Response from the boss:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4179298
My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report
121–130 of 145 posts
Re: My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report
#122Earlier 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]
If you suck at interviews, you'll suck even worse when you're desperate and in a hurry.
Also, interviewing is a skill that gets better with practice.
Re: My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do more! Practice makes better.
Yes! If you ([redacted]) need somebody to practice on, feel free to get in touch. I'm glad to do an interview and then give you feedback.
I can see a match-making service for finding people to give mock interviews being really useful for folks like [redacted] -- People who may be good coders, but their confidence is crappy.
Re: My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
http://www.globalfirepower.com/ Compare that list to the population size of each country, Israel is a very large outlier.
National will is important, but you don't rank on that list by being ineffective.
Re: My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
This is a very well-known phenomena. If you don't feel anything after a bug in your code cost your company lots of money and your team members many days in debugging and fixing it... then you're like nobody I've ever worked with.
Re: My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report
#126A blame field is unnecessary.
Just note the broken revision and `git blame` or `svn annotate` or whatever equivalent you have. :)
Re: My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find it interesting that you'd feel shame over a bug. Why?
This is a very well-known phenomena. If you don't feel anything after a bug in your code cost your company lots of money and your team members many days in debugging and fixing it... then you're like nobody I've ever worked with.
Really? My first major software release took the AOL mail system down for 34 hours. My later work kept it up for 8 years. I consider both equal fodder for bragging, self-immolation, and war stories over drinks. I couldn't tell you which taught me more.
Re: My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report
#128Facebook implements a system similar to this. Devs who screw up are negatively scored (I think its a star based system). Low stars mean you are less trusted etc.
Re: My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report
#129Facebook implements a system similar to this. Devs who screw up are negatively scored (I think its a star based system). Low stars mean you are less trusted etc.
This is false. You're talking about the push system, which is an entirely different kettle of fish.
Re: My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report
#130Joel Spolsky refused to add a "blame" field to FogBugz for years, he used this as an example of how you should not give the customers every feature they demand, and he said it was one of the top most requested features. He explained that once you add that field it will be the end of fixing bugs and making honest bug reports. Developers will work with QA so that bugs don't get entered into the system. Long arguments w…
Aaah... if only Open Source developers learnt from that Joel's article from 10 years ago!
Instead, filing a bug for Firefox, Gnome or the majority of popular open source projects requires you to provide even the color of your socks.