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"What does this teach us? Well, it teaches me to do more diverse tests when doing destructive operations. It also should probably teach something to Vimeo and t
by davbryn1 4y ago
"What does this teach us? Well, it teaches me to do more diverse tests when doing destructive operations. It also should probably teach something to Vimeo and to my contractor but I doubt it will (and yes, the upload for some reason is still manual to this day. Go figure!)"
So you wrote bad code, didn't test it properly, ran it on production on the Friday before a release and are blaming Vimeo and [name redacted]?
And your resolution was yet another cobbled together script that you probably didn't test?
This isn't a great article to have attached your name to
- gala8y 4y agoNot to mention that he _deleted_, but not _lost_ videos. Nothing to see here.
- chopin 4y agoI'd hire this guy if only being for this frank about his mistake. He owned it and that is what I would look for. After deletion, what should he have done? Postpone the go-live? That's often not a a cost-effective option. As for a risk-analysis the worst what could happen was deletion of the remaining videos. I don't think that that makes big difference in this situation. And to do the right thing, you have to have the infrastructure in place, if you are in a hurry. I doubt that's the case for a 10 heads shop.
- malexbone 4y agoAgree 100%. Acknowledged mistake, moved forward to find a solution. Reflected on lessons learned. Shared valuable lesson. To me this indicates intelligence, competence, integrity, grit and generosity. TechnicL proficiency is much easier to come by than integrity, grit and generosity. I would trust the author to deliver on commitments.
- davbryn1 4y agoOwning the mistake would be fine if he did that - he did'nt. He blamed the company he was contracting for. That's a big no from me
- thevinter 4y agoI'm sorry if it came off like that. The mistake in this case was completely mine (bad code and bad testing). The detour on the other two companies was mostly because this way of deleting/recovering stuff should've probably been avoided in the first place, other than that I'm absolutely not blaming anyone else!
- davbryn1 4y agoDon't worry about all that - there isn't a developer worth their salt that hasn't made a mistake. But I'd consider having this blog post and HN post retracted purely for future internet checks. It isn't a reflection on you, and your honesty is fantastic. But there is a lot to be said about using a pseudonym when it comes this close to your employers
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- desarun 4y agoI'd probably make your github profile private for a while as well. Or at least removing your real name from it.
- esquivalience 4y agoIt's as if we read different articles. He literally writes that he made "A series of mistakes that could've probably been easily prevented."
- honksillet 4y agoAgreed. But I’d also fire him from this job.
- yohannparis 4y agoDoesn't make sense. Their employer literally paid them to learn from their mistake. Now, you think they should be fired? So that another employer rips the benefits of that learning experience.
- Beltiras 4y agoFor having got into a sticky situation and out of it?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- SparkyMcUnicorn 4y ago"Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?" -- Thomas J. Watson
- GordonS 4y agoAye, this is how you learn and make sure it doesn't happen again. I did a similar thing ~20 years ago when I first started my career, accidentally deleting a production database because I thought I was working on the test database. I owned it, learned lessons from it, and it's never happened again.
- breakfastduck 4y agoVimeo completed a major migration of videos between accounts with no confirmation or communication before commiting it, then refused to reverse the change. Hardly the best service. The article hardly comes across as 'blaming' them for the core issue but they were definitely not helpful.
- kwertyoowiyop 4y agoWill every developer who has never checked in bad code on Friday, or accidentally deleted the wrong data, please raise their hand? ‘Judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from poor judgment.’ :-)
- nickkell 4y agoBetter to do it before the release then afterwards. I'm assuming this way nobody noticed the issue. Also, would you rather everyone only ever posted about all the times they were successful?
- smokey_circles 4y agoOof, we wouldn't work well together. Very rarely is someone good enough to be this obnoxious.
- davbryn1 4y agoI very much doubt you would ever work with or for me.
- jasonlotito 4y ago> This isn't a great article to have attached your name to A million times better than your comment.
- davbryn1 4y agoAll I did was give advice. If you don't like it it's fine.
- oneepic 4y agoEarlier in the article, the author does call out that it's bad code, so he's not entirely blaming these companies. Anyway: You should not be afraid of thinking about what each party could have done better. Not just yourself, but other people too. When I look back on times where I only blamed myself for prod issues, it was less of a learning experience, and more focused on beating myself up for no good reason. That approach shows that I'm afraid of the consequences, and it's an effective way to feel isolated from the team instead of improving.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dang 4y ago(Since the OP redacted the company name from the post, I've done the same in your comment here. I hope that's ok.) (We do this sort of thing to protect users, usually as the result of an emailed request, and you can tell when we've done it because of the word 'redacted' in square brackets.)