2009-07-30
To the outside observer, Christopher M's work environment might appear to be a potential breeding ground for WTFs. They supported an "enterprise-level" product and, when a developer noticed a bug, the development manager expected him to just go in and fix it. No change controls, no QA oversight — those were far too time consuming and added little value. Almost anywhere else, this set up would result in chaos, but Chris and his four fellow coders were experts, and they were able to navigate the lack of process.
2009-07-21
Jerry wasn't the sort of guy who would normally vent frustration out loud at work, yet here he was - cursing into the air at two individuals in particular - the first round of explitives being directed at the toolbag, somewhere, who had botched months of server backups by reusing the same set of tapes for months and the other being a long ago departed developer whose name he was continually being subjected to in the comments of the rotten shell script he was now stepping through.
2009-07-02
Twenty five years ago, when Steve W. worked for a military subcontractor, he'd often roll his eyes when meetings were denoted "CONFIDENTIAL". It's not that he didn't take confidentiality seriously, it's just that everything they did was confidential. By labeling most everything "CONFIDENTIAL", there was no way of knowing when some things – like performance reviews and should-we-fire-so-and-so discussions – were really, really confidential. At least, not until you were actually in the meeting.
