> Sometimes it’s just an influential VP or CEO’s pet project, and you need to align with their vision.
My biggest career mistake was a project that I had no way to know was the CEO's pet project.
Can't say where (non-disparagement agreement), but oh boy was that a lot of messy fallout — QA awarded me a prize for least bugs on launch, yet at the same time line manger also immediately went from giving me bonuses to putting me on a PIP for having too many bugs in launch.
optics. If the CEO is reporting bugs they find or those bug numbers appear "concerning," the apparent lack of quality calls for corrective action.
Obviously things were not the healthiest there. The CEO should be similarly interested in other projects and their quality. Your manager should be aware of the relative quality and your award and tell his manager that "it has been / will be dealt with" and then to either never file the pip or speed run you through it (while letting you in on why: optics). And then the manager should be working towards producing better reporting metrics that executives can use that expose quality issues at large
I'd like to say I can code perfectly, but I'm a mere mortal not Donald Knuth and I can't get away with saying "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."
We had tracking of launch bugs, the manager ignored the evidence — that didn't make any sense at the time, then I developed a better understanding of office politics and suddenly it became easy to understand.
My biggest career mistake was a project that I had no way to know was the CEO's pet project.
Can't say where (non-disparagement agreement), but oh boy was that a lot of messy fallout — QA awarded me a prize for least bugs on launch, yet at the same time line manger also immediately went from giving me bonuses to putting me on a PIP for having too many bugs in launch.