Ingratitude

Zoho’s domain was inaccessible for a while. This is an embarrassing event for a software organization.

Whenever I hear of events like this, I am reminded of a couple of pages in “The Black Swan“. Taleb calls it “A new kind of ingratitude”.

The idea presented by Taleb essentially boils down to a person who takes steps to prevent something catastrophic from happening. Since that person has taken steps to prevent the catastrophe, the catastrophe never occurs. Thus the person never gets his due and dies a silent hero.

This is a very fascinating thought that keeps repeating in all aspects of life. Whenever it floods, we make a big deal of politicians who fold their sleeves and get into action. What about that politician who took the necessary steps to prevent flooding?

Whenever there is a production issue at work and a team goes out of their way to put out the fire, that team is lauded. What about those teams that took steps to prevent something like this from occurring in the first place?

Software security is one big area that falls in this category. If you have a great security team, life would go on humming silently. You need to have the right tech leadership to recognize this otherwise it falls bang into ingratitude category.

This is a very obvious thought but Taleb has done a great job of giving structure to this idea. If you keep your eyes open, you see this happening around you all the time.