Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

programmers.stackexchange.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 145 posts

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

#111

Post by Retric »

anamax wrote: post #99
Nimi wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Israeli, I can vouch for the massive ass-covering that goes on there. In fact, we just had a big public ass-covering demonstration regarding the awful flotilla blockade. Regardless of what one thinks of the political aspects and/or morality of that action, the purpose was to examine why were several soldiers injured and Israel's relationship with Turkey, previously a strategic ally, deteriorated. Both these res…

> effective organizational behavior is definitely not something you want to pick up from the IDF. (1) The IDF is "ineffective" on an absolute scale. (2) The IDF is significantly more effective than most other organizations. While better isn't perfect, you can learn from both.

It's also a lot easier for large organizations to examine issues of a less sensitive nature. AKA missile detonates in the middle of a field vs school.

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

#113

Post by Nimi »

anamax wrote: post #99
Nimi wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Israeli, I can vouch for the massive ass-covering that goes on there. In fact, we just had a big public ass-covering demonstration regarding the awful flotilla blockade. Regardless of what one thinks of the political aspects and/or morality of that action, the purpose was to examine why were several soldiers injured and Israel's relationship with Turkey, previously a strategic ally, deteriorated. Both these res…

> effective organizational behavior is definitely not something you want to pick up from the IDF. (1) The IDF is "ineffective" on an absolute scale. (2) The IDF is significantly more effective than most other organizations. While better isn't perfect, you can learn from both.

Why do you claim that the IDF is more effective than other organizations?

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

#114

Post by chris_wot »

[deleted] wrote: post #95
Goladus wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beware. If the environment is as bad as it sounds, the issue may get forced on you sooner than later. Something will draw the Eye of Sauron onto your boss and he will need to fire a scapegoat or get blamed himself. As the guy who doesn't give a crap you'll be both threatening and vulnerable. Getting fired can turn out to be a good thing in the long run but it's stressful and best to avoid if possible.

[deleted]

Seriously, if that's the case then get the hell out. It's going to stifle your whole career if you stay in a place that is poisonous. And it will kill your confidence (if it hasn't already).

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

#116

Post by roguecoder »

quantumhobbit wrote: post #108
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…

That sort of sounds like how Morbidity and Mortality conferences at hospitals are supposed to work. It isn't about assigning blame(unless someone really screwed up) but examining the mistake in front of the whole department so that everybody learns from it.

Right. Ideally, everyone is willing to take responsibility for the work they do and are proud of it even when it contains flaws.

If you can't handle having bugs in your code without getting all defensive, you probably shouldn't be coding. The only way to get better is to get feedback.

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

#117

Post by dredmorbius »

[deleted] wrote: post #95
Goladus wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beware. If the environment is as bad as it sounds, the issue may get forced on you sooner than later. Something will draw the Eye of Sauron onto your boss and he will need to fire a scapegoat or get blamed himself. As the guy who doesn't give a crap you'll be both threatening and vulnerable. Getting fired can turn out to be a good thing in the long run but it's stressful and best to avoid if possible.

[deleted]

You should have a lot of external contacts who know you directly then, if there's similar turnover in your department.

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

#118

Post by roguecoder »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #67

Reminds me of a consulting story. I was sitting down with a team getting started on Agile/Lean, and I was trying to lighten things up. "Well, the first thing to do is pick somebody to blame when it all goes south," I paused for effect, "and that's usually me, the consultant." It was dead silent. Everyone in the room was looking at me seriously. Tough crowd.

I had a new PM come in and give a similar speech. "If we fail spectacularly, it is going to be my job. But if we just fail, it is also going to be my job. More importantly, in neither case is it going to be your job. So now is the time when you can do spectacular things in utter safety; I'm asking you to take this opportunity and run with it!"

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

#119

Post by hackoder »

A lot of ideas sound great to management, and they work too! I mean, other than killing employee morale and resulting in long term loss ;-)

At one of my past jobs, we worked like consultants (we quoted hours that a task would take to get done, tested etc). We filled daily timesheets to ensure that our hours did not exceed our estimates. In fact, the time on those timesheets had to total 40 hours every week. So we worked the full 40 hours. And we billed those 40 hours to the client. In those few months, I was as productive as I've ever been.

Unfortunately, we weren't paid like consultants.. we got a regular salary. Management was doing nothing wrong. They failed to realize that the 'consultant lifestyle' of billing and working in hours only works if there is an equally motivating paycheck to go with it. I've known multiple people to leave because of how hard it was.

You shouldn't need a person to blame field. Good responsible employees will know what they did wrong and work to fix it. And if they don't, having the field in there will only increase finger pointing and people trying to protect their own jobs. And your bottom line will still not improve. So why do it?

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

#120

Post by damoncali »

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.

I find it interesting that you'd feel shame over a bug. Why?
Post reply on HN