I used to be a software engineer, which I only mention as evidence that I've developed pretty good attention to detail. (Miss one character in your program and pukes or does something random and unpleasant.) But now I've been a BA for about 10 years and the single thing I struggle with the most is documentation reviews. I'm curious if others have the same issues or not.

One example was a place I worked for 5 years that had a hyper-critical culture. Everybody and their dog was encouraged to review and provide feedback, which resulted in dogpiles and goose chases (bob says X, Mary says Y, Sam says change it back to X, Mary says change it back to Y, etc.) and aggravation all around. I have a high work ethic and feel compelled to learn to do things right the first time, so this place drove me batty. I had a conversation with my boss where I expressed this issue and she told me that I shouldn't worry about doing things right the first time. In order to get along there I just needed to always have a happy attitude about all the feedback and revisions and never lose patience or get frustrated. I couldn't do it, so I eventually left. (For the record, I am happy to receive feedback and greet reviews with a good attitude... until the process goes on so long that it's unproductive, which is what this place was. I'm pretty sure I got the reputation there of not being able to handle feedback well, which was also frustrating.)

Another thing I've dealt with is when starting a new job, not knowing if small mistakes and needing multiple reviews will get me disciplined. That's part of learning the culture, I guess. Most of the BA jobs I've had were in cultures that had worse ideas of what "good quality" was than I do - like the one I describe above! So I got used to lowering my standards to meet the standards of my coworkers and bosses. But this year I started a new job and discovered that my new boss and coworkers actually have high standards. Now I have a lot of sloppy habits that I'm working on breaking. But it's taking time and every time I make a mistake I wonder if my boss is grinding his teeth about me.

What have you guys dealt with in terms of cultural challenges and work quality?