[cvik]

Good teams don't blame individuals. You can praise individuals, but you take blame as a team.

Hopefully at least two people reviewed the commit before it was put into production. Someone set up the post-launch smoke-tests/api-test-suits. Someone built the CI/CD-system. Etc etc.

My point is, it is rarely a single individuals fault when something at this scale goes down.

[jilles]

>Good teams don't blame individuals. You can praise individuals, but you take blame as a team.

I could not agree more with this statement.

[godelski]

I also think a lot of praise should generally be a team thing too (but I also love this: "You can praise individuals, but you take blame as a team.")

When discussing success to an outside group (giving a presentation or something) or higher up (especially here!) you always use "we". Even if it is a section that only you worked on or you did most of the work. You can often pick out good managers by just seeing if they talk like this, if their focus is around what they individually did or what their team accomplished.

My point is, it is rarely a single individual's success when things work.

[nitrogen]

I also really like it when managers mention significant individuals (as suggested by the phrasing that started this thread), as long as everyone on the team is getting mention-worthy projects. Both group and individual recognition, as long as it's fairly used.

[godelski]

Yes, exactly. I don't want to downplay the importance of praising individuals, but at the same time I don't want it to shadow praising teams.

There's a balance and I do think we tend to focus on the individual as a society. We can only climb mountains by standing on the shoulders of giants. One person gets to the peak and we should praise them for that, but we shouldn't ignore their foundation either (which I think currently happens). E.G. Kepler was an essential part of science and needs to be recognized, but if it wasn't for the work that Tycho Brahe did, Kepler's achievements couldn't exist. The "single person" mentality ignores the importance of the foundational work that needed to be done and frequently causes many to feel that they are not achieving simply because they are working in these roles, which are essential.

[cvik]

I agree with everything you say.

[mrosett]

You're absolutely right both about how teams should function and about the reality of how failures happen.

But the parent is right that it still sucks to be the persons whose work was the proximate cause of an outage, even if nobody is going to blame/punish you for it. It doesn't make for a day where you feel good when you get home from work.

[crimsonalucard1]

>Good teams don't blame individuals. You can praise individuals, but you take blame as a team.

This is a form of illusion. A cover up for what is essentially in reality a mistake made not only by the team but by the individual as well. To mask part of the truth and lay only the blame on the team is an effective form of not hurting someones feelings but also an effective form of avoiding the full reality.

Do people not see how illogical it is to blame the team but only praise individuals? The precedence being set here is that: People succeed as individuals but fail as teams.

The harder ideal to strive for is that both the team and the individual take the blame, but it's harder because people are prideful stubborn and easily hurt.

If you make a mistake step up and admit your mistake. Don't hide in the corner and expect the team to change all their processes to account for your mistake. Yes the team should do this, but yes you should stand up as an individual and do things yourself as well.

There are times when you must blame an individual. Let's say a team member repeatedly pushes bad and buggy code to production. Is it the teams fault or the individuals fault when such actions are repeated? Does it lay on the team or the team member to make sure buggy/bad code doesn't go into production?

The line is blurry here and I feel it is ultimately the wrong stance to say absolutely good teams don't blame individuals. Good teams and good people take responsibility so there is no need to dish out blame.

What happens when the person who spilled coffee all over the on premise servers doesn't take the blame? The team sees this and decides to blame nobody. Is this a good team? No.

The good team member volunteers and states publicly that the fault is his own. The good team agrees with this stance and also says that the fault is with the team as well and both the individual and the team take steps so that this mistake cannot happen again.

[devwastaken]

The reason the blame is taken as a team is so that methods are put in place to prevent those problems in the future. If it were simply a blame game those issues would not be resolved. Humans do not operate on pure reason, and if you decide to do the blame game they will rarely resolve the underlying issue that caused the problem in the first place. The blame game is a stupid game, and as we know playing stupid games wins stupid prizes.

It isn't about eliminating recurring problems, it's having the highest chance of reduction. If someone continually performs poorly then thats management's responsibility to replace them.

[Volundr]

It's also that we (the team) failed to put steps in place to prevent the problem. The person who pushed the button that took down prod is only the last person who made a mistake. Plenty of mistakes were made before, otherwise their mistake would've been a non-issue.

If your system can't tolerate one person's mistake, it's not robust.

None of this means you can't praise a whole team (you should! The original statement just said you CAN praise individuals), or discipline team members who regularly show poor judgement.

[crimsonalucard1]

> If it were simply a blame game those issues would not be resolved. Humans do not operate on pure reason, and if you decide to do the blame game they will rarely resolve the underlying issue that caused the problem in the first place. The blame game is a stupid game, and as we know playing stupid games wins stupid prizes.

I never said play the blame game. I never said the team must not take the blame. Please don't put words into my mouth.

I literally said it's the teams fault and the individuals fault. Both parties must take responsibility.

Take it this way, if a single team member repeatedly makes mistakes then is it the teams job to put methods in place just for that team member? Or is it the teams job to help that team member as an individual?

The blame game is a stupid game so don't play a blame game. Take responsibility both as a team AND as an individual. The team taking the blame exclusively is AVOIDING individual responsibility. It is not a sign of a healthy team.

I am essentially saying the solution is not so clear cut. The team can't always take the blame just to "avoid a blame game." The reality of the universe is that problems aren't always team level problems, that problems at the individual level exist as well.

To exclusively avoid addressing problems at the individual level is a stupid and delusional endeavor and you also win the stupid prize for ignoring reality.

>If someone continually performs poorly then thats management's responsibility to replace them.

This is called blaming an individual then firing him. It entirely contradicts your main argument. I didn't even go there yet, I advocated blaming the individual than helping him improve as a team. You immediately cut his head off and let management do the dirty work.