If You Can't Scoop The Poop, You Shouldn't Own A Dog
Posted by Jacob Harris Thu, 02 Feb 2006 23:59:00 GMT
If you own a dog in New York, you’re probably very familiar with the sentiment of the title. New York has “pooper scooper laws” that require all dog walkers to clean up after their dogs. It’s not really pleasant to clean up after my dog, but it’s something I accept as part of owning her. It’s simply being considerate to my fellow person, but especially to my fellow dog owner; when someone doesn’t clean up, it makes all of us look bad.
Perhaps it’s a result of fatigue from having stayed up late the night before fixing an urgent bug, but the next morning at the dog run with Bella this seemed like a remarkably good aphorism about taking responsibility as as a programmer.
I can’t really give details, but I was up the night before fixing an extremely critical bug. I was fixing the bug because it was my fault. And I was fixing it that night because it was vitally important it not inconvenience customers any further (it had already affected them for a few days). And the bug was completely my fault, not the code’s, not the operating system’s, not my coworkers’ or the QA testers’, all mine. And this is what I told my boss and my coworkers, and this is what I think was also told to the customers.
This may sound like I am only pointing out what’s natural (like tooting my horn about how my heart is able to speed up when I exercise). But from my experience, software developers are horrible at handling failure. We blame it on the language we write in, the overwhelming complexity of our tasks, those testers we expect to find all our bugs for us or those project managers we expect to manage all our time for us. When we fall behind on deliverables, most of us keep silent and vainly hope we can catch up before the next milestone (a mistake so common it’s earned the euphemism hope creep among project managers). And when we mess up technically in front of the customer, we mask it in euphemisms like a technical error has occurred whose passive voice make the customer wonder if they’re being blamed and if errors just magically fall from the sky like rain.
To be fair, taking responsibility hurts. It damages your pride, makes you look bad for the moment, and might almost feel like a career-limiting move. But as Chad Fowler puts it in My Job Went To India, you must learn how to fail. Your managers might be pissed at the moment but I think honesty as well as concrete plan for fixing things and taking action will impress them. Your customers might be annoyed but will appreciate your forthrightness instead of fuzziness when explaining what broke and will love it if you can make things right as soon as possible instead of a few months. It’s good for your fellow developers because it fights the cynicism and despair that result from too much unapologetically bad software already. And it’s good for your character. You will actually turn out the stronger for having taken your lumps and emerging from it.
So, the next time something breaks (and there will be a next time), embrace it. And if that’s too hard for you to do, get a different career; and don’t get a dog.
