Gergely Orosz on X: "Okay, we’ve all had a good laugh. Let’s now talk at the person who should be in the hot seat. It’s not the intern. It’s the manager of the intern. Who messed up big time. Here’s the 3 reasons why:" / X

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Gergely Orosz
@GergelyOrosz
Okay, we’ve all had a good laugh. Let’s now talk at the person who should be in the hot seat. It’s not the intern. It’s the manager of the intern. Who messed up big time. Here’s the 3 reasons why:
HBO Max Help
@hbomaxhelp
Jun 18, 2021
We mistakenly sent out an empty test email to a portion of our HBO Max mailing list this evening. We apologize for the inconvenience, and as the jokes pile in, yes, it was the intern. No, really. And we’re helping them through it. ❤️
12:32 PM · Jun 18, 2021
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Gergely Orosz
@GergelyOrosz
Jun 18, 2021
1. You NEVER put a team member as a root cause for an incident. *Especially* not when the social media team asks what to write. This was NOT the fault of the intern. Congratulations for making them feel it is. If you need to name a person who is responsible: it’s the manager.
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Gergely Orosz
@GergelyOrosz
Jun 18, 2021
2. The real problem is not that the intern accidentally sent emails to all subscribers in prod. It’s that *anyone* can do so. It could have been the senior eng. A new joiner. The system should have not allowed doing so. Automations, peer review etc help here.
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Gergely Orosz
@GergelyOrosz
Jun 18, 2021
3. Mentors and onboarding buddies. An intern is… an intern. Do they have an experienced engineer helping them onboard and with their work? If yes - what happened? What information was missing? If no - why? It’s one of the highest leverage activities, and a win-win.
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Gergely Orosz
@GergelyOrosz
Jun 18, 2021
If I was the manager of the manager for this intern, I’d be asking them all the above questions. The intern did his/her job. The manager screwed up and allowed blame to fall on the intern, over protecting their team. Manager: you need to do better. For the sake of your team.
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Mahmoud
@thisismahmoud
Jun 18, 2021
Yea it's a lot easier to say an intern messed up than saying "sorry we haven't set up the right checks and made sure that it's hard to make these types of mistakes"
1

Okay, we’ve all had a good laugh. Let’s now talk at the person who should be in the hot seat. It’s not the intern. It’s the manager of the intern. Who messed up big time. Here’s the 3 reasons why:

HBO Max Help

@hbomaxhelp

Jun 18, 2021

We mistakenly sent out an empty test email to a portion of our HBO Max mailing list this evening. We apologize for the inconvenience, and as the jokes pile in, yes, it was the intern. No, really. And we’re helping them through it. ❤️

12:32 PM · Jun 18, 2021