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As one of my early mentorish people used to say: sometimes you have to let the baby fall down.

Before that I hated it when people confessed to me that they knew a problem was going to happen and they did nothing to stop it. But the problem with doing things right the first time is that nobody appreciates how hard it is. You spend all your political capital trying to stop the company from making a mistake it desperately wants to make. You get no credit when it doesn't happen because they already figured it wouldn't. And you don't get any buy-in for keeping it from repeating in the future. So now you have this plate you have to spin all by yourself, and nobody who can hand your more control gives a shit other than the fact that you seem like an asshole so we aren't going to promote you.



This is the hidden cost of heroics[1]: it severs an important information channel.

[1]: https://entropicthoughts.com/hidden-cost-of-heroics


I feel like that's what happening nowadays with vaccines and the like: victims of their own success




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