Bystander-Effect

At 3:15 AM on March 13, 1964, a young woman named Kitty Genovese was attacked outside her apartment building in Queens, New York. She screamed for help. The attack lasted over 30 minutes. According to The New York Times, 38 people witnessed the attack from their apartment windows. Not one called the police during the assault. Kitty Genovese died. The story shocked America. How could 38 people watch someone being murdered and do nothing? ...

A critical bug crashed our production system at 2 AM. Slack notifications went out to the entire engineering team—thirty developers. Nobody responded. Not for 45 minutes. Everyone saw the alerts. Everyone assumed someone else would handle it. After all, with thirty people notified, surely someone more senior, more experienced, or more available would jump in. When I finally woke up and fixed it, I found out that seventeen people had been awake and seen the alert. Each one thought, “Someone else will get this.” ...