Manager not highlighting issues with software

neaideabh

I have been working with this company for 2 just over 2 years.

Me and my boss are the only people in the company globally who run a particular software as administrators.

It has proven to fail numerous times in more than 1 feature but these failures can be hard to spot unless you carry out tricky analysis on the data which is time consuming. Once I determine the issues I put together a fix for it!

Then on another feature, my boss pointed out to me that there was an issue with it. He advised that on the next monthly exercise that executes the feature to not run one of the steps in the hope that the reoccurring failure will not materialize so I complied. Sure enough this error happened again. He asked me did I run that step which I said no. Next time round, I again did not run that step in the process but the same error appeared. This time round he accused me of not doing as he said. I off course told him I did do as he said

Then the next time round, the error appeared again. this time he believed me when I said I didn’t carry out that step and said he will contact the system developers about it which he didn’t.

Regarding the other feature with an issue, the manager also stated that he will raise the issue with the developers when we have clear examples which we do have but he still hasn’t raised the issue.

So there are 2 problems here….

1.Both these issues have the potential to create big problems.

2.He accused me of lying about my actions…. I did the right thing by him but he said I didn’t.

Needless to say this is causing me stress and anxiety

The amount of time I spend fixing the issue and taking proactive measures to minimize the effects of the issue is taking up a lot of time for just doing my job leaving me working late many times

Then today, 2 hours after I finished, (WFH by the way) he sends an email with a spreadsheet showing one of the features failed again saying…. We’ll talk about this on Monday. I suspect he is going to accuse me again of running the step he advised to leave out.

Talk about leaving you with a bad vibe on a Friday evening after work.

Bottom line is, the system is not fit for purpose but he is not raising the issue to anyone. He is sweeping it under the carpet. This system is used globally, but only the two of us are the administrators for it. I don’t think anyone else in the company khow to use it as much as us. Even the IT Dept!

im not sure he is even 100% convinced of what he is teaching me about the system.

So…. I’m just curious to know how one should/would deal with this!

Any thoughts anyone?

Flinty997

Can you contact the developers yourself?

dennyk

Anything stopping you from submitting your own bug report to the devs directly? It's possible your manager is just busy with other things and hasn't had time or keeps forgetting.

If you do submit a bug report, make sure it's a good one. "Feature X is broken..." is not a useful bug report; you want to provide as much detail as you can to explain exactly what the issue is and (most importantly) exactly how to reproduce it, step by step. Something like:

+++

When using feature X, issue Y occurs.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Open feature X and go to page A
2. Enter 1 in box B and 2 in box C
3. Click Button D

Expected result: Output field E is "3" and no error message is displayed

Actual result: Output field E is "6" and an error message "Error 1234 has occurred in function blah() line 456" is displayed

+++

Your devs will love you if you give them this up front instead of submitting a bug report that just says "halp its broke" and making them resort to military interrogation techniques to drag the actual details out of you. (Well, either that or they'll hate you for making them do actual work instead of just closing your bug report with "Unable to reproduce"... 😆 )

Jim2007

First and foremost you don't have the same view of the situation your manager has. You see a technical problem, but the actual situation may be a political problem at the manager's level. For all you know reporting problems on the system might be the catalyst for replacing the system and you along with it. Contrary to what other are saying, by passing your manager is not a good idea and developers will not thank you for by passing the established protocol and bothering them about a system that has little or no budget and one they are not supposed to be working on.

Your manager is responsible for the operation of your group, so document in detail what the problems, the steps to reproduce etc and leave it with them. When running the process, confirm with him that you are by passing the step as instructed etc... so it is very clear that you are doing as instructed and leave the rest to him, that is what he is paid for.

28064212

Why are you reading work emails two hours after you finish on a Friday evening? Why are you getting stressed and anxious about a software fault that your manager has shown you they don't care about? If he wants you to spend every Friday doing noting else but fixing the broken report, so what? It's their problem that other work won't get done, not yours.