The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

The Shadow Over ShipPoint

by Dan J. in Feature Articles on 2014-10-31

In the winter of 2012-13, I was fired from the ill-rumored e-commerce company known as ShipPoint. Though I remained stalwart to the end, the wretched darkness embodied in ShipPoint's CTO and his twisted worshipers dogs me still, a malignant growth choking the very life out of my career aspirations. And although I fight every day to forget, to leave my time at ShipPoint behind, I still awaken in the uttermost black of night, shuddering, my mind wrenching itself free from nightmare's grip. I record this grim history only because I fear I may soon slip irredeemably into madness.

It was 2011 when, freshly downsized, I found myself wandering the LinkedIn Jobs Directory, seemingly in vain. I had almost made up my mind to hang out my shingle as a consultant when I received an email from a recruiter. I don't remember his name, nor the firm that he claimed to represent, only that he demanded that we meet in person; apparently he was privy to a lucrative opportunity whose details could only be revealed face to face. While suspicious, I must admit I was gripped by curiosity — tinged, I must now believe, with a touch of the wild. I met the recruiter, a grim, swarthy fellow of furtive glance and questionable heritage, in a refuse-choked alley far from the central business district. It was there, amidst the dumpsters and commercial-grade recycling bins, that I first heard in a grating croak the name whose syllables I would one day shudder to write.

59 comments - Last comment @ 2014-11-04

The Alpha-Team

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2014-10-29

In 2010, a crack development team was formed inside of a Fortune 500 company. These developers promptly escaped the maximum security Project Management Office and instituted an Agile Scrum. Today, they survive as green-field developers. If you have a problem, if traditional corporate IT can’t help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire… Alpha Team.
A-Team Van
When Thom interviewed at said Fortune 500 company, he didn’t know he was interviewing for Alpha Team. He assumed that it would be like any other huge enterprise development shop- tedious line-of-business applications that helped ship widgets but didn’t do much more. The product and the team was sold to him as being very exciting, and he liked the idea of the stability a large company offered, so Thom joined the Alpha Team.

The team room was slightly larger than the inside of a large van. John, the team lead, greeted Thom with a sly grin. “Great to have you on the team. You’ll be sitting between Albert and Murdock. I hope you don’t have any plans for lunch- today’s our weekly team lunch. Good chance for you to get to know everyone.”

The team’s architect, Murdock, grabbed Thom for a few minutes to brief him on the application’s architecture. It wasn’t surprising: a SQL server backend, a web-service based middle-tier, and a hybrid ASP.NET and WebForms presentation tier. “This application is extremely flexible,” Murdock said. “That’s the main goal, really. We’ve got it set up so our business analysts have a lot of control over the display, so that we aren’t wasting time just changing field names around.” The exact details were simply described as “magic”, which Murdock didn’t have time to explain right then; “It’s documented, and I need to crank on a few tasks, our burndown is terrible this sprint.”

40 comments - Last comment @ 2018-02-17

It's Easier This Way

by snoofle in Feature Articles on 2014-10-27

After more than two years at WTF Inc., I thought I'd seen everything that could be done wrong actually done wrong in the worst possible way. Whether it was DBAs who wcouldn't administer a database if their lives depended upon it, managers who wcouldn't manage anything, or business people who simply could not understand the concept of save a dollar today, spend ten tomorrow to fix it.

After that dalliance, I'm back in my chosen field. While crazy things sometimes get done in insane ways, it's usually in the name of beating the competition to market, and (almost) always with the understanding that it will be fixed later - at a price.

39 comments - Last comment @ 2014-10-28

Security through Idiocy

by Charles Robinson in Feature Articles on 2014-10-22

The ticket Bruce found in his help desk queue seemed innocuous enough on the surface. A user in the Finance department complained about not being able to create a file named “Wire Transfer” in their network folder. Being in finance, they did this many times in the past, but suddenly it no longer worked. Bruce assumed the user was doing something wrong, and that it would be resolved in five minutes.

Bruce navigated to the Finance network share, and attempted to create a new file named WireTransfer.txt. A big, ugly “ACCESS DENIED: Security Policy Violation!” message box stared back at him. “That’s odd…” Bruce muttered, knowing he had write access to the directory. “I’ll bet Duane had something to do with this…”

Duane was the resident security “expert”, which always made him Public Enemy #1. He was a kooky old-timer, with a short temper and a low tolerance for human interaction. Duane spent most of his time researching everything but the threats their systems were likely to face. Bruce slinked up to Duane’s office, took a deep breath, and said, “Hey, Duane, I got a ticket for…”

19 comments - Last comment @ 2014-10-22

A Stupid Comment

by Ellis Morning in Feature Articles on 2014-10-16

Paul worked for a branch of the Defence Department in Australia, writing reams of C++ using the standard template libraries on a Linux box. On a typical afternoon, Paul checked some code into CVS with a comment:

Fixed bug 7551, see issue report 2119. Tinky Winky is my favourite Teletubby.

86 comments - Last comment @ 2014-10-17

Bazooka Proof

by snoofle in Feature Articles on 2014-10-14

Back in early 2000, Clint interviewed for a position as a software developer for a mid-sized engineering company of about 200-plus people somewhere in the deserts of Kerblekistan, located in very close proximity to the Elbonian mud fields. Everyone there, especially the women, was used to living in harsh conditions, and had grown extremely rugged as a result. The Kerblekistanis and Elbonians had been enjoying an uneasy peace, but kept a wary eye out for less-than-peaceful activities...

During the interview, the development team was ready to hire him when one of the bosses burst into the room and interrupted the interview to introduce himself. When he discovered that Clint had an IT background, he became very excited. They temporarily needed a network administrator until they could hire someone permanently, so for the first three months, Clint was assigned to be a network admin.

65 comments - Last comment @ 2016-12-01

Oh So Secret Passwords

by snoofle in Feature Articles on 2014-10-08

Our long-time friend, GRG, is back again, this time with tales of ~~anti~~ security...

A very long time ago, he worked at a University Computer Center. At the time, the school was the proud owner of two huge, hulking mainframes. (The faster of the two was big, gray, probably designed by a guy named Seymour, and was the fastest computer in the world for several years!) Unfortunately, the operating system was rather bare-bones. Thus, although you couldn't do much, you could do it without fear of the OS getting in your way. For example, you could store files (one directory per user), compile FORTRAN or COBOL or Pascal programs, or run SPSS, and that was about it. Unless you were willing to creatively think outside the box...

38 comments - Last comment @ 2020-01-01

Threadbare Down Under

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2014-10-06

Organizing a small development team is an art. Organizing a large team is a challenge. Organizing a global team, scattered across eight countries and four continents is a job for Sisyphus.

Scali’s company was in exactly that situation. Their self-appointed Sisyphus was actually named Steven. Steven’s slot on the org-chart was “Chief Application Architect for the Australian Region”, or CAAAR for short.

35 comments - Last comment @ 2014-10-15

Best of Email - Greatest Pitch EVER!

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2014-10-01

Trying to advance yourself in your career is really tough. Usually, if you want things to go your way, either you have to work really hard at it or pray that you know someone who might be willing to assist on your behalf.

Well, if the email that Dhruv received is any indication, you can forget about all that stuff. Yep, here's proof that, sometimes, opportunities just fall out of the sky.

111 comments - Last comment @ 2023-11-29

Recent Feature Articles