I was recently in a very unpleasant situation.
I made a mistake while improving a customers SCO server and his server was no longer able to boot properly, offering the “panic…” message.
He has critical data and applications there and the contact person is not a technical one so I had to dictate character-by-character commands and instructions on phone in order to have the problem fixed. “Happily” this happened after 5p.m. and the system was back next day before noon (I had to send him a couple of programs by FedEx).
Normal, the customer informed the general manager of my company and I had a ?nice? discussion with him. Only the argument that their data was never in danger because I was very carefully with it and the support from my college was able to bring the discussion to a normal way. Now I?m still waiting for a possible punishment and I?m reviewing my resume.
I?m curious to hear some of your experience(s) related to small or big mistakes you did and what kind of punishments/rewards followed. What you consider to be a good policy in dealing with this kind of problems?
P.S. 3 years ago I herd about an Oracle DBA that dropped one of the company databases. He was fired and in the same day he was hired by the company located next floor with a higher salary. So this could be considered a reward for a mistake. Maybe is only an urban legend, but what about if…
