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by nirvana 5362 days ago
I think in a healthy, functioning, company there is some politics. The thing about amazon is, it doesn't matter to anyone that I had pointed this out months ago. From my boss up to the person who reported to Bezos, every one of them would be embarrassed by it, but what could I do? Threaten to tell Jeff Bezos? He doesn't care. He was in the ticket and they were all pointing the finger at me. Me coming back and say "But, I pointed it out months ago"... would result in "therefore its your fault because you weren't persuasive enough!"

You can't make people take responsibility. Hell, Bezos would probably say I should have made the change anyway "You failed to take initiative". But if I had made the change, I would have been fired "You're not a team player".

Asscovering is the rule of the day and its very easy in that environment.
3 comments
GryMor 5362 days ago
Making the code capable of the correct (but apparently not desired behavior), with a simple flag to turn it on is often the right solution (when you've received insurmountable push back, "Disagree and Commit!"). At that point, you document it in an oncall wiki and when someone finally decides it's actually a bug (or the people that said no 'go away'), it's sitting there with a good audit trail so you can tell your teams oncall one or two words and they can flip it over in a few minutes (after some QA). Note: I only learned this after surviving a really bad manager. I'm not saying you should have known to do it.
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potatolicious 5362 days ago
> ""But, I pointed it out months ago"... would result in "therefore its your fault because you weren't persuasive enough!""

And then this would get noted in your performance review.

Weakness: bias for action.

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simplekoala 5362 days ago
LOL at bias of action :) Reminds me of ex-manager's parrotry of Amazon's values
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nirvana 5362 days ago
Absolutely. Hell, at one point, praise for me from a former manager in a performance review was twisted around and used against me.

If I never hear the phrase "Bias for action" again, I'll be happy. (Though I laughed when you used it.)

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serverascode 5361 days ago
Wow. That last part "you failed to take initiative" or "You're not a team player" makes me sad. That's a fubared situation.
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