It’s not actually that hard to accept the blame, especially if people kind of realize that it wasn’t all your fault. Which brings us to the best way of taking the blame: do it for another guy. You’ll feel good for taking the fall, he’ll feel good about not getting blamed, and the guy who lost his whole 36GB porn-collection because of your incompetence will grudgingly admit that you at least didn’t try to weasel out of it.
Then make the developer who really screwed up (if you can find him) know inprivate that he screwed up. Not just so he can avoid it in the future, but so that he knows he owes you one. And, perhaps even more importantly, he’s also likely the person who can fix it. Because, let’s face it, it sure ain’t you.
ETA: I take back my initial reaction. It’s not completely different from what TheOtherDave described. But there are some important differences from at least what I described and had in mind:
If someone else already accepted the blame, it doesn’t advise you to try to take away the blame from him and on yourself, especially if he’s really the one at fault!
It doesn’t paint being blamed as being a net positive in some situations, so no incentive to invent things to be blamed for, or to blow them u pout of all proportion
Telling off the one really at fault, in private, is an important addition—especially if everyone else is tacitly aware you’ll do this, even if they don’t always know who was at fault. That’s taking responsibility more than taking blame.
In addition, there’s a difference between a random person taking blame for the actions of another random person; and a leader taking blame for the mistakes of one of his subordinates. As far as I can tell, the situation described in the article you linked to is a bit closer to the second scenario.
Linux Kernel Management Style says to be greedy when it comes to blame.
Here are some relevant paras:
ETA: I take back my initial reaction. It’s not completely different from what TheOtherDave described. But there are some important differences from at least what I described and had in mind:
If someone else already accepted the blame, it doesn’t advise you to try to take away the blame from him and on yourself, especially if he’s really the one at fault!
It doesn’t paint being blamed as being a net positive in some situations, so no incentive to invent things to be blamed for, or to blow them u pout of all proportion
Telling off the one really at fault, in private, is an important addition—especially if everyone else is tacitly aware you’ll do this, even if they don’t always know who was at fault. That’s taking responsibility more than taking blame.
In addition, there’s a difference between a random person taking blame for the actions of another random person; and a leader taking blame for the mistakes of one of his subordinates. As far as I can tell, the situation described in the article you linked to is a bit closer to the second scenario.