Thread by @Nick_Craver

I've talked with so, so many new devs over the years and far too many are afraid to try because they're afraid to fail.

So do me a favor, share your failures. Not just the successes. It's not just about learning from them. Sometimes it's just about people knowing they happen.

Reminder: you see the successes people are proud of and want to shout from the rooftops for all to see. Far, far fewer people share all the failures leading up to those successes. Yet those missteps are almost always far more numerous.

Hi, I'm a dev. I've caused more production outages that I can count. I've deleted a production database by accident. I've missed hundreds of bugs in code reviews. I try my best. I try to not repeat mistakes. It still happens sometimes. I still think my impact has been a net good.

Listen to experience. People are trying to teach you a failure path without you experiencing it. And it's okay to take failure hard for a little bit. Learn from it. Bake it in. You're not likely to repeat that thing again.

It happens. To everyone. Learn. Move on. You're awesome.

I've been building my current thing for the last 8 years of my life. It's older than both my kids. I'm proud of it.

I can't tell you what half those outages were, but I can name every great thing we built along the way. That's what will stick with you most past tomorrow.

When you see a dev make a mistake, the last thing you should ever do is assign blame. Help them fix and analyze it. Help them learn what went wrong. And reassure them it's going to be fine.

This is one reason I like code reviews. I read it. I approved it. It was my fault too.

"I can't believe I missed this"
"Yep, same here. We both did. *WE* won't again."

We. This is critical. It's a team. It's a team when you succeed. It's a team when you fail. It's a team when you learn. We send out an org-wide postmortem after every incident, true to this.

Assigning blame to a person is one of the best ways to make a team repeat mistakes over an over again. Avoidable ones.

Failures need to be learning points, never something to fear. And it's okay to look back and laugh at them. They're an experience. You're better for them.