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I work as a software engineer of significant seniority at a software company. One of our customers is one that we have had for a very long time; a decade or more. They are very happy with us and our product, and we have a very productive working relationship with them.

Recently, work assignments among our team have shifted significantly due to an increase in work that needs to be done. As a result, I was given this project as the engineer who was previously on it was assigned to another project. A few months after this happened, I was assigned to another project as well, and development on project became the responsibility of a new employee, who we will call Alice. Alice is a new hire, but has previous experience as a software engineer; I show Alice the ropes and provide guidance on what she should do, but I am not her manager. At the same time, the Quality Assurance tester for this project also changed, from the previous tester to Bob, who is the most junior tester on our team but has worked here for 2 years.

The latest release for this customer went poorly; the software had many more bugs in it than is typical. Some parts of it did not even work at all. There are several reasons for that, but to me it appears as though Bob did not do the required quality assurance testing, and that Alice may not have been able to realize that is the case because of her inexperience with our team. Bob claimed that he did not know what testing was required, yet I know with certainty that Alice and several of the engineers who were previously involved with the project sent Bob very detailed notes on what must be tested and what the expected results of the testing are.

Since then, Alice and Bob have worked together on a few more releases for this customer and one release for another customer, and I have worked directly with Bob on several releases for other customers. I am convinced that Bob does not actually do the required testing and that he deliberately misleads the rest of the team about the progress of testing and the thoroughness of what is tested. Based on comments I have heard him make, I think this is because he simply does not care to do his job properly.

Alice, Bob, and I report directly to Charlene. I have expressed my concerns about Bob to Charlene. Charlene is of the opinion that Bob is merely young, that this is his first job out of college, and that this is something he will basically grow out of. I think Charlene is incorrect, and even though it is true that Bob is young, he has worked here for 2 years and cannot complete simple tasks that new hires of similar background now do with no trouble at all. If Charlene is acting on this feedback, I do not know about it (nor would I typically expect to). I know other employees have complained about Bob to Charlene.

Charlene reports to David, who reports directly to the CEO. David had a meeting with me and Charlene to plan future work for the customer who had the especially bad release. As of now, it is expected that Alice and Bob will work on this again, and I may or may not work on it also depending on what the situation is when this work starts. As part of this meeting, David asked me directly if there were any problems with staffing on this project. I repeated the assessment that Charlene and I both agree on, that the problems were caused by relatively inexperienced people taking over the project from relatively experienced people, but I did not state my reservations about Bob that I believe Charlene does not share. I was not comfortable disagreeing with Charlene in front of David.

Did I do the correct thing by not disagreeing with Charlene in front of David? If so, why? If not why not?

In general, how should I handle potential disagreements of this type in the future?