Mastodawn

Jess👾May 29, 2025

Also, I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but I'll say it again:

Part of your job as a senior is to tell your juniors about your fuckups. The embarrassing cringe reckless and lazy bullshit that you did when you were new, and the various times you brought down Prod. We ALL did it sometime. And then tell them: the moment you realized you fucked up, I know, the impulse is to try and cover it up, but don't do it. Come to the seniors you trust, and they'll help you unfuck it, and fight management tooth and claw like mamma and pappa bears to defend you from any shitheads in management. Because that's what our seniors did to us.

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Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE

@JessTheUnstill I once worked for a CEO where the (very) occasional conversation would go like this:

Him, spotting something he hadn't expected: "What's this then?"
Me: "A cock-up."
Him: "What are you doing about it?"
Me: explain the plan
Him: "Jolly good, carry on."

The clear message was that if I had *not* admitted to the cock-up I'd have been in deep shit.

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Autoerotic Defenestration Jun 11, 2025

@TimWardCam @JessTheUnstill right, this is what I told my current junior too, when she was certain she'd be fired for a fuck-up: "no-one will remember *that* you fucked up, because we all do. They *will* remember how you handled it. So, raise the alarm early, calmly try to figure out what happened, and provide a solid plan or at least a reliable risk-assessment."

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Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE Jun 11, 2025

@danielaKay @JessTheUnstill

Exactly.

When I became a portfolio-holding councillor pretty well the first thing I said to my directors and heads of service was "If there's a cock-up I want to hear about it from you first. If the first I hear of something going wrong is a phone call from a journalist I shall be seriously displeased."

And they did as asked. So when a journo phoned to ask about a cock-up I already knew about it so had something ready to say.