Re: Revisiting the Aviation Safety vs. Networking discussion

["Dobbins, Roland" <rdobbins () arbor net>]

On Dec 25, 2009, at 9:27 AM, George Bonser wrote:

> Capt. Sullenberger did not need to fill out an incident
> report, bring up a conference bridge, and give a detailed description of
> what was happening with his plane, the status of all subsystems, and his
> proposed plan of action (subject to consensus of those on the conference
> bridge) and get approval for deviation from his initial flight plan
> before he took the required actions to land the plane as best as he
> could under the circumstances.

Conversely, the ever-increasing outright hostility and contempt evinced towards their customers by airlines worldwide - 
 especially US-based airlines - over the last decade or so, all in the name of 'regulations', offers a useful 
counterexample.

When it comes to larger organizations, this latter scenario is more the norm than what you describe, in my experience.  
Critical problems are left unresolved for days/weeks/months; if one attempts to report an issue which is causing 
problems for many of an organizations customers worldwide, but one isn't oneself a direct customer of said 
organization, one is often as not ignored and shunted aside.

This isn't specific to the SP realm; it's simply a function of increased size, which leads to increased 
bureaucritization, which leads to dehumanization and the subordination of the organization's ostensible goals to 
internal politics, one-upsmanship, and blame-laying, no matter the industry in question.  The folks with a can-do 
attitude who're willing to buck the system in order to do the right thing for the customer stand out in stark contrast 
to their peers, and in many cases end up paying a price in terms of career advancement because of their willingness to 
Do The Right Thing.

'Process' is all too often merely a ruse designed to avoid responsibility, shift blame/liability, justify hiring 
lower-cost/unqualified employees whilst shedding expensive/competent employees, and indulge in empire-building.  We've 
seen this throughout corporate America with the 'permanent Y2K' of SoX and HIPAA, and the increasing involvement of 
government in terms of telecommunications-related rule-making which ends up directly affecting SPs.

I'm a big advocate of standards and change-control, and not an advocate of seat-of-the-pants, midnight engineering - 
except when the latter is necessary, as in the examples you give.  

Unfortunately, many folks who work in larger organizations are actively prohibited from indulging in fluid, 
situationally-approrpriate problem resolution; and because of the aforementioned siloing of ops and engineering, their 
valuable first-hand experiences and the lessons learned thereby aren't taken into account during the design and 
rulemaking processes.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Roland Dobbins <rdobbins () arbor net> // <http://www.arbornetworks.com>

    Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.

                        -- H.L. Mencken