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Comment by josephg | Hacker News Reader

> just get it done or you're fired

Who actually works in a job like that? Do you seriously think you’re a slave to your boss, with no personal agency? Do you think your employer wants you to be feckless? Do you think that’s good for your career?

Your capacity to take responsibility is the differentiating factor between junior and senior engineers. Learn to step up. If nothing else, your pay check in 10 years time will thank you.

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Incentives do matters. It should be pretty clear to anyone on this forum. The parent is absolutely right. Responsibilities do matter. In this case, there was clearly a systemic problem that was repeateadly ignored by mulitple levels of hierarchy.

You position is a position of principle. When peopke lives are at risk (boeing, fukushima and yes even the post-office) pragmatism must prevail. Those in charge must pay the price, otherwise you incentivise financial results over everything else. People die? Oh that's because Greg in engineering is an idiot, burn him!

The problem is with insufficient QA and processes in place. If a coder delivers code that is insufficiently tested before deployment, the onus is on the product owner. It's the reason "owner" is synonymous with "person who is responsible."

I don't know where you live, but in my (extensive, but rather local) job experience so far, it's possible to raise concerns and propose solutions, etc., but once the IT director or VP of whatever says "we're not going to do that", it's over. You have to work on something else. Or find whistleblower protection, and good luck with that. Otherwise it'll be "Can you step into my office for a minute? Close the door, please."

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