Running into a burning building is heroic work.
Keeping buildings from burning down in the first place
is actually just as important.
And it scales more reliably.
– Seth’s Blog
I’ve worked with firefighters and with fire inspectors on proposals: literally and metaphorically. Unless the damn place/proposal is on fire, I much prefer the inspectors. Seth’s right: prevention scales more reliably than recovery.
But when things *are* on fire despite our maybe less-than-best efforts, asking “why” in that moment is not only not helpful, it makes it harder to do the work that needs to be done.
If someone can’t help with the effort to extinguish the flames, they should shut up and sit down.
There’ll be lots of time later to do the forensic analysis.