The further away one gets from the technical side the more one is operating with imperfect information. Even if you're technical yourself you can't oversee everything so you look for rules that you can impose to try to guide things without having to micromanage.
If every function could be reduced to rules, however, life would be a lot simpler than it is. Rule makers need to understand why people have to do X or Y before banning or forcing some behaviour and I think this is where rules go wrong - the people that make them aren't the ones necessarily having to live by them.
I've been a manager and I know of no way to deal with this other than to make time for development myself and see where the problems are. I think one shouldn't really be making rules for things one isn't doing oneself - if you are then you're going too low level.
All of this advice here is ok as long as you work in a functional organisation. However it should be used strategically, sparingly and only when you have gained the trust of your superiors.
If you work in a dysfunctional organisation I would advise against ever using any of this advice. Any of this advice will be used to discredit you, even if the outcome was successful. In a dysfunctional organisation you should concentrate on protecting yourself.
The right tool, for the right job.
If you watch an expert arborist (tree man) at work, you’ll notice that they’ve removed every single safety guard from their chainsaws.
Every now and then, there’s a nasty accident, but most of them respect their tools, and just make a lot of money (which you’ll understand, if you’ve ever hired one).
Same goes for pretty much any vocation.
That said, manufacturers have learned that there’s a lot of money to be made, selling professional tools, to insecure fools with money.
There’s a big ego hit, in LARPing a highly-experienced engineer, when you’re not one, yourself.
Although I've never worked as an arborist, I supervise the installation of high voltage equipment for a living. I work with all kinds of contractors. Our equipment weighs tens of tonnes.
If I would see somebody removing the guardrails from their tools, I send them off site immediately. There will be no nasty accidents.
>If you watch an expert arborist (tree man) at work, you’ll notice that they’ve removed every single safety guard from their chainsaws.
What are you actually talking about here? Tree surgeons may remove some of them some of the time, but all of them would either kill them, get them fired, or both.
Here is an old quote to put into perspective:
> If you watch an expert arborist (tree man) at work, you’ll notice that they’ve removed every single safety guard from their chainsaws.
You can say that about everything that has some form of guardrails. It goes faster without them. That doesn't necessarily mean it's the right decision to remove them. People tend to change their minds after they have an accident, which to me is an indication that they can't seem to properly assess the risk and the outcome beforehand.
Opinions like yours are wildly popular on the white collar internet because they "feel good" to people who are far removed from actual danger and productivity. But if you go to a part of the internet where many are self employed such naïve and un-nuanced opinions will be laughed at and ridiculed because they completely ignore the benefit side of the equation.
We all only get so much time on this earth and on some level quality and quantity are fungible, if inefficiently and imprecisely with some element of chance.
How much is a life worth? What's a finger worth? What's a crippling accident worth? And so on and so on. Once you define these terms numbers can be crunched and it can be determined whether you are right or wrong in any given case, and I assure you, there will be cases where your attitude computes so poorly it is farcical.
Is the retired carpenter with 10 fingers really better off than the one with 7? Sure the guy with 7 wished he'd not made that foolish mistake but the lifetime productivity gains of habitually moving fast likely show in his quality of life.
More complex benefit calculations simply make the problem more complex, but they do not change the fundamental nature of the tradeoff.
Depending on what an injury is worth, the compensation structure, etc, etc, it may very well be the right decision to disable all the safeties on everything and work fast for 10yr before losing a finger and moving on to something else because the faster man can command the higher labor rate, etc, etc.
Likewise, often times it's more valuable to write crap software in a week that solves a transient need for a year rather than spending 7mo spec'ing out and developing the arc of the goddamn covenant. Yeah it might shit all over your production database but if you're smart about the details it won't be much more likely to do that than "good" software and you can be on to the next value producing task.
It might alternatively be an indication that they can't properly assess the risk and the outcome afterwards....
(More likely both: we are as a species absolutely terrible about assessing low-probability risks.)
I've benefitted from modern "safe" languages.
I cut my teeth on things like Machine Code, ASM, and ANSI C.
I don't miss them, at all.
Nowadays, I write primarily in Swift, and I absolutely love not testing for leaks, anymore.
How does this support your original position? Now you're saying you want the guardrails, I don't get the point you're trying to make.
I think he's happily retired.
I enjoy the non safe parts and proving with code in production for decades it works... it is sort of like code golf.
however I use everytrick I tan to get memory safety when possible.
It can also mean they properly assessed the risk and got incredibly unlucky
In that case they would not change their mind, though.
Not necessarily. Having a painful accident often leads people to a position of "even if I know a mishap is very unlikely I am not doing this again".
I think that falls into the "did not correctly assess the risk beforehand" bucket (and as you say and as the post I was replying to said, this is quite common). If they had correctly assessed "this is going to be really awful if it happens such that want to rule out even an unlikely possibility of it" they ought to not want to do it the first time.
Yes, that is a valid point you make!
A couple of years ago we bought a 50-year-old-house and gutted it. We had professionals do the stuff that required expertise or a lot of time / skills (electricians, plumbers, plasterers, etc), and did most other things ourselves.
At some point I'd come in to do something within my remit while the electricians were here. I'd put in earplugs to do some masonry drilling, because I've only got one set of ears and I'd like to be able to hear things when I'm 80. One of the electrician's assistants, probably in his late 20's commented on it, something like, "Got your ear condoms on, huh?" I'm at a stage in my life where I don't really care about that sort of thing, so just blew it off.
A few months later, that same guy came in to do the final wiring on something. He'd lost the end of his thumb -- had an accident with some tool or other and cut it off.
It's hard for me not to think that his attitude toward earplugs and his accident were related. Nobody deserves to be maimed for life, but we live in a universe which can be pretty unforgiving.
Yup. One of my arborist friends was a bit reckless (very, very good, but I thought he took unnecessary risks). Whenever he would see me, he’d hold up his left hand, to show he still had all his fingers, because I’d always tell him he’d lose one.
Not sure which of us was in the wrong. He made very good money.
I remember some electricians, working on our lighting system, at work.
They worked on live (320 Volts) fixtures. Never bothered to kill the circuit breaker.
I’ve found that pro tools tend to look pretty scruffy, while amateur tools tend to look shiny.
Quite possibly.
In my experience, the people who make unsolicited comments about others’ risk mitigations have incorrectly learned that safety precautions indicate weakness or inexperience, when experience teaches the opposite.
Seasoned professionals know that tools and environments don’t care about your skill level. A tool will injure anyone who doesn’t respect its inherent dangers.
The mockery typically comes from those who’ve either been lucky so far or selectively absorbed workplace cultures that prioritize appearing tough over staying whole.
I've repeatedly heard the anecdote (to the point that I suspect it's now data) that inexperienced users of chainsaws are terrified of them, experienced users are comfortable with them, and very experienced users are even more terrified of them.
It isn't experts who remove it. It is professionals whothink they know. I've been trained on chainsaws by USFS experts - they used the safety gear and demonstraighted that used correctly things work just as fast. In fact they were often faster than the professionals who thought they were faster - because the planning and communication steps (6 steps) often saved more time than was gained by jumping in)
safety gear doesn't cost much time to put on. Checking the safety gear also finds not safety things wrong with it.
> Every now and then, there’s a nasty accident...
That may just be they aren't very good at risk assessment. Nasty accidents with a chainsaw are in a different league of damage for the person involved compared to, eg, accidentally deleting a database or upsetting a manager. A software engineer is all but guaranteed to walk away from deleting a DB with their limbs intact. Even if their manager gets really angry a dev is almost certainly going to survive the encounter.
Deleting a DB could have life-changing ramifications, depending on what's in the DB.
I used to write a lot of hardware-interfacing software.
The cool thing about writing things like device drivers, is that you can have some really kinetic bugs.
You have bad catastrophe management if deleting a database causes issues. I've seen databases accidentally deleted in production ... we just restored from a backup losing only a few ms of writes.
This stuff happens; sure it causes downtime, but it shouldn't have any real ramifications.
True. That's what good process and risk management gives you.
I have blown up $40,000 receivers, though.
Hard to restore from a backup.
The old saying "they've forgotten more about X than you'll ever know" is very true. A professional quite often has forgotten what it was like to be a beginnner, making them both very knowledgeable about a topic but also very likely to give dangerous advice to a beginner.
This is absolutely correct.
I must confess that I have done exactly that.
Having grown up in a rural environment and nearly having my own catastrophic accident while using a circular saw with all of its safety features intact and myself being in an alert and mindful state, I can only describe the scenario you've outlined as, "typical idiot-class behavior".
You see this kind of stuff amongst the petty-criminal working class who chain smoke and binge drink and steal tools off the work site and complain about never being able to get ahead. I've had numerous uncles and neighbors who have life-long debilitating injuries because they showed up to work drunk and fell of a ladder or dropped a running chainsaw on their foot. Every single one of them thought they were a bad ass who "knew what they were doing".
My own accident occurred because I was over-using the tool. I did not have the best tool for the job. The tool was generally appropriate, but I also didn't have the best work space set up for it. The work space wasn't uncomfortable, but I didn't give myself room for error. I thought I had all of the safety features in place and was "being extra careful" while I used it at an awkward angle. Then, halfway through the cut, I noticed the off-cut drooping and knew it was going to damage the piece I was cutting if it dropped too far. I reached to support the droop with my off-hand, which given my angle meant I had to cross under my arm pushing the tool. In a moment I still don't completely understand, the path I sent my hand on did not go directly towards my armpit as I knew I would need to do to keep clear of the tool and instead went under the saw directly. I ended up touching the running saw blade sticking out of the bottom of the piece I was cutting.
A half-dozen different things could have been done differently to avoid the mistake, any one of which is not all that dangerous in isolation, but combined created an incredibly narrow error envelope.
What I didn't consider is that "being extra careful" can change in an instant. One little bump in balance, one little fleeting distraction, one little change of thought as you are mid-task and don't immediately stop to re-evaluate and you blow right on out of your after envelope.
Luckily, I only cut the tips of two fingers. I was able to get them stitched up and they have healed almost completely (there is some thick scar tissue right where my fingers hit keys in my keyboard that serves as a daily reminder).
You don't see this behavior amongst the professionals in the trades who successfully build their businesses from the ground up. Professionals over design their safety envelope. And they still occasionally get hurt. Just not as catastrophicly so.
Well put!
And what do their insurance companies think about this?
> If you watch an expert arborist (tree man) at work, you’ll notice that they’ve removed every single safety guard from their chainsaws.
I've never seen an expert arborist remove any safety feature from a chainsaw and they'd be off site in a heartbeat if they did.
You're imagining a scenario to support your opinion, no basis in fact.
Actually, I have several friends that are arborists. It's a fairly common vocation, hereabouts.
It's not nice to be not nice...
What safety features are they removing from their chainsaws to speed the job up?
I would imagine the spark arrestor is the first and least dangerous 'feature' to be removed by regular chainsaw users.
It's a small oblong of fine stainless steel mesh that sits at the exhaust, prevents any large hot particles escaping, but also gradually impedes the operation of the motor.
It can clog up fairly quickly, especially if you run a slightly higher oil:petrol ratio, which you may have very sensible reasons for doing.
And because it's bothersome to remove (especially when the engine is hot) and clean (you need a toothbrush, some petrol, a small container, etc) or replace (you need to carry a spare, and different models have different sizes) - a lot of people just remove it.
None of my chainsaws still have theirs, f.e. It's a calculated risk, but I'm very careful with where and when I use a chainsaw, and also cautious about monitoring fire risks.
I won't give up my electric chainsaw... no spark arrestor.
Perhaps you guys are in completely different regions?? I wouldn’t assume arborists behave the same everywhere!
> Actually, I have several friends that are arborists.
Right, and they're removing chain brakes and throttle lockouts, are they?
> It's not nice to be not nice...
It is nice to make up stories to support your worldview?
I've never seen a professional modify equipment to remove safety features, let alone an expert.
The same person flat-out contradicted themselves about guardrails: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45024689
race car drivers are the exact opposite of what you are describing and they compete in a sport where every gram matters.
Race cars have special rules - safety equipmet geneal does not count againts some track limits so winners are looking for ways to hide something that makes them go faster in safety equipment. Every gram matters but there are things that matter more than grams.
In my experience, only the top 5% or so of engineers actually get to decide what to work on. Everyone else just has to churn through the backlog.
That is about right. The backlog is what makes money in general.
You want the top 5% not working on the backlog because that means if something urgent comes up you don't feel bad about asking them to switch tasks. If a junior needs help they are not interupting anything imbortant to ask. and it means you are making the 5-10% your leads and thus growing them into future top 5%.
that the top 5% often discover things that make money you didn't expect is a bonus.
In my experience orgs need a mix of both rule followers and rule breakers to function.
I really like Dimitri Glazkov's "Sailors and Pirates" framing of this:
This can be taken the wrong way by self-centered people and cause damage- specifically, the advice to “take strong positions even if uncertain.”
I work with someone that does this regularly, and it’s made for a hellscape.
Yes. Letting the young ones drive because they seem confident is a recipe for disaster over the long haul.
I don't feel the need to give dangerous advice. As an educator that has to do with the stuff people build more or less unsupervised I can assure you that dangerous is the defacto default starting point for anybody who has no idea what they are doing.
There is only a very specific class of person, who is often overcautious and perfectionist to a degree that they won't even get started. They might need some advice that eases their worries. But the dangers are real. Overcomplexity is also a danger.
Most of the "dangerous advice" I have encountered as an engineer (be it electrical or software) I have seen in the form of legacy projects without anybody there to explain them to me. There you can see where corners where cut, where they were completely out of their depth, etc.
The key is goodness/badness of advice is a function of the receiver. The internet doesn't give you control over who reads your stuff, so internet advice is safer and less useful than it could be.
The advice "use 'any' if it's too much work to type" is dangerous/bad advice for some developers because they don't have a well tuned definition of 'too much work', and they might not have all the tricks in the toolbox for every situation.
But legacy code or poorly typed libs can be an infinity time suck, and the most pragmatic approach might be to cut your losses, slap an 'any' on it and move on.
A great mentor gives the best (different axis than good/bad or safe/danger) advice for an individual in a specific situation.
I feel like there’s a cultural difference between people in this thread. I’ve lived and worked in 3 different countries and I can say that in one , you absolutely don’t need to tell anyone that it’s ok to break rules sometimes. They’ll do that without your advice, you can be sure of that! In others, only a small percentage of people will, specially when they are inexperienced and fear the consequences more than would be warranted in reality. Perhaps that’s the biggest culture difference I’ve noticed.
> Deliberately break written company rules sometimes
I love this. It’s so true. Rules are written for indemnity, but nobody will blame you for not remembering every one of the 216 rules the company has as of this moment (217 tomorrow).
And they’ll love you for fixing the problem now, instead of waiting for the two week review cycle to finish. That is assuming you don’t break shit, but even then it’s a matter of ‘sorry’ in all but the most egregious cases.
> Rules exist to constrain engineers with bad judgment, not to bind the ones with good judgment
Also, “how to fall to the dark side” xD
As an engineering manager ... please don't "knowingly" break the rules. It makes my job so much harder. Just break them and apologize. And try to break a different one every time; this is the one thing to be inconsistent on.
Also, I never said this; I disavow all knowledge of writing this message. I am probably drunk and queued this message to be sent during working hours as a prank to myself.
> Tech company leadership often views engineers as useful idiots. Managers are expected to be professionals.
I'm not sure if this quote really adds value to the article. At best it's probably not true, especially if you avoid working at a "tech company". At worst, it's insisting on the false narrative of "class warfare" that only seems to be true when you're junior and still don't understand why nobody cares about you or wants to hold your hand.
Since I've taken a recent foray into management I'm also inclined to disagree slightly with the article. In big tech I see a lot of managers as people who's main goal is climbing the corporate ladder and therefore don't want to make waves. If you're more concerned about your reputation than doing your job it'll affect your openness. This isn't limited to tech, it's just the corporate ladder. Engineers are treated more like children than idiots, but I think that distinction is minor.