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Comment by xrd | Hacker News Reader

I would go further. It's worse in commercial projects. Most of the time, no one will be fired if you report a bug in an open source project.

But, and this is the important part: depending on how the company is structured, reporting a bug in a closed source project will result in unplanned work. If the company takes a "everyone is responsible for all bugs, we don't assign blame" then it is likely someone will report it.

If the company, whether explicitly or implicitly, is communicating that if you report the bug, you fix it, then there is a good chance you will not report it, if you own it.

If you own something, you can be fired if you break it. So there is a perverse incentive to not report your own bugs, especially if you inherit a mess.

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Bugs are inevitable in software, the best anyone can do is try to minimize them. I don’t know any companies that would fire someone for introducing a regression unless it was from malice, or a level of carelessness indistinguishable from malice. Maybe this is different in other countries or industries? If you ever find yourself working for a company that would fire someone for that, definitely find a new employer ASAP, because that company is far more interested in meaningless ass-covering by management than they are in great engineering or shipping great products.

Unfortunately some of live in regions where getting a new job isn't an option. The parent post raises a very valid point which I have observed in companies whose core business isn't IT but have an IT department. You end up having a fair number of non-technical managers who don't understand the intricacies of software development They don't understand that bugs do not mean you didn't test enough or you are a bad developer. Bugs delay projects or require resources and reporting them is likely to make someone look bad so there tends to be push back from IT. It isn't right but it is what it is. Its valuable to be aware of this prepare accordingly.

That was really what I was wondering about, it sounded strange to me but that's the bubble I'm in. Different industries or different countries might have very different norms surrounding this kind of thing.

In my bubble, you have to be very careful about hiring because it can be very difficult to fire anyone at a large company. Or it just ends up being such a long, awkward, multi-stage process, that even objectively terrible engineers will get transferred elsewhere within a large company rather than get fired, because it's that much easier for the manager who wants to get rid of them.

Some of it might be a cultural affinity for giving people second chances, but I think a lot of it is just the hoops you have to jump through to avoid the possibility of a future wrongful termination lawsuit if you fire somebody. But I've heard that it can be very different elsewhere, in different industries or countries. I bet it has a lot to do with the legal system too, like whether or not there's a framework of worker protection laws in place.

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