This is very much not the cultural norm over in these parts. I'd be curious to hear your reason as to why you think that. (Genuinely curious, not passive-aggressive "curious.")
Particularly with specific regards to engineering, even things which are theoretically not within our control (e.g. the server going down because a technician tripped over the cable) are often inside our ability to affect (by picking a better provider, investing in a redundant setup, etc). This is good: after we know that things are generally within our capabilities to address, we'll address them, rather than thinking that it is outside the scope of our responsibility, capability, or authority.
(Semi-related sidenote: For hackers who enjoy theology there is a doctrine in Catholicism called subsidiarity which, as a quick gloss, states that responsibility for solving a problem begins immediately local to the problem and then bubbles up to the lowest level of societal organization which is capable of resolving that problem. That level is obligated to solve the problem rather than passing the buck up, where it will not receive sufficient attention, or down, where it will not receive sufficient resources.
I always thought, aside from being a good idea, this was virtually tailor made for programmers. It's like there is a papal encyclical on the canonical right way to do exception handling.)
I can respond to his comment from my own perspective. With my own customers, I have a policy of accepting blame for everything and always working to fix pretty much anything.
This, semi-regularly, results in customers who notice this policy and take advantage of it. You end up in a situation where you either have to piss off a customer or do mountains of work that have nothing to do with the scope of your product simply because the customer is convinced its your fault (or he's a dink that knows if he pretends its your fault, he'll get something out of you).
My biggest falling is that. And unfortunately, I feel that the customers who are like that, are also the ones who make the biggest noise. I'm in a relatively sensitive industry where my customers tend to be doing a lot of research before picking my product, so I can't afford to have any bad noise floating around.
Just an anecdote/personal vent very related to the discussion.
No, that isn't the business I was referring to. Those are usually pretty open and shut projects -- and I don't do many of them anymore. Thanks for the Internet sleuthing though.
I wasn't thinking of things you have the power to address. I was thinking more of making yourself the fall guy for things you didn't cause and cannot fix. I didn't know how to express exactly why, but scott_s summarizes part of my feelings on the matter quite well.
The rest of my thoughts on the matter center around the sense I get that, in continually taking responsibility (blame) for things outside your ability to influence, you will basically form a habit of it, which will lead you down a dark road of learned helplessness, omega behavior, and never being able to please your clients because everything bad that happens is "your" fault. If you think about it, if you form a habit of it and it begins to internalize, you are basically developing something similar to Imposter Syndrome.
Personally, when something is my fault I try to own it. When something is not, and is outside my sphere of influence, I try to skip past the issue of "fault" by briefly explaining the cause (in an attempt to show it was not incompetence on my part, while doing my best to avoid "pointing fingers") and focus on resolution.
Simple example: Coworker erases your work from centralized revision control (history and all), causing you to miss a deadline. Do you declare, "There was a glitch in revision control, it is my fault for trusting it" or do you state the facts and try to move on? The former certainly appears to be noble, but to me it appears to be the tragic hero sort of noble.
(I will add that I am very conflicted in writing this. I am saying to myself, "You cold heartless bastard!". I would, and do, cover for other people sometimes, but fundamentally I do believe in the untenable nature of regularly making yourself the scapegoat.)
To go just a little bit further, I would like to draw attention to some of the people who, at some point or another, were indirectly involved in some way with someone's death. I think everyone is familiar with the opine of 'If only I had told him to finish his dinner, that car might not have hit him!', or 'If only I had not stopped for a bagel this morning, the poor cashier would not have been shot!'.
Taking responsibility for things that you did not cause and have utterly no power to fix has a long, long and documented history of (at least temporarily) destroying people. Obviously this is an extreme example, but I feel it illustrates rather well.
"It's all personal, every bit of business. . . . If a bolt of lightning his a friend of his the old man would take it personal. . . . That's what makes him great. The Great Don. He takes everything personal. Like God. He know every feather that falls from the tail of a sparrow or however the hell it goes. Right? And you know something? Accidents don't happen to people who take accidents as a personal insult." -- Michael Corleone
Particularly with specific regards to engineering, even things which are theoretically not within our control (e.g. the server going down because a technician tripped over the cable) are often inside our ability to affect (by picking a better provider, investing in a redundant setup, etc). This is good: after we know that things are generally within our capabilities to address, we'll address them, rather than thinking that it is outside the scope of our responsibility, capability, or authority.
(Semi-related sidenote: For hackers who enjoy theology there is a doctrine in Catholicism called subsidiarity which, as a quick gloss, states that responsibility for solving a problem begins immediately local to the problem and then bubbles up to the lowest level of societal organization which is capable of resolving that problem. That level is obligated to solve the problem rather than passing the buck up, where it will not receive sufficient attention, or down, where it will not receive sufficient resources.
I always thought, aside from being a good idea, this was virtually tailor made for programmers. It's like there is a papal encyclical on the canonical right way to do exception handling.)