Do you want to fix other's bug secretly?
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Michael Bergman wrote:
So you don't have any version control?
Even with version control, it is not easy to discover the bug or the fix of it. Besides me, nobody cares about it (unless it blows up).
Michael Bergman wrote:
You are known for the enemies you make.
I am disappointed that I haven't made any respectable or worthy enemy. :)
Xiangyang Liu 刘向阳 wrote:
I am disappointed that I haven't made any respectable or worthy enemy. :)
Its probably time you make one. :-D
Signature construction in progress. Sorry for the inconvenience.
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What about your team's bug list? Surely you have a centralised Bug/Task list that allows you (or QA) to enter bugs that go into the queue to be prioritised by the team lead and then fixed according to priority? There should be no egos or conflicts involved. A bug is a bug. If the team is internally hostile then hide the names of those who added the bugs. Or better yet: fire the person or persons responsible for poisoning the team.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
Chris Maunder wrote:
There should be no egos or conflicts involved.
:thumbsup:
Chris Maunder wrote:
fire the person or persons responsible for poisoning the team.
Unfortunately, in some projects, the team leads themselves are the poison.
Signature construction in progress. Sorry for the inconvenience.
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Here is a hyperthetical ( ;) ) situation:
- First of all, it won't earn you any bonus or promotion or even praise, no matter what you do
- If you don't fix it, then it is likely to be blamed on you when it blows up and it will consume a lot of your energy to convince everyone that it is not your fault
- If you fix it openly (let people know who is responsible), then your enemy list is going to grow, plus it won't do you any good (see #1)
- The management don't really care who is right or wrong, they don't want you to point fingers at other team members, although they can point fingers at you if they feel like it
- There is not much risk in fixing it secretly, nobody will ever know
P.S. Don't suggest looking for another job, not yet.
Xiangyang Liu 刘向阳 wrote:
First of all, it won't earn you any bonus or promotion or even praise, no matter what you do
:thumbsup:
Xiangyang Liu 刘向阳 wrote:
If you don't fix it, then it is likely to be blamed on you when it blows up and it will consume a lot of your energy to convince everyone that it is not your fault
Maybe, maybe not. For some companies that has tracking tools(ticketing system, version control), it would not be hard to track when the issue occured, what fix has broke the system, and who did/tested the fix. These tools will not only save you energy for convincing everyone(if its really not your fault) but will also save time for investigating the root cause of each issue.
Xiangyang Liu 刘向阳 wrote:
If you fix it openly (let people know who is responsible), then your enemy list is going to grow, plus it won't do you any good (see #1)
Not entirely true. Again, if those tracking tools exist, there would be no you-discovered-the-bug thing, it will be tracked anyway by the time it blows up in production.
Xiangyang Liu 刘向阳 wrote:
The management don't really care who is right or wrong, they don't want you to point fingers at other team members, although they can point fingers at you if they feel like it
:thumbsup:
Xiangyang Liu 刘向阳 wrote:
There is not much risk in fixing it secretly, nobody will ever know
Here in our company, aside from those tracking tools, we also have a team called Change Management. They are responsible in reviewing every fix that is deployed. Fixing a bug secretely is likely impossible here because they're connected to the Operations(the team that deploys the fixes). In addition, we developers don't have access to the production servers.
Signature construction in progress. Sorry for the inconvenience.
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Here is a hyperthetical ( ;) ) situation:
- First of all, it won't earn you any bonus or promotion or even praise, no matter what you do
- If you don't fix it, then it is likely to be blamed on you when it blows up and it will consume a lot of your energy to convince everyone that it is not your fault
- If you fix it openly (let people know who is responsible), then your enemy list is going to grow, plus it won't do you any good (see #1)
- The management don't really care who is right or wrong, they don't want you to point fingers at other team members, although they can point fingers at you if they feel like it
- There is not much risk in fixing it secretly, nobody will ever know
P.S. Don't suggest looking for another job, not yet.
If I find a bug I fix it. I don't care where it came from.
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Here is a hyperthetical ( ;) ) situation:
- First of all, it won't earn you any bonus or promotion or even praise, no matter what you do
- If you don't fix it, then it is likely to be blamed on you when it blows up and it will consume a lot of your energy to convince everyone that it is not your fault
- If you fix it openly (let people know who is responsible), then your enemy list is going to grow, plus it won't do you any good (see #1)
- The management don't really care who is right or wrong, they don't want you to point fingers at other team members, although they can point fingers at you if they feel like it
- There is not much risk in fixing it secretly, nobody will ever know
P.S. Don't suggest looking for another job, not yet.
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Never public acknowledge bugs or do evidence you can be blamed. Then when blows up, do not answer phone or email, mgmt will find someone else to blame.
Because if you even start volunteer a little fixing, your name is stick to it forever. If never acknowledge, when email comes around it is easy to ignore "Sorry I was very busy working on xyz, I did not see open email for abc because that is Coworker's project".
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Here is a hyperthetical ( ;) ) situation:
- First of all, it won't earn you any bonus or promotion or even praise, no matter what you do
- If you don't fix it, then it is likely to be blamed on you when it blows up and it will consume a lot of your energy to convince everyone that it is not your fault
- If you fix it openly (let people know who is responsible), then your enemy list is going to grow, plus it won't do you any good (see #1)
- The management don't really care who is right or wrong, they don't want you to point fingers at other team members, although they can point fingers at you if they feel like it
- There is not much risk in fixing it secretly, nobody will ever know
P.S. Don't suggest looking for another job, not yet.
There should be only 2 options, CM covered the first, where is your bug list? Damien covered the alternative, talk to the bugger and get them to fix it. If the bugger won't do it then piebalds option come into play, email and cc his boss
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
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There should be only 2 options, CM covered the first, where is your bug list? Damien covered the alternative, talk to the bugger and get them to fix it. If the bugger won't do it then piebalds option come into play, email and cc his boss
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
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Here is a hyperthetical ( ;) ) situation:
- First of all, it won't earn you any bonus or promotion or even praise, no matter what you do
- If you don't fix it, then it is likely to be blamed on you when it blows up and it will consume a lot of your energy to convince everyone that it is not your fault
- If you fix it openly (let people know who is responsible), then your enemy list is going to grow, plus it won't do you any good (see #1)
- The management don't really care who is right or wrong, they don't want you to point fingers at other team members, although they can point fingers at you if they feel like it
- There is not much risk in fixing it secretly, nobody will ever know
P.S. Don't suggest looking for another job, not yet.
I don't understand what the problem is. If you work as a team, you fix bugs or work with other team members to get them fixed. It sounds like management wants you to work as a team, so why not do it? If your enemies scare you, it seems like you may need to find a different environment to work in. Personally I'd just fix any bugs I found, but check with the original code authors to make sure you're not breaking something else. I could care less about who gets credit and I'm not interested in pointing fingers - I get paid to do the job and that's the reward one agrees to when accepting a job.
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr., P. E. Comport Computing Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
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Here is a hyperthetical ( ;) ) situation:
- First of all, it won't earn you any bonus or promotion or even praise, no matter what you do
- If you don't fix it, then it is likely to be blamed on you when it blows up and it will consume a lot of your energy to convince everyone that it is not your fault
- If you fix it openly (let people know who is responsible), then your enemy list is going to grow, plus it won't do you any good (see #1)
- The management don't really care who is right or wrong, they don't want you to point fingers at other team members, although they can point fingers at you if they feel like it
- There is not much risk in fixing it secretly, nobody will ever know
P.S. Don't suggest looking for another job, not yet.
Xiangyang Liu 刘向阳 wrote:
P.S. Don't suggest looking for another job, not yet.
Look for another job as the culture/ethos described by your list is a culture of fear. If you cannot make mistakes and admit to them openly then you will never be creative.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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Here is a hyperthetical ( ;) ) situation:
- First of all, it won't earn you any bonus or promotion or even praise, no matter what you do
- If you don't fix it, then it is likely to be blamed on you when it blows up and it will consume a lot of your energy to convince everyone that it is not your fault
- If you fix it openly (let people know who is responsible), then your enemy list is going to grow, plus it won't do you any good (see #1)
- The management don't really care who is right or wrong, they don't want you to point fingers at other team members, although they can point fingers at you if they feel like it
- There is not much risk in fixing it secretly, nobody will ever know
P.S. Don't suggest looking for another job, not yet.
-
Here is a hyperthetical ( ;) ) situation:
- First of all, it won't earn you any bonus or promotion or even praise, no matter what you do
- If you don't fix it, then it is likely to be blamed on you when it blows up and it will consume a lot of your energy to convince everyone that it is not your fault
- If you fix it openly (let people know who is responsible), then your enemy list is going to grow, plus it won't do you any good (see #1)
- The management don't really care who is right or wrong, they don't want you to point fingers at other team members, although they can point fingers at you if they feel like it
- There is not much risk in fixing it secretly, nobody will ever know
P.S. Don't suggest looking for another job, not yet.
If it's a trivial fix, I would just fix it, and make a note in the SVN/git/etc commit statement (and close it down in the bug tracker if it was filed). If not, I'd file a bug report via whatever mechanism your team uses (emailing the team if that's all there is) and ask the person responsible for that section of the code base to fix it.
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Xiangyang Liu 刘向阳 wrote:
here is not much risk in fixing it secretly, nobody will ever know
So you don't have any version control? I say 3! Fix it openly. You are known for the enemies you make.
m.bergman
For Bruce Schneier, quanta only have one state : afraid.
To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered. -- Voltaire
Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense. -- Steve Landesberg
I am not a chatbot.
Are you thinking Sir Winston[^]?
'As programmers go, I'm fairly social. Which still means I'm a borderline sociopath by normal standards.' Jeff Atwood 'I'm French! Why do you think I've got this outrrrrageous accent?' Monty Python and the Holy Grail
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Here is a hyperthetical ( ;) ) situation:
- First of all, it won't earn you any bonus or promotion or even praise, no matter what you do
- If you don't fix it, then it is likely to be blamed on you when it blows up and it will consume a lot of your energy to convince everyone that it is not your fault
- If you fix it openly (let people know who is responsible), then your enemy list is going to grow, plus it won't do you any good (see #1)
- The management don't really care who is right or wrong, they don't want you to point fingers at other team members, although they can point fingers at you if they feel like it
- There is not much risk in fixing it secretly, nobody will ever know
P.S. Don't suggest looking for another job, not yet.
If fixing a verifiable bug in the code makes enemies, maybe you *should* be looking for another job...
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997 -
If I find a bug I fix it. I don't care where it came from.
:thumbsup: Thats my stance. Doesn't matter where it came from. If you see it correct it. There are only 2 cases I can think of where you should discuss it with the original developer. 0. The code is somewhat confusing, but you "think" you understand it. Maybe it works with other systems etc. and you are not sure of their inner workings. Need to double check with the dev to make sure they simply did not make a bug to get rid of another bugging (knowingly or not). In the discussion you point out the flaw, but do not point it out as "their" flaw but rather the code. Code has its own life. Its a shame when developers take full ownership, because innevitably they will get their feelings hurt as people learn and new patterns arise showing flaws in our old ways. Its the nature of the business. Those that understand that prosper, those that don't tend to shift out of programming. 1. Just received a presentation etc. on how superior the code is to the last version. Essentially they are 'upgrading' the system, but are not seeing why it will not work. In this case you must discuss with them as well because otherwise they will think you are overwritting their 'enhancement' (which is a bug). In this situation, one has to be more careful. They are likely proud of their new method so simply pointing out "You are doing it wrong" will likely backlash. Instead, ask what happens when . They would hopefully realize. If not, write the test case up and hand it to QA.
Computers have been intelligent for a long time now. It just so happens that the program writers are about as effective as a room full of monkeys trying to crank out a copy of Hamlet.
