Elon, We’ve All Made Shoddy Software. Own It.

As a software developer, I’ve produced a lot of software. Some of it works as intended, even under heavy load.

Some of it has left much to be desired, particularly when a big campaign kicks off.

My strategy historically has been to blame someone else. As I’ve matured, I’ve realized that the best way to go is to own my mistakes and to learn from them.

When a CEO adopts the behavior of an immature software engineer perhaps someone should sit down with them and have a chat about accountability and doing the right thing.

Elon Musk has entered the chat

During a much-anticipated X Spaces interview with former President Trump got delayed by over 40 minutes at first it appeared that X was not at fault.

Musk made an announcement:

The problem is how was the rest of X running just fine?

Good Lies, Bad Lies

When you write your resume tell whatever lies you like. Say that you had more responsibility than you actually had, be my guest but make sure you tell *good lies* that aren’t instantly provable to be lies. DO NOT lie about things that are factual and provable. Start and end dates of employment, and job titles. You’ll get found out, so these are *bad lies*.

Musk told a *bad lie*. Not only did the DDOS attack magically not touch the rest of X, but the website The Verge has been told that the DDOS attack didn’t exist and there is a 99% chance that Musk has been caught in a lie.

Even though they happily said:

But I guess you fired the QA department?

We’ve All Been There, But…

Most of us have estimated work to be finished and then not managed to deliver. We learn from our mistakes and move on, owning our mistakes. As long as we are in a decent (non-toxic) work environment we are supported to move on and improve.

That isn’t the atmosphere at X of course. This is a denial from someone who touts engineering excellence and hardcore long-hours programming. Perhaps these screw-ups might just be a pattern of a terrible work culture and the blame game that an egocentric CEO loves to play? Just wondering.

Everyone Does It!

Look, everyone ships bugs.

The more complex the system, the more bugs you’re likely to ship. Spelling errors aside you might have shipped non-production-ready code. You might have created your own DDOS attack on your own server. You might have crashed your users’ machines (CrowdStrike we are looking at you).

Being a great developer isn’t about avoiding mistakes. That’s an impossibility. This is about how you respond to errors. Blaming aliens, users or the programmer before doesn’t cut it. If you’re the CEO it’s an insult to the developers who work for you frankly, and it’s giving our profession a bad name.

The Right Behavior

Musk’s refusal to take responsibility is a broader tech issue. We’ve fostered a culture that prioritizes bravado over humility.

Devs who nitpick line breaks but can’t see logic errors? That’s an issue.

We aren’t invincible code warriors and pretending we are, isn’t good for anyone. Most of us are duct-taping code together with the help of Stack Overflow and ChatGPT (come on! Admit it! I’m not the only one).

As for Musk, this is about leadership. If Musk owned up to the mistake his company could continue to learn and improve. Instead, he’s sending the message that accountability doesn’t matter — and that’s an issue that damages the whole industry and halts innovation and improvement.

Conclusion

I became a software engineer thinking that the job would be data-driven and logical. I thought people owned their mistakes so that they can improve them, and Agile frameworks helped people to do so.

I thought software engineers embraced mistakes as an opportunity to learn.

Can someone convince me that this outlook is appropriate in just one tech company? Please?