02 January, 2016

How completely messed up practices become normal

How completely messed up practices become normal: "A classic example that tech folks often bring up is hand-washing by doctors and nurses. It’s well known that germs exist, and that washing hands properly very strongly reduces the odds of transmitting germs and thereby significantly reduces hospital mortality rates. Despite that, trained doctors and nurses still often don’t do it. Interventions are required. Signs reminding people to wash their hands save lives. But when people stand at hand-washing stations to require others walking by to wash their hands, even more lives are saved. People can ignore signs, but they can’t ignore being forced to wash their hands.

This mirrors a number of attempts at tech companies to introduce better practices. If you tell people they should do it, that helps a bit. If you enforce better practices via code review, that helps a lot."



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