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Accountability sinks

(aworkinglibrary.com)
493 points l0b0 | 5 comments | 19 Oct 24 23:39 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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TZubiri ◴[20 Oct 24 01:39 UTC] No.41892231[source]▶
I was thinking about something similar today. Sometimes accountability can be a blocker, for example for hiring.

If you have 1 candidate, it's an easy call, if you have 3 candidates, you evaluate in less than a week. If you have 200 candidates, you need to hire somebody to sift through the resumes, have like 5 rounds on interview and everybody chiming in, whoever pulls the trigger or recommends someone is now on the hook for their performance.

You can't evaluate all the information and make an informed decision, the optimal strategy is to flip a 100 sided die, but no one is going to be on the hook for that.

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cj ◴[20 Oct 24 01:54 UTC] No.41892300[source]▶
> If you have 200 candidates, you need to hire somebody to sift through the resumes, have like 5 rounds on interview and everybody chiming in, whoever pulls the trigger or recommends someone is now on the hook for their performance.

That's not how accountability works, in the traditional sense.

What you described is Person A (accountable for hiring) hiring person B (responsible for screening and evaluating candidates). Person A is still accountable for the results of Person B. If Person B hired a sh*t candidate, it still lands on Person A for not setting up an adequate hiring system.

Being accountable for something doesn't forbid you from delegating to other people. It is very common for 1 person to be accountable for multiple people's work.

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1. lstodd ◴[20 Oct 24 02:01 UTC] No.41892330[source]▶
heh never works that way. an experienced bureucrat like you describe always has a shit-deflecting canopy. so whatever decisions he personally took are never attributable to him personally.

it just so happened.

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2. from-nibly ◴[20 Oct 24 02:06 UTC] No.41892354[source]▶
That's what TFA is saying, and they call it an accountability sink.
3. cj ◴[20 Oct 24 02:26 UTC] No.41892435[source]▶
what you’re describing is not someone who is accountable for something.

In the hiring example, perhaps the person A stops being accountable for hiring someone successful in the role, and rather they are accountable for successfully hiring persons B who is capable of hiring someone to fill the role.

Essentially creating an accountability chain. If you want to describe a logical chain of accountability instead as a “accountability sink”, then I’d go along with that.

It’s true that accountability chains can be difficult to keep track of and the longer they get, the blurrier they get.

The comments here are grossly oversimplifying this concept.

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4. bigiain ◴[20 Oct 24 04:06 UTC] No.41892785[source]▶
The terms "shit umbrella" and "shit funnel" have been around for a long time, at least in the context of management in software development.

https://managementpatterns.blogspot.com/2013/01/pattern-shit...

I learned early on when I moved from development to management that a big part of my job was being accountable for everything my team did (short of outright sabotage). You don't hold junior devs accountable for anything, you do your best to monitor their work anytime they're working on something mission critical and to mentor them through the mistakes they make. Senior devs take on some or a lot of that monitoring and mentoring role, especially as the team size grows, but as their manager I am still accountable for any errors they make too (especially including letting errors from junior devs slip through).

Sometimes I think the most important part of my job is standing up before senior management and saying something like "My team made this series of decisions which resulted in the bad outcome we are here to discuss. I apologise and accept full responsibility. The team has learned from this, and we can assure you we will never repeat this mistake." And then deflecting and outright refusing to throw any of my team under the bus by naming them - to the point of being accused of insubordination occasionally.

(To be honest, I didn't internalise that quite early enough. There are probably a few apologies I should have made from back then...)

5. TZubiri ◴[20 Oct 24 14:21 UTC] No.41895539[source]▶
Sure you are a little bit responsible if your hiring manager hires a dud, but not as much. Similarly your hiring manager is not as responsible as the dud, accountability loses power in each chain.

You can fire your hiring manager and pick another one if he fails too often for example