[noisy_boy]

Firstly, firing the intern doesn't make sense - it was a mistake waiting to happen and he just happened to do it at the wrong time.

Secondly, the punishment meted out should be:

1. Proportional to the degree of carelessness (in this case not that much since he accidentally hit a wrong key adjacent to the right one, didn't mow down anybody while driving drunk)

2. Inversely proportional to the likelihood of the error (in this case the likelihood was very high since the reset key was a. uncovered/single-press b. right next to single reset key).

3. Proportional to intention (this was a completely unintentional error)

If you say, that the punishment should also be dependent on the degree of damage, I would say that the responsibility of managing the risk of such damage wasn't his but of the person responsible for implementing such a high risk design. If such a person is not around, find the person who approved such a design. Government departments are usually very good with paper trail.

[jaredandrews]

The author has actually responded to this on his blog: http://johncbeck.tumblr.com/post/92502108047/so-what-did-you....

    So what did you do after you got fired from the embassy?

    What I didn’t say is that it was the last day of my summer internship. The next summer they invited me back again. Everyone understood it was a mistake, but by officially firing me, someone had been punished … :)

So I guess it wasn't a big deal after all.

[zeidrich]

Punishment is not a good way to correct behavior.

Your number 2 is particularly wrong. For punishment to work in affecting behavior, you can't punish for a very unlikely event, especially accidental.

Punishment changes behavior by making people anxious and afraid of the punishment. If you punish something that's very unlikely, it does no good. It's like if pushing ctrl-F restarted the stations, and the guy has never pushed ctrl-F before, and never been punished for it. It's very unlikely that he would ever push ctrl-F. But he happens to trip getting up and accidentally hit ctrl-F while he's catching his balance. Does that warrant a heavier punishment? It's more unlikely, certainly, but what would the punishment change about his behavior?

Punishment works because you are afraid of it. It works because you want to avoid it. But accidents don't happen because of defiance or a rational decision making process.

If you were punished moderately and frequently for a common mistake like hitting F7, it could correct behavior because you would be more vigilant when hitting F6. Having it be proportional to the degree of carelessness in terms of correcting behavior is not important. If someone is more careless, they will get more frequent punishment. If the punishment is too strong, it will just make people fearful instead of correcting the behavior.

Firing someone who consistently makes mistakes is a corrective action, not punitive.

Punishment is generally more of a cultural thing and less of a means of correcting an issue. Punishment is expected, so it's delivered. In western culture we have a particular need to find someone responsible and punish them. Rarely though do you feel "I don't want to get punished, so I am going to do this right." but it's not uncommon to think "I don't want to get punished so I'll avoid this altogether."

Corrective behavior is better when it's not punitive. Look at the design of the software, correct that problem. Look at the systems that allowed this to happen, correct them. Work with the staff and find out why this could happen, help them correct it. If people are punished for writing the software poorly, they're just going to cover up the flaws that they find instead of bringing them to light to correct them. If staff are punished for making mistakes, they're going to hide them instead of seeing if they can fix them.

Punishment is often just a game to abdicate responsibility. "Oh, it wasn't my fault. It was his fault. The proof that it is his fault is that he got punished for it. I've done my part to solve this problem."

Especially in complex environments like corporations and government, I think that the last thing you should do is look for a person to blame. Instead of looking for the person responsible for implementing the design, or the person who approved it. Look at why it was implemented, how it was approved. Instead of pinning it on an individual, pin it on a system.

I think you should only look at an individual if they are committing malfeasance for the purpose of benefiting themselves outside of the system. If the person approved the design because they weren't aware of the potential risk, then find out why. If they approved it because there was supposed to be another safeguard to stop it from accidentally happening, find out why that wasn't there. If they approved it because they gave the contract to their friend who wasn't the best decision, and overlooked issues for a cut, then go ahead and blame them.

If there's a problem with the person, say the designer was just irreconcilably bad, then remove him. If it's a problem with training, then train him. If it was something he did as a greenhorn in the past, and now he's much better, then for God's sake don't punish him for a mistake he made years ago when he was put into a project that was more important than the skills he was hired with, unless he grossly lied about his skills.

[nathanb]

I think you're wrong to ignore the consequences of the actions as an input to the punishment. A small amount of unintentional carelessness that causes huge damage could still be punished. One could argue that a certain degree of mindfulness in critical situations is a job requirement, and casually making a careless -- though unintended -- mistake demonstrates a lack of mindfulness indicating that the person is not properly qualified for the job.

I understand that we don't want a culture that fires people for making the sort of mistake anyone might make. But to be so careless on a day that is clearly an exception where something more important than standard business procedure is going on, can't you at least see why firing the intern for such a lack of mindfulness might at least make sense, even if you disagree with it?

I interned for a government organization that maintains hydroelectric dams and the software that controls them throughout the Southeastern US. A careless mistake could -- in the worst case -- cause blackouts, cost the company millions of dollars, or even cost lives (if the data-control feedback loop caused a turbine to spin up at the wrong time or to fail to shut off in an emergency). And, as is quite common in organizations with non-software-engineers running the show, the development processes were entirely haphazard. The environment was such that it would be really easy for me to push unreviewed code, or to make a stupid deployment mistake, or to be careless in a number of ways that the system didn't protect me against.

But it was OK, because they hired smart, competent people who understand the need to triple-check, if necessary, before committing. People who understood the gravity of the situation, and who didn't phone it in if they weren't feeling it that day. If I demonstrated that I wasn't one of those people, I would fully expect to be fired.

[woodchuck64]

> I think you're wrong to ignore the consequences of the actions as an input to the punishment.

This equivocates on "consequences" of actions, though. It's obvious that the consequences of hitting F7 before the incident were understood by all responsible to be low enough that any intern could be expected to make the right decision. After the incident, the consequences of hitting F7 were sharply increased such that no future intern would ever be allowed to make that decision. But then you can't make an argument that assumes "consequences" were the same at both points in time.

We make this fallacy all the time probably because we're designed by evolution to reassess the morality of an action based on consequences. It works as a social heuristic for shaming or rewarding people but it makes no rational sense that the morality of an action should retroactively change based on future consequences. You can see similar behavior in our rewarding athletes for profound genetic advantages, or punishing criminals for profound genetic deficits. The consequences somehow redeem or condemn, and they should do neither.

[marbletiles]

No, the consequences were the same before and after the incident: a total system reboot. The varying factor here was temporal: it was usually a low-risk action when the office was empty, a high-risk one when the office was full.

The negligence on the intern's part was to make decisions and act without regard for risk as if he was in the low-risk window despite the evidence he was actually in the high-risk one (all the already-active PCs).

It makes perfect sense that the punishment should reflect inappropriate regard being given for known consequences. That's what negligence is.

[woodchuck64]

> No, the consequences were the same before and after

I'm talking about the perceived consequences, not the actual consequences. The fallacy here is to perceive low consequences at one point in time, perceive high consequences at a later time and then try to change history such that low consequences were never really perceived.

> The negligence on the intern's part was to make decisions and act without regard for risk as if he was in the low-risk window despite the evidence he was actually in the high-risk one (all the already-active PCs).

He was in a perceived low-risk window. The perceived consequence of accidental reboot was already figured in and was already perceived to be low. Else why would the F7 key be next to F6? It is certainly unfair to expect someone to perceive high-risk when everyone else perceives low-risk.

> It makes perfect sense that the punishment should reflect inappropriate regard being given for known consequences. That's what negligence is.

The perceived consequences were low-risk, therefore the known consequences were low-risk.

[marbletiles]

> He was in a perceived low-risk window.

... because he was negligent. "Oh, all the computers are already on? That only happens when Washington's waiting on something. Oh well, I'll carry on like this was any other low-risk morning"

> Else why would the F7 key be next to F6?

Same reason why "rm -rf " is the one keystroke away from disaster. Perceived risk has nothing to do with it.

[woodchuck64]

> "Oh, all the computers are already on? That only happens when Washington's waiting on something. Oh well, I'll carry on like this was any other low-risk morning"

Because those situations were also low-risk mornings. He only saw that pattern when people left late. He had no reason to expect that people would be working early in the morning because that situation had never occurred. Further, a secretary playing a computer game in the morning suggests business as usual, no one working.

> He was in a perceived low-risk window. ... because he was negligent

No, someone else set up the computers and software with F6 and F7 command functions side by side and then evaluated the entire network as low-risk for interns under all situations. It is perfectly reasonable for an intern to take the same low-risk perspective as his superiors.

> Same reason why "rm -rf " is the one keystroke away from disaster. Perceived risk has nothing to do with it.

Perceived risk has everything to do with it. It is inconceivable today that an intern would have unrestricted access to a company's file system and be literally a few keystrokes from disaster. The key reason for that is because perceived risk now is much closer to actual risk. In 1983, no one had a clue about the kinds of things that could go wrong. Understanding real risk is a painstaking process requiring time, trial and error.

[hackuser]

> it was OK, because they hired smart, competent people who understand the need to triple-check, if necessary, before committing. People who understood the gravity of the situation, and who didn't phone it in if they weren't feeling it that day.

In my experience that is not nearly sufficient for implementing any process that can't tolerate errors. It is necessary to have conscientious people of course, but they still are humans. Given the opportunity for 2,000 hours a year, year after year, they will screw up.

Humans are very bad at following procedures. For recent examples, consider the people operating our nuclear missiles and those protecting our bomb-grade nuclear materials. If even they don't have enough motivation to follow procedure ...

[samspot]

I got a strong impression from the article that he had no idea there were extra people there, or that there was even a critical situation. He wrote as though he was doing a mundane daily task, and said he was really surprised his boss was even there. Given those details, he had no reason to have a heightened sense of awareness. He also mentions that a reset of all workstations should have had no impact at the time.

In this situation, the secretary playing the game is just as culpable as the intern, which is to say, not really responsible.

[nathanb]

Well, he mentioned that he noticed an exceptional circumstance right when he arrived -- notably, that computers which were usually his responsibility to turn on were already on. You could argue that a less negligent (and more aware) individual would have extrapolated that into a heightened sense of awareness.

[67726e]

There is a wholly different level of responsibility and ability to ensure quality in your scenario that is simply not present in the article.

In one case accidentally pressing the wrong key deleted incredibly important data, while in your case you have plenty of time to review and ensure quality at your leisure.

[acdha]

He's used a longer version of that story to view this as a management lesson – it's definitely not just “blame the intern”:

http://globis.jp/774-2

[kyrra]

Sorta weird how the 2 articles differ from one another about being "fired".

Count to ten article:

> I, naturally, felt terrible and was, appropriately, fired.

Honesty Wins article:

> But, naturally, that day was my last day of work at the American Embassy. But, not because I was fired; although, I might have been fired if that day didn’t just happen to be the last scheduled day of my summer internship.

[acdha]

Bureaucratic jit-jitsu:

http://johncbeck.tumblr.com/post/92502108047/so-what-did-you...

“Oh, don't worry boss, we sacked the fool who made that mistake!”

[genericuser]

I find it surprising that the exact key he fat fingered wasn't burned into his long term memory. Not that it would of been helpful to him down the line, actually the level of obsessing which would of taken place after the fact to remember it this many years later would of been quite counter productive.

It is simply that given the simplicity and consequences of the error, it is the type of thing I generally see people beating them selves up over until they can not forget it.

(In case you are saying to yourself but he did remember the key, look at the two versions in one he says F6 machine reboot F7 all reboot, and in the other he says F7 machine reboot F8 all reboot, indicating that while I hope he knew the keys functions then, he has since forgotten the exact key, or is substituting F keys for story telling purposes)

[HCIdivision17]

I bet this entire article comment thread would be completely different with this additional context. Thanks, it certainly paints a better light on the situation!