Who ships a product release while in no position to monitor the results?

Who ships a product release immediately after a commit?

"People who are shipping actual products instead of talking about them on message boards", perhaps. Running someone else's product company from a message board is a little like playing Jeopardy! from your couch, right?

Yeah. This was... my biggest takeaway from running my own company. I struck out on my own because I thought the business people who ran the companies I worked for were unethical idiots, and being not-an-idiot, I could do better.

Turns out? Nope.

I also find that the arguments I had with my bosses come around again, from my employees.

I still don't really understand how business works - but I've learned enough to understand that I don't understand how business works.

All true, but that still doesn't answer what possesses someone to pack their cell phone in a box.

Seriously guys, take it easy.

My question is: Who never makes mistakes? I certainly do not belong in that set.

And I like Patrick's candid business anecdotes. Snarky comments like this might disencourage people from writing useful advice here. Which would be very unfortunate.

Just trying to be light-hearted about it, sorry if that did not come across.

>All true, but that still doesn't answer what possesses someone to pack their cell phone in a box.

this is the primary difference I see between programmers and sysadmins, development and operations. I know programmers who don't own cellphones at all, while I know some sysadmins who take tertiary backup communication devices on vacation.

It's a difference in focus.

Of course, most programming jobs have /some/ operational responsibilities, and most sysadmin jobs have /some/ development responsibilities, but most people see themselves as primarily one or the other, and act accordingly.

Note, I agree that packing your cellphone in a box was a mistake either way. But if you are primarily an operations/sysadmin type? that would be a really big deal kind of mistake, one that you probably wouldn't make very often. To a Developer type who saw their operations role as secondary, sure, it's still a mistake, but it's a smallish, forgettable kind of mistake.

You're right, I just run my own product company from my couch, and we'd never be daft enough to ship something critical right before disappearing into the ether.