After manager threatened to fire colleague, he gave him a critical task—which was flubbed

A warning at work

Gordon became manager of an engineering team working on a popular PC chipset. He was asked to tell a colleague that he needed to improve or leave. Gordon described the colleague as a nice person who was not a strong engineer and needed to do better.

A critical backup assignment

Soon afterward, the team was tasked with making a full backup of the chipset’s production stepping, a minor revision of the silicon. The backup was intended to provide a detailed record for restoring the design.

Gordon gave the assignment to the underperforming colleague. He later said he was overworked and had not thought the decision through.

The backup could not be found

Before the next stepping was completed, the employee was let go after earlier problems caught up with him. The semiconductor company then asked Gordon to find the backup. Gordon assembled what he could from fragments, but he still does not know whether the customer could make a useful chip from it.

A change in procedure

Afterward, Gordon took greater care when assigning restore-backup work for design projects. He also kept emails requesting backups and confirmation that they had been completed.