Re:Guide to scaling engineering organizations
by wlll on Wednesday December 05, 2018 @10:18AM
(#18608923)
While I agree with the sentiment, this isn't entirely true:
> A false negative has zero cost (and zero benefit).
False negatives means that your hiring process is longer, more difficult, more costly, and you therefore find it harder to grow, or to replace people who leave.
It may well be that avoiding false positives in general is better for the business, but it's not as clear cut as you make out I believe, it's a balance.
Re:Guide to scaling engineering organizations
by sheepmullet on Wednesday December 05, 2018 @04:01PM
(#18612493)
> False negatives means that your hiring process is longer, more difficult, more costly, and you therefore find it harder to grow, or to replace people who leave.
Exactly! If a couple of people on my team of six leave and they can’t be replaced for 6-12 months then I’m going to quit as well.
There will be more pressure on the remaining team to produce and most of the interesting long term work will be put on hold.
Re:Guide to scaling engineering organizations
by jonathanoliver on Wednesday December 05, 2018 @10:19AM
(#18608941)
A false negative has zero realized cost. I would say there's missed opportunity cost.
Re:Guide to scaling engineering organizations
by beagle3 on Thursday December 06, 2018 @03:31AM
(#18616315)
Yes. But a false positive has negative realized cost AND missed opportunity cost; I was implicitly subtracting the missed opportunity cost as it appears in both, but it should be stated explicitly - Thanks.
A false positive often has negative contribution to the overall training (at the very least taking time from current members without giving back, but often also creating new problems).
A false negative has zero cost (and zero benefit).
I think it's a no-brainer that false negatives are much preferred to false positives in the overall tradeoff (and ... there is always a tradeoff between false positive and false negative)