kentcowgill.org/blog

I keep getting reminded of the story about the broken window I read recently in a great book I've purchased called The Pragmatic Programmer.

Most recently was this set of conversations between a coworker and myself, and my manager and myself.

Coworker Y: "Kent, can you please run sudo command xyz on the production cluster?"

me: "Sure, but only if you promise to fix the race condition that causes condition X on the production cluster."

Coworker Y: "I would, but it's not on my platter."

me: "Whose platter is it on?"

Coworker Y: "Coworker Z."

me: "This has been a known issue for nearly a half a year, hasn't it?"

Coworker Y: "Actually, about 9 months."

... time passes ...

phb: "Kent, does sudo really need to be run for command xyz? Can't you just¹ do it with normal user privileges?"

me: "I assume so - they wouldn't ask me to do it otherwise, no? BTW, the cumulative time taken to run or have someone else run [sudo] command xyz every time this happens is probably much greater than just fixing the race condition that causes condition X, which as I understand has been a known issue for at least 9 months."

phb: "They tried to fix the race condition and failed. But I didn't know coworker Z had been running sudo command xyz all along, I thought he had another way to deal with it. Until he comes back from vacation, can you take care of these requests?"

me: "I'd much rather the race condition get fixed."

phb: "I agree, however coworker Z is out of the office this week and coworker Y is swamped -- we will have to wait."

me: "Coworker Z hasn't been out of the office for 9 months, though."

phb: "Coworker Z and coworker W tried a couple of times and could not get it fixed."

me: "Did they exhaust the entire technical resources of our company?"

phb: "No one really had lots of time on their hands. If coworker Z tells me again they can not fix it, I will hand it over to someone else for sure."

I really wish conversations like this didn't happen.

I really wish that more people at my job cared more about what they did.

Why did coworker Z and coworker W give up?

Why didn't they ask anyone for advice?

Sure it doesn't take much time to run sudo command xyz, but how much time is lost from breaking your concentration, switching contexts into "firefighting" mode, running the command, and trying to pick back up wherever you left off? And then what if you're so distracted by this craziness that you have to write a blog post about? How much time gets lost then?

I really wish people would care more.

¹ Andy Lester pointed me² to a great rant of his about this very phrase "can't you just...".

² And a second article linked from Andy on complexity management (I think he's on to something here)