Questions tagged [mistakes]
For questions involving mistakes that happen at the workplace, and to deal with the fallout or to recover from them.
92 questions
243
votes
9
answers
59k
views
How can I inform my boss that I may have been hired by mistake?
I was hired at my current workplace just over a month ago. During the interview process, I found out that someone I knew from university was also interviewing for the position. I'll call him Jim. Jim ...
- 1,459
138
votes
8
answers
24k
views
How do I tell my boss I've accidentally been working halftime on the wrong project for the past year?
I am a QA tester, and started with my company almost a year ago.
On my second day, I got invited to a meeting to discuss a project (let's call it Project A) that was just getting started. I am the ...
- 781
110
votes
11
answers
21k
views
Made a bad code change that introduced a bug into our system. How do I rebound?
I made a code change (pull request (PR)) about six months ago that introduced a bug into our system. It ended up really causing a lot of issues and just recently it was brought to my attention. I ...
- 821
77
votes
9
answers
25k
views
I've not performed well in my first year as technical director. What should I do next?
Summary: I've been the technical director of a project. It finished well, but I made some mistakes that I don't know I can fix easily. This also ruined my manager's trust in me. Should I go back to a ...
- 649
63
votes
9
answers
21k
views
How to professionally acknowledge to a client that a former coworker made a mistake in production?
I work at a tech consulting company in the US and I recently took over a project from a coworker (Bob) who got laid off. (He was mainly let go because of covid, but he wasn't the easiest to work with ...
- 6,440
60
votes
13
answers
17k
views
Is using internet proxies a sackable offence? [closed]
I'm based in the UK and am about six months into my first job as an Apprentice Software Dev, and came straight into it from college. All through high school and college we would easily bypass the ...
- 541
52
votes
15
answers
14k
views
Could producing a grave bug that made headlines make you unemployable? [closed]
Does producing such a grave bug like Log4Shell make you effectively unemployable?
The people involved have committed under their real names and, taking into account how prominent the bug is, it's easy ...
- 2,612
52
votes
8
answers
19k
views
How can I fix a large financial mistake that I made?
I've made a huge mistake and am looking for some advice. I especially need advice now because I'm an emotional wreck and don't know if I can make a sane decision on my own.
I was on rocky terms with ...
- 2,062
43
votes
13
answers
20k
views
Accidentally spent much more than the food allowance on a business trip
I just got back from a week-long business trip with my company. This is the first time I've traveled with my current company.
On our trip, we had a $300/day meal allowance that we would charge on the ...
42
votes
12
answers
15k
views
How should I handle multiple mistakes without losing credibility?
In short: I've made multiple mistakes in a calculation software within a year. These mistakes caused no harm whatsoever, but I'm afraid that I will lose credibility if I approach this the wrong way. I ...
- 457
40
votes
7
answers
14k
views
How to approach senior colleague who overwrote my work files?
I've been working on a SQL dashboard project whereby I modified a template script.
I became stuck on part of the project and asked for help from a senior colleague (on the same level as my manager ...
user27483
35
votes
8
answers
11k
views
How can I regain a professional atmosphere with someone who may have seen me misbehave? [closed]
I believe a female colleague saw me masturbating at work. I was in my office after hours with the door locked and blinds down, but I'm afraid the blinds had a crack. I am not an exhibitionist, and ...
- 350
29
votes
5
answers
22k
views
I made mistakes during a project, which has resulted in the client denying payment to my company
To give some background, I have been working in India for a company for the past four and a half years, mainly in core development (Java, JSP, and C#). At the start of 2020, I was assigned to a ...
- 415
25
votes
4
answers
10k
views
Depression and on final warning for tardiness
Over the last few months, I've been getting more and more depressed, and this has been feeding into me getting later and later everyday, and this culminated in me getting the final warning of all time....
user137578
24
votes
5
answers
11k
views
How do you get over feeling like you're constantly making mistakes?
I graduated college in December and in March I was hired for my first professional job, as a Project Coordinator at a company that builds commercial kitchens in Arizona. By all accounts, I'm doing ...
- 249
21
votes
5
answers
8k
views
I accidentally told an offensive joke at my boss's expense in a team meeting, how do I apologise?
During a recent Zoom team meeting, we were playing a team bonding game where everyone would share a picture of themselves re-creating a favourite movie scene. Everyone was having a good natured laugh.
...
- 319
17
votes
8
answers
94k
views
How do I stop making silly mistakes at work? [closed]
I have been working as a software engineer at a small IT consulting firm for 3 years now. I try to do excellent work but very careless and silly mistakes creep into my work. For example, sending email ...
- 187
14
votes
4
answers
2k
views
How to handle a boss that I believe is non-maliciously setting me up for failure?
I have been working with a company for about 6 months, with the job title of software engineer/support specialist. So far, I have done very little software work, but that was initially expected.
The ...
- 863
13
votes
6
answers
3k
views
I submitted an unapproved feature, got in trouble, now what?
TLDR: I pushed (broken) functionality without approval that ended up being caught by QA, and my boss is (rightfully) upset. What should I do?
I work as a developer on a digital product.
Recently, ...
12
votes
6
answers
6k
views
Am I being overly critical and unfair to my coworker or is she being entitled?
About a year ago my boss was fired, and I was put in his place as a new manager. Our team was already understaffed, so I ended up doing several jobs, including team lead, project lead and PM for a big ...
- 165
12
votes
5
answers
5k
views
How should a manager handle an employee who lacks intuition?
I'm a manager at a small company. My team maintains product and marketing data. One of my team members, a graphic designer named Amelia, is an increasing source of consternation.
Amelia has several ...
- 155
11
votes
3
answers
3k
views
Colleague cannot put down her phone... even while teaching!
A colleague cannot put down her phone, not for a moment. She's a lecturer in English. Today I came into one of her classes, and she was holding her phone in front of her face with one hand while ...
user106815
10
votes
6
answers
3k
views
Coworker made a big mistake with no bad consequences should I tell the boss?
A coworker accidently threw away a check from a customer of pretty significant value ~$10,000 and I was able to find it in trash before they took it out.
I think it was accidental and no malicious ...
- 1,454
10
votes
4
answers
5k
views
Lost my manager's pendrive - what to do?
I've recently been to a presentation in a client's office which is located in another city. My manager handed me his laptop, modem and pendrive for the presentation. It was on the last day of the week ...
10
votes
1
answer
4k
views
Lost important office documents. How to properly handle the situation?
I found out that some important office documents have gone missing from my custody. I am responsible for the lost documents. What should I do in this situation?
- 111
9
votes
4
answers
3k
views
How to get coworker to own up to his mistakes?
My coworker (hired 1+ years ago) has made numerous mistakes in his work, recently requiring many extra hours from both of us to fix. The mistakes are frustrating but the worst part is my coworker does ...
- 3,652
9
votes
5
answers
11k
views
How to deal with a coworker which keeps pointing out a mistake I made?
At some point I made a mistake which made a certain feature of our app fail. This got mentioned in the next team meeting by QA, but in a really aggressive and threatening way (as in "This simply can't ...
- 1,761
8
votes
3
answers
8k
views
Fired from software engineer role at FAANG for poor performance: What to put on Resume? [closed]
UPDATE: I refocused this question to honor the answers that those contributors like Flater put a lot of of effort into. However, I tried not to materially change too much as that can make reading the ...
8
votes
3
answers
1k
views
Should I alert my previous employer to errors I made during an internship?
I finished my very first proper internship at an engineering company (HVAC industry) a couple of months ago. I worked in sales support for the sales engineers and filled out project equipment ...
8
votes
1
answer
5k
views
Mistakenly Emailed Wrong Recipient
I am in the middle of a job search...putting feelers out. I hired a resume writer who shares the same name as a colleague. I mistakenly emailed my colleague (from my personal email account after ...
- 81
8
votes
5
answers
1k
views
Senior dev always makes careless mistakes - how to not feel frustrated? [closed]
I work with a senior developer with more 15 years of experience - we'll call him Paul - who displays a very careless attitude, and demonstrates a complete disregard for other people's time and ...
- 97
7
votes
4
answers
4k
views
Just started a new job and I screwed up big time - How to best come back from this?
I just started at a high-intensity company doing graphic and web work. My boss had worked with me before at a third party company and loved my work, and offered for me to come on board full time with ...
user48249
7
votes
3
answers
2k
views
How to navigate an embarrassing mistake I created and recover?
asking for a friend
As part of a small project I wrote some code some months ago.
The code passed my tests, code review, UAT by business analysts and everything was fine. When the time came for me ...
- 19.3k
6
votes
5
answers
1k
views
Should I make it up to my manager for making him buy something I didn't need?
I just started a new job and asked my boss to order me a USB hub about a week ago (they will order stuff you need for work). A couple days later I discovered that the monitors have built in USB plugs. ...
- 303
6
votes
6
answers
1k
views
Should I own up my own mistake in public?
I am working as a software qualify assurance engineer and partially due to my work, a bug managed to get to our production code.
Our customer service team has reported back this issue to us on Slack.
...
- 171
6
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Potential miscommunication by recruiter cost me the job? What are my options?
I have a potential case of miscommunication by a recruiter which may have cost me my job offer. Though it also may be in part due to my stance.
I applied for a job at a much larger company at x salary ...
- 69
6
votes
5
answers
11k
views
Accidentally upset coworker, how to mend this situation?
Backstory
I've been working at this office for about 3 months now and everything seems to be going smooth. During our company's time allocated for sports while we were standing with ~12 people on the ...
- 390
6
votes
3
answers
714
views
I am the sole statistician in my group, and I am scared of making mistakes
I am fresh grad statistician and I am working in the agronomy industry (first time working with this kind of data), I am doing the best the best in my knowledge to produce analysis within the given ...
6
votes
2
answers
819
views
How do I tell my boss to not intervene too much with technical decisions?
I am working in a tech start up, boss is a non technical CEO, lately we are working on trying to make the product scalable, without performance being affected. I think that he is trying to help from ...
- 12k
6
votes
4
answers
3k
views
how to handle a Misbehaviour from senior colleague?
I work for an IT organisation from 1.5 years now.
Let me discuss from start, we went for a team party at a resto-bar and all those who wanted to drink alcohol had it, I even had a little. We all ...
- 199
5
votes
6
answers
1k
views
Dropping out from an interview for a job you don't want
Once upon a time, a temp agency sent me on a job interview. There was a miscommunication (perhaps a mental glitch on my part) about the nature of the client's business.
As soon as I became aware of ...
- 159
5
votes
2
answers
902
views
Made a mistake that really annoyed a coworker. Should I attempt to explain myself or just leave it be?
I had an issue that I needed a DBA's help with. I went to my go-to DBA (DBA#1), since he's usually been friendly and receptive to my questions. He gave me his recommendation, and I logged a ticket for ...
- 59
4
votes
3
answers
8k
views
A company addressed me by a wrong name, and then sent me an offer. How should I approach this situation?
A little over a week ago, I applied for a data science position with a company, not really expecting much to come of it. The next day, their recruiter emailed me to set up an interview, starting ...
- 65
4
votes
6
answers
2k
views
Self-employed and messed up a client's brochure, should I still bill them?
I have been self-employed for 2 years and most of my work is in web development/general IT. I mostly work for small businesses and sometimes they need extra things like graphic design. Often my ...
- 151
4
votes
6
answers
1k
views
Is a coworker rightfully annoyed by my typo?
I recently got chastised in an e-mail because I pasted the wrong number. She asked me for the ID number of a test run that I submitted to a server. To view details about a test run, you have to run a ...
- 367
4
votes
3
answers
3k
views
Gross misconduct and being a scapegoat [closed]
Context: In employment for a small London based software engineering company (3 employees including me) for 18 months now. No previous warnings or grievances or disciplinary procedures.
I was due ...
- 57
3
votes
4
answers
4k
views
Should I withdraw my job application after discovering an unacceptable mistake?
My girlfriend submitted a job application to a big international organization based in the EU. After sending in the final application, she realized she made a shameful mistake in the name of the ...
- 157
3
votes
4
answers
698
views
Should I reveal my mistake after project delivery? [duplicate]
I was working on a project, as assigned by my manager. It was completed, reviewed and delivered, and is now under maintenance. While I was searching through code (for a different purpose) I realized ...
3
votes
3
answers
1k
views
How to hide the fact you very publicly messed up in your last job from potential employers?
This is totally hypothetical based on the recent Ryanair debacle. In no way have I screwed up at work (today, at least), and I don't work for Ryanair.
So I'm the HR manager who decided to switch our ...
- 153
3
votes
4
answers
775
views
Shall I accept an HR "mistake" about the contract? [closed]
I validated a "contract-to-hire" probation period, and now received my final contract for the permanent position, to sign it.
It is consistent with what the HR employee and I had agreed by mail before ...
- 207