Losing Trust

One of the new ways of doing things here at FluxCorp is to start tracking bugs we find in verification, no matter how large or small, so (a) the issue doesn't slip through the cracks, (b) management gets to see how hard we're working, and (c) the rate of bug finds is a loose indication of how robust the design is. We're also employing a new web-based bug tracker, something that I personally setup for this very purposed.

But old habits die hard and old perceptions are hard to change. Recently, a bug was entered into the system due to a typo in someone's design. Instead of typing something like "out = in + 5", the line ended up being "out = out + 5". The typo caused the entire design to fail during simulation. The engineer doing the verification (me) logged the problem and indicated to the designer that the problem was a typo. The response was quick. The bug was fixed in minutes and I got an e-mail from the bug tracking software, saying the problem's status has been changed from "open" to "fixed" along with the designer notes. The note said that logging every tiny little bug into the bug tracking system is f%^king bullsh*t.

It's easy to point fingers with a self-righteous sigh, blaming this colleague for being unhelpful and uncooperative. But I do understand where he's coming from. Through the grapevine, I've heard that the digital team has been burnt in the past by logging all of their bugs. Some upper management idiot had used the list to blame the team for too many bugs in their designs. Ever since, the team has been wary of maintaining such lists, or at most, having a list of serious issues shared amongst only a limited handful of people.

Often, management do not see the long term effects of their actions. Once trust has been violated, it is extremely difficult to gain it back again, even many many years later.