
Ask HN: What is the biggest mistake you have made on the job? - altotrees
What is the most catastrophic, painful mistake you made while working? Did it teach you a valuable lesson and how did you deal with the fallout?
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relaunched
Staying too long. If your goal is to grow in responsibility, title and
compensation, the most important thing is to have a boss that has the
inclination and authority to develop your career and promote you, when
appropriate. If you don't have that, you need to make a move.

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altotrees
I'll start. I had been chatting with a coworker online while at work — using a
bit of coarse language. Shortly before leaving, I copied and pasted some
marketing copy into the CMS for the page I was working on. I didn't check my
work and went home for the weekend.

Got a text Saturday morning that something was off about our "For Prospective
Students" landing page (I was working on the new website for a Private
Catholic College). Navigated there, and stood staring in disbelief as I read
my own words calling a certain friend of mine a certain derogatory name or 4
under the heading "Why Choose Us?" Turns out, I thought I had added the
Marketing copy to the clipboard, but must've accidentally copied and pasted a
fraction of my damning convo instead.

Lesson Learned: ALWAYS check your work, no matter how long you have been
building websites or anything public-facing. It was such a dumb mistake. I
didn't end up fired, but got a stern reprimand from my direct supervisor.
Months later, the President of the school confided to me that he found the
incident fairly hilarious, and somewhat troubling. Hoo boy.

~~~
sillysaurus3
What ended up happening? That sounds like one of the worst scenarios from a
career standpoint.

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altotrees
Nothing, shockingly. My supervisor just shook his head and went "man, I
just...you can't..oh man." I felt like an idiot and had another serious talk
with supervisor. Apparently, only a few members of our marketing team had seen
it, and I had been doing good work so the damage was mitigated somewhat.

It helped that I was the only person on staff who really knew Javascript and
Coffeescript well and that I was also well-versed in writing and editing. Had
I lacked any of these, had another staff member been better at them, or had
the project been further along I'm sure I would've been canned. The president
didn't find out until weeks later, thank god.

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Jack000
there was a tax issue in our shopping cart software that only occurred in
florida. I googled for an address in florida and put in a few test purchases.

Long story short, I shipped a thousand dollars worth of networking equipment
to Disney World.

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oldsklgdfth
I once fell asleep at a customer facility. We had been doing 12hr days and it
was a weekend. No one was there. Cafeteria was closed so no coffee. So I
decided to find a quiet spot to nap. Needless to say I got a call from my
boss's boss's boss. Also, I was told to not bill that day. Despite being
salaried with no overtime and having reached 40hrs in the first few days.

It wasn't the same after that. Never let your boss or coworker discover how
little you care about work.

~~~
Rjevski
> Never let your boss or coworker discover how little you care about work.

Or switch bosses. A boss that can't understand that after 12 hour days you
need some rest can go fuck themselves.

