I’ll never forget pausing to consider what a colleague told me about his coding convention at the dawn of my career. Walking along the hallway, I stopped to ask him about it and he said, “That’s just the way I was taught.”
I thought to myself . . .
So, his way is more organized, easier to follow, and cleaner to work with. What are my reasons for why my way is better? I don’t have any good ones?
End of story
His way was better — no debate needed. And when I made a database blunder several years back — my manager sent out an email to the DBAs saying, “We made a mistake that requires a restore.” That’s what a manager should do — but now it’s my turn to do what I should do. I replied to all by saying, “While I greatly appreciate the sentiment, “we” did nothing of the kind.”
When I walked into his office a little bit later, he said, “I see you fell on your sword.”
A colleague once corrected me on something I thought couldn’t be done (as I was coming from a different database platform). Rather than cling to a belief based on my own experience — I let him enlighten me with his. We had an impromptu meeting with a whiteboard and minutes later it was all cleared up. Next team meeting — I openly thanked him for correcting me.
Contrast my attitude with what I faced below when politely correcting some colleagues on a colossal screw-up they just couldn’t see:
In 2008, just a few weeks on the job — I discovered a blunder that 4 other developers had missed for over a year. These are smart guys — and I learned a lot from them. How could they have missed that all the decimal places were truncated in a key source with over 100 million records? What’s more — how could they still not see it once I pointed it out to them multiple times?
Even my manager said, “That data’s been validated.” I thought to myself:
Yeah, that can happen when you’re comparing two wrongs that make it look right
Comparing two wrongs that make it look right:
A lot of that goin’ around . . .
Once again, I sent out more screenshots to compare the source to destination side by side. And finally, the first guy on the project replied:
You’re right, they’re all gone
They had to go back and re-pull all the data over again — which was pretty time-consuming considering the volume. These are good-natured guys with no politics, ulterior motives, or raging egos involved. And yet they couldn’t see what was right in front of their faces.
How could four professionals at that level fail to see what could not be more obvious?
Groupthink — plain as day
I’m not fond of the first definition in this case, as it includes an “urge to conform” and possibly having an agenda. The one below is more applicable. Each developer had followed the ones before. 2nd assumed 1st was right. 3rd assumed first two were right. And 4th assumed the other 3 were right.
5th guy comes along and says:
Wait a minute!
Imagine what untold millions are missing when money, power, politics, religion, fragile & raging egos, and cult-like hero-worship are involved. The damage is astronomical — and exponentially increases in a nation that never learns.
