At ten past three
the alert landed in the engineering channel.
Payment webhooks failing.
Two hundred people in that channel.
The message showed
the little row of avatars
of everyone who had read it.
Eleven.
Then thirty.
Then forty.
Two people added
the eyes emoji.
Nobody wrote
I am looking.
At four,
a customer emailed support
to ask why their order
had not been confirmed.
That was the first time
anyone opened the logs.
Every one of those forty
was a decent engineer.
Most of them would have fixed it
in twenty minutes
if it had come to them alone.
That is the uncomfortable part.
It did not come to any of them alone.
In 1968
John Darley and Bibb Latané
ran a study in New York.
Students talked over an intercom,
and one voice
appeared to have a seizure.
When a student believed
they were the only other listener,
eighty five percent
went for help
before the seizure ended.
When they believed
four others were listening too,
thirty one percent did.
Same people.
Same emergency.
The only thing that changed
was the size of the audience.
They called it
diffusion of responsibility.
Every extra witness
makes each witness
a little more sure
that somebody else has it.
A busy channel
is a crowd of witnesses.
And the read receipts
make it worse,
because you can see
how many others know.
So notice the thought
when you have it.
Somebody must be on this.
That sentence
is the effect speaking.
If you can check,
check,
and say so in writing.
I am looking at it.
Six words
turn you from a witness
into an owner,
and tell the other thirty nine
where to send what they know.
If it is not yours,
say whose it is,
by name,
and ask them directly.
And if you lead a team,
stop sending alerts to crowds.
Send them to one person
on call,
with the crowd copied.
Responsibility
that belongs to everyone
lands on no one.
Give it a name.
– Serguey Asael Shinder
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