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Comment by praptak | Hacker News Reader

The part about not giving a fuck is crucial. You don't get rewarded for preventing bad things.

> You don't get rewarded for preventing bad things.

A few years ago I saw a promotion announcement e-mail come into my inbox for a colleague who sat a few steps from my desk. It was filled with the usual "did this, did that, made an impact, etc." statements but it also had a large section dedicated to the analysis this employee performed and presented to kill a huge initiative before the organization rolled it out. The initiative was very innovative but it ultimately wouldn't have achieved its goals. It was encouraging to see this in a promotion announcement and indicated to me that some organizations do explicitly reward for preventing bad things.

This was at AWS.

Might be an exception that proves the rule. Killing a major initiative might’ve been a boon for sibling initiatives m — no wonder those leads applaud an underling who usefully twisted the knife. Politics — is Amazon known for it?…

Or it might not. Have you any reason to search for the negative in a prima facie positive?

My experience matches with the GP. In my ~20-year professional life, I can't recall even one instance when I'd read a promotion announcement and saw that one of the person's accomplishments was that they prevented something bad from happening. Sure, it's possible I'm forgetting, but such a thing seems odd enough to me that it feels like something I'd notice and remember. I expect most people will have a similar experience.

It's also possible that people are getting praise for these sorts of "negative accomplishments" in private, or on performance reviews. Which is better than nothing, but I think it's still valuable and healthy to remind people that part of the job isn't just building stuff, it's also making sure the right things get built. And public praise for killing bad things is a good way to do that.

I've never seen it either but that's irrelevant. The original guy talked about someone blocking a crap project with good results. That's a positive.

So someone responds by assuming it's a negative: "...applaud an underling who usefully twisted the knife". I mean maybe, but quite possibly maybe not. But some people seem wired to find the worst.

It's a save-the-budget kind of thing. By showing that we don't need X or can delay buying Y for 1 year, saved the company from $ZZ million dollars of spend. It might not be stopping other people from working, but it is praised.

> Have you any reason to search for the negative in a prima facie positive?

This article from three days ago: “'Stress, burnout, churn, and a cut-throat atmosphere': An internal Amazon study slams the company's culture.”

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-earths-best-employer-...

That’s not what exception that proves the rule means. “Parking allowed only on Tuesdays” is an exception that proves the rule. This is just an exception that disproves the rule, like most exceptions.

You can, but only in the long run, and only if you’re saying “yes” to good things too. We’ve all probably worked with someone who just says no to everything and manages to kill both good ideas and bad. That leads to stagnation, which can be even worse than trying and failing at a bunch of different ideas.

What's tricky is managing "the good idea BUT" situations.

Good ideas at the wrong time, or good ideas if only we had the heads, skill, money.

Say Yes to those and you can screw things up, say No and you might not be forgiven.

I got top marks in 2021 based on feedback from two high level managers because I "prevented a year of wasted engineer with with a comment on a Google doc". Those marks lead to a nice pay bump.

It really depends on the size of the org and the team dynamics.

In a small startup with a fairly high degree of trust and emotional safety your CEO is more likely to notice that you prevented damage/loss by saying no.

A large org where so much is lost due to the telefone game, misaligned goals, hierarchy and increased complexity is not an environment where this is (usually) noticed or appreciated.

That's generally the case. It's soul-sucking to work when you can't prevent idiocy and at most places you're punished for pushing back hard, so the only response (other than, you know, burn-out) is to leave. When you see senior people you respect getting the hell out for no obvious reason, that's usually a sign that you should be polishing your resume. Bad times are coming.

> You don't get rewarded for preventing bad things.

Akin to not being rewarded for deleting lines of code.*

* unless the deletion measurably improves performance and you get rewarded for the improvement

Like with politics. Everyone notices leader visiting places after disaster while no-one can notice if one was prevented.

I think the story of the Japaneese major that built a silly big storm wall was noticed.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fudai,_Iwate

However to prove your point, years after his death.

In fact, you might feel like a hero for needing to put in OT to put out a garbage fire! Never mind that it shouldn't have happened in the first place...

> You don't get rewarded for preventing bad things.

This is the source of so many problems at large companies. The employees part of the day to the day understand how much of a positive impact this has but the people in charge of the cash don't see that.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease, or the new product launch gets the promotion.

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