Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

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.



I don't think we can assign blame in a complicated situation based on a two-paragraph retelling, please have a bit more empathy.


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.


> 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.?


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?




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: