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Comment by erelong | Hacker News Reader

Relatedly, I'm periodically thinking about the issue of people who prevent problems not being rewarded as much as those who become "heroes" for resolving avoidable situations

I guess it may be important to underscore the value that simplicity provides over needless complexity or to sell people on the value of problems prevented rather than preventable catastrophes that were dealt with

Maybe we could encourage a culture of patting people on the back for maintaining reliable "boring" systems

Some people also crave "drama" so there might be a way to frame "boring reliability" as some kind of "epic daily maintenance struggle that was successfully navigated"

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The difference between the fire fighter and the fire safety inspector. The former puts out fires and saves lives and is of course a hero. The latter complains about things that never happen, wastes everybody's time and money and is generally annoying.

It seems like the safety inspector might be closer to a SOX compliance auditor or something... in this metaphor, the engineer who doesn't build something that "catches fire" is just the one who uses sensible materials, includes smoke alarms in the design, and chooses to use passive insulation in the walls instead of electric space heaters on a high-pile rug.

In my engineering job of over 30 years, I've noticed that the heroes that get rewarded for fixing the problems are usually the same ones who created the problems in the first place.

I've only been a paid-on-call firefighter for 10 years, but I have yet to work with any who are also arsonists. ;)

You’re thinking along similar lines as I am. The article talks about “visibility” in the end. This might be a document that is written. Or it could be a demo thats shared. Or a simple shout out in slack.

As engineers, we tend to keep away from the limelight and quietly get shit done and be happy with it. But professional growth and recognition requires visibility somehow. We need to be creative on how to achieve that.

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