One of the most corrosive things you can do to a team of sysadmins is to start
playing the blame game and punishing people for making mistakes. I've seen it
happen.
You get to the point where people are afraid to say what they did because it may
have been the cause of the outage, and that leads to other things being hidden,
and the end result is that nobody can possibly figure out what is going on
because everybody is keeping secrets.
David Lang
On Thu, 29 May 2014, Denise Adams wrote:
It is interesting to hear these problems, mistakes and the results as a still
learning Systems Administration Student. I have only crashed the system at my
Internship once, but I was not punished. I felt HORRIBLE, and my SysAdmin
Mentor, Ski, just smiled and said, "Now we know not to do that, and don't
worry you took a snapshot." That's it, I was so upset that I had messed things
up on the production side, and he's been a great mentor. Using each mistake or
near-mistake as a learning opportunity. It's reassuring to know that the
culture seems to lean toward the attitude that there's not a blame required as
long as all the details are known and the solution is timely. I will admit, I
don't do ANYTHING to ANY VM now without a snapshot. Just in case. :D
Denise A.
Server Intern @ NorthShore School District.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alan Robertson" <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2014 9:36:33 AM
Subject: Re: [lopsa-discuss] Yup, been there done that.
Our most picky and insane customer had a tape jukebox that was prone to hanging -
attached to a computer called "longs".
I called in to ask the operator to "power cycle longs" when I meant to say "power
cycle the tape jukebox on longs".
When my login session stopped responding, I realized with horror what I'd said
to the operator. When the machine rebooted, the boot process asked the operator
to explain the boot. I told her to explain that I'd told her to do it by my
mistake, and that she'd done exactly what I'd asked her to do.
I waited for the sh*tstorm the next day. It never came. It took me a few days
to realize that it was never going to come.
Another time I'd accidentally distributed an experimental terminfo for the terminal most
commonly used by "elite" programmers in the building.
I wrote an apology email saying in part: "It is not my policy, nor the policy of the
computer center to make mistakes, but from time to time I make them. My apologies for my
mistake and its impact on you".
So for years afterwards, people would remind me that it was not my policy to
make mistakes... ;-)
On 05/29/2014 09:55 AM, Moose Finklestein wrote:
Oh, yes, we've all been there. Typed 'reboot' in the wrong window. Done 'newfs' on the
wrong dev. Told someone, "Go press the alarm button" only to watch in horror as
they push the EPO. Oh, yeah.
The best part of this tale, I think, is that the company's attitude of "Well, the person
screwed up and knows it; we don't see any need to beat them further than they're beating
themself." It's a refreshing and intelligent change from the typical "Of course we fired
the person who did this!" that comes with a public disaster.
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