Ask HN: What is the biggest mistake you have made on the job?
What is the most catastrophic, painful mistake you made while working? Did it teach you a valuable lesson and how did you deal with the fallout?
Got a text Saturday morning that something was off about our "For Prospective Students" landing page (I was working on the new website for a Private Catholic College). Navigated there, and stood staring in disbelief as I read my own words calling a certain friend of mine a certain derogatory name or 4 under the heading "Why Choose Us?" Turns out, I thought I had added the Marketing copy to the clipboard, but must've accidentally copied and pasted a fraction of my damning convo instead.
Lesson Learned: ALWAYS check your work, no matter how long you have been building websites or anything public-facing. It was such a dumb mistake. I didn't end up fired, but got a stern reprimand from my direct supervisor. Months later, the President of the school confided to me that he found the incident fairly hilarious, and somewhat troubling. Hoo boy.
It helped that I was the only person on staff who really knew Javascript and Coffeescript well and that I was also well-versed in writing and editing. Had I lacked any of these, had another staff member been better at them, or had the project been further along I'm sure I would've been canned. The president didn't find out until weeks later, thank god.
Long story short, I shipped a thousand dollars worth of networking equipment to Disney World.
It wasn't the same after that. Never let your boss or coworker discover how little you care about work.
Or switch bosses. A boss that can't understand that after 12 hour days you need some rest can go fuck themselves.