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Comment by _jx7j | Hacker News Reader

>Meaning you could absolutely suck at your job or be incredible at it and you’d get nearly the same regards in either case.

One of the things I don't like about statements like this said in a Data Science context, is that they are true outside of Data Science as well. Executives make big decisions, managers make smaller decisions, nobody can evaluate how good/bad they really were for months or years. Engineers build something amazing, or build a house of cards, nobody cares as long as the money people are happy, even if the business use case turns out to be wrong in the long run.

>With a short-term focus they also won't really care, because they can still put these results in marketing materials and impress most outsiders as well.

Forget Data Science, you see this in KPIs as well. Say a crappy metric has to be moved by Q2 next year and people will destroy the company to move it.

I feel like Data Science is just one of those areas where you are exposed to a wider range of people and get to feel the full crapola of the insanity of working in a corporation. For lots of roles (e.g. Engineering) you get to hide in a hole behind layers of people and not see some of this insanity.

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Not to get too off topic, but as a 35 year old engineer it seems the world in general has far fewer consequences than I was raised to expect. Everything from businesses with bullshit ideas flourishing at a loss, to January 6 even being possible (politics aside I expected the Capitol Police to crack a lot more skulls than they did once people started smashing windows), to the whole FTX situation and the tepid response in the media/government, to petty crime being outright tolerated, to in my own career I've at times burned through enough money badly enough (albeit with good intentions) that I thought I was going to be fired, only to be told in a performance review I was doing a good job (grateful to stay employed but WTF, I would have fired or at least demoted me). Importantly, the motivation for this lack of consequence doesn't seem to stem from a desire for forgiveness or positive reinforcement or any mechanism that might make things better.

It seems like there's a general apathy/nihilism that's growing in society, whereas by contrast my entire education from childhood up I was held to strict standards and reliably punished when I failed to meet them, and this was in US public schools (albeit a highly ranked school district) and a public university. That or I was just raised in a bubble, and the historical examples I referenced growing up and reference to this day are just a case of survivorship bias, and all the bullshit that was alongside them back in the day has simply been forgotten. I'm not sure, but it is disappointing how little people at large seem to give a shit. Maybe it's a side-effect of the obesity epidemic and people just have less energy or something

Part of it too is the stressful expectations school puts on you that as you’ve found, don’t actually exist in the real world.

Enforcing consequences is difficult as laws and bureaucracies become ever more complex.

This gives plenty of space for opportunists and tricksters to hide.

You don’t ever have to fear being beheaded by the people whose life savings you stole and you don’t have to face consequences if you have a good lawyer.

To do well in todays world learn all the rules and where the loop holes lie. Violating the spirit of the law is fine as long as you can lawyer around the letter of it.

I think you hit the nail on the head there with the survivorship bias and the raised in a bubble comments. Most people are raised in a bubble because children generally can't cope with how messy and complicated the world is. And systems and companies that last a long time can point to how successful they were because of their good decisions while ignoring their equally bad decisions that really should have undone them had they not been lucky.

The older I get, the more I realize how fragile a lot of human systems really are, but I suspect it has always been this way and it won't change significantly any time in my lifetime.

Your comment itself sound somewhat nihilistic, so I hope you're doing well mentally!

>The older I get, the more I realize how fragile a lot of human systems really are, but I suspect it has always been this way and it won't change significantly any time in my lifetime

I agree that human systems have always been fragile, but have long been papered-over by things like "decency", "tradition" and "doing the right thing" and in extreme cases, mobs with pitch-forks.

I disagree that it won't change in our lifetime(s) - the extreme polarization and tribal politics will get worse and people will let systems break - or intentionally break systems just so that their team will gain a short-term win. I have no idea what new horror it will take to remind people to be decent to each other again, but looking back at how divisive COVID-19 was, I'm not hopeful.

I took the prior post as in, "the fact that they are fragile won't change", not that the systems themselves won't change. And I would agree with that---I see it as yet another expression of the human condition. We may try to build order over chaos to make society, but we also keep loopholes and wiggle room for our psyches. I think the fragility of human systems emerges from that contradiction.

Students of history and the arts can get an earlier exposure to this worldview. I think we engineering types can get too focused on technology and imagine everything is innovation and progress. You have to work uphill against your default interests to expose yourself to a longer view and consider that fundamentally modern people with modern minds lived for (many) thousands of years doing almost all the same cognitive things as us, just with different physical props.

Our lungs are constantly in flux as we breathe. But at the same time, we're just breathing and that doesn't really change until our end. I'd say human social systems are much like that.

Yeah, I was really going for something like "the more things change, the more they stay the same."

Thanks for the concern, but I'm all right, I have the privilege of living near the top of Maslow's hierarchy and actually pondering these questions. :) If I'm a nihilist I'm at the "creating your own value system" part. The world is generally a giant blob of apathetic flavorless jello, I can at least inject some sugar and food coloring wherever I'm at. There's also some freedom in that, when people don't care they also tend to give way pretty easily. It's just disappointing, except for when you encounter that rare person that also gives a shit. Part of the reason I spend a lot more time on HN than reddit. :)

Good to hear you're doing relatively well, and I agree that injecting positivity where you can is probably one of the sanest ways to live.

I think this hits the nail on the head. People are learning the meritocracy they were taught growing up isn't real so why would they work 80 hour weeks for a 25% bonus instead of a 10-15% bonus. The calculus gets even worse when the bonus people get is insignificant to that of switching careers often.

For what you specifically experienced, my opinion, the bigger the organization the more inevitable this seems to become. To make things worse the size of the organization isn't limited to just a company or non-profit but to the size of all groups involved, i.e. a small charity or non-profit that's part of a huge government program is similar to a small engineering team in a huge tech company. They could do huge things or be completely worthless and so long as they pass along positive messages up the chain and the org or company as a whole is doing well then yay no consequences.

We're (hopefully) at the beginning of a cycle where companies realize they are causing apathy amongst the majority of the employed and hopefully experiment (and succeed) in providing meaningful pay raises to the lower echelons which will come at the short term costs of profits but are justified for long term productivity. Or we'll just keep divolving into a dystopia

Parenting & the public education system is a very artificially constructed bubble designed to reinforce and reward "good" behavior, where "good" is usually defined as "that which makes life easier for my caregivers". That gives kids a falsely inflated sense of how much everything matters: your caregivers want you to mind your behavior, because then they don't have to, even if you would've been perfectly fine playing with mud or swearing in school or watching TV all day.

In real life there's basically one absolute goal, and that's survival. And that's largely assured in developed western countries these days, unless you do something really stupid. Everything else is socially constructed, and pretty arbitrary. There are some decisions that are fairly consequential for what your life will look like (where & whether to go to college, what field to go in, what metro area to move to, which employers to work for, who to marry, whether & when & with whom to have kids), but you will still have a life regardless, it just might be a slightly smaller house or a spouse that you click with worse or less disposable income for travel.

That's also instructive for what decisions actually do matter. Don't do drugs. Wear your seatbelt. Don't get pregnant unless you mean to. Don't play with loaded guns. If you're staying away from major causes of death you're generally doing pretty well.

> In real life there's basically one absolute goal, and that's survival. And that's largely assured in developed western countries these days, unless you do something really stupid.

Or just get unlucky: no need to do anything stupid. One can easily die of cancer at 30 and leave a toddler behind.

Well, not so easily. The chances per-capita are in the sub-percent range at 30.

Yes, easily. My partner died of cancer at 30 despite exercising, avoiding alcohol, going for the screening, and generally trying her best.

Chances are it won't happen to you and your close ones. Perhaps try being grateful rather than dismissive?

[Edit: perhaps we have a misunderstanding as to the word "easily". I'm not saying it's likely, I'm saying it can and does happen without any warning signs and no amount of planning/preparation can save you.]

Unless you're exposed to a carcinogenic chemical...

Nah, not even. I have a mutation called CDH1 that happens to be pathogenic and predisposes me to a greater than 40% chance of stomach cancer. It's a dominant gene which means it has a 50% chance I've passed it onto my daughter as well.

That cancer is what's known as a Hereditary Diffuse Gastric Cancer gene (HDGC). It just so happens that the E-cadherin control that suppresses those cancer cells is not processed properly. The diffuse part is what makes it particularly tricky. It's on the surface of the stomach epithelial cells and progresses from there. The only solution is a total gastrectomy (prophylactic if you do it early). No carcinogen necessary. It's found in populations all over the world and pathogenic lines don't even have to be related. The mutation can occur independently in the germline and is passed on. As long as you reproduce before it kills you nature really doesn't care.

Fun side fact. It also predisposes carriers to 70% chance of breast cancer. As a result many of those diagnosed are women who then find out they need to also have their stomachs removed.

Ouch, that’s a raw deal. Very very very sorry about you. If you don’t mind me asking, what are the consequences and mitigations necessary to live with a total stomach removal?

True until you have kids yourself or in other ways become responsible for people you care about.

This is the kind of mindset that felt obvious to me when I was young and resented anyone else trying to influence what I chose to do for myself.

But after growing up and having kids of my own as well as watching others' kids grow up with varying degrees of parental involvement, I have a whole new appreciation for adult caregivers who get involved and help shape healthy behaviors and habits in kids.

> your caregivers want you to mind your behavior, because then they don't have to, even if you would've been perfectly fine playing with mud or swearing in school or watching TV all day.

You've got it backwards. The easy way of caregiving is to just not care. Let kids watch TV all day, swear in inappropriate social situations, and whatever else they feel like doing. You don't have to get involved if you just don't care what they're doing.

But anyone who has worked with kids in an education setting can tell you that this doesn't actually produce good outcomes for the kids. There are occasional exception stories where students with minimal parental involvement lean heavily into becoming successful in life, but the more common outcome is that hands-off or absentee parenting styles lead to poor outcomes for the children, including social and personal issues. It's not just about getting good grades just because. It's about learning how to operate and function within a civilized society, as well as how to balance your own emotions, impulses, desires, and other behaviors they need to learn as they grow up.

It so happens that "good" behaviour that we seek to embed in our children is generally the same as behaviour that is good for society.

Broadly the values I've tried to instil in my children break down as

- Take responsibilities seriously

- Apply your best efforts

- Be considerate

- Cultivate empathy

- Value yourself

- Don't be a dick

- When you screw up, admit it, and make amends

These, when applied, lead to the behaviours that make parenting easy, and I'm hoping will make them good members of society in general.

> It so happens that "good" behaviour that we seek to embed in our children is generally the same as behaviour that is good for society.

The behaviour that most of the school system seeks to embed in children is primarily "obey and do as you're told, don't question", which is far from good.

I disagree, but our school systems probably differ.

I would say that there is indeed a problem with modern tech companies where things matter even less than they should. It's not a problem of being raised in a context where everything matters, but that many companies, especially tech are totally care free with their vc money, and we can see that changing in the last months of downturn.

Raising children to care is good and takes lots of effort.

Raising children to leave parents alone usually means the children end up not caring or worse.

This is a more recent phenomenon - I would say the last 10 years or so - money became cheap, tech saw an infusion of billions of dollars. I would also say "tech folk" are the biggest beneficiaries of this largesse. My friends who are lawyers and doctors, not so much, they bust their ass for a lot longer and for a lot less. I agree with you though - there is a malaise in society, folks in power don't even get a slap on the wrist, working hard and being sincere does not get you anywhere, deceit and fraud are the currency of our times.

Consequences often catch up slowly. It took years for Elizabeth Holmes to be sentenced because it takes time to collect evidence, build an airtight case, and give people their due process.

As I get older, I'm actually noticing more and more consequences catching up with people, albeit slowly. The people I knew who drank heavily through their 20s and 30s are in much worse shape than basically anyone who made an effort to stay healthy. People with poor diets and low physical activity are visibly worse off than others who paid attention to their inputs. I knew several people who got into recreational drugs in their 20s thinking they were safe because they educated themselves before hand, yet who ended up losing jobs, relationships, wealth, and a few who even lost their lives.

I've also noticed more peoples' career reputations catching up with them. It's not uncommon to interview someone only to later discover that they left a very negative reputation at a previous company where I happen to know someone.

I was very jealous of one of my peers who job-hopped his way up the salary ladder, joining companies and then immediately focusing on nothing other than interviewing at his next salary increase. He rotated through several of the big companies here until his reputation for demanding high salaries and then delivering nothing at all finally locked him out of any company with well-networked people who knew about him. He literally had to leave the state and go somewhere new to escape his past network and get new jobs after 10 years of this.

Consequences do catch up to people most times, but it's not immediately obvious. If you expect immediate justice or for people like SBF to go straight to jail the moment the headlines break, you're only seeing the beginning of the story.

> Consequences often catch up slowly.

Agreed. Few people defy gravity; in the end most hit the ground.

The phrase “slowly, then suddenly” comes to mind.

Should term consequences rarely align with expectations.

But Long term consequences always do.

The universe is eventually consistent

I favorited this comment for showing me a new analogy in your second sentence. I'll have to use that one in the future.

I can't match up your anecdata with mine. I can think of numerous people who have done all the things you have mentioned and have no suffered no ill-effects. In fact, many have prospered from lying or cheating the system. From substance abuse to habitual lying, there were no consequences and actually in some cases great wealth was accrued. A great deal of awful people have a very fine life out of it, and there is no greater cosmic justice to address this.

Also, one could argue another interpretation of what you are advising is never take a risk, because it will have consequences. Well, in real life, it doesn't always. You can get away with a lot, and people do.

> Also, one could argue another interpretation of what you are advising is never take a risk, because it will have consequences.

That's not at all what I was saying. I was referring to predictable negative consequences of unhealthy behaviors.

There are many risks that don't involve gambling away your health, your reputation, your credibility, etc.

I think both you and the GP are correct. I do think that consequences are being detached from actions, at least in the last decade of free money and rapid growth. But I also agree with you on the slow burning nature of small bad decisions made many times over years on end.

With the economy contracting and inflation skyrocketing, consequences should be back in fashion relatively soon. We're already seeing it in mass layoffs and other areas of business.

The problem is that time value is extremely relevant. If it takes 10-20 years for consequences to catch up, the person is likely to have already built up an unassailable lead that the consequence barely dents.

> He literally had to leave the state and go somewhere new to escape his past network and get new jobs after 10 years of this.

That's not even that bad of a consequence. It sounds like his strategy was worth it tbh.

Personally I hate this kind of behaviour, but from a maximization POV (Especially in regards to career) it seems like the best move. There is likely some risk of ruin, but the upside appears to be much greater.

> The problem is that time value is extremely relevant. If it takes 10-20 years for consequences to catch up, the person is likely to have already built up an unassailable lead that the consequence barely dents.

I largely agree with you: the big names attached to the resume, the pay, and the effort spent on interviewing skills likely offset the negatives of the reputation (though I also intuitively don't like it because the strategy is rather self-centred).

However, the consequence is rather significant if he has roots. It's harder to pack up and move if one has a romantic partner who is settled into a job at a particular place, and you could also possibly be leaving family and friends. Sometimes one has to move, but typically one has the option to come back, which wouldn't be practical for the person in question. It's still plausibly worth it for the person if he didn't have roots and collected a lot of compensation, but especially when one is older (the commenter mentioned 10 years of workin experience), moves can be tougher.

To add another piece of evidence, while previous poster noted that the initial response by police officers on January 6 seemed less violent than they could have been (though even then, one person was shot and killed), the US Department of Justice is continuing to publish press releases about charges of people involved in the January 6 Capitol attack (at https://www.justice.gov/news , with full records with dates at https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/capitol-breach-cases). The charges for many of the people involved caught up eventually, though it took time.

Separately, to put a positive spin on this, it often takes time for positive habits to pay off. When picking up a positive habit (e.g. exercise and especially learning a new technical skill such as a language), oftentimes much of the reward doesn't come until far later. This is important to keep in mind, especially if one has self-doubts or even a lack of encouragement for trying to adopt a new positive habit in one's life.

My own thought (I know there is a great deal of room for disagreement) is that the J6 crowd saw no consequences for the attempts to obstruct the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation and thought the rules had changed. One of them was shot in the neck, many others are still incarcerated two years later despite a clear constitutional right to a speedy trial. I'd rather the Capitol Police had just cracked heads at this point. You might think one protest was more justified than another, but the differential in response works to dissolve confidence in the fair application of the law. At any rate, the participants in J6 have been broken, so you're not likely to seen that again...yet I feel we could get another riot season provoked by police brutality at any time.

There is garbage and tent encampments thoughout much of my city, and I am told that nothing can be done about it. I've been invited to engrave something on my catalytic converter. I wonder what good that would do.

> You might think one protest was more justified than another, but the differential in response works to dissolve confidence in the fair application of the law.

in 2018, the capitol was open to the public, no one broke in. 78 were arrested in the Capitol on Oct 5, 2018 and charged with Crowding, Obstructing, or Incommoding [1].

in 2022, the Capitol was closed to the public and people broke in. 12 people were arrested on Jan 6, 2021 and charged with Unlawful Entry or Assaulting a Police Officer [2].

Assaulting a Police Office is a felony; Crowding, Obstructing, or Incommoding is a misdemeanor. Seems there was a differential in severity of breaking the law as well.

[1] https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/press-releases/us-capitol-...

[2] https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/press-releases/us-capitol-...

I must have missed the part where the Kavanaugh protesters showed up in body armor with zip ties and plans to hold members of the Senate Judiciary Committee hostage.

The J6 crowd broke through windows and members of congress were literally barricading themselves into rooms for protection. Some brought zip ties for the purposes of apprehending individuals. They beat a capital police officer to death with a fire extinguisher.

I’m not sure how once can fail to see a difference between that group and the one protesting Brett Kavenaugh’s confirmation.

I feel your pain. It often seems to me like Quality is on the decline, on many different fronts. Hard to say if it's just my perception. It does make me more fully appreciate it when I do encounter true craftsmanship or excellence -- which though it might be increasingly rare, is still relatively easily found.

It might seem that way but it is hard to say with certainty but there is also probably sampling bias or declinism in that you are more likely to hear about negative events while normal or positive events are filtered out. And like PragmaticPulp said it can take time for things to catch up but they often do and people often eventually get what was coming to them.

Enlightening sociological reflection!

It seems that individuals often bemoan such a lack of consequences, but for some reason they are still quite prevalent in our “systems.”

I wonder how to harness the good intentions of individuals…

While what you're saying appeals to my biases I think it's a somewhat ahistorical. Not long ago we had Nixon. We had JFK's, MLK's, and RFK's assinations. Plus Reagan's attempted assination. We had the Vietnam war. And so forth. If I were an adult during that era, I imagine it would have felt like consequences were slow to come.

> as a 35 year old engineer it seems the world in general has far fewer consequences than I was raised to expect.

I wouldn't say fewer uniformly, but certainly very noisy. Some have their lives destroyed for minor or non-existent misdeeds, others get away with egregious crimes.

Your post mentions how you are surprised you can skate by at work without facing huge consequences for your actions. Most everyone is like you. We are self-centered and worried about our own security, over-analyzing our own problems and barely being aware of others. I don't know if this is a new problem or one as old as humanity.

The Jan 6 riots are possible because again, the Capitol Police weren't ready to lay their careers and lives on the line "cracking skulls" to defend an old building. Most of them probably were taking in the spectacle and thinking about how exciting it will be to recount with their friends/family later.

The owner at a boutique engineering firm I worked for told me that in a large corporation the best thing you can do is massively fuck up at the beginning. Everybody would learn about you and then eventually forget what you did wrong. The extra bit of notoriety would help with name recognition and people would think you're a "good guy".

no, warehouse workers, nurses, other people with extreme work hours requirements and tons of metrics, are constantly being fired for failing to meet quota or whatever.

its the "the higher the pay the easier the job" paradox.

If you are only 35 you aren't old enough to remember when interest rates were correctly pricing risk. You should see a lot more consequences show up (probably painfully for all involved) as the low interest BS makes way to people actually having to have a high likelihood of generating high positive returns to get funding and those companies that are otherwise profitable retrenching to pay off the overspend from the zero interest years.

I think you are also seeing the effect of the oligopolization of the world stemming from the bad rework of the antitrust laws relaxing antitrust enforcement significantly from the 1970's through now.Any sort of market power is really bad for this kind of behavior because almost noone wants to rock the boat if they don't have to and when you have an oligopoly/monopoly you can abuse you often can hide this stuff in slightly lower but still excessive profits.

stay in your lane, go the speed limit and ALWAYS look for an escape route.

After reading your comment, I think you have captured some of my own thoughts about consequences and deserts (i.e., worthiness or entitlement to reward or punishment). I agree with the other comment that replied to you that says that thinking like this is a product of being raised in a bubble.

I am not sure if apathy/nihilism is growing in the larger society. I think that things have always been like this because people have always struggled to find meaning in life. After taking an intro psychology class, I was exposed to the idea that society wants an individual to police him/herself. The "super-ego" that makes one feel guilty for breaking rules and want to aim for perfection.

My parents raised me with the message that there are no second chances. I've only found that to be true in a few particular situations in my life.

I would not agree with general apathy. I get it more as reality. Strict standards are BS. If you get up sober in the morning and go to work it is like 80% of what is expected from an adult.

> One of the things I don't like about statements like this said in a Data Science context, is that they are true outside of Data Science as well. Executives make big decisions, managers make smaller decisions, nobody can evaluate how good/bad they really were for months or years. Engineers build something amazing, or build a house of cards, nobody cares as long as the money people are happy, even if the business use case turns out to be wrong in the long run.

This is purely anecdata, but I have found that this is more pronounced in a data science context. Managers and executives are (in my experience) more willing to admit they don't understand engineering work product and seek input from technical advisors, and executives and managers deal with decision making on a daily basis and understand that it can be nuanced. But since almost everyone reads financial reports or has to make a chart in Excel every now and then, they know enough to read someone else's analysis but not enough to recognize their knowledge gaps (particularly wrt advanced statistics).

IMO the reason behind this is that a lot of "data science" driven decisions are short term decisions. So you can look at something on a PowerPoint, not really care if it's wrong unless you personally will get fired if it turns out to be wrong, and back out of it a quarter later when it turns out to be wrong. IME there's no shortage of justifications or pivoting when it comes to a decision you made a quarter ago. The consequences are relatively small, so the caring is only bravado, not really caring.

When it comes to disastrous long term decisions, there's plenty of time to get input from multiple stakeholders. I always remember the armies of companies who went chasing after Hadoop because Big Data was going to transform something or the other. All the stakeholders were on board, from the CEO and CTO to IT and Engineering management. How much money and time got flushed down the toilet trying to implement and extract value from data with Hadoop. They only people who paid the consequences were the employees at Hadoop companies who thought their stock options would be worth something.

About 10 years ago, I worked at a company that really wanted to use Hadoop for some reason, so I was forced to use it for a project. The amount of data we were processing was minuscule (a few hundred megabytes per run) It could've been done with a simple script on a single EC2 instance for the entire duration of the project without any scalability issues. Instead, I had to provision Hadoop clusters (dev, staging, production), fit the script into the map-reduce paradigm, write another script to kick off the job and process the results, etc. At least we were using Hadoop.

This reminds me of the seminal article by The Correspondent about online advertising: https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-h...

Relying on your data science or marketing department to tell you how good your data science or marketing department is doing, with their own metrics and their own evaluation methods that you don't understand, can only really lead to one outcome.

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