5 ms·

Parent comment is onto something. You sound traumatized.

KMag 5y ago
I was a couple years out of school, and felt a lot of responsibility. It wasn't really a big deal, but it didn't feel like it at the time.
- quakeguy 5y ago
  What a great story nevertheless.
  - KMag 5y ago
    It helped me empathize with young engineers dealing with their first high responsibility bug. About 4 years ago, I was managing a guy right out of school who pushed a minor bug that broke real-time risk calculations for a major multinational financial institution in the middle of the European trading day, prior to the NYC open, and people were yelling over email that they were trading blind. Someone had committed an important change right after his, so a simple rollback was highly sub-optimal. Remembering how I felt years ago, I reassured the new guy that people were yelling over email because it was important, not because they were mad at him. I told him that I thought he was the most familiar with his change and the most capable person to fix it, and that he should do his best to calm down and focus, but he should let me know if he needed help, and I would do my best to calm folks down. I told him he would probably remember that mistake the rest of his life, but nobody else was going to remember it a week later. He had the bug fix in production in under an hour. He sent me an email from home that night worried that he had let the team down, and I reiterated that he was going to be the only one who remembered the mistake longer than a week. The post-mortem follow-up was just to reiterate to authors and reviewers the importance of corner-case tests, and nobody brought it up later. I really only remember it because my manager sent me an email that night praising how well I handled the new guy's first big production bug.
    - mattclarkdotnet 5y ago
      "I reassured the new guy that people were yelling over email because it was important, not because they were mad at him" This is outstanding advice, and very well put. I shall be borrowing it, thank you!
    - koide 5y ago
      For someone who sort of justified a humiliating response to a mistake a few comments above, this seems really well done! Congratulations.
    - jseban 5y ago
      It's your fault, you were the manager, the yelling should not even have leaked to the developer, it should have stopped with you. Edit: if you are managing someone who is new in a job, it's your job to make sure they don't push bugs to break important stuff in the first place.
      - stavros 5y ago
        I don't think we can assign blame in a complicated situation based on a two-paragraph retelling, please have a bit more empathy.
      - Forgeties79 5y ago
        Did you consider the fact that you probably know nothing about the dynamics of their workplace, the structure of their management/leadership, etc. before assigning blame?
      - webmaven 5y ago
        > It's your fault, you were the manager, the yelling should not even have leaked to the developer, it should have stopped with you. That's impractical in organizations with flatter structures and general purpose communication channels. What would you suggest, kicking everyone off of internal IRC/Slack/mailing lists/etc.?
      - KMag 5y ago
        The "yelling" was coming to the team email list, asking for ETAs and progress updates for when real-time risk would be back up. Roughly 4 people at the time knew the bug could be traced to the new guy's commit, and none of those people were doing the "yelling". And it was Goldman, so the "yelling" was kept very professional (no swearing, strictly enforced). But, there were literally tens of billions of dollars that needed to be dynamically hedged, but that wasn't possible without real-time risk, the European markets were open, and markets in the Americas were going to be open within a couple of hours. Trading and management were making sure that that everyone on the team email list understood that this was drop-everything important, perhaps using all caps. Yes, I and the person who reviewed the change bear more responsibility than the new developer. Also, I say "new guy", but the person who had interned with us the Summer after "the new guy" had already joined full time at that point, so "the new guy" had been working full time with the team for at least 9 months at that point. I also remember the room where it happened, which wasn't the first room we were in, so maybe he had been with us full time more like 18 months. In any case, it was the first time when he was trying keep the weight of billions of dollars out of his head and calmly but quickly fix a bug.

KMag 5y ago

I was a couple years out of school, and felt a lot of responsibility. It wasn't really a big deal, but it didn't feel like it at the time.

quakeguy 5y ago
What a great story nevertheless.
- KMag 5y ago
  It helped me empathize with young engineers dealing with their first high responsibility bug. About 4 years ago, I was managing a guy right out of school who pushed a minor bug that broke real-time risk calculations for a major multinational financial institution in the middle of the European trading day, prior to the NYC open, and people were yelling over email that they were trading blind. Someone had committed an important change right after his, so a simple rollback was highly sub-optimal. Remembering how I felt years ago, I reassured the new guy that people were yelling over email because it was important, not because they were mad at him. I told him that I thought he was the most familiar with his change and the most capable person to fix it, and that he should do his best to calm down and focus, but he should let me know if he needed help, and I would do my best to calm folks down. I told him he would probably remember that mistake the rest of his life, but nobody else was going to remember it a week later. He had the bug fix in production in under an hour. He sent me an email from home that night worried that he had let the team down, and I reiterated that he was going to be the only one who remembered the mistake longer than a week. The post-mortem follow-up was just to reiterate to authors and reviewers the importance of corner-case tests, and nobody brought it up later. I really only remember it because my manager sent me an email that night praising how well I handled the new guy's first big production bug.
  - mattclarkdotnet 5y ago
    "I reassured the new guy that people were yelling over email because it was important, not because they were mad at him" This is outstanding advice, and very well put. I shall be borrowing it, thank you!
  - koide 5y ago
    For someone who sort of justified a humiliating response to a mistake a few comments above, this seems really well done! Congratulations.
  - jseban 5y ago
    It's your fault, you were the manager, the yelling should not even have leaked to the developer, it should have stopped with you. Edit: if you are managing someone who is new in a job, it's your job to make sure they don't push bugs to break important stuff in the first place.
    - stavros 5y ago
      I don't think we can assign blame in a complicated situation based on a two-paragraph retelling, please have a bit more empathy.
    - Forgeties79 5y ago
      Did you consider the fact that you probably know nothing about the dynamics of their workplace, the structure of their management/leadership, etc. before assigning blame?
    - webmaven 5y ago
      > It's your fault, you were the manager, the yelling should not even have leaked to the developer, it should have stopped with you. That's impractical in organizations with flatter structures and general purpose communication channels. What would you suggest, kicking everyone off of internal IRC/Slack/mailing lists/etc.?
    - KMag 5y ago
      The "yelling" was coming to the team email list, asking for ETAs and progress updates for when real-time risk would be back up. Roughly 4 people at the time knew the bug could be traced to the new guy's commit, and none of those people were doing the "yelling". And it was Goldman, so the "yelling" was kept very professional (no swearing, strictly enforced). But, there were literally tens of billions of dollars that needed to be dynamically hedged, but that wasn't possible without real-time risk, the European markets were open, and markets in the Americas were going to be open within a couple of hours. Trading and management were making sure that that everyone on the team email list understood that this was drop-everything important, perhaps using all caps. Yes, I and the person who reviewed the change bear more responsibility than the new developer. Also, I say "new guy", but the person who had interned with us the Summer after "the new guy" had already joined full time at that point, so "the new guy" had been working full time with the team for at least 9 months at that point. I also remember the room where it happened, which wasn't the first room we were in, so maybe he had been with us full time more like 18 months. In any case, it was the first time when he was trying keep the weight of billions of dollars out of his head and calmly but quickly fix a bug.