Comment by notepad0x90
4 days ago
That problem is already caught, how do you make sure they know and understand that mistakes like that cause harm and it was a result of their negligent attitude? Fixing that mistake isn't the goal, making sure they exercise more care and understand the gravity of the situation is.
"making sure they exercise more care" is quite a vague concept. If things are important there will be checks and extra safety nets and people will learn over time. If the only thing stopping harm is people "caring more", then you have a ticking time bomb on your hands anyway. And yeah, you can just tell someone "this is very important and serious" to convey it's very important and serious. Adding asshole phrasing on top doesn't change much.
it doesn't work that way in reality. You can monitor/check for bugs you can anticipate, but some bugs fall through the cracks and you have RCE's and outages causing millions of dollars. There is a limit both in terms of imagination and available resources on what you can anticipate and prepare for. There will never be a world where humans won't have to catch corner cases and bugs that would cause severe harm.
I'm not saying the checks and safety nets have to be automatic. QA, reviews, design sessions exist for a reason.
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The manager needs to judge if it is a one off oversight, a skill issue or an attitude issue.
I think it is better to talk to everyone civilly and respectfully regardless and then use fair processes to deal with these issues.
Broadly you have 2 possible issues:
1. People make mistakes and you need processes like code reviews and tests etc. to catch them. No one does 100% perfection. Avoid blame.
2. Someone is not performing well enough.
You deal with 1 as a team through continuous improvement. And 2 is usually manager and team member through feedback and perhaps performance improvements. It should be utterly respectful at all stages.