There’s a thing you see on social media sometimes where people call out bugs they’ve found in other people's software. Okay, maybe I see it more because I follow other people in tech but if you’ve read this far so I reckon you move in the right circles to also see this behaviour as well. I don’t know if this has an accepted name but I’m going to refer to it here as Bug Shaming. I’ve done it myself in the past and I’m sure I’ll do it again but I think it might be an unpleasant habit. I found myself wondering why people do this, because I think it’s unhealthy.
When people do this is it so the company can fix the bug? If so then really you should try and direct it to the correct account and fill it with enough details for someone to investigate it. If you are a tester, there is no excuse for not treating this like a real bug report. If you truly are trying to help a company improve their software or hardware, you would want to utilise your known skills to increase their understanding of what you’ve found.
Unless you don’t want them to fix it. If you haven’t included the known ‘Support account’ in your public message then maybe the right people won’t see it. Or if you’ve tweeted at the general company when you know that your bug lives in a specific product with it’s own more niche address then maybe you want it to be seen by more people rather than the right people. So if you aren’t trying to get it resolved is your intent to show how clever you are? Is your aim to highlight how you are better at finding the bug than the team who worked on it were? Are you vocalising how appalled you are at the team who allowed the bug to get out in the world? Or are you just showing off? Because I think it might be okay if you are.
Lots of people do this and why shouldn’t testers be allowed to highlight bugs they’ve found in the public? More importantly who do I think I am with the authority to tell people what they are and aren’t permitted to do? Obviously I can’t stop people from doing this, and neither would I want to, remember, I still want to retain the right to show off myself occasionally. There is a type of sentiment which appears in Bug Shaming which I specifically dislike though, phrases such as; ‘Which idiot tested this?’ or ‘Why wasn’t this tested?’
If you’re an old fashioned software developer or a civilian (normal human who lives outside the software industry) then you are probably forgiven for doing this. Like you even care about my forgiveness. However if you’re a professional tester or an enlightened developer, (a test ally if you like), who works in a slightly modern agile environment then I think maybe you should avoid Bug Shaming testers. Be passionate to your fellow tester.
Here’s why I think this. If you are a modern tester then you’ve probably practised risk based testing in the past. You’ll know that you can’t test everything. Or you may work in an environment where the tester is not the sole quality gate. It’s fairly common for a product owner or the team as a whole to prioritise issues found in releases, deciding sometimes that bugs which have been discovered should be permitted to be let loose into the outside world.
I would guess that every agile tester out there has been aware of bugs going live that they really wish could have been fixed but which they have been told aren’t high enough priority.
At which point we should each of us be aware that sometimes bugs go live and it’s not because the tester was an idiot or that it wasn’t tested at all. Maybe the bug was a perceived edge scenario not worth running or the cost of fixing it was deemed too high.
So I suppose what I’m saying is, finding bugs in other people's software is fun but calling out the testers is mean. Let’s not be a mean community, let’s support each other. The people we should really hate are the developers who put that bug in there to start off with, right? I am of course joking with my last remark. Oh, you know what, live your own lives and do whatever you want, it’s just my opinion.
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