Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue
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All of your proposed arguments as to why they chose what they chose come back to one base thing - a malicious starting point. Malicious because they want to hurt someone or malicious because they are willing to. But the malicious point remains. We are dealing with people who are misleading others for what we assume is personal gain and providing false information to do so. Not many non-malicious situations actually lead to something like that. We want and hope that we can justify this kinds of things happening through honest means, and there are rare cases where they do, but in general malicious intent is the root the majority of the time. Especially in a case where we are essentially expecting it to happen.
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@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
If they don't know what open source in then making up false facts about it to dismiss it would be malicious ignorance -
Malicious ignorance. It's hard to disagree with this, but at the same time, I'm not sure how a business person is suppose to know about this - I suppose you could say it's their job to research this as a business owner, and that's hard if not impossible to argue. But like the Linux discussion in general, there is so much FUD surrounding open source software, made even worse by the media,, and sales people trying to get a leg up.
intentionally covering up proposed answers without even considering them and lying to cover it up.
I'm not sure that this applies to Dustin's situation - he said that management doesn't want to give up the 1% that his open source solution won't solve, so it sounds like there was at minimum a reason to try the other solution, even if Dustin doesn't like it.
THey might do it subconsciously. They might have done it so many times in the past that they aren't thinking about it any more. But at the end of they day, your argument doesn't hold up as providing any sort of excuse.
I'm not saying my argument has to stand up, but its one they have/use just the same.
It's human nature to not accept blame/responsibility - of course this isn't good for the end game of a business, but I'd be surprised if 'passing the buck' isn't a valid evolutionary trait.
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@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
All of your proposed arguments as to why they chose what they chose come back to one base thing - a malicious starting point. Malicious because they want to hurt someone or malicious because they are willing to. But the malicious point remains. We are dealing with people who are misleading others for what we assume is personal gain and providing false information to do so. Not many non-malicious situations actually lead to something like that. We want and hope that we can justify this kinds of things happening through honest means, and there are rare cases where they do, but in general malicious intent is the root the majority of the time. Especially in a case where we are essentially expecting it to happen.
Are you saying that saving face is malicious intent?
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@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
If they don't know what open source in then making up false facts about it to dismiss it would be malicious ignorance -
Malicious ignorance. It's hard to disagree with this, but at the same time, I'm not sure how a business person is suppose to know about this - I suppose you could say it's their job to research this as a business owner, and that's hard if not impossible to argue. But like the Linux discussion in general, there is so much FUD surrounding open source software, made even worse by the media,, and sales people trying to get a leg up.
- Common sense
- Any amount of effort
- Yes, it is their job
- Sales people promoting things should be a flag to research it, not make it confusing
- The malicious point is the guy lying to them for personal gain
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@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
All of your proposed arguments as to why they chose what they chose come back to one base thing - a malicious starting point. Malicious because they want to hurt someone or malicious because they are willing to. But the malicious point remains. We are dealing with people who are misleading others for what we assume is personal gain and providing false information to do so. Not many non-malicious situations actually lead to something like that. We want and hope that we can justify this kinds of things happening through honest means, and there are rare cases where they do, but in general malicious intent is the root the majority of the time. Especially in a case where we are essentially expecting it to happen.
Are you saying that saving face is malicious intent?
Yes, absolutely 100%. Doing something to hurt someone else for the purpose of personal gain (saving face) is totally malicious. Malicious does not imply a desire to hurt someone, only a willingness to do it which is likely the case here. Saving face is literally a "saving face" way of stating "malicious intent."
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@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
It's human nature to not accept blame/responsibility - of course this isn't good for the end game of a business, but I'd be surprised if 'passing the buck' isn't a valid evolutionary trait.
It's not human nature to do work for other people either. Business is about overcoming human nature, that's what he has to do.
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@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
All of your proposed arguments as to why they chose what they chose come back to one base thing - a malicious starting point. Malicious because they want to hurt someone or malicious because they are willing to. But the malicious point remains. We are dealing with people who are misleading others for what we assume is personal gain and providing false information to do so. Not many non-malicious situations actually lead to something like that. We want and hope that we can justify this kinds of things happening through honest means, and there are rare cases where they do, but in general malicious intent is the root the majority of the time. Especially in a case where we are essentially expecting it to happen.
Are you saying that saving face is malicious intent?
Yes, absolutely 100%. Doing something to hurt someone else for the purpose of personal gain (saving face) is totally malicious. Malicious does not imply a desire to hurt someone, only a willingness to do it which is likely the case here. Saving face is literally a "saving face" way of stating "malicious intent."
WOW - again, pretty hard to disagree. I'll have to think about it to see if I can come up with an 'other side' situation. None the less, if people in general understood this to be true (and I don't believe that they do) imagine how much faster progress we could have? Op, that didn't work - it's OK Joe, we are all learning all the time, we just learned one way something didn't work, what's the next way we're going to try?
I think most bosses (which probably means most bosses are bad) assume their employees are perfect and are thereby disappointed/unhappy in the extreme when an employee makes a mistake.
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On a sorta related (OK maybe not) topic - have you @scottalanmiller ever short billed a client for a problem you were working on?
Example, client calls you up to solve a problem, you bill hourly, assume the problem takes 15 hours to solve. Have you ever billed a situation like that for less time than actually took you to resolve the problem? If yes, why?
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@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
All of your proposed arguments as to why they chose what they chose come back to one base thing - a malicious starting point. Malicious because they want to hurt someone or malicious because they are willing to. But the malicious point remains. We are dealing with people who are misleading others for what we assume is personal gain and providing false information to do so. Not many non-malicious situations actually lead to something like that. We want and hope that we can justify this kinds of things happening through honest means, and there are rare cases where they do, but in general malicious intent is the root the majority of the time. Especially in a case where we are essentially expecting it to happen.
Are you saying that saving face is malicious intent?
Yes, absolutely 100%. Doing something to hurt someone else for the purpose of personal gain (saving face) is totally malicious. Malicious does not imply a desire to hurt someone, only a willingness to do it which is likely the case here. Saving face is literally a "saving face" way of stating "malicious intent."
WOW - again, pretty hard to disagree. I'll have to think about it to see if I can come up with an 'other side' situation. None the less, if people in general understood this to be true (and I don't believe that they do) imagine how much faster progress we could have? Op, that didn't work - it's OK Joe, we are all learning all the time, we just learned one way something didn't work, what's the next way we're going to try?
I think most bosses (which probably means most bosses are bad) assume their employees are perfect and are thereby disappointed/unhappy in the extreme when an employee makes a mistake.
This is why this exists:
Because companies like Ray's talk about exactly this stuff, train their people to recognize it and make a really big deal of not letting people hide behind things like "saving face" and simply refer to things as "truth" or "lying." They hold people accountable and don't allow social conventions of "it's okay to lie in a situation like this because otherwise someone will feel badly" to override honesty and doing a good job. And by doing so, everyone is able to improve faster and work better together. It's amazing how much honesty can help a company.
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@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
On a sorta related (OK maybe not) topic - have you @scottalanmiller ever short billed a client for a problem you were working on?
Example, client calls you up to solve a problem, you bill hourly, assume the problem takes 15 hours to solve. Have you ever billed a situation like that for less time than actually took you to resolve the problem? If yes, why?
We always bill that way, that's what hourly billing means. By "always" I mean "always when it took fewer hours than quoted." We don't bill short when it takes us more time, of course.
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@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
On a sorta related (OK maybe not) topic - have you @scottalanmiller ever short billed a client for a problem you were working on?
Example, client calls you up to solve a problem, you bill hourly, assume the problem takes 15 hours to solve. Have you ever billed a situation like that for less time than actually took you to resolve the problem? If yes, why?
We always bill that way, that's what hourly billing means. By "always" I mean "always when it took fewer hours than quoted." We don't bill short when it takes us more time, of course.
You quote a troubleshooting time? My server won't boot - you quote some amount of time? or you say there's a minimum amount, those aren't the same thing.
Let's assume your mimimum time is 2 hours, and it takes you 10, you've never billed for less than the full 10 in that case?
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@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
On a sorta related (OK maybe not) topic - have you @scottalanmiller ever short billed a client for a problem you were working on?
Example, client calls you up to solve a problem, you bill hourly, assume the problem takes 15 hours to solve. Have you ever billed a situation like that for less time than actually took you to resolve the problem? If yes, why?
We always bill that way, that's what hourly billing means. By "always" I mean "always when it took fewer hours than quoted." We don't bill short when it takes us more time, of course.
You quote a troubleshooting time? My server won't boot - you quote some amount of time? or you say there's a minimum amount, those aren't the same thing.
Let's assume your mimimum time is 2 hours, and it takes you 10, you've never billed for less than the full 10 in that case?
Why would you? If the business knows and agrees to pay you an hourly rate then you are only hurting yourself by billing less then the time spent.
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@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
On a sorta related (OK maybe not) topic - have you @scottalanmiller ever short billed a client for a problem you were working on?
Example, client calls you up to solve a problem, you bill hourly, assume the problem takes 15 hours to solve. Have you ever billed a situation like that for less time than actually took you to resolve the problem? If yes, why?
We always bill that way, that's what hourly billing means. By "always" I mean "always when it took fewer hours than quoted." We don't bill short when it takes us more time, of course.
You quote a troubleshooting time? My server won't boot - you quote some amount of time? or you say there's a minimum amount, those aren't the same thing.
Let's assume your mimimum time is 2 hours, and it takes you 10, you've never billed for less than the full 10 in that case?
Why would we bill for less than ten? I'm so totally confused by what you are asking here. Are you asking if we randomly don't charge for work? Are you asking if we bill for actual time?
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@coliver said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
On a sorta related (OK maybe not) topic - have you @scottalanmiller ever short billed a client for a problem you were working on?
Example, client calls you up to solve a problem, you bill hourly, assume the problem takes 15 hours to solve. Have you ever billed a situation like that for less time than actually took you to resolve the problem? If yes, why?
We always bill that way, that's what hourly billing means. By "always" I mean "always when it took fewer hours than quoted." We don't bill short when it takes us more time, of course.
You quote a troubleshooting time? My server won't boot - you quote some amount of time? or you say there's a minimum amount, those aren't the same thing.
Let's assume your mimimum time is 2 hours, and it takes you 10, you've never billed for less than the full 10 in that case?
Why would you? If the business knows and agrees to pay you an hourly rate then you are only hurting yourself by billing less then the time spent.
And what would be the purpose? Just to falsify the time and bill less?
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@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@coliver said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
On a sorta related (OK maybe not) topic - have you @scottalanmiller ever short billed a client for a problem you were working on?
Example, client calls you up to solve a problem, you bill hourly, assume the problem takes 15 hours to solve. Have you ever billed a situation like that for less time than actually took you to resolve the problem? If yes, why?
We always bill that way, that's what hourly billing means. By "always" I mean "always when it took fewer hours than quoted." We don't bill short when it takes us more time, of course.
You quote a troubleshooting time? My server won't boot - you quote some amount of time? or you say there's a minimum amount, those aren't the same thing.
Let's assume your mimimum time is 2 hours, and it takes you 10, you've never billed for less than the full 10 in that case?
Why would you? If the business knows and agrees to pay you an hourly rate then you are only hurting yourself by billing less then the time spent.
And what would be the purpose? Just to falsify the time and bill less?
The false sense that you would be saving face and earning a customer? They'll just expect the same behavior next time or balk at what the 10 hours of work actually costs when it is billed in full.
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@coliver said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@coliver said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
On a sorta related (OK maybe not) topic - have you @scottalanmiller ever short billed a client for a problem you were working on?
Example, client calls you up to solve a problem, you bill hourly, assume the problem takes 15 hours to solve. Have you ever billed a situation like that for less time than actually took you to resolve the problem? If yes, why?
We always bill that way, that's what hourly billing means. By "always" I mean "always when it took fewer hours than quoted." We don't bill short when it takes us more time, of course.
You quote a troubleshooting time? My server won't boot - you quote some amount of time? or you say there's a minimum amount, those aren't the same thing.
Let's assume your mimimum time is 2 hours, and it takes you 10, you've never billed for less than the full 10 in that case?
Why would you? If the business knows and agrees to pay you an hourly rate then you are only hurting yourself by billing less then the time spent.
And what would be the purpose? Just to falsify the time and bill less?
The false sense that you would be saving face and earning a customer? They'll just expect the same behavior next time or balk at what the 10 hours of work actually costs when it is billed in full.
Nice tie back into the thread
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@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@coliver said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@coliver said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@scottalanmiller said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
On a sorta related (OK maybe not) topic - have you @scottalanmiller ever short billed a client for a problem you were working on?
Example, client calls you up to solve a problem, you bill hourly, assume the problem takes 15 hours to solve. Have you ever billed a situation like that for less time than actually took you to resolve the problem? If yes, why?
We always bill that way, that's what hourly billing means. By "always" I mean "always when it took fewer hours than quoted." We don't bill short when it takes us more time, of course.
You quote a troubleshooting time? My server won't boot - you quote some amount of time? or you say there's a minimum amount, those aren't the same thing.
Let's assume your mimimum time is 2 hours, and it takes you 10, you've never billed for less than the full 10 in that case?
Why would you? If the business knows and agrees to pay you an hourly rate then you are only hurting yourself by billing less then the time spent.
And what would be the purpose? Just to falsify the time and bill less?
The false sense that you would be saving face and earning a customer? They'll just expect the same behavior next time or balk at what the 10 hours of work actually costs when it is billed in full.
Nice tie back into the thread
I try my best.
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When I worked for a consulting company 15 years ago, a tech was sent out to a client's site to install a network printer. The printer itself didn't have a network port, so they had to use a JetDirect box.
The original tech went out and spent two days trying to get it to work and failed, he then elicited help from another tech, who after another day also couldn't get it to work. Day four they ask a third tech who comes in and has it installed in about 20 mins.
What should that client be billed?
I can tell you that all three techs submitted their billing, and the consulting company sent a bill for 24.5 hours of billing to the client. This was north of $3000.
The client demanded a meeting and refused to pay it. I don't know what the ultimate billing amount was, but it wasn't the full bill.
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@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
When I worked for a consulting company 15 years ago, a tech was sent out to a client's site to install a network printer. The printer itself didn't have a network port, so they had to use a JetDirect box.
The original tech went out and spent two days trying to get it to work and failed, he then elicited help from another tech, who after another day also couldn't get it to work. Day four they ask a third tech who comes in and has it installed in about 20 mins.
What should that client be billed?
I can tell you that all three techs submitted their billing, and the consulting company sent a bill for 24.5 hours of billing to the client. This was north of $3000.
The client demanded a meeting and refused to pay it. I don't know what the ultimate billing amount was, but it wasn't the full bill.
That's a tough one. Had those techs been staff, and they often are, the customer pays that all of the time.
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@Dashrender said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
The client demanded a meeting and refused to pay it. I don't know what the ultimate billing amount was, but it wasn't the full bill.
This is where "under the hood" transparency can be a bad thing. It really took that long to fix and would have been the same had it been internal staff. The firm seems to have handled it badly, and sometimes time has to be eaten, but that things are difficult and need multiple attempts, multiple eyes and such is normal IT. That the third tech did it in twenty minutes is based partially off of two other techs accumulating lots of info for the third tech before they even started, for example. It's impossible in IT to say "well it should have only taken X amount of time."
