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My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report

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Re: My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report

#51

Post by reitzensteinm »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #47
reitzensteinm wrote: post #32

The top answer has it exactly right. This should be Root Cause, since ultimately even bugs caused by human errors are really caused by systemic flaws. Some examples: * SQLite has 1177 times as many tests as code (not a typo) * Live television is broadcast with a 5-10 second delay * IMVU automatically reverts commits pushed to the site if regressions are detected * Netflix implemented a system called the Chaos Monkey,…

I'm usually arguing against stereotyping management around here, but I find it a stretch to believe a boss who thinks "Person to Blame" is going to be willing to pay the cost for true root cause analysis. I have a feeling it's more like: ; "Oh, it's Bob's fault."

I completely agree with that - the boss in the story sounds like a lost cause. My post was more of a speaking in general kind of thing.

I was going to go off on a tangent about the importance of good management, but I haven't ever had a boss (self employed then startups), so by missing half the picture I didn't really feel qualified.

Re: My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report

#52

Post by sgoranson »

[deleted] wrote: post #6

[deleted]

Sounds identical to my first job outta college. I knew that some of the senior neckbeards were just toxic people, but at the same time I knew I was really inexperienced so it was hard not to second guess everything I did. In the end I quit (5 years later) but felt like at least I learned a lot about code and even more about people and how to not run a company. Thicker skin too. (p.s. thanks for posting, your comment was a nice change of pace from the usual pissing contest fare)

Re: My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report

#53

Post by rcfox »

yashchandra wrote: post #44

Person to blame: A Boss to 'A': what happened ? why the bug ? 'A' to boss: I just checked in the code. It was done by 'B'. Boss to 'B': hey what happened ? Why the bug ? 'B' to boss: I just merged the code from 'C'. boss to 'C': hey what happened ? Why the bug ? 'C' to boss: My code worked fine when I unit tested. I gave it over to 'D' to integrate. boss to 'D': hey what happened ? 'D' to boss: I integrated fine when…

Boss to the team: That's it, no more software!

Re: My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report

#54

Post by wccrawford »

cletus wrote: post #46

One tradition I really appreciate at Google is the post-mortem. Any serious outage or bug will be followed by a detailed post-mortem detailing a timeline of what went wrong and why. Sometimes this will go as far as establishing a "war room", possibly for weeks, dragging in people from a number of different areas to address a particular issue. It's not about pointing the finger or otherwise apportioning blame. It's ab…

A good programmer will feel shame from that whole process even if nobody points the finger at them. The blame game just isn't needed.

A bad programmer shouldn't work there in the first place, and if they need to be blamed, they're probably doing other things to destroy morale.

Re: My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report

#55

Post by richardlblair »

[deleted] wrote: post #14
scott_s wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a toxic work environment, and I'm not sure from verb-tenses if you're still there or not. If you are, find another place to work. Your quality of life will improve.

[deleted]

"Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right." - Henry Ford

You can start to overcome this by telling yourself that your are amazing at interviews. Eventually you will start to believe it.

At the end of the day an interview is just explaining why you are awesome, and then getting the interviewer to tell you why their company is awesome.

I hope you can get out of this toxic environment. No one deserves that kind of disrespect.

Re: My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report

#57

Post by kls »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #47
reitzensteinm wrote: post #32

The top answer has it exactly right. This should be Root Cause, since ultimately even bugs caused by human errors are really caused by systemic flaws. Some examples: * SQLite has 1177 times as many tests as code (not a typo) * Live television is broadcast with a 5-10 second delay * IMVU automatically reverts commits pushed to the site if regressions are detected * Netflix implemented a system called the Chaos Monkey,…

I'm usually arguing against stereotyping management around here, but I find it a stretch to believe a boss who thinks "Person to Blame" is going to be willing to pay the cost for true root cause analysis. I have a feeling it's more like: ; "Oh, it's Bob's fault."

We actually had a tradition at one of the places I worked at, where someone along the way brought in a trophy and the title was changed to something along the lines of best bug write. Anytime a bug broke the system the trophy was passed to the person that broke the system. It was actually light hearted and effective. We would make a big deal of passing the trophy, but no one wanted that trophy. It was not punitive, but more of a joke, kind of a simple reminder that I don't want to be the guy with the trophy on his desk.

Re: My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report

#58

Post by tomkin »

Sounds like you have a large team if it's gotten so out of hand that you need to add a field. So isn't your boss the one at fault for hiring a bunch of shit programmers?

Hiring a bunch of shit programmers and putting up a blame field is like trying to patch the Titanic with a band-aid. If your programmers are shit, your boss is the one to blame and should be fired. Adding a blame field will just incite demoralizing outcomes for those who make regular human mistakes.

Re: My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report

#59

Post by eternalban »

wccrawford wrote: post #54
cletus wrote: post #46

One tradition I really appreciate at Google is the post-mortem. Any serious outage or bug will be followed by a detailed post-mortem detailing a timeline of what went wrong and why. Sometimes this will go as far as establishing a "war room", possibly for weeks, dragging in people from a number of different areas to address a particular issue. It's not about pointing the finger or otherwise apportioning blame. It's ab…

A good programmer will feel shame from that whole process even if nobody points the finger at them. The blame game just isn't needed. A bad programmer shouldn't work there in the first place, and if they need to be blamed, they're probably doing other things to destroy morale.

s/programmer/worker

Re: My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report

#60

Post by bambax »

I had this to say but can't post it on the site:

The European Directive 94/56/EC [1] "on the investigation and prevention of accidents and incidents in civil aviation and repealing" states that:

> ‘causes’ means actions, omissions, events, conditions, or a combination thereof, which led to the accident or incident; the identification of causes does not imply the assignment of fault or the determination of administrative, civil or criminal liability;_

(Art. 2 part 4).

This is said again in the preamble of the same directive, paragraph 4:

> The sole objective of safety investigations should be the prevention of future accidents and incidents without apportioning blame or liability.

I'm sure there are many other legal texts (including in the US) that state the same thing, as it's plain common sense: assigning blame and getting to the root cause of a problem are two very different and separate businesses; both are necessary but shouldn't be conducted by the same personnel and not at the same time.

[1]: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2...

(Why HN doesn't support Markdown, we'll never know.)

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