[HN Gopher] Writing a postmortem: an interview exercise I like (...
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       Writing a postmortem: an interview exercise I like (2017)
        
       Author : wonger_
       Score  : 70 points
       Date   : 2025-05-31 13:54 UTC (4 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.danielputtick.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.danielputtick.com)
        
       | pickpuck wrote:
       | This is a cool idea! At first I thought it was that they give you
       | notes about what happened, and you have to process the
       | information real-time and suggest practical improvements.
        
         | sylens wrote:
         | I think this would ultimately be the best approach as it
         | creates an even playing field for all candidates
        
       | voidUpdate wrote:
       | It reminds me of NTSB reports, particularly around aircraft
       | accidents, where even if one person was definitely to blame for
       | the accident happening (eg a pilot performed an incorrect action
       | that least to the loss of a plane), the report will recommend
       | things like better training and testing standards to make sure
       | that a pilot who crashes through incompetence can be trained
       | more, without blaming the pilot specifically
        
         | steveBK123 wrote:
         | That is the mindset, but you really see a general lack of this
         | in the industry... even as the term has been so popularized.
         | 
         | At the end of the day if your intern can take down your
         | production DB, about 5 other things went wrong first to put
         | them in a position to be able to do so.
         | 
         | Systems are complex, and sometimes the holes in the Swiss
         | cheese line up.
        
         | tialaramex wrote:
         | Swiss Cheese model, to prevents bad things from happening we
         | need to focus on preventing situations where those bad things
         | could even arise.
         | 
         | Britain's Maritime Accident Investigation Branch (EU rules
         | required members to have such agencies, although I think the UK
         | had several of them before that anyway) published a memorable
         | report where, despite this usual practice they offer zero
         | recommendations.
         | 
         | The accident was basically some guys took a fishing boat out,
         | did a lot of heroin, got into trouble and all died. And there
         | were no recommendations because heroin is already illegal,
         | operating a fishing boat while _on_ heroin is also illegal, so,
         | yeah, we already told you this was a terrible idea, there 's
         | nothing to recommend.
        
       | Romario77 wrote:
       | I would have added some more things that you could have mitigated
       | - like lowering your sail to half mast after the wind increase.
       | Or only using the jib or even switching to engine power.
       | 
       | Which in the context of incident prevention translates into
       | adapting to what is happening and maintaining the safety profile
       | to prevent the incident.
       | 
       | Half mast sale - less force on the mast, more time to react to
       | things when going solo.
        
       | spankibalt wrote:
       | > The "blameless" aspect is crucial: a good postmortem avoids
       | conclusions like "Dan wrote a bug and it brought down our
       | service" and instead says "Dan wrote a bug and it brought down
       | the service: we need to improve our testing and deployment
       | processes to make sure that they catch this category of bugs in
       | the future."
       | 
       | The offending dog's name is still there...
        
         | NotAnOtter wrote:
         | The blameless aspect of post mortem's is paradoxical. I agree
         | with the sentiment but at the end of the day, somewhere in
         | there, the blame is placed on one or two human made oversights
         | or errors. If the conclusion of the PM is "This error was
         | caused when <This PR> was submitted", then everyone's natural
         | instinct is to go look at who authored the PR.
         | 
         | I guess aiming for blameless is as good as it gets sometimes.
        
           | lesserchance wrote:
           | I've always seen it as specifically being blameless of
           | individuals. E.g. it's ok for blameless post mortems to find
           | faults in systems, but ideally not the people that use them.
        
       | beneboy wrote:
       | I do something similar when interviewing, asking candidates to
       | walk through a project they've worked on that didn't go as
       | planned, and what they learned.
       | 
       | Usually it's work-related, but sometimes the personal stories
       | like this sailing one give a better insight and show real
       | understanding of systematic failings and that they really have
       | the right mindset. Those real world examples speak volumes.
        
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