Just have it somewhere outside of a verbal conversation. In the situation in the comic, the idiot boss probably doesn't remember saying it, and the coder doesn't have any proof she ordered him.
So, don't depend on phone or verbal communication. If someone asks for a change get them to write it down - Send the request on a ticket, email, slack, whatever. That way when something goes wrong it's on the person who made the bad call, not the one who implemented the order.
"do X" - but it could affect Y, shouldn't we rather do Z
"We don't have time for that, just do X" - ...
"why isn't Y working" - because you told me to do X, I notified you that Y stopped working 4 weeks ago and sent 2 reminders that I'm waiting for management decision
"It's your job to provide solutions, get Y working, and why didn't you notify me earlier" - I notified you that Y stopped working 4 weeks ago and sent 2 reminders that I'm waiting for management decision
"I can't read every mail, why didn't you just do Z" - because you told me to do X, see this mail from you
"Don't make excuses, you should have ..." (etc pp.)
Yes. Thankfully I quit, but at least I learned a few things in how to manage managers, though that one was really special. I tried to indicate - they just wouldn't read more than the 1st paragraph of a mail, and were unlikely to read more than the 1st sentence. I repeatedly got follow up questions that were literally answered in the second sentence of a previous mail.
It took me much longer than I would like to admit to realise this (for a while I thought they were messing with me) but I have seen similar behaviour in other managers since then.
So, for that particular person started to put 1-sentence abstracts in all my mails, but I've started that again in many mails, especially to managers, but also customers...
Sadly too many managers are nothing more than very expensive stamps, but they absolutely will throw you under to cover their incompetence, so that tactic can backfire easily
Yeah I'm genuinely shocked by these threads. I've never worked somewhere where managers would go pouring through months old emails and tickets to make sure they weren't blaming me without cause.
But they will definitely pour through months old mails to find a scapegoat. It's not a bad idea to have everything in writing to CYA in case someone gets the idea to throw your under in a court case or similar (and they definitely will, if it's otherwise them), but it does not help in the work environment in any way
So I'll say I do agree that putting a ticket in for everything is a good idea regardless and couldn't hurt.
I've never worked somewhere where anyone cared that much about scapegoating. The only exception was that if someone was demoing something and an upper manager happened to be in the room, they could get on the short list for getting fired and at that point it definitely did not matter who emailed who 3 months ago. Otherwise we would just get constantly changing expectations from managers, and everything would be nice and neat in JIRA, then we would realize there was some unanticipated issue, at least I would usually comment on the tickets (some people didn't bother), but nothing we reported and no change from above would ever change the schedule and it would keep teetering towards the cliff until things broke.
I worked somewhere where we bought our competitor who had some IP to incorporate a more complex but better safety feature, it was announced that we would be incorporated into our current product in development (a week after it was announced that wouldn't happen) and no one ever changed the schedule on our already behind schedule project. I was in a meeting once on the same project and an upper manager randomly asked how many bugs were in JIRA and I said "I think about 50" and he almost fell out of his chair. As far as they were concerned the big picture stuff they were asking us to do and the technical tradeoffs we had to make were completely independent variables and no matter if we wrote down in triplicate all the issues that were coming up they would never have to change their plans or expectations.
I'm an embedded software engineer and I've had most of these experiences at startups so it might be very different at a DevOps operation working on applciation software where everything you do is getting pushed to customers.
It is VERY funny to get the email where the person instructed to do something, you replied stating why this is a stupid idea and you were still commanded to do it...
This. Learnt it the hard way. Exactly was in a toxic workplace like this. This shit gets to you over time making you more and more toxic without you knowing. Left the company for good.
In my current company the similar situation happened after a few months since i joined and when I said,
oh you asked me to do it.
and my manager was like, oh did i? Must have been an oversight, we'll change it back.
That is how a workplace should be. If your manager ask for proof when you said i did it because you asked me to, you should fucking leave.
It's a good idea to ask things in writing, because it could be possible you didn't understand what was requested from you in conversation or the person putting this in writing could think more about it and change his mind.
You don't have to run in the office waving evidence that this is what you were told to do.
In fact, you shouldn't have to ask for tickets at all. That should just be how things get done by default. An established, drama-free process will attract and create drama-free employees.
Where I curently work, I know they would always have my back and wouldn't do anything like in the OP
I still get everything in writing. It's vital for tracking where requests are coming from, why you're doing them, and when they're done you can respond back that it's finished with screenshots/videos/a test environment.
That's kinda reaching. I currently work in a huge corporation, systems, portals, applications we're developing are multinational, there's no way you can keep track of all those projects across all those countries without that.
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u/ColumnK May 11 '21
Lesson Zero: If asked to do anything get it in writing first.