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What I think is particularly noteworthy is not that Gitlab recognized that anybody could have made that mistake, but rather how supportive Gitlab was about the
by Declanomous 10y ago
What I think is particularly noteworthy is not that Gitlab recognized that anybody could have made that mistake, but rather how supportive Gitlab was about the whole thing.
When you make a big mistake, it is easy to place yourself in a mindset where you feel like a disaster even though everyone is accepting. I call it the "disappointing your parents" mindset, because it can feel a lot like people are just being supportive because they love you, and what you did was indeed inexcusable to a certain degree.
The feeling is made somewhat worse when you are an employee, because your livelihood and your future are dependent on how other people perceive you. To that point, I'm really impressed by the fact that Gitlab addressed the fact that this employee was still being promoted, and that the mistake hadn't affected that. In my mind that is as at least as important as all of the rah-rah stuff.
- overcast 10y agoThey really had no choice. If they were jerks about it, they would have made an already completely ridiculous scenario ten times worse. Spinning this as some lighthearted commentary spam every week since then, is their PR move.
- Declanomous 10y agoThat's true, and I do find the semi-celebratory tone a bit self-congratulatory. That's why I think team-member-1 still being promoted is the most important factor at play.
- sytse 10y agoIt wasn't our intention to come accross as self-congratulatory but I can see how it might come accross as such. We take this incident really serious and especially our production engineers are working very hard to improve our infrastructure.
- RainaRelanah 10y agoI actually think the openness is very important as well. Many companies(/C levels/managers/employees/clients/etc) are still stuck in the "heads must roll" mindset, where a mistake is punished rather than used as a learning experience for the employee and for the company. I think at the very least it'll turn the heads of a few employees that are living in fear of being fired for a typo by showing them there are still decent employers left in the field.
- rodorgas 10y agoAn ordinary company would not disclose so much details about the outage. GitLab's openness required them to do so, and they had no choice but posting these "lighthearted commentaries" about people involved. The amazing thing about the event is their level of openness.