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The tech world is rallying around a young developer who made a huge mistake

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Re: The tech world is rallying around a young developer who made a huge mistake

#3
post #2

This article clearly missed the point. He didn't make a huge mistake, he made a very tiny one. The company/CTO made the huge mistakes.

To be fair, the article states that the junior dev made one mistake, whereas the company made several. However, I agree with you in that it should emphasize that the mistake made by the junior dev is lesser in both size and quantity.

Re: The tech world is rallying around a young developer who made a huge mistake

#4
post #2

This article clearly missed the point. He didn't make a huge mistake, he made a very tiny one. The company/CTO made the huge mistakes.

He made a tiny mistake that, due to the mistakes made by the company/CTO, had huge consequences.

As a first-day developer, he shouldn't really have had the ability to make a mistake with any consequences beyond lost time.

Re: The tech world is rallying around a young developer who made a huge mistake

#7

Glad to see more folks discussing this. I'm sure it's reassuring to the new developer that this wasn't their fault. It's still amazing how badly that company is being managed from a technical perspective.

Or... since no aspect of the story is verifiable, and much of it is nonsensical in the reactions of all parties involved, it is completely fake.

Re: The tech world is rallying around a young developer who made a huge mistake

#8
post #2

This article clearly missed the point. He didn't make a huge mistake, he made a very tiny one. The company/CTO made the huge mistakes.

A old supervisor of mine told me that "You treat a new developer like a duckling near a pond with Northern Pike". There is no way you let them have access to production (or frankly, anything past a development environment) until they have been there a while and gotten the hang of it.

On a tangent, I was paranoid enough in one position to have all my production terminal windows have a red background with yellow text. That brought the proper, serious attitude towards my work.

Re: The tech world is rallying around a young developer who made a huge mistake

#9
post #2

This article clearly missed the point. He didn't make a huge mistake, he made a very tiny one. The company/CTO made the huge mistakes.

A old supervisor of mine told me that "You treat a new developer like a duckling near a pond with Northern Pike". There is no way you let them have access to production (or frankly, anything past a development environment) until they have been there a while and gotten the hang of it. On a tangent, I was paranoid enough in one position to have all my production terminal windows have a red background with yellow text.…

That's not paranoid! That's a fantastic thing to do and one that I highly recommend for anyone. It's terribly easy to forget which environment you're working in when you get distracted for a moment and that's how mistakes happen.

Re: The tech world is rallying around a young developer who made a huge mistake

#10
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A old supervisor of mine told me that "You treat a new developer like a duckling near a pond with Northern Pike". There is no way you let them have access to production (or frankly, anything past a development environment) until they have been there a while and gotten the hang of it. On a tangent, I was paranoid enough in one position to have all my production terminal windows have a red background with yellow text.…

That's not paranoid! That's a fantastic thing to do and one that I highly recommend for anyone. It's terribly easy to forget which environment you're working in when you get distracted for a moment and that's how mistakes happen.

I went the whole nine yards on that project. I had white (black font) for my own machine, green for development, blue for integration test, yellow for system test, and red for production.

I liked the green / white text theme the most with blue being my second favorite to write code in so those got the ones I would use the most. I was never a lover of the old amber terminals and red is just plain painful to write on. I guess the more pain your terminal causes you, the more dangerous the environment.

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