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Seriously. The CTO in question is the incompetent one. S/he failed: - Access control 101. Seriously, this is pure incompetence. It is the equivalent of having
by _jal 9y ago
Seriously. The CTO in question is the incompetent one. S/he failed:
- Access control 101. Seriously, this is pure incompetence. It is the equivalent of having the power cord to the Big Important Money Making Machine snaking across the office and under desks. If you can't be arsed to ensure that even basic measures are taken to avoid accidents, acting surprised when they happen is even more stupid.
- Sensible onboarding documentation. Why would prod access information be stuck in the "read this first" doc?
- Management 101. You just hired a green dev just out of college who has no idea how things are supposed to work. You just fired him in an incredibly nasty way for making an entirely predictable mistake that came about because of your lack of diligence at your job (see above).
Also, I have no idea what your culture looks like, but you just told all your reports that honest mistakes can be fatal and their manager's judgement resembles that of a petulant 14 year-old.
- Corporate Communications 101. Hindsight and all that, but it seems inevitable that this would lead to a social media trash fire. Congrats on embarrassing yourself and your company in an impressive way. On the bright side, this will last for about 15 minutes and then maybe three people will remember. Hopefully the folks at your next gig won't be among them.
My take away is that anyone involved in this might want to start polishing their resumes. The poor kid and the CTO for obvious reasons, and the rest of the devs, because good lord, that company sounds doomed.
- dkrich 9y agoYeah when I read that my first thought was that the CTO reacted that way because he was in fear of being fired himself. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he wrote that document or approved it himself.
- sillysaurus3 9y agoSo at what point are you allowed to fire someone for being incompetent? Blowing away the production database seems to rank pretty high. Note that I'm not talking about the situation in this article. That was a ridiculous situation and they were just asking for trouble. I'm asking about the perception that is becoming more and more common, which is that no matter what mistakes you make you should still be given a free pass regardless of severity. Is it the quantity of mistakes? Severity of mistakes? At what point does the calculus favor firing someone over retaining them?
- nialv7 9y agoYou fire people when they stopped producing values for the company. In my opinion, mistakes should never be considered the person's fault. The development process should be designed to prevent human mistakes. If mistakes happen, that only means the process has been designed poorly.
- khazhoux 9y agoYou can't treat mistakes as no-ops. This event demonstrated lack of attention.
- ResidentSleeper 9y agoDon't be ridiculous - the first day at a new job can be incredibly stressful and disorienting. And even if somehow this doesn't apply to you, keep in mind that it does to a lot of people.
- khazhoux 9y agoHa! I missed that it was his first day. World's worst on-boarding guide!
- gremlinsinc 9y agoNo kidding, --he should get a bonus for finding a HUGE bug in their security lol.
- hluska 9y agoFiring should only really be an option when someone doesn't respond well to re-training and education.
- sillysaurus3 9y agoIt's hard to imagine a startup allowing themselves to die because they're trying to patiently re-train and educate someone. I know startups are a limit case, but we didn't bother to make those sorts of distinctions for this article, so it's worth considering.