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How is it pointing fingers if your hosting provider lost your site plus their backups of your site? They were being paid to provide a service, and they failed

by akeefer 17y ago

How is it pointing fingers if your hosting provider lost your site plus their backups of your site? They were being paid to provide a service, and they failed at it in basically the worst possible way (i.e. total data loss, rather than just downtime). Sure, he should have had his own backups, but how does the fact that he could have recovered better form his host's screw up change the fact that they screwed up? That's not too far from saying that it's your fault if you get hit by a car while walking across a crosswalk because you didn't jump out of the way fast enough. They failed, they failed in a catastrophic way, and they deserve to have it made public knowledge and to lose business over it. He should do a better job backing up his own stuff, but he's right to be angry with his hosting provider and to call them out.

synnik 17y ago
He is right to be angry, but I have to disagree about calling them out while the site is still done. An analysis posted after the fact can lay out where the technical failures took place, and that is the right time to describe issues with the host. Pointing fingers in anger is very frowned upon in all organizations I work with. It implies a lack of ownership of your own products and a lack of maturity in handling your business affairs. Organizations that pursue blame before solutions do not have a positive culture -- they have a fear-based culture. To answer your direct question, nothing he says will change the fact that the vendor screwed up. Your analogy is correct that it is the drivers fault if someone hits you, but flawed in that you cannot absolve all responsibility for your own safety when crossing streets. When a vendor screws up, the level of professionalism that you portray when dealing with the situation says a great deal about yourself.
- akeefer 17y ago
  Point taken regarding calling them out before the situation is resolved: it would be far more respectful to allow the provider a reasonable amount of time to correct the error before explicitly attacking them. In this situation, I can understand it a little more, as recovering the backups from various internet caches might seem like a time-critical operation, and it would be difficult to ask for help with that without some explanation of what's happened. That explanation certainly could be fairly vague, though. Once the situation is resolved, though, if the resolution is unsatisfactory I think it's fair to say so. I really took issue with your initial comment because "pointing the finger" has some connotation of assigning blame unfairly or unreasonably; I 100% agree that companies with a culture of blame are poisonous, and that people should err on the side of accepting too much responsibility rather than too little, and do their best to not pass blame on to other people. There's certainly a line, however, across which I think it's reasonable to call someone else out. Where that line is depends on the situation and your relationship: the bar for doing it within your team is astronomically high (you should basically always deal with those things internally), within even the same company is still incredibly high (likewise), but it's lower when it comes to vendor relationships. Where you draw the line is probably different from where I draw it. So while I agree that he should have waited, I don't think that publicly expressing his anger with his hosting provider after the fact would count as "pointing the finger" or "passing the buck" or otherwise indicative of a lack of personal responsibility; to me it would be understandable frustration and anger out of having been so dramatically let down by a third-party you were contracting with. And honestly, that sort of negative public publicity is one of the strongest checks we have on companies, be they hosting companies or retail stores or any other type of establishment. More to the point: even if he did have backups, if they really lost his data and were unable to recover it themselves, I think he'd still be justified in outing their failure publicly after the fact. But again, you're definitely right that he should have waited and given the host a chance to resolve the issue before saying anything.

by akeefer 17y ago

synnik 17y ago

He is right to be angry, but I have to disagree about calling them out while the site is still done. An analysis posted after the fact can lay out where the technical failures took place, and that is the right time to describe issues with the host. Pointing fingers in anger is very frowned upon in all organizations I work with. It implies a lack of ownership of your own products and a lack of maturity in handling your business affairs. Organizations that pursue blame before solutions do not have a positive culture -- they have a fear-based culture. To answer your direct question, nothing he says will change the fact that the vendor screwed up. Your analogy is correct that it is the drivers fault if someone hits you, but flawed in that you cannot absolve all responsibility for your own safety when crossing streets. When a vendor screws up, the level of professionalism that you portray when dealing with the situation says a great deal about yourself.

akeefer 17y ago
Point taken regarding calling them out before the situation is resolved: it would be far more respectful to allow the provider a reasonable amount of time to correct the error before explicitly attacking them. In this situation, I can understand it a little more, as recovering the backups from various internet caches might seem like a time-critical operation, and it would be difficult to ask for help with that without some explanation of what's happened. That explanation certainly could be fairly vague, though. Once the situation is resolved, though, if the resolution is unsatisfactory I think it's fair to say so. I really took issue with your initial comment because "pointing the finger" has some connotation of assigning blame unfairly or unreasonably; I 100% agree that companies with a culture of blame are poisonous, and that people should err on the side of accepting too much responsibility rather than too little, and do their best to not pass blame on to other people. There's certainly a line, however, across which I think it's reasonable to call someone else out. Where that line is depends on the situation and your relationship: the bar for doing it within your team is astronomically high (you should basically always deal with those things internally), within even the same company is still incredibly high (likewise), but it's lower when it comes to vendor relationships. Where you draw the line is probably different from where I draw it. So while I agree that he should have waited, I don't think that publicly expressing his anger with his hosting provider after the fact would count as "pointing the finger" or "passing the buck" or otherwise indicative of a lack of personal responsibility; to me it would be understandable frustration and anger out of having been so dramatically let down by a third-party you were contracting with. And honestly, that sort of negative public publicity is one of the strongest checks we have on companies, be they hosting companies or retail stores or any other type of establishment. More to the point: even if he did have backups, if they really lost his data and were unable to recover it themselves, I think he'd still be justified in outing their failure publicly after the fact. But again, you're definitely right that he should have waited and given the host a chance to resolve the issue before saying anything.