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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 p

by cvik 6y ago

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 6y ago
>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 6y ago
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.
- cvik 6y ago
  I agree with everything you say.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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.
crimsonalucard1 6y ago
>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 6y ago
  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.
mrosett 6y ago
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.

by cvik 6y ago

jilles 6y ago

>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 6y ago

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.

cvik 6y ago
I agree with everything you say.
nitrogen 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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.

crimsonalucard1 6y ago

>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 6y ago
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.

mrosett 6y ago

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.