Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue
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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:
@DustinB3403 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:
@DustinB3403 said in Ripping the bandaid off of the Sunk Cost Fallacy Issue:
Also this concept of open source just disappearing, where did this idea come from?
Just crap that people make up when they think that their bosses are total fools and will believe absolutely anything. It's the ultimate form of mocking them right to their faces.
See, but how do you call that out? I can't just jump up, and shout "LIAR!!!" They are more likely just completely unaware / uneducated.
But I can't teach everyone, the onus is on that person to take the 15 seconds and research open source, right?
Should not require research, it's just common sense. One license totally protects against the idea of the maker going out of business and the other totally exposes the customer to risk. It's that simple, one protects, one exposes. That they choose the opposite implies they didn't look into it at all, don't care or actively want to be misled.
The fact that the software can never 'Disappear' is a completely foreign concept compared to a product made by a company with patients/copywrites, etc... they just don't consider that free just means, as long as someone is willing to host it on the internet, it will be there forever for whomever to download. But even if they do consider that - they might look and say - why would someone be willing to spend their own money to host files for others - that just doesn't make sense.
Not saying these people are right, it's just how so many think.
But we aren't talking about free, we are talking about open. If someone is injecting free, that's misleading.
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Using free as a substitute for open is a common means of misleading buyers. Software that is open has no direct relationship to software that doesn't cost anything. But malicious parties will often try to interchange those words to set up a misleading argument.
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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:
Those who say this/repeat this just have more faith in a company that appears to be there to make money vs a project that's supported by good will.
No, that's wrong because that's the beauty of the open source license, it removes the need to have faith in the "vendor". Or conversely, it's why closed source is risky because it suddenly requires us to trust a single vendor in a way that we can't generally trust them. The way that you have stated it is misleading, if it were only about faith in vendors vs. good will it would be a different matter. That's closed source commercial vs. closed source free, no open source included in your equation.
Just because the license prevents this - doesn't suddenly make people realize it (they don't read license agreements, are you kidding me?). I said - they simply have faith, is it wrong - of course it's wrong - but it's the same reason that so much advertising works.. people are lazy and just follow the skin deep thought process.
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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:
Those who say this/repeat this just have more faith in a company that appears to be there to make money vs a project that's supported by good will.
No, that's wrong because that's the beauty of the open source license, it removes the need to have faith in the "vendor". Or conversely, it's why closed source is risky because it suddenly requires us to trust a single vendor in a way that we can't generally trust them. The way that you have stated it is misleading, if it were only about faith in vendors vs. good will it would be a different matter. That's closed source commercial vs. closed source free, no open source included in your equation.
Just because the license prevents this - doesn't suddenly make people realize it (they don't read license agreements, are you kidding me?). I said - they simply have faith, is it wrong - of course it's wrong - but it's the same reason that so much advertising works.. people are lazy and just follow the skin deep thought process.
But it is faith in something other than the subject of what is being discussed. In order for the faith argument to come up they have to be ignoring the situation already and looking at something else in order to have it even matter. No amount of faith would cause the problem, it's misdirection that causes the problem. That's what I just explained. It's not even considering open source at all and desperately looking for unrelated excuses that has to cause this to happen. If they knew what open source was, they'd know that faith in the company was irrelevant. If they don't know what open source in then making up false facts about it to dismiss it would be malicious ignorance - intentionally covering up proposed answers without even considering them and lying to cover it up.
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.
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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
