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Comment by silvestrov | Hacker News Reader

I think it's the only method to ensure that all the ladders are of perfect quality. If you outsource the production to the lowest-bidder, then you get lowest-bidder quality.

It's a way different thing to build a ladder that your colleagues (and friends) are going to climb, than to build something on an constantly more restrained time schedule for somebody you don't even know the name of. The latter encourages shortcuts, the former encourages avoiding them.

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There are a lot of life safety devices which are made by someone other than an end user, after competitive bidding.

You either need to do testing of every article delivered, or set up something like ISO 9000/9001 quality management and accept that you will be paying a premium for a documented, repeatable process.

Counterfeit parts getting into the supply chain (which might be visually identical, and may even appear identical to testing) are a problem, but that's where having documented/audited suppliers comes in.

Or you could just pay these two dudes to build ladders that have worked for 100 years.

In San Francisco in 2007 there were over 8000 city employees making over $100k/yr.

http://www.sfgate.com/webdb/sfpay/index.shtml

Good.

Is this supposed to be interpreted as a bad thing? Presenting this fact with no context around it is confusing.

And what do you think the number should be?

> I think it's the only method to ensure that all the ladders are of perfect quality

I think there must to be more to it than that.

Or airlines are making their own airliners now? :)

The airlines are clearly not ensuring that anything is perfect quality.

Flying is statistically much safer than driving. They may not ensure quality in many of their amenities, but their safety standards are as high as they come.

That's not exactly an apples to apples comparison the space shuttle's record sit's between cars and commercial aircraft in deaths per passenger mile. 14 deaths in 20k orbits * 7 people @ 42k miles per orbit. = 1 death per 420 million miles vs commercial aircraft which sit at 1 death per 2,000 million miles vs cars at 1 death per 80 million miles. But, the shuttle is not exactly a safe ride.

Now, if you line things up by trip, it's car's then aircraft then the shuttle.

> I think it's the only method to ensure that all the ladders are of perfect quality.

Then what about their trucks, their hats and coats, their hoses, and so on?

I wonder what it does to workmens-comp and liability insurance when you build the equipment your employees use as opposed to something bought from a vendor.

When a ladder breaks and a firefighter breaks a leg, the department can't really sue itself, can it?

The video says that nobody has been injured on these wooden ladders - nobody has fallen off. It's implied that none of them have broken in action. Probably worth it to them.

> When a ladder breaks and a firefighter breaks a leg, the department can't really sue itself, can it?

The department doesn't sue, the firefighter does.

Department-made equipment means that the city is the only party on the other side of the lawsuit.

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