3:05 for example but you had to run
| a <3:03 to make it in.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| So this is what confuses me. You can look at the most recent
| results. There were 14578 male finishers in the most recent
| Boston Marathon. 7000th place was 3:29:24. 14000th place was
| 5:29:37.
|
| How do these runners get into the race if they needed to go
| 3:03:00 (or whatever the current number is) to qualify? I'm
| clearly missing some piece of important information!
| agundy wrote:
| Boston has two modes of entry, qualifying time or meeting a
| fundraising goal of something like $5,000. I suspect 5:29
| runners are fundraisers.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| Ah, I see. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any
| official information about the second mode of entry. I
| assume that this is intentional.
| canucker2016 wrote:
| I don't know why they don't distinguish entrants who are
| fund-raising versus time-based qualifiers.
|
| If you ran a marathon sufficiently fast to get under the
| qualifying time, that doesn't mean that you are required
| to run THAT FAST on race day for the Boston Marathon.
|
| Some runners try and run fast on race day and discover
| that their body has hit the "wall" and are forced to run
| slower, walk for much of the remainder of the race, or
| worst case, drop out.
|
| Qualifying times for the Boston Marathon are different
| for older age groups. Older runners can get into Boston
| with a much slower time than someone in their 20s.
|
| Then there are years where it would require super-human
| effort to get close to a qualifying time (i.e. 2018, year
| of heavy rain and wind, see
| https://runningmagazine.ca/sections/runs-races/japans-
| kawauc... )
| timerol wrote:
| Boston keeps a table of qualifying times that need to be hit.
| But it's such a popular race, that people train to hit that
| qualifying time, and they end up with too many runners. The
| solution is to use a cut-off time to adjust all of the
| qualifying times. As an example, an 18-34 year old male had a
| qualifying time of 3 hours exactly for the 2025 Marathon (which
| qualification ended for last month). The cut-off time required
| athletes to be 6 minutes and 51 seconds faster than the
| qualifying time for their age group and gender. So
| qualification was actually 2:53:09, but no one knew that when
| they were running. (Next year they've adjusted the times all
| down 5 minutes to compensate, though they'll likely have around
| a 2 minute cut off, since the times have been getting faster.)
|
| https://www.baa.org/races/boston-marathon/qualify
| king-wavy wrote:
| Great blog post. Congrats on the PR! While it's true that no one
| cares more about your marathon time than you, it still feels like
| a tremendous victory when a new one is achieved, and likewise,
| oppositely when an attempt is failed. There are not many serious
| consequences when failing except maybe a temporarily bruised ego
| and trying even harder on the next build.
| madmountaingoat wrote:
| I believe the article misses the point of the saying. It's not
| really about failing but rather about committing yourself to the
| objective. If you know in your heart you gave something
| everything you had, and you still fail, well that's spectacular
| or glorious failure.
| metalman wrote:
| sometimes failure is not an option my horse needed hay,so I went
| to a buddy place,kinda coolsl spot(I think) not home went where
| he might be and told him and his wife that there dogs say hi,went
| back a few days to get hay and chatted about things snd the
| dogs,and only later thought about,who do can I talk to that would
| be able to enjoy the idea of walking up a long drive way knee
| deep in snarling pitbulls stopping to talk to them and pat them
| on the head which of course messes with there minds,no one home
| ,and walk back out with the same escort my favorite wasn't
| there,as he was still healing up from trying to eat a porqipine
| whole,lovely bruser,half piti and half coyote its not a
| marathon,except in the sense that life itself is a relay race
| different batons is all
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