> Bending over backwards not to be the meanie is pointless.

This thinking that we must avoid blaming individuals for their own actions and instead divert all blame to an abstract system is getting a little out of control. The blameless post-mortem culture was a welcome change from toxic companies who were scapegoating hapless engineers for every little event, but it's starting to seem like the pendulum has swung too far the other way. Now I keep running into situations where one person's personal, intentional choices are clearly at the root of a situation but everyone is doing logical backflips to try to blame a "system" instead of acknowledging the obvious.

This can get really toxic when teams start doing the whole blameless dance during every conversation, but managers are silently moving to PIP or lay off the person who everyone knows is to blame for repeated problems. In my opinion, it's better to come out and be honest about what's happening than to do the blameless performance in public for feel-good points.