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Pete O'Hanlon wrote: With colleagues, always praise in public and criticize them in private
I sit on both sides of the fence with this one. I agree because it fosters better working relationships, but I disagree because it frequently creates an illusion of competency, especially to management and new co-workers.
The only way out of this that I've found is to take Dale Carnegie's approach of combining some positive aspect with a necessary criticism. Though it sometimes is damned hard to find something positive other than "Joe worked really hard on this but unfortunately, all his hard work had to be thrown out the window." 
Personally, I wish we didn't have to "handle" people with velveteen gloves. That, and position and salary should be determined by one's peers (with, of course, the subject's evaluation of the ability of others to evaluate him/her as part of the equation.) *evil grin*
Marc
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Excellent advice! Not surprised though, coming from you.
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Yeah, that came as a shock to me too. Until this point, I thought you were the sole cause of all bugs. 
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Must be my minions spreading my legend i guess
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Like Windows Vista
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I thought Vista was a virus. I tried installing XP but Vista insists it's a "better version".
Now I just use 3.1 and have no viruses!
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Do not go too deep now
Clickey[▬] 
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Corporal Agarn wrote: Or Microsoft.
Don't let my Former Bitch Supervisor From HellTM hear you say that, she thought the sun rose, and set, on Redmond.
She believed program bugs were like roaches. If you saw one, there were at least ten, and no program was bug free.
However, one day we encountered a compiler bug. The machine code generated did not do what the source code said.
We showed her the two side by side, since she couldn't read assembler code, she insisted the problem was ours.
We reminded her that the compiler was a program and of her stated position on bugs.
Her response, it's a COMPILER, not a PROGRAM, and therefore exempt from her rule.
Besides, Microsoft does not issue products with bugs.  
No. Exaggeration.
Psychosis at 10
Film at 11
Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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Pawel Krakowiak wrote: I feel that whoever breaks stuff should be publicly shamed
We have a Trophy affectionately called the f***-up cup. If you discover a bug, you can award the cup to the person who implemented it and they have to display it on the highest part of there desk until somebody else is awarded it. It works really well as the person who finds the bug is usually happy to fix it as they had the pleasure of awarding the cup to the original culprit. Or sometimes you can have a quiet word with the culprit who 9 times out of 10 will drop whatever they are doing to fix their mistake in exchange for you not giving them the cup and thus drawing everyones attention to it.
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P0mpey3 wrote: Or sometimes you can have a quiet word with the culprit who 9 times out of 10 will drop whatever they are doing to fix their mistake in exchange for you not giving them the cup and thus drawing everyones attention to it.
Now that's motivation! 
Marc
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I agree, this is a great approach.
YOU are responsible for YOUR CULTURE. I say you work with the Team, and do stuff like this.
Find cool ways to celebrate the process and "reward" the problem children. We had padded karate blocking sticks. We could opt for a public (among developers, all getting their licks in) beating (body shots only). It did not hurt, but boy was it fun. I took the first beating for SIMPLY NOT coming up with the idea sooner... That got everyone into the spirit.
Finally, where are the code reviews? People who break things often MUST have their code reviewed by their peers before publishing.
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Trophies like this work great, just don't let management get their hands on it or the award process. Ideally, don't even let them know what its all about, so there's no chance they can use who's got it against them.
At my previous job, the other developer and I instituted a couple of different trophies for various mistakes. They were great fun for years, until management made a big deal out of awarding one of them to one of the developers in a big public display in front of some customers who had come to visit. We never awarded the trophies ever again -- they weren't fun anymore and management obviously took too much notice of who was getting them.
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
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Do you really think the person who broke it, has the skill set to fix it?
Public shaming doesn't work and it is terrible for morale.
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Slacker007 wrote: Public shaming doesn't work and it is terrible for morale.
I saw a plugin or something (years ago) for Continuous Integration servers which on a failed build adds the avatar of the dev who broke it and displays it on the page.  I think it's part of the game, it's not real shaming, just an incentive to quickly fix what you broke. No one wants his mugshot to be posted next to a failed build.
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LOL. That's awesome. 
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Pawel Krakowiak wrote: it's not real shaming
I would say that's up the shamed person to decide.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
(√-sh*t) 2
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Pawel Krakowiak wrote: Another dev went in and changed how some code works
Pawel Krakowiak wrote: This really grinds my gears.
This brings back old memories. Years ago at a large corp. I was forced to write code over a weekend, because "it had to be comleted". I did the work, wrote some documentation, wrote test cases and put the code out for QA team.
Of course, even though it had to be done immediately, they never got around to the code for weeks later. Oh, yes, this was HIGH PRIORITY. Whatever.
Anyways, weeks later, the guy puts the stuff into production and someone comes to me.
"That fails upon start up. Can you have a look."
I looked at the code. What? Wait. I've never seen this code. Even though it's supposedly my code. What is going on?
After much searching I find a contractor. An architect who is certainly my genius master.
He says, "Oh, I rewrote that code."
"Well, you did a bang up job," I said. "It doesn't even start. You're going to have to fix it."
"I don't do that," he said.
Later my boss told me I had to fix The Genius Architect's code even though I had already written code that worked and the GENIUS rewrote my code.
What?!? (deployment of interrobang)
That is utter stupidity!!!
I totally understand your frustration. He who touches code should fix it!!!
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newton.saber wrote: He who touches code should fix it!!!
THIS.
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newton.saber wrote: Later my boss told me I had to fix The Genius Architect's code even though I had
already written code that worked and the GENIUS rewrote my code.
What?!?
(deployment of interrobang)
At which point you just reverted the architards checkin to the prior working version?
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Dan Neely wrote: reverted the architards checkin to the prior working version?
That's exactly what I wanted to do, but I wasn't allowed. It was completely political.
Basically, without examining anything my boss said, "His unworking code is better than your working code."
Now you could assume I'm an idiot and my code is complete crap. But, honestly, the code worked very well and was actually designed and I had unit tests, etc.
Here's the kicker...
The code was never put into production anyway, because the entire project went belly-up after they spent millions $$$ paying for contractors (such as the architect) who never could get the final product running. ugh!
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Pawel Krakowiak wrote: I feel that whoever breaks stuff should be publicly shamed
That would include everyone at some point then. 
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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Of course it would! I have never met a developer who never introduces any bugs. I am fully aware I'd be shamed on occasion as well.
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