We were writing a Unix program to parse transactions from some specialized terminals that read customer invoices and the checks that accompanied them, writing the transactions to digital tape to carry over to the mainframe system. During testing our tapes were compared to tapes generated by the legacy IBM system. Our team lead got a call from the customer liaison *early* on morning saying "Do you realize one of your batches was 5 MILLION DOLLARS SHORT - yes, she was shouting. Turns out that the $5 million transaction was the largest we'd ever tested with so far. All others were less than $999,999. It was my bug - I'd put the sign nybl (half a byte) on top of the most-significant digit of the packed-decimal payment-amount field on the test tape, dropping that digit from the field. Trivial fix - I had just been auditing the relevant code the previous day.

Something that I did as a manager was to have an HR person that everyone trusted be the recipient of anonymous evaluations. Can't remember who made up the questionnaire - I think that I and the HR person collaborated. Then HR summarized the results and I had some good info.
I think that every manager's review process should include such a subordinate evaluation. You may be able to "manage up" and keep a good reputation with your bosses, but it's hard IMO to fool your subordinates.

This (potentially) builds on your relationship with Bob and has the potential to improve both it and the storage system. AND, it may be that you've picked up subliminal signs that Bob is unhappy and may leave, so BACK IT UP first. Then do the above, and you're covered. Unless you already have a regular, tested, backup process. Oh, Bob runs it? ... Trouble.

He's a rollicking adventure writer and can be very funny as well. All his works to date are on fsand.com as e-books. Here's an excerpt from "AI Wars - the Big Boost" Trent the protagonist speaking to his boss, Melissa:
Trent: Listen,” he said in a confidential voice, “you tell the Elite Commander everything is under control, and he’s not to worry.”
Melissa: “ ‘Everything’s under control, and he’s not to worry.’ ”
Trent: “Exactly. We like the hardware, and the hardware likes us. We have mutual respect and admiration.”
Melissa: She stared at him. “You have mutual respect and admiration. With the hardware.
And this has trimmed seventy-seven days off your completion estimates.”
Trent: "And the new people, of course."

Get the omnibus edition to have all of them.
No, I didn't get paid for this endorsement.

The picture in the original article is incorrect. Here's an accurate drawing of an Iridium satellite. I speak from first-hand knowledge, having seen one in a lab at Lockheed in Sunnyvale, CA. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=17e53224-a6f9-458b-8e74-7b4943acbede Great tech, IMO!