
The no excuses culture - furkansahin
https://steveblank.com/2017/03/08/the-no-excuses-culture/
======
kerkeslager
Excuses happen because people don't want to be blamed. If your team had an
excuses problem, it's a response to a blame problem: when a problem is
identified, people aren't looking for solutions, they're looking for someone
to blame.

Saying "no excuses" and "we're holding people accountable" might fix the
excuses problem, but it exacerbates the blame problem. "Holding people
accountable" is just blaming people harder and hoping that will pressure then
into perfection. It might work for a little while, but it's unsustainable.
People will crack. This is especially bad in this story because it's literally
coupled with a threat of termination.

The real solution, I think, is to not play the blame game. Instead of "whose
fault is this" you can just operate in facts: "what happened", "how can we fix
it", "how can we avoid it in the future". Sometimes the facts reflect badly on
someone ("he showed up high and made the wrong decision") but more often
there's no blame needed to address the problem ("he made the wrong decision
because nobody trained him"). Instead of creating a culture where people turn
against each other to "hold each other accountable" for problems, you want to
create a culture where people team up to _solve_ problems.

The story here is a success story, but I don't think it can be attributed to
the "no excuses" rule--I've seen similar policies fail miserably. Instead, I'd
attribute their success to their encouragement to identify problems early and
ask for help. But that probably could have been done with less friction if
they had addressed the blame problem.

~~~
crooked-v
The treatment of airplane crashes comes to mind here for me. Crash studies
look for cultural and technical improvements that reduce the risk of the same
thing happening again, as even "pilot error" ultimately points to some problem
in education or work environment.

~~~
m-j-fox
That, and the pilot is rarely around to take any blame.

~~~
baylisscg
But there is the flight recorder which let's you both see the state of the
plane and what the pilots were doing. Thinking about it many roles where
people make major decisions independently have a concept of records being kept
either automatically or as close to the event as possible for later forensic
use.

------
rdlecler1
This is an example of a dangerous one-size-fits-all silver bullet philosophy

First, this creates selection for a culture that punches below its weight.
Never willing to stetch itself. Underperformers apply here.

Second, this is fine when you don't have external dependencies who you can't
simply fire. You may have to work at the speed of an organization that doesn't
share these values and this becomes the rate limiting step to your growth.

Third, if your company is a rocketship and you have a lot of leverage over
your employees, you may be able to pull this, but in practice you're going to
have to pick your battles. Failure to create a safe work environment can erode
trust and make for a toxic and fearful workplace.

~~~
mindcrime
_Failure to create a safe work environment can erode trust and make for a
toxic and fearful workplace._

Having a safe work environment isn't the same thing as not holding people
accountable.

~~~
sprafa
No of course not. The whole problem that Steve is talking about here stinks of
mismanagement of some sort tho, that isn't really fixed by telling people
"stop giving me excuses on delivery day". Something is wrong with the whole
organization, but he isn't able to figure it out, so he's telling people to
put up or shut up. He's attacking the symptom, not the cause.

Read on the Toyota Production System for alternative solutions.

~~~
mindcrime
_Something is wrong with the whole organization, but he isn 't able to figure
it out, so he's telling people to put up or shut up._

I think for any of us to try and go into specifics on that particular case,
without a lot more information (unless we were there), is an exercise in
pointless speculation. I think it goes without saying that all generalizations
are flawed, and I'm sure the company did need more than just "stop giving me
excuses". But a culture of no accountability can be a cause that needs to be
addressed.

 _Read on the Toyota Production System for alternative solutions._

I devour everything on TPS / Lean / Kaizen that I can get my hands on. :-)

~~~
mnmlistc
I agree. I very much enjoyed this article. Even though Steve's situation may
not fit every organization perfectly, I think the core concept holds true.

The way I see it, the symptom is giving excuses the day of, and the problem is
people thinking they are entitled to a job with only putting forth minimal
effort.

------
munin
Whatever kind of person Steve Blank is as a person is being discussed to death
in the comments. I think that what this shows is that most people on HN have a
lot of scar tissue from bad management. Bad management will say "tell me your
problems before they become excuses" but then ignore you, then, berate you
when the deadline comes due. "Why isn't the project done?" "Well like I told
you last week..." "Don't give me excuses!" We've all been there.

What Steve Blank writes here is the outer dialog and what seems to be missing
is the inner dialog - listen to what your reports say! When an engineer says
to you, at the end of the day, "this component just doesn't make any sense and
I don't know what to do to make it work" don't just slap them on the back on
the way out the door and say "I'm sure you'll figure it out, just try a little
harder," maybe you as a manager should engage a little more then in the
moment.

~~~
gluggymug
It's all about bad management. But it's about how they make plans and
deadlines in the first place.

If they don't spare a thought for what future problems can come up and make
allowances and contingencies for these risks then they can't manage. Who cares
if you tell them about problems early if there's no ability/wiggle room to
change directions?

If management don't want surprises, try thinking ahead. It's called risk
_management_. Who is to blame when a predictable issue eventuates? Not
engineering. If you have no slack in the schedule get ready for shit to hit
the fan.

------
analog31
I've always been struck by an odd irony in academia: People tend to have left-
wing political beliefs, but maintain an organizational culture that is
decidedly authoritarian.

Perhaps this is necessary: I can't think of how else to manage a classroom
than to have hard deadlines for things like homework assignments. Even in
college, by definition, the work is finished when the semester ends.

I'm personally guilty of missing deadlines at work, and if I were permitted to
be honest about it (or if it even mattered), my three excuses would be:

1\. Managing the complexity of my job is over my head, because there are too
many internal dependencies.

2\. I'm going to miss this deadline because x[n] didn't happen, and I can't
make those things happen.

3\. I was kind of hoping the task would vanish, as roughly 75% of urgent tasks
seem to.

~~~
watwut
There is no contradiction between left-wing and authoritarianism. Communists
as they were rising to power and in power were all about that.

~~~
CalChris
Similarly, there is no contradiction between right-wing and authoritarianism.
We've seen this in Greece, Latin America, ....

~~~
watwut
Absolutely, I agree. I wrote about left wing, because OP specifically
mentioned left wing somehow being incompatible with authoritarianism.

I think that only wing incompatible with authoritarianism is pro-democracy
crowd.

~~~
valuearb
And libertarian-ism!

~~~
CalChris
Libertarianism or libertarianism?

The Libertarian Party has had no problems with nominating authoritarians: Bob
Barr comes to mind. Gary Johnson willingly sent people to prison for drugs as
governor. The LP is more of a flag of convenience for protest votes.

------
kristianc
This is a piece of positioning. It's not so much Blank giving any serious
solution to the solution of 'no accountability' as him saying 'look at how
tough and uncompromising I am.' He literally says he thinks 'creating a
culture' is the same as 'I hung a sign on the door.'

Well no. A lot of management thinking (5 Whys etc) has gone into breaking down
problems into micro-blockers.

If your graphic designer is constantly sick, then that is a problem, and it
doesn't mean that your VP deserves to be fired for failing to open up
Photoshop himself. It's not the VP's job to do as it as the VP is not a
graphic designer. The VP isn't a hero for having a go- what the VP produces is
likely to be shit.

'No excuses' cultures tend to, far from raising accountability, attract the
kind of mediocre performers who want to be told what to do, don't want to
stretch themselves (as they're frightened of failure) and are looking for the
next person to throw under the bus. No thanks.

~~~
cj
Perhaps you didn't make it to this part of the article:

> By accountable I meant, “We agreed on a delivery date, and between now and
> the delivery date, it’s OK if you ask for help because you’re stuck, or
> something happened outside of your control. But do not walk into my office
> the day something is due and give me an excuse. It will cost you your job.”
> That kind of accountable.

> The goal wasn’t inflexible dates and deadlines, it was to build a culture of
> no surprises and collective problem solving.

~~~
kristianc
Ah the 'I'll fire your ass if you give me an excuse on the due date but of
course an attempt to maintain an open line of communication between now and
then will be met with sunshine and rainbows.'

Let's call this disingenuous bullshit what it is - management by fear. Don't
tell me you're about 'collective problem solving' in an environment where
people are constantly fearing for their jobs.

~~~
pm90
Heh, I think it made sense upto the point where he threatened firing people. I
agree that is too extreme: you're gonna quickly lose a lot of people who
perform best when they're not under constant pressure.

~~~
btilly
I disagree. Strongly.

A common attitude of effective managers as documented by _First, Break All The
Rules_ can be summed up by, "I never waited too long to make the right hire. I
never fired the wrong one quickly enough." Having the wrong employee is very
toxic for your organization and culture.

The rules that Steve laid out do not actually put pressure on people. They
amount to, "Be accountable for what you say, try to make it work, and let
people know quickly once you hit a roadblock." It is about effort and
communication, not achieving results.

People who don't put in effort and don't communicate can't be made to, and
can't stay. But people who do, can. And, on average, this will work out well.

~~~
nercht12
>> The rules that Steve laid out do not actually put pressure on people. They
amount to, "Be accountable for what you say, try to make it work, and let
people know quickly once you hit a roadblock." It is about effort and
communication, not achieving results.

Just want to clarify: It's subjective perspective. It is pressure and it is
about achieving results, but it's not unreasonable or unexpected for any
business. I pay you, you do work. Period. Or the company fails.

>> People who don't put in effort and don't communicate can't be made to, and
can't stay.

Depends on the personality of the individual. Make sure you work with them
first and figure out if you CAN get them to cooperate. If you don't bother
trying but just put up the rules and say "follow this", there is the
possibility you'll dump a good employee and have to spend the next 6 months
getting HR to replace him/her.

~~~
btilly
_Just want to clarify: It 's subjective perspective._

Right. Whether there is pressure is a subjective judgement. But the fact that
you feel pressure DOES NOT make it an objective fact that someone else is
putting pressure on you.

To get to an objective fact, you would need to find fair and neutral third
parties. Neither of the two people directly involved can actually judge.

As a neutral third party, my impression of Steve Blank is that he is probably
a very good person to work for. I have been in environments similar to the one
that he described. And I found them very good environments to be in.

------
tzakrajs
Sounds to me like the real problem is that Steve Blank does not have a system
to get enough context from individual contributors to know that a project is
slipping well before the deadline. This is a management problem being cast as
a individual contributor problem (we need to fire those lazy, incompetent
employees who don't ask for help when they should /s), what a bizarre
inversion of reasoning.

Edit: Management should be the ones held accountable for projects slipping
their deadlines. The individual contributors don't just auto-assemble into on-
time results.

~~~
valuearb
You miss the point that "no excuses" is exactly that system.

A manager shouldn't have to ping every subordinate every day for status
updates, that's annoying to both and should be unnecessary. Management only
works through delegation, you need to trust your subordinates to do delegated
tasks without hand-holding, but you also need to give them a protocol for
exceptions, which is exactly what this is.

Managers usually have other work besides managing people, from their own
projects to strategic planning and budgeting. If you are required to also
micromanage the projects of your subordinates, you have the wrong
subordinates.

~~~
cardiffspaceman
I abhor status meetings with the round-robin format. As an individual
contributor I love to collaborate with anti-meeting managers. The catch is to
get the IC's to provide timely information on successes and blocks. I like the
idea of asking that all the IC's email announcements of their successes as
they happen. There's one less reason for the "status" meeting. The rest of the
equation is to get people to automatically network about their blocks. That
takes care of another major, routine component of status meeting. Now it can
be valuable to workshop or otherwise, in one place, collaborate about a
problem. I once had a manager who supported classic-form scrums. He was the
one who had the Outlook fu for scheduling a meeting on the calendar, so he
scheduled the scrums, but he did not appear at the scrums. He did circulate
among his reports, but he didn't have to have long conversations with them,
because all the other mechanisms were getting the work done.

A regularly-scheduled meeting tends to become the ONE channel for
communication, and with such a meeting on the calendar it is a little
unconvincing for a manager to say that they want to hear about blockers before
the meeting instead of during it.

------
jacquesm
The whole problem is 'hands off management'. Just get out of your jacket and
work along periodically with the people that are below you in the org chart.
That will create an atmosphere of being in it 'together' and it will work
wonders for team spirit. It will also help to convey that you actually know
your stuff (which will cut down on bullshit excuses like nothing else).
Miraculously, even when you're in meeting with higher ups or other
departments, the work will continue (who would have thought).

Of course that would require management to be able to actually _do_ something.
The best managers I worked for did just that, and I copied their style as much
as possible.

Managers that isolate themselves from their department are the very worst
kind. One guy I knew literally had a code-lock on his door to make sure he
wasn't bothered when he was doing 'important' stuff (which was all the time,
his door was always closed). Guess what happened to productivity in that
particular company.

------
Karrot_Kream
Having worked at a few places in my career now, I've found two dominant styles
of management. Either you trust your team, listen to their "excuses", and try
to help them unblock themselves (and come up with learnings to increase future
velocity), or you _don't_ trust your team and constantly hold the stick above
their heads. The former style lends itself to cautious team growth and views
each employee as having a valuable skillset, emphasizing low churn. The latter
seems to engender a hypergrowth strategy, where employees are seen as
"resources" rather than important cornerstones of the company.

Consider the following. Asking for help ends up blocking other employees
_also_ laboring under their own deadlines, which incentivizes most employees
to ignore requests for help.

------
chadaustin
Funny, I was just thinking about this and Steve Blank.

Early at IMVU we really struggled with our crash rate. It was a 3D desktop
application for _mainstream computers_. This was back before Windows 7 and
everyone had terrible onboard graphics chips with equivalently terrible
drivers.

During a board of advisors meeting, our CEO presented our crash metrics and
justified it by saying "We might not be able to improve these metrics much -
we're one of the only applications shipping 3D graphics on almost every
computer."

Steve Blank immediately ripped into him: "That's an engineer's justification!
Figure it out!"

I felt pretty guilty because I was the one who'd planted that idea in our
CEO's head just days before.

Of course there _were_ ways to improve application reliability in the presence
of driver crashes. You just have to move the rendering code into another
process like Chrome does, detect when it crashes, and restart. :)

~~~
jacques_chester
> _" That's an engineer's justification! Figure it out!"_

I find that I like Steve Blank less and less.

You might as well yell at your lawyers, your accountants or a physicist. Some
things _are_.

The problem is that, once in a while, a professional opinion is wrong. So the
Blanks of the world remember only the occasions where they bullied someone and
lucked out -- then assume their Non-Excusing was the magic ingredient.

------
eric_b
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that most people on HN don't like this
attitude. I used to think this kind of thing was stupid too. "Oh, management
by fiat, that will never work". I see comments here talking about management
by fear, or, ironically, making excuses as to why this won't work most places.

I've worked in numerous Fortune 500's, and without a doubt the biggest piece
missing from the dysfunctional teams is always accountability. Or lack of
responsibility and ownership (said another way). The high performing teams
don't tolerate excuses or abdication of responsibility. They may not come
right out and say it explicitly, but between the lines of success, that's
what's going on. If you're on a team that sucks, it's probably because no one
cares about doing a good job.

There are many ways to increase accountability and responsibility, but
sometimes people do need to lose their jobs. Trying hard is not sufficient
when you're making six figures a year. Steve Jobs (I think) had the quote -
"Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, excuses stop mattering". In my
world, that's once you start making 100% more money than the median. I've
never seen a big organization that couldn't lose 25% of its people and not
miss a beat. In some cases 50%.

Anyways, our culture has moved beyond responsibility and accountability.
People joke about participation ribbons and "everyone gets a trophy" \- but
speaking generally, most of the younger employees I've encountered don't know
what it takes to really succeed. They don't understand how hard you actually
have to work to be better-than-competent at something. I know it sounds very
"get off my lawn" \- but the change (generalizing of course) is real enough.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
This may work, but only if the culture of accountability goes all the way to
the top.

It rarely does. It's more usual that once you get past a certain level, the
Jobs Rule is reversed. Project failures and corporate problems are
mysteriously and inexplicably never caused by bad management or poor executive
decisions, and blatant incompetence stops being an impediment to promotion.

------
randomdrake
This was a good post and an interesting idea with some nice conclusions.

One of the commenters, however, nailed it and got to the heart of the
difficulty: _getting people to do what they say they will do_. Period. Full
stop.

You can wrap excuses, or culture, or other corporate vocabulary around the
matter, but it boils down to that fundamental thing of people doing what they
are asked and delivering what they say they will.

Managing people is difficult and if there's an organization who has had more
experience organizing people to execute objectives than most anyone else, it's
the military. They are damned good at it and there exists a lot of manuals and
writings to this end.

The commentor brought up an essay from 1899 that is still brought up in
today's military training. It is clearer and more to the point of the
fundamental need of _people who can do what you ask and deliver what they
say_.

It's only three pages and it's wonderful. A Message to Garcia by Elbert
Hubbard:

[http://www.benning.army.mil/infantry/199th/ocs/content/pdf/m...](http://www.benning.army.mil/infantry/199th/ocs/content/pdf/message%20to%20garcia.pdf)

There's an extraordinary amount of laziness and entitlement in today's
businesses; technology is no exception. It is truly rarer and rarer to find
someone who will simply: "carry a message to Garcia."

~~~
mythrwy
I find it an odd idea that the military (at least the US military) is the
paradigm of efficiency or organization.

It's true they do have ways to get people do do what is directed but they
aren't very efficient and organization at the micro level might be good but
not at the macro.

There is a reason the military is so absurdly costly and apparently has
trouble decisively ending conflicts. Because all the parts are in place
doesn't necessarily mean organization at a higher level.

I also offer as evidence the growth of the use of contractors. Because we
apparently can't put three guys in a rowboat for less than a million bucks.
That's not organization, even if all uniforms are pressed to specification.

The successes the military does enjoy are more a matter of literal brute force
and a big budget rather than organized long term planning IMOP.

~~~
SerLava
>I find it an odd idea that the military (at least the US military) is the
paradigm of efficiency or organization.

People in the military usually talk about it being a clusterfuck on the macro
level. I think most of the people with this mental model of the military are
just office middle managers.

------
nullspace
I feel a little skeptical. One of the hardest and important parts of
management is maintaining trust between you and your team. It's very easy to
communicate something in a way that's misunderstood, and kills the morale.
What then happens is that few people leave, and overall productivity of your
organization plunges.

Note that he spent about a third of the post explaining `I didn’t mean
“deliver or else.”`. It's an indication that it's hard to pull off.

I have no opinion on this this strategy as such (i.e. I think it sounds pretty
good), but please don't try this in your org unless you are very experienced,
and feel confident that you can communicate it well.

------
mate_soos
If you to treat your employees as children, you will end up with a culture of
excuses. If you give and take responsiblity for both your own work and the
work of helping others do their work, you will realize that excuses won't be
needed. People will inherently know they are either messing up or have messed
up and will volountarily ask for help from others, who will help.

Not trusting and respecting in your employees will corner them to behave like
children and you will eternally (be unhappy to) be their parent. Treat people
with trust and respect and expect the same. It will make for a much more happy
and a much better performing team and ultimately, company.

------
Sorreah
I don't like that article. I believe that it's entirely backwards actually.

If you actually do everything right in your organisation, you'll end up with a
"no empty excuses" culture anyway. If you try to enforce a "no excuses"
culture without doing all the other things right, then your team is likely
suffering and often won't get the chance to express themselves in actually
pursuing what they think needs to be done instead. Sometimes, your team
members have an equally good idea about where you should be focusing your
efforts to get the most value out of them or avoid future pain points, despite
what most management people think.

So if you go about this wrong, you might lose that, but what's worse you might
end up losing the wrong people. Sometimes things are out of your control. And
even when you can get help, when everyone is focused on doing their best to
avoid being fired, help from someone else is hard to get.

So if you fix everything that would make following such a management strategy
a huge disaster, you quite possibly end up not having to enforce such a
strategy, because you got people willing to help each other and people who
know what matters and what needs to be done.

You end up with a "no excuses" team after you fix all these, but that's an
emergent fact not the fact that got you all your success.

~~~
placebo
While I agree with everything you wrote about "no excuses" being a side effect
of a healthy frame of mind, and that in an ideal situation things should be
motivated by passion and not by fear, I wonder if perhaps sometimes the amount
of damage created from long exposure to a bad environment is not something
that can be easily undone and one has to revert to the stick to achieve
results. I wouldn't want to manage or be managed in such an organisation, ,
but I can imagine there are situations where discipline needs to be enforced
when the culture is too far gone due to past mistakes. Using the analogy to
human personality, you probably won't fix deep rooted pathologies or self
destructive habits overnight by motivation talks. Maybe sometimes things have
to be artificially straightened out because the time for a natural fix would
just take too long.

------
Animats
That's the Curtis LeMay approach to management.[1] He was famously into
management by fear.

We see this problem in software, especially in DevOps and "agile" shops,
because the process is so forgiving of delay. In a manufacturing plant, no
product comes out until all the component parts are ready. So there's a "no
excuses" culture about running out of parts, or having an assembly line
station down unexpectedly. Software rarely has that.

Organizations with real "no excuses" cultures have spares and reserves. They
have a backup plan if a key person is sick or unavailable, or something
important doesn't show up. They have slogans like "two is one and one is
none". This is seldom seen in software development.

[1]
[http://www.au.af.mil/au/afri/aspj/digital/pdf/articles/2014-...](http://www.au.af.mil/au/afri/aspj/digital/pdf/articles/2014-Mar-
Apr/V-Meilinger.pdf)

~~~
RandomOpinion
> _He was famously into management by fear._

The article you linked to says precisely the opposite and is more in line with
the blog post. LeMay made it clear that results were expected and got them.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
LeMay almost started WWIII. I don't think he's a good example in this context.

I'm in the "tone deaf management bullshit" camp. It starts with the assumption
that your people are basically incompetent losers and it's up to you to stomp
around and whip them into shape.

It doesn't work in most areas, and it _especially_ doesn't work in software
dev.

If your people aren't acting like responsible professionals, either your
culture is broken, or you're hiring the wrong people for the wrong reasons -
or both.

Given the chance most adult professionals will be adult and professional. Some
will even take pride in doing a good job.

If that's not happening, unprofessional management won't fix it.

~~~
valuearb
You just argued for Steve Blanks approach. Trust your people to work
independently and bring problems to your attention in a timely manner. And if
they can't do that, release them back into the wild.

I ran a 40 person development organization that never missed a schedule with
that philosophy. Everyone empowered to bring problems up for help, everyone
trusted to work independently.

~~~
davidgerard
Steve Blank's actual approach is to shout at people who bring issues to him
ahead of time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13846800](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13846800)

------
vvanders
Sounds very similar to one of my old bosses. He had one rule and one only: no
surprises.

Soon as anything is a potential issue raise it, find a mitigation and move on.
Simple and works surprisingly well both on an individual basis and at scale.

------
WalterBright
My father was a professor teaching business at a small college. On his first
semester teaching, he assigned an essay due in a couple months. He said any
papers turned in a day late got docked one grade, two days two grades, etc. He
said no excuses would be accepted, because they had two months to do the work.

The due date rolled around, and half the class turned in their papers late,
and got docked grades accordingly.

The next semester, there was only one paper late one day.

~~~
analog31
Now try a new experiment:

* There are 60 students, all taking 5 classes, with multiple assignments due at random time points in each class.

* To finish any assignment, the student needs several tasks to be performed by other students in different disciplines.

* The exact amount of effort required for any of those tasks is unknown.

* The college has ordered the professors to assign just a bit more work than can possibly be completed, or equivalently, has under-estimated the number of students needed to complete all of the assigned tasks.

~~~
jacques_chester
I take it you spoke to my professors.

------
williamdclt
I'm surprised that nobody here realize that this marketing team has reinvented
part of agile and lean managment? Making devs accountable but not holding
responsible, group solving problems and Andon, prioritizing tasks, a bit about
handling external dependencies, kind of sprints, visibility, staying on
budget...

They're obviously not following Scrum in Action at the letter, but I really
saw a striking resemblance with the "agile & lean" company where I work

~~~
watwut
I would not say so. In agile, individual developer does not have personal
responsibility for anything. In this system, individual person had own task
and was accountable for that task completion. It also sounds like they were
working independently and wouldn't get help unless they asked for it.

"I will fire you if deadline is suddenly not met and no one else is there find
out before if you don't say so" is on the opposite extreme from agile
"everything is collective task, we check up on you every four hours and you
are neither autonomous nor responsible".

~~~
mindcrime
_In agile, individual developer does not have personal responsibility for
anything._

Where in the world do you get this idea? For one, there is no such thing as
"agile", in the sense of a prescriptive methodology that would make such a
declaration. There are just individual methodologies that claim varying levels
of adherence to the Agile Manifesto[1]. And even then, the popular "Agile"
methodologies like Scrum, XP, etc. never say that no one has personal
responsibility for anything. Some say that teams are self-organizing and that
you succeed or fail as a team, but I think everybody understands that that
later part doesn't mean you can just come in and stare at the walls all day
with no consequences.

 _we check up on you every four hours_

If someone is "checking up on you every four hours" it's almost 100% certain
that whatever process you're using has absolutely nothing to do with "agile".

~~~
vacri
Are you sure? Daily standups = checking up on you every 8 hours, and then you
have tons of checkups in-between. Retros, sprint planning, ticket management.
Agile methodology is designed for a tech lead to know what each member of the
team is doing.

Agile methodology is not "here's a large task, I don't want to hear from you
again until it's completed".

~~~
mindcrime
None of that stuff is "Agile". Those things are artifacts / ceremony related
with specific methodologies which are only "agile" to varying degrees. Read
the Agile Manifesto, there's almost nothing prescriptive in there at all.

 _Agile methodology is designed for a tech lead to know what each member of
the team is doing._

That might be the case for some specific "agile" methodology, but if there's a
core essence to Agile, it's about embracing and responding to change...
nothing to do with tech leads.

~~~
vacri
How, exactly, is embracing and responding to change going to happen if there's
not frequent communication? What form of agile methodologies have the
developers going off on their own for weeks without oversight? How do they
'respond to change'?

A strict literal reading of the agile manifesto doesn't include daily
standups, yes, but if you read it at anything other than the most superficial
level, frequent communication is necessary.

~~~
dragonwriter
> How, exactly, is embracing and responding to change going to happen if
> there's not frequent communication?

Frequent communication doesn't have to be synchronous, prescheduled, or in-
person, though, and it doesn't have to be through a heirarchy (team lead).

Also, the phrase "Agile methodology" is almost an oxymoron (and absolutely
incorrect in terms of most of the methodologies it is applied to); a
development methodology in the usual sense cannot be Agile, though a team's
higher-level methodology that controls choice of and change to the development
methodology can be.

~~~
vacri
I didn't say it had to be any of those things, and mentioned ticketing as
well, which is none of those things. The comment I was responding to was about
being checked-up on frequently. And regarding tech leads, once you get above
the size of a single very small team, how many of those don't have some form
of technical lead?

Besides, the Agile Manifesto _explicitly_ states at least one form of daily
interaction: _Business people and developers must work together daily
throughout the project._ Having this in the list and then pretending that
having standups are the functional opposite of "what Agile _really_ means" is
just nonsense.

Every time I see one of these "Ah, but Agile doesn't _have_ to be that way",
it makes me think of lynx and w3m. There's the way the majority of browsers
work, and then there's ones like these. Yes, you can make the correct
_technical_ argument about what a web browser is, and then there's the way
that almost everyone thinks of when the word 'browser' is used. File a bunch
of bugs about how your front-end is failing in w3m, and then sit back and
watch the WONTFIXs roll in.

------
seangrogg
This sounds somewhat aligned with the culture that my manager has fostered
where I'm working - just spun a different way:

We come up with a target that we plan on achieving in 6 weeks and then we have
said 6 weeks to execute on that plan. For example, if our goal is to add four
features to a product we write it down and the intent is to deliver in six
weeks.

That being said, no excuses. When it comes time to deliver we should be able
to deliver on anything that we committed to. BUT - and I think this is what
Steve does a poor job of spinning - it's not that we have to have our original
plan fully executed; rather, if we found a problem along the way it's expected
that we raise the issue and course-correct. If one of those four features
turns out to hit a snag we alert the PMs and generally just cut back our
scope.

The thing is that we are accountable for our work. Accountability does not
mean that you'll necessarily accomplish everything on your plate - it just
means that at the end of our timeline we don't throw up our arms and say that
it didn't get done. We've been transparent with our stakeholders the entire
way and so when something goes awry they knew about it well ahead of time and
could do their own expectation management with whomever their stakeholders are
- thus putting everyone in a much better position.

While I would refrain from calling this a "no excuses" culture - which sounds
really dickish and annoyingly managerial - I would say a culture of
accountability is an extremely strong and empowering thing. It puts the onus
on you to execute but enough latitude to express when execution is no longer
feasible within the expected window.

------
BuuQu9hu
"Excuses are the nails used to build the house of failure," or so the saying
goes. A teacher used to repeat this phrase to any grade-school students who
failed to turn in homework. He didn't care what the excuses were; no amount of
excuse can undo the passage of time and the truancy of students.

The bulk of the post is about compensating for the lack of excuses with
compassion and teamwork, and avoiding creating a culture of blame. This is
important. Excuses hide accountability, but blame makes communication
impossible.

~~~
k__
Never did my homework.

I'd rather stayed at school an hour longer than doing homework in the
afternoon.

Lowered my grade in every class, but my free time was totally worth it.

In the end I still got to study computer science, like I always wanted, so I
don't see their point in retrospect...

~~~
draw_down
Same here.

------
xrd
At first I was really resistant to reading this. "No excuses" sounds like
something someone who has never been responsible for impossible engineering
deadlines gets to say. But, I really like the way Blank defines it as "be in
communication and ask for help so there are no surprises." That is great: I
often find myself avoiding being in communication because I'm sure someone
will offer uncomfortable solutions. But, those are the difference between a
mediocre organization and a superb one.

~~~
cj
+1 - I think this is key: "be in communication and ask for help so there are
no surprises."

The title of the article would probably be more palatable as "No surprises"
since by "No excuses" he really means no _bullshit_ excuses a day before the
deadline. Then again, an article titled "No surprises" probably wouldn't have
gotten this many upvotes.

------
GuiA
_" [Steve] Jobs imagines his garbage regularly not being emptied in his
office, and when he asks the janitor why, he gets an excuse: The locks have
been changed, and the janitor doesn't have a key. This is an acceptable excuse
coming from someone who empties trash bins for a living. The janitor gets to
explain why something went wrong. Senior people do not. "When you're the
janitor," Jobs has repeatedly told incoming VPs, "reasons matter." He
continues: "Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop
mattering." That "Rubicon," he has said, "is crossed when you become a VP."_

[https://www.macstories.net/news/inside-apple-reveals-
steve-j...](https://www.macstories.net/news/inside-apple-reveals-steve-jobs-
anecdotes-apples-little-known-facts/)

~~~
derefr
I've heard this from a lot of business-management types, but I've always felt
they have the causality backwards.

It's not that "reasons don't matter", so therefore you can know your job is
now in the executive suite.

It's rather that once you're an executive, you are (presumably) granted enough
_power_ and _authority_ to actually _fix_ problems on your own initiative,
before they become visible to the people above you. So if a problem becomes
visible to the people above you, it means you didn't _exercise_ all that power
and authority at your disposal to prevent that.

I think this causal direction is more useful, because it suggests that there
sometimes still _are_ "reasons" that can matter as justifications for
failure—as long as those "reasons" are things outside of the reach of the
executive's power+authority. For example, a COO won't usually be fired if an
political/military emergency grounds all flights and so nobody's stuff gets
delivered—because there's nothing they really could have done about that, no
amount of planning that would have circumlocuted the problem.

~~~
Mz
No, I think the OP is correct.

My father and ex husband were career military and I was a full time mom. Both
the military and parenting have this in common: You may not be in control of
certain things, nonetheless, you are responsible for the outcome.

In other words, kids are autonomous beings and may do things the parent does
not want them to do. When the law says money is owed due to the child breaking
something, they come after the parents. In the military, if you are in charge,
you take the fall when things go wrong, even if it wasn't your fault.

The world gives us endless obstacles between us and our goals. If you want to
make excuses, there is never any shortage of them to be found. But if you want
a thing to happen, at some point, you just have to decide that "The buck stops
here" and not accept excuses.

~~~
derefr
> When the law says money is owed due to the child breaking something, they
> come after the parents. In the military, if you are in charge, you take the
> fall when things go wrong, even if it wasn't your fault.

Ah, but these are both situations where, to my phrasing, there could have been
"enough planning [to] circumlocute the problem." In other words, the
punishment falls on the parents or the officer who _trained_ those who failed,
to complete the feedback loop back to _their training style_. If they had
trained their children/soldiers better, the event in question _perhaps_ could
have been prevented. And it might be prevented in the future, due to that
negative feedback.

A CIO of a large corporation usually _would_ be fired if the company's
business halts for 48 hours (losing money) because a datacenter got hit by a
meteor. This is not because the CIO could have seen a meteor-strike coming,
but rather because they _could have_ put processes in place for fault-
tolerance/high-availability, such that any random act-of-god that takes out
the data-center wouldn't have mattered to the business.

It's not the CIO's fault if a datacenter blows up, but it _is_ the CIO's fault
if "a datacenter blowing up" is able to halt their business, when there is
something they _could_ have thought of that and put in place, long ago, that
would have interrupted that causal chain in the present.

But a parent, or a military officer, or a corporate executive, usually isn't
blamed for what amounts to "enemy action"—where something intentionally
malicious out-thinks every preparation you've made and goes ahead and ruins
your day anyway. Parents, for example, aren't blamed for what their children
do when they've been _told_ to do that thing by another authority figure.
Executives aren't blamed for rival companies' industrial sabotage. Generals
aren't blamed if a sudden trap is sprung during a retreat, turning it into a
rout.

~~~
Mz
_But a parent, or a military officer, or a corporate executive, usually isn 't
blamed for what amounts to "enemy action"—where something intentionally
malicious out-thinks every preparation you've made and goes ahead and ruins
your day anyway. Parents, for example, aren't blamed for what their children
do when they've been told to do that thing by another authority figure.
Executives aren't blamed for rival companies' industrial sabotage. Generals
aren't blamed if a sudden trap is sprung during a retreat, turning it into a
rout._

High ranking officers can be relieved of command for doing the right thing,
but breaking the rules to do it, a la this based-on-a-true-story movie:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behind_Enemy_Lines_(2001_fil...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behind_Enemy_Lines_\(2001_film\))

I pulled my kids at homeschooled when it turned out the public schools were a
mess where we moved for one duty station. I am "The buck stops here" kind of
parent. Other adults being assholes and fucking up my kid is not an acceptable
justification for letting my kids get fucked up.

My kids are intensely loyal to me. They know I can be trusted to do what is in
their best interest, _no excuses._

~~~
derefr
> Other adults being assholes and fucking up my kid is not an acceptable
> justification for letting my kids get fucked up.

To be clear, I wasn't talking about things that have negative impacts _on your
child_ , but rather things that society _blames_ your child for, and then
redirects that blame to you.

An example: if your 10-year-old child just grabs a loaded gun off a table and
shoots someone, whether this ends up deemed "accidental" or not, whether
someone else is to blame for leaving a loaded gun there or not, people will
still (at least partially) blame _you_ for that—for (presumably) not
instilling gun safety rules into your child.

But if your 10-year-old child is _handed_ a gun by another adult, and _told_
to shoot someone, blame for that would _never_ land on you: society would deem
that _coercion_ , due to the power-imbalance between adults and children, just
as much as if an adult were told to shoot someone with a gun held to their own
head.

You might blame yourself for the trauma your kid suffers from having shot
someone, sure. But, in the situation above, I don't think even you would think
you somehow held ultimate causal responsibility for the shooting occurring in
the first place. It'd be like blaming yourself for a drunk driver driving
through the front of your house and killing someone you love: essentially an
"act of god" that happened to have been performed by another human being.

~~~
Mz
My original example of a kid breaking something and the law coming after the
parent was chosen in hopes of not getting into this kind of conversation. It
was chosen as something that should be obviously true and not arguable.

I try really hard to be careful about talking about parenting because I am
aware that I was fortunate to be in a position to insist on _no excuses._ I
was able to be a full time mom, in part because my ex was career military, and
also my parents were very big on the idea that kids need a full time care
taker, so they helped make it possible for me to put my kids first.

But I am talented at certain kinds of insights and one of my rules was that if
my kid did not like someone, they were not left with them. So, I did feel
responsible for making sure they were generally not left in the care of some
dumbass nutcase who might hand them a gun. Nothing as extreme as you describe
ever happened, because I was incredibly vigilant about details like vetting
folks whom I left my kids with.

So, your example really does not work for me and I imagine we are not going to
see eye to eye on this point.

~~~
derefr
I was trying to intentionally create an example that avoided any case where
"vigilance" would have made a difference, but I guess I wasn't clear.

I don't know the age of your children, but speaking of them in a general sense
(i.e. they'll still be "your child" until they're 18), I presume they will at
some point go to a store on their own, take public transit, etc.? That is,
they will be out in public without you, if just for a few minutes, and an
adult _will_ be able to just wander up to them and coerce them. Homeschooling
doesn't do much to stop this; only bubble-boy paranoia can (and even then...)

But really, even then, people can still break into your home. (Or, as I said,
hit your house with their car.) You'd have to live in a bunker.

~~~
Mz
My oldest will soon be thirty.

I fundamentally do not agree with you. My sons were raised with real agency
and genuine respect from the get go. They did not cave to bullying by adults,
even as children. When away from me in public school, they inferred that they
were entitled to enforce the standards I had set at home and they were not
inclined to take shit off anyone.

This is not an argument you will "win" with me.

Suffice it to say that I acknowledge that I am fortunate to have had latitude
and insight that many parents do not have. I try like hell to not blame other
parents when they fail and, instead, to empower them to do better. But my
children are grown, I know the results of my handiwork and I basically am a
kickass parent.

We should probably just end this discussion here. No one ever wants to believe
that any parent can meet the standard I consistently set for myself as a
parent.

~~~
Sorreah
No one has a hard time believing you are a good parent. And I doubt anyone
really cares much, as we've gone far beyond the point of providing a personal
anecdote to help with arguing a point, and instead we're at the point of
almost bragging.

The point is:

You argued people get deemed responsible for things entirely outside their
control, and as an example you pointed out parents are expected to pay for
something their kids broke.

The first person to responded pointed out that you're usually not deemed
accountable for things entirely outside your control, and in the case of a kid
breaking something, you're expected to pay because you have a large amount of
control over your kids habits, and you certainly have a large amount of
control over your kids whereabouts, so them throwing a stone to break a window
is something you could have avoided.

And no one deems you responsible you for things that you couldn't truly
control about your kid. As an example, if your kid hits someone with a
medicine ball after their gym teacher instructs them to use them in a slightly
dangerous way, no one would have you pay the other kid's hospital bill.

~~~
Mz
I am not trying to brag. I am trying to communicate.

In insurance and legal settings, you are not responsible for "acts of God."
Obviously, no one can control everything. But trying to figure out where to
draw that line separates the wheat from the chaff, the ordinary businesses
from the good ones.

Parenting is where I have substantial experience. And it gets all kinds of
push back. It is a subtle form of sexism: My experiences do not count because
they are mom experiences. It is kind of like the use of the dismissive term
"mommy bloggers." I never hear the term "daddy bloggers."

Einstein said something once like "Talented people solve problems. Geniuses
prevent them." A healthy _no excuses_ culture is one where the emphasis is on
preventing them. I did that as a parent.

But feel free to give me yet one more BS excuse as to why my point of view and
examples are somehow invalid, as if that is clever and nothing I have ever
heard before.

------
tabeth
As usual with business people, the author seems to believe their [simplified
strategy] (no excuses) is what caused the outcome they describe. I think it's
more likely from the article that the organization simply became more
efficient as a result of said "no excuses culture", but it isn't actually the
lack of excuses that did much. Why isn't it OK to just say "it's complicated;
here's what we did" instead of trying to reduce it into some meaningless
phrase.

I think this pretty much says it:

> By accountable I meant, “We agreed on a delivery date, and between now and
> the delivery date, it’s OK if you ask for help because you’re stuck, or
> something happened outside of your control. But do not walk into my office
> the day something is due and give me an excuse. It will cost you your job.”
> That kind of accountable.

\---

What's an excuse? Most dictionaries define it as some variant of "justifying"
an event. Some editorialize and use words such as: apologizing for, or making
light of. Let's just take the essence, justification.

Therefore, a "no excuses culture" is a culture in which there's no
justification for events. Such a culture will likely fail in the long run as
it fails to acknowledge the blind spot it's purposely ignoring. I doubt any
business people would be proud of _not_ knowing why they're missing targets...

~~~
watwut
I think that successs had nothing to do with excuses and a lot more to do with
"my groups inside of marketing had become dumping grounds for projects from
both inside and outside of marketing – with everything being “priority one.”
[...] We quickly put in a capacity/priority planning process."

I bet a hat that it was primary the prioritization and planning process that
did the trick.

~~~
SerLava
Yeah, he rallied around the "no excuses" mantra because it felt good. And sure
enough, halfway down the page he says the department dramatically reduced the
amount of work intake.

Gee.

It seems like most of the excuses could be boiled down to "Well, you told me
to complete a project, but then later you told me _not_ to complete it, so I
didn't."

~~~
watwut
That is another thing. The maximum total amount of work I can do is
incompatible with making sure I always do everything on time. E.g. when I see
deadlines as super important, I am more risk averse in terms of how much I
attempt. I will spend less time helping colleges if my deadline may be in
danger. I will refuse unplanned urgent tasks. I may finish on time but with
lower quality and will leave myself buffers in planning. That may be good
thing if promised deadline is really important.

If the total output is more important, I will do what is the most effective
action now. E.g. instead of spending time pressing on third parties to give me
information, I will work on what I have information for now and leave them
proceed at their own pace. Again, that may be good thing if deadline is less
important then effectivity.

------
watwut
It seems that original problem was that importance of deadlines was not
communicated to the team. For example: "the January ad had to be moved into
February because my graphic artist was sick, but I didn’t tell you because I
assumed it was OK." does not sound like an excuse to me. It sounds like the
person genuinely did not seen the event as important and may be surprised over
this being big deal suddenly.

It sounds to me that previous management did not valued deadlines and did not
even made deadlines possible, so naturally employees did things previous
management valued.

------
dccoolgai
Some blue collar guys I used to work with had a saying: "Shit rolls downhill".
Years later, I realized that had a lot to do with the way orgs with bad
management deal with tech/dev: everyone likes to talk about accountability
when it goes downhill to the devs, but no one wants to talk about
accountability for having a clue about what they want. You could plug in space
heaters in a circle in a conference room and it would have about the same
effect.

------
lillesvin
I've tried to stick to "no excuses" ever since I watched Rising Sun in the mid
'90es. When Wesley Snipes' character is late he starts making excuses to Sean
Connery's character who promptly tells him to stop making excuses and "don't
be late". It's not a very prominent quote from the movie or anything, but for
some reason it just resonated with me. Perhaps because I tended to make a lot
of excuses.

------
smacktoward
I'm of two minds on this.

As many of the commenters on the original piece note, the idea of a "no
excuses culture" will be familiar to anyone who's familiar with the culture of
the (U.S., anyway) military, and generally speaking it works quite well there.
It helps cut through B.S. and keep everyone focused on the idea that results
are the thing that matter, which is important when results can literally mean
the difference between life and death. And while it can sound to an outsider
like a cruel standard, I personally found my exposure to it freeing -- it
means not having to deal with the blame-seeking and post-hoc litigation of
small mistakes that we all have to struggle with every day in other contexts.
So in that respect, I'm all for it.

The thing is, though, in the context of military culture "no excuses" isn't a
stand-alone principle the way it's presented here. It's embedded with a bunch
of other, complimentary principles that help sand off its roughest edges.

An example would be the principle that _responsibility flows uphill_ : leaders
are responsible for failures of their units, even in cases where the failure
is entirely due to mistakes by subordinates -- mistakes that they may not even
have known were being made. (Because why _didn 't_ the leader know those
mistakes were being made? It's their _job_ to train their people to do the
right things, and to make sure they're actually _doing_ them.)

This compliments the "no excuses" idea, because it limits its usefulness as a
tool for powerful people to push ones farther down the food chain to do
unethical things. You're responsible for the things your people do, so there's
a strong incentive to make sure not just that they get results, but that they
do so in ways that you would be comfortable being judged by.

Without that, "no excuses" becomes a kind of blind eye standard -- "get
results, I don't care how." Which can put immense pressure on the person on
the receiving end of that directive to cut corners, fudge evidence and cross
ethical lines if they have to in order to get those results. And if they do,
the leader can then feign innocence: "I never told them to do those horrible
things!" Well, yeah, but you put them in a position where the horrible things
were they only things they could realistically do. You set them up to fail.

So while I applaud the general idea, I worry that in the absence of
complimentary values "from now on showing up with an excuse the day the
project is due will cost them their job" becomes just one more way for bad
managers to push blame that should rightly go to their own incompetence down
down the org chart.

~~~
watwut
On one hand, I agree that responsibility flowing uphill can help with the
pushing down unethical things. However, when dev leader felt so much
responsibility for all tasks, he attempt to micromanage us all to absurd
degree. I strongly preferred when I was responsible for what I was doing,
because then other people don't try to constantly control details of what I
feel responsible for.

------
coding123
This story being about a marketing department might seem like it's not
applicable to a software company, but when it comes down to it, we still break
down our work into bite-sized stories that can/should be accomplished in a
timeframe that's estimated ahead of time. Some shops have more nebulous tasks
because they've never done something before, I get that. But for the build the
thing we know how to stuff? We should be able to deliver consistently. It
comes down to your ability to break down the work into small enough pieces
such that you know how long it will take. If you don't know how long it will
take, it's not broken down enough.

Now to play devils advocate - I'm generally in favor of carrot not stick.

~~~
Sorreah
I believe this just isn't possible for a whole lot of projects. Codebases tend
to grow so large, and people tend to come and go, so people don't really know
most parts of the code, so then a lot of the time estimates are inaccurate to
the point of being useless.

------
Fraztastic
Manager has piss poor communication then "solves" it by threatening to fire
people. Genius.

------
tyingq
He's in disagreement with himself.

See point #3: [https://steveblank.com/2012/05/14/9-deadliest-start-up-
sins/](https://steveblank.com/2012/05/14/9-deadliest-start-up-sins/)

------
draw_down
Sounds great, if the boss is not somehow magically delivered from being a
responsible party, and as long as the boss's reasons for not meeting
commitments are not considered somehow different and therefore "not excuses",
i.e., acceptable.

~~~
icebraining
Yeah, that's a great way to destroy moral, ie, have your underlings hate your
guts. Parents do this kind of crap to their kids all the time, too, then
wonder why them don't get respected.

------
scandox
No surprises. Agreed. Consequences. Agreed. Firing people. Bad idea. If the
biggest lesson you teach people is the one they learn as they leave your
organization, then I think you're wasting a good crisis.

------
always_somethng

      No excuses for failures given, just facts and requests for help
      No excuses for failures accepted, just facts, and offers to help
      Relentless execution
      Individual honesty and integrity
    

Wow! I didn't know that the political aspects of small in-groups was so
simple!

We can just proclaim "PROBLEMS BE GONE!" and so it shall be! It's also so
clear to me now!

What a load of crap. I've been on at least six developer teams, and the one
thing that's proven true every time is that third party externalities will
always find a way to hobble progress, introduces stalls in productivity, and
wear down morale.

But there are deeper issues, particularly with software development, and
undisprovable beliefs about which implementation of technology is THE ONE TRUE
WAY.

People will always use that as a wedge, to alleviate the amount of work on
their plate, and declare efficiency as the driving principle. But then! Non-
technical people, clueless as ever about the machines that govern their
livelihood (as glorified CRM receptionists) fail to understand, the truth is
that it's just technical people pushing work around, spreading it in different
arrangements, according to their liking.

    
    
      Let's bind everything to UNIX users 
      and LDAP permissions, that way the 
      system administrators can control 
      progress, and must be aware of all 
      tangential events.
    
      Gee, I can't create a folder structure
      on this file system, because I have to 
      wait for a sys admin to provide permissions
      just so I can create an index.html file
      at the location I need.
    
      How about we throw everything in a MySQL 
      database, and persist our data over there?
    
      Awesome, but wow, our table schema is 
      getting kind of huge. Managing it is 
      a chore unto itself.
    
      Let the DBA team control every aspect 
      of the RDBMS, so that every change to 
      the database schema requires their 
      involvement. This way, we'll always 
      have to ask them for permission to 
      introduce a new table or column.
    
      Okay, how about we just design our
      tables, to be gigantic structured 
      text blobs, of unlimited size, so
      that we don't have to wait for a DBA
      to respond to our schema change 
      requests? Sounds great! It's less work!
    
      NoSQL vs. SQL. Which is the one TRUE way?
    
      Man, this CGI programming is really 
      hard, and our PERL codebase is tough to read.
      Let's try PHP since it's so much easier to code.
    
      Wow, our PHP code is so disorganized.
      We should organize it into classes.
    
      That didn't help. PHP permits too 
      many ambiguities, and it's counter-productive.
    
      Javascript everywhere, at all times? 
      Why not a full re-write of the entire 
      system, because all we know how to use 
      is one client-side technology?
    
      Object Oriented Programming or Functional 
      Programming. Which is the one TRUE way?
    
      I'm having trouble sorting out which 
      functions are in scope, because there 
      are so many modules in this file tree,
      and I can't easily discern which file 
      references which, and in which order.
      So many functions are similarly named, 
      and many developers are simply overriding
      namespaces to control scope. We should 
      restrict who can create new files in
      this tree, so the library stays sane.
    
      Let's bind everything to UNIX users 
      and LDAP permissions, that way the 
      system administrators can control 
      progress, and must be aware of all 
      tangential events.
    

And so on...

------
BinaryWaves
Yet another person blind to greed, so focused on money and profit they miss
out on life

