Whenever I come across risky stuff like this I make a song and dance about it at meetings so when someone (incl. me) trips over it, well, I warned everyone including management. And whenever I am tasked to do it I send message on Teams to make as much noise as possible. Logging into prod environments, into prod databases, running scripts as root etc.

Standard fresh grad hire stressing over that first mistake

Learning how you communicate with the management chain is more important than avoiding mistakes.

In my experience, A) You should always let your manager know about what you think is a serious mistake B) Try to either fix it or let them know how a process could be designed to avoid it. If you do both and get fired anyway, it is probably a shitty workplace anyway.

^This exactly. Doing the right thing might get you fired, but at least you did the right thing. Update your resumé and move on as best you can.

The two answers by Gregory and Old_Lamplighter are _very_ good answers, and contains tons of advice that OP (and others) should follow and learn from.

Disclaimer: I've been both an employee who has done mistakes, and I have been a manager/boss who has done mistakes and dealt with employees doing mistakes.

Let's get the recent grad to communicate with our clients/vendors using sensitive data that they don't understand. No need to supervise, it will be fine

The bigger issue is lack of training and the ease with which you can make copy paste errors. At least use separate files for each client or something.

Step 1 if you've made a mistake is to tell your supervisor. Waiting to see if it'll go away on its own will make the problem grow, robbing your supervisor of the ability to fix it. Your failure to tell others makes you look like you either don't understand what's happening around you, or that you did it on purpose.

Having to be afraid of losing your job after making one honest mistake is such a foreign concept to me, being from Norway. Speaking very generally, only the most illoyal of behavior towards your employer is grounds for immediate dismissal, such as stealing from the till.

Generally, an employer needs to document their reasons for wanting to fire a worker, and something like them not working fast enough is not reason enough on its own. Having a dialogue between employee and employer is very important, such that the employee gets a chance to change and improve if they wish.

The difference between how Norway and the US do everything from employment, to pension and workers rights is so vastly different. I would love to hear what HN thinks about this.