Mind your Language

My professional credibility took a steep dive the day I used a certain 4-letter-word starting with "S" in the defect tracking database at the medical device company where I was working as a senior Engineer.

I had been deep in a system debugging session tracking five different problems at once, any of which could take a week or more to really nail down. In the midst of this, I started seeing some very bizarre threading behaviour which I thought appeared unrelated to any of the things I was looking for. I didn't want to just sweep it under the carpet, since too many similar problems in the past had been overlooked in the heat of development. But I didn't have time to investigate the weird threading problem given all the other issues I was supposed to be investigating, so I logged a bug report in the defect tracking database describing the circumstances under which the problem had occurred. My big mistake after stating that there appeared to be some kind of threading problem, was adding the description to the effect that there was "some weird s..t going down."

A couple of months later, an FDA audit team arrived to perform a routine audit of the development processes at the company. This was a very big deal, since the FDA had the power to close access to one of the company's most significant markets, overnight. As a precautionary measure, the software development manager did a quick profanity search of all the rude words he could think of in the defect tracking database: and the only match was my entry. He summoned me to his office, and asked my opinion as to what I thought he should do to reprimand an engineer for swearing in an official document. Oh-oh, I thought. I'm in trouble! I recognised the report immediately, and said I'd fix it. Fortunately I was able to edit the entry without leaving an audit trail. Unfortunately, I was able to edit the entry without leaving an audit trail.

I was lucky to be able to redeem my professional standing in the audit itself. When the FDA audit team arrived, they chose my project to scrutinise. They dug deep into how the project had been conducted, and found only some very minor issues relating to the recording of detailed test results, from which we were able to learn how to improve future verification practices. Everything else was up to scratch, with all the i's dotted and t's crossed. I recall thinking during the audit that some of the review paperwork they scrutinised was among the most thorough that I had produced. I had cross-referenced every document I could think of, and filled in all the relevant fields with meaningful information which made everything traceable. Even this paperwork was a work of art; and just as well. The audit was a success, the auditors went away happy, and everyone was relieved to know that we were doing a good job of meeting our regulatory development requirements.

To add to my public embarrassment though, the software development manager announced to the development group during the audit debrief that I had used the work "F..k" in the defect tracking database, and suggested that it wasn't the sort of behaviour that he wanted everyone to follow in the future. I protested that he was mistaken, claiming that “weird s..t going down” was different to just saying “F..k!!!”; but my point was moot.

The obvious lesson learned is to watch your language in official documents. Even entries in a bug tracking database are important development documents, and it's not the place for colloquialisms. Especially ones containing offensive words that your manager, or worse: some auditor, is likely to search for. They can leave a bad odour around your professional standing, and that's not what you want as a Great Engineer.

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