From: Alan Olsen <alano@teleport.com>
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 1996 10:57:53 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Why Companies are Poor at Finding Bugs
Message-ID: <2.2.32.19960110024957.00963960@mail.teleport.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 06:53 PM 1/9/96 -0800, Tim May wrote:

>And this has always been a major role of extra-corporate agents: safety
>inspectors, insurance companies, independent testing laboratories, and so
>on. The in-house testing departments are frequently inclined to overstate
>concerns (known universally as "CYA," for "cover your ass"), so it is not
>surprising that their concerns are often treated as a non-urgent matter.
>Until a crisis happens, then they are lambasted for not having spoken up
>more loudly and more forcefully.

I have seen this before in a number of companies...  I think it is becuase
alot of management is trained to think of things in the positive.  To try
and put the best spin on any situation...  On the other hand, people of a
technical bent tend to think of things as problems to be solved.  Such an
outlook is seen as negative.  The two outlooks seem to conflict on many
levels. Such outlooks from management tend to delay resolution of problems
until it is too late...

>This was true in ancient Sumeria, in the early factories in Europe, on the
>communes in China, and in the high-tech labs of today. An easily
>understandable mixture of psychology, systems analysis, group dynamics,
>economics, and evolutionary game theory.

You forgot the works of Machivelli...

Alan Olsen -- alano@teleport.com -- Contract Web Design & Instruction
        `finger -l alano@teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key 
              http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ 
"Governments are potholes on the Information Superhighway." - Not TCMay