Ask HN: Does anyone else notice increased incompetence?

I worry often that my perception of this is biased because I'm young and "this has always happened" but I fully agree with you, and it's across the spectrum of importance.

Hire a contractor to power wash part of a house, and they simply _did not do half the work._ Not a matter of a half-assed job, simply was not even done. When called back, they proceeded to skimp in almost the same way, except when confronted over there being literal clumps of dirt still on sections they did claimed "oh I guess it just came off easier a second time."

What's absurd is like you I've experienced it in life-threatening fields as well. I'm currently contesting a rather pricy medical bill as a result of a surgery, that should be covered, when I call my insurance provider they claim should be covered, but then I... keep getting bills for. Even calling the university sending the bills, they claim it should be covered, claim they put a "note on my account" but then the bills keep coming. I've spent 12+ man hours being fed BS by a string of companies who have shown no real ability to actually rectify a glaring, financially critical issue.

It's just crazy to me how pervasive it is, even for well-reputed companies. I feel like if I was this bad at my job I'd be fired in an instant, but then I see managers in my stack whom engineers have _abysmally_ low reputations of (have had HR reports for bullying, have pushed individuals out of the company, regularly are caught in lies/misdirection) get continual promotions and praise.

There really seems to be two classes of accountability in this world, and for those jobs where there really isn't any, I get the sense it's become a race to the bottom. (Look in govt. as well. It's basically dogma that campaign promises are full-of-shit, but we continually accept them at face value/there's no recompense when they're inevitably not met.)

"I feel like if I was this bad at my job I'd be fired in an instant..."

Yes! I look at these other jobs and think how great it would be to work in a position that had no accountability.

I think that’s probably impostor syndrome working. My bet is that a lot of people could be significantly worse at their jobs without the system detecting it

True. Possibly observation bias too - I only observed an issue, but I could be the only one out of a hundred or thousand with a problem.

Well, I could tell you our heat-pump saga from the early 1990s, or our difficulties dealing with painters in 2004.

But the best is probably the contractor drama of several years ago. One plumber left the country and did not return. This would have been fine, except that he left a vent pipe unblocked when he removed the toilet or sink or whatever. Then we had a really cold winter and the rats found their way into the house by that route.

Home contractors have always been a dumpster fire. They will no show, do a half-assed job when they do show, sometimes take the money and run. It is one of the worst fly by night industries there is. If you find a home contractor that does a good job, and show up when they say they are going to, pay them well and try to always go thru them, even if it is not their expertise they will usually be able to refer you to another contractor that they trust.

I think incompetence is about on the level that it has always been, but I can tell you two things I have seen change in my lifetime (45 years) which I believe make us feel the incompetence more.

1) Companies systems and processes are enshrined in software, when the software does not handle your non-sunny day scenario, the company employee does not know what to do, they punt you to someone else and you get in a loop of no one knowing how to address the issue, or no one having the authority to address the issue. This is a huge problem and many times you the consumer are just left holding the bag.

2) Companies in their never ending pursuit of profit are offloading their business processes onto the consumer. As an example, My home insurance lapsed for a brief period because they sent me an email, which went to my junk mail, in that email was a form that has to be filled out by getting information from the local fire department. Stuff like pumping capacity, hydrant geocords, etc. etc. This was a routine business form that the insurance company needs to underwrite the policy. This is something that traditionally a clerk at their underwriting department would call the local fire department get the answers, input them in the case file and be done with it. Instead, they changed their business process to offloading most of the legwork for underwriting to the consumer. I see this all the time now, in medical, legal, financing as well as a host of other industries, it was not the norm 20-30 years ago.

I think it is due to the change in the nature of employment while human beings have remained the same. In the modern world, to live a semblance of a normal lifestyle, you have to commit to a job or labour that requires putting in thought and effort. 100 years ago, the white collar jobs only went to those who chose education and hard work and worked towards it because it was an objectively better lifestlye than what most people were doing. People were motivated to change their circumstances because the difference between a bad job and good job on the lifestyle was massive. So people were motivated were to keep those jobs and do good at them. Nowadays, a lot of people will sleepwalk through life and end up in a situation that they can't handle on a daily basis. There is a feeling of people not really wanting to be here - wherever they are in life. The mind is distracted and focused on petty things like personal conflicts and day to day inconveniences. It is not really their fault. It is just how the time is. The people who for centuries would have gotten along fine with manual labour are suddenly forced into jobs that require continuous mental thought all during the day. Most people can't handle it or they don't want to and you can't really blame them.

Well it is basically the pandemic, which put stress on lots of different level. Both within and outside of their Job.

And the other factor in the modern era is that everyone is overworked and / or underpaid. The motivation to do something properly is gone. I would not be surprised those jobs you mentioned are now doing 2x the workload compare to 20 to 30 years ago while earning a quality of life ( Even Money over inflation may not be a clear indicator ) that is lower than what it was 20 - 30 years ago. Comparatively Speaking.

I have been calling this "Haeberli's corollary" to the Third Law of Thermodynamics - "globally, competence is not conserved" - it's leaking out of the universe, somehow...

Part of it is automation. "Peopleware" has an episode about human-mediated processes vs. machine-mediated processes that explains a lot of it:

In the past, whatever you needed done, was done through human action even if they used machines. So there was a good chance that somewhere along the way, there would be someone who'd notice and check/fix, or at least would be able to help you when things go wrong.

But with increased automation, every mistake is amplified and carried to completion much more efficiently -- and the humans you can talk to are often minimum wage people who are not very familiar and are not authorized to modify anything about the processing stages. There are 1/100 or 1/1000 as many people who can actually help you as there were 40 years ago -- and by that I mean actually help you, that is - fix wrong data, override automated processes, etc; not just read from a script.

I would like to comment on this. My real name and also email I believe are in my profile, as well as in a couple of past comments.

Incompetence is sometimes a brilliant intelligence and counterintelligence strategy.

The old saying of "don't suspect malice when stupidity is possible" or whatever was a favorite saying of Aldrich Ames. And of course that is what one would say if they were doing what he did.

It's also a great recruitment strategy for spies. The CIA realized by the mid 70's that hey didn't have to ask ppl to defect, or to pass secrets, often they would just say, "can you make sure that if this security concern ever gets filed, you just just make sure it gets lost, or that you are really confused and don't understand?"

Incompetence happened a great deal in the Soviet Union. It mentally killed people to see it everyday. People had just given up on society and accepted a corrupt incompetent way of life. Ultimately, incompetence, even if begun as a malicious strategy, eventually inspires it in others, which is tragic.

> Incompetence happened a great deal in the Soviet Union. It mentally killed people to see it everyday.

Wasn't it result of communism? At least that's my impression after reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago".

> which could very negatively impact lives.

Yeah, but the lives of people that the worker who actually produces the citation/form/record/whatever will never see, doesn’t care about, and just views as an annoyance who’s making them do something.

The bigger populations and communities get, and the more remotely everyone can work, the less likely it is you’ll deal with someone who has any interest, knowledge or fucks to give about you. I’m sure if these companies had to get it right for the boss’s friend, they’d magically become competent.

The seemingly innocuous mistakes of morons in society will always cause immeasurable amounts of pain both through wasted time and anxiety.

I'm not even that smart, but heck I have a college degree and for me I had to stop assuming others had the best of intentions and / or were as smart as I was. When you just double check and clarify when appropriate - you can avoid dumb pitfalls like this.

For instance, "Here's my bank acct number, can you confirm this is the number you are submitting for the request?" or "thank you officer, I would like to ensure we are on the same page, I understand you underlined this check box, but I'd like to have a new slip without the underline".

Interacting with morons sucks, but if you put a bit of effort into these things, in time you might avoid wasted time or anxiety.

You seem pretty smart to me. Good advice.

If there is one thing I have learned, it is this - most people don't care about anything other than themselves. At least in part, it is not their fault - they have their own crappy life to deal with, so why bother having good intentions and care for others (work or otherwise)?

It is tolerable most of the time, except when it comes to powerful jobs like cops/doctors/lawyers etc where even a small mistake can wreck someone's life. I had a colleague whose lawyer made a mistake while filing paperwork. He lost his visa and move back to his home country, all because a lawyer (well paid one at that) couldn't bother to do simple paper work correctly. I don't know if it was incompetence or I don't care attitude, my colleague's life is ruined either way.

I agree.

I think in many cases the lawyers are overpaid. I'm doing all the legal leg work for my wife - researching case law, scrutinizing statutes, combing through code, placing calls, and talking to my LEO buddies (they think the officer made a mistake).

None of this sounds any different from thirty years ago. And the interaction with law enforcement sounds like high competency it’s just that high competency doesn’t look like what you thought it did.

Generally I find greater competency on average. I just accept that a person can be competent at doing something I don’t like.

Why do you say the interaction with law enforcement shows competence? You mean gaming the system to increase convictions/charges by essentially lying (incorrect charges)?

They are fucking with you. Competently. They are doing so on behalf of people on the other side of the “who gets fucked with” line. You thought you were on the other side of the line but it appears you were mistaken. Behaviors premised on a belief law enforcement is incompetent won’t do much for a defendant. Defendants are even further along the “who gets fucked with” spectrum.

I completely get that they can lie and do other tricks in the course of the investigation (hence subpeona the investigation file). They are not supposed to file false charges. The entire premise of our legal system is based on the idea that two equal parties in a fair contest (court) will yield the truth. Abusing the system (violating regulations) is a completely different level.

Actually, the behavior premised on incompetent law enforcement is the only way to go. If you assume they are competent, then you would plead guilty because there's no way to win. Cases are routinely thrown out over incompetent actions by law enforcement. This is all a big waste if time and tax dollars when we show up and show the judge that we don't meet the elements of the offense and he dismisses the case.

I know what competent policing looks like. I have many friends who are officers and I am state licensed/trained as a armed guard. My friends and the dog warden have also said this is odd and that he wrote it up wrong. For the record the citation was supposed to be for a dog being off leash and they instead wrote it as a dangerous dog - a big screw up.

The entire premise of our legal system is based on the idea that two equal parties in a fair contest

One side decides who is an equal party. The other side is you.

If the entire premise of our rule of law is being ignored, then one has no reason to abide by it. Declare it tyranny and become a scofflaw. This disenfranchised mentality is how empires crumble.

The premise of common law is the Magna Carta. it was between the king and his nobles. Everyone wasn't a noble.

Common law is a different thing. Common law is based on historical customs and English Common law is different from American Common law. It can even vary by state.

We aren't governed by the divine right of kings. Our system is based on limited sovereignty and trial by "combat" (truth comes from a fair fight in the courts). The Magna Carta is listed as the beginning of the evolution towards limited sovereignty - it is not the premise on which the current court system is based (it's that truth comes out during a fair fight).

Wild speculation: Customer service, support, and other direct interactions are difficult to scale. Large corporations tend to optimize direct-contact positions for cost and speed over quality. This act of endlessly “optimizing staff time” to control costs inevitably ends up with people rushing through things in order to satisfy an unforgiving productivity algorithm. Consolidation/competition displaces local businesses that solve the service problem with higher-cost service offerings, leaving everyone with worse-off except for the beneficial owners of these consolidated behemoths.

I don't think it is incompetence. It seems more like laziness. Everyone is on their phone or trying hard to get back to their phone and small mistakes are adding up.

I can see that. I probably should have included it.

I think the lazy part might be more prominent in low power positions. The specific example I have of these positions of power (LEO, court officials, healthcare) seem to let the power power go to their heads. In my opinion it seems they let that feeling of mastery lead to incompetence. I do think laziness is part of the equation that leads to that.

I've got a feeling when I was younger in the 80s/90s people stayed in the same job for most of their career and had a huge hierarchy of people above them. Processes were largely manual and paper based and so completely understood by administrative staff in most business areas. Now most things are computerised and dumbed down, no-one needs to understand them. Add to that outsourcing and people moving quickly between low skilled jobs where is the incentive to care deeply about these issues?

I don't know that its increased. I rather think that with the pandemic, and WFH and everything else, weaknesses in the process -- and whole new processes are being exposed.

- People are being challenged

- Situations are rapidly changing course, and people have to adapt quickly.

- People are trying to do their jobs while worrying about their finances, or how they're going to home school their kids, or daycare, or them or their spouses losing their job.

It's fine, everyone will adapt to the new normal, whatever that ends up looking like.

I am clearly much more incompetent at my job than I was in 2019. My performance is much worse and this is very noticeable to my boss and anybody who tries to pay attention.

Working from home is hard in my situation, and I have all the symptoms of depression yet I'm not treating them.

I expect a huge part of the population to be in the same position as I am.

No, I notice increased competence. So much I depend on the competence others have which I myself don't. Everything from getting a haircut, to calibrating the ventilation in my apartment, to politicians holding speeches.

politicians holding speeches

Curious about this. I can count on one hand the politicians I truly admire/respect, including the world leaders (among the ones I am familiar with, and I am familiar with a few). Why do you think politicians are getting better with speeches? All I see are useless, meaningless, confusing soup of words that they blabber (with few exceptions)

And even the ones typically highly regarded lie. See Obama's comment on the wage gap from the state of the union a few years back. I doubt it was incompetence, but probably a calculated lie.

Why is this downvoted?

I have held speeches. They required lots of preparation but they were still terrible. Holding good speeches is really hard. Especially for politicians, who must be careful not to say anything factually incorrect, insult anyone or otherwise embarrass themselves ("Please clap").

Suppose you are a politician bankrolled by the oil industry and you're invited to speak at a climate change conference. How do you ensure that your speak neither upset the climate change activists or your rich donors? Not easy.

2020 has taken a toll on everyone.

This. A lot of people lost their routine. People who never experienced stress and anxiety before are now bathing in it.

Maybe the stress is making them care less. "Why should I care about washing this house when the world is falling apart?"

Some of them may care more. "If I make a mistake here, I'll get fired and never find a job in 2020."

Either way, stress WILL increase the amount of mistakes done.

For example, this study saying that surgeons make up to 66% more mistakes during stressful situations. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181219191052.h...

It's daily stress, they describe it as people talking, machines beeping, etc.

Now imagine the result if you replace this daily regular stress with a fear of a pandemic, a fear of the economy crashing, a fear of the environmental crisis, etc.

People are bound to make more mistakes.

Perceptions are deceptive. I will await data.

Perception of the data can be deceptive too (the process of turning data into information).

I've had a cop try to boost charges from non-injury careless driving to injury careless driving. The ticket had a check-box for "injury" on it. The cop underlined it instead of checking the box when the other driver was unharmed. If confronted she would just say she meant to strike through. If I did nothing and pleaded no-contest I would be getting myself into a massive injury lawsuit. Sometimes incompetence is not incompetence.

True, and it can be hard to tell sometimes. Sometimes they'll upgrade the charge or write a false charge because many people just plead guilty so they can pay the fine and get on with their lives. I'm glad you paid attention.

My wife once picked up an old traffic cone that had been abandoned in a ditch for more than 30 days. An officer wrote her a citation and she just plead guilty and mailed the fine in. She didn't realize it was for a misdemeanor when the officer was supposed to write it for a summary offense. She kept getting denied when applying for jobs and found out that was the reason. She had to get a lawyer to get it correct - at her expense. (This was long before we met)

A local police department was spreading similar misinformation on Facebook about something being a misdemeanor when it should have been a summary offense. I ended up having to get the DA involved to set them straight so they wouldn't ruin someone else's life.

>Sometimes they'll upgrade the charge or write a false charge because many people just plead guilty

How do you know that, and where do you live that the police file charges? That's typically the job of a prosecutor.

>A local police department was spreading similar misinformation on Facebook about something being a misdemeanor when it should have been a summary offense. I ended up having to get the DA involved to set them straight so they wouldn't ruin someone else's life.

Would you provide more information about the local police department and the "something?"

And how would it ruin someone's life if they thought that 'something' carried greater consequences than it actually did?

For example, if the police refer to "jaywalking" as "felony jaywalking," that doesn't actually make it a felony, nor does it mean that if someone jaywalks that they would have a felony on their record.

No?

Many lesser offenses are handled via a summary trial at the local Magistrate in Pennsylvania. The officer is the one representing the state/prosecution in those instances. The DA will typically not get involved (currently going through this). Most of the time I believe it is incompetence or complacency/laziness that would be the cause for incorrect charges. But I have heard of cops screwing someone over by writing the wrong thing (I have friend who are cops and tell stories).

The township police posted info stating that the new 'purple paint' law makes trespassing (defiant) an M3 when a property is posted with purple paint. In reality it only adds purple paint as an alternative to using a sign and carries the same grading as signs (summary offense). If they issue a citation under the wrong grading and someone just pleads guilty to pay the fine, then that misdemeanor can ruin their life by preventing them from passing background checks required by most 'good' jobs and would require expensive legal representation to correct it (see my previous comment on my wife's situation).

The jaywalking example isn't really the same since there is no felony grading of jaywalking. If you look at the prior example of trespassing, that could be graded as S, M3, or M1 depending on the elements of the offense. If the officer is complacent, lazy, incompetent, or malicious, then they might write your citation for the M3 grading even if you didn't meet the definition - you would have to be told in-person to leave and refuse to leave for it to be an M3.

Thank you for the detailed explanation. That was helpful and clear.

I think it is more likely that the change is in you. It has been a stressful year and you may be keeping score more than you did in the past. When things are hard we try to find fault in others, which is a painfully easy thing to do.

It might help to see these not as opportunities to be frustrated but as opportunities to be gracious and forgiving. It’s like seeing money fall out of a stranger’s pocket: it can be an opportunity to steal or an opportunity to help.

I don't think I've changed. I'm pretty forgiving. For example, I could have the other person involved in the legal situation issued a $300 fine, but I'm not reporting it. I also understand people make mistakes, which is why I contacted to officer involved to give him the correct information and ask that he make the correction to the citation. Instead he was complacent and said even if it's wrong he won't change it and we have to go to court. I could file a professional complaint against the officer, but I'm not.

So there's a lot of stuff I could do against people, but I'm not. I'm trying to give people the benefit of doubt or correct their mistake, but they are making it very difficult.