• Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    You guys are missing the point. It was automatically assumed by Aaron that the "guru" was going to fail. He wanted a new permanent position and a way to end the constant stream of dim-bulb consultants. Double-checking that your backups are good then giving the "guru" write access to the live DB is genius. It practically ensures an epic fail by the "guru" thus, unless HR is completely clueless or downright evil, producing the desired outcome.

    When you put it that way, there's no WTF here at all. Everything went exactly according to Aaron's plan. Brilliant!

  • ounos (unregistered)

    Excellent denormalization technique.

    PS: Akismet, you moron, die a slow horrible death

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    You guys are missing the point. It was automatically assumed by Aaron that the "guru" was going to fail. He wanted a new permanent position and a way to end the constant stream of dim-bulb consultants. Double-checking that your backups are good then giving the "guru" write access to the live DB is genius. It practically ensures an epic fail by the "guru" thus, unless HR is completely clueless or downright evil, producing the desired outcome.

    When you put it that way, there's no WTF here at all. Everything went exactly according to Aaron's plan. Brilliant!

    I have an image of Mr. Burns in my head saying "Excellent..." while doing his finger-thingie.

  • Anonymous contractor (unregistered) in reply to I really need to find my logon info again

    I'm a contractor too and I share most of your mentality. I do a good job and am disgusted when I see firms sending rookies to clients pretending they're senior devs.

    But your comment about "working for free because I'm learning" and "I don't overcharge" IMHO are indications that you're still pretty new to this and/or a bit naive. No disrespect intended.

    There's learning involved in every job. The difference is, are you so grossly underqualified that you're cheating your client? Based on your earlier comment you're not in that category so, why not charge for the client-specific skills you're learning? If they didn't want to pay for that, they simply had to hire a guy who already knew everything about the topic. They didn't. They hired you.

    Also, you can never overcharge, such a thing doesn't exist. What I mean is that you ask for a set amount of money and they either agree or disagree and it's their choice. That you make triple the salary of the guy next to you or a tenth, in the end it all boils down that you and the client agreed on a price that satisfies both of you. End of story.

    My 2 cents :)

  • the beholder (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Oh, you didn't bold Aaron's name in the first paragraph, you fail at writing.... Lorne??? Oh, this is interesting, a new writer. Well, I was only kidding, it's sort of a running joke round here. Anyway, welcome Lorne!
    Lorne is not as new a writer as you think. He brought us two articles last month, as you can see here: http://thedailywtf.com/Authors/2010/2/Lorne_Kates.aspx

    Once again few readers are disappointed. Keep up the good job, Lorne.

  • (cs)

    Having now worked as a contract/consultant for more than 3 years, which works out to about 1/4 of my total career, I can confidently state that TRWTF is definitely the HR position that workers are warm bodies, job openings are warm body receptacles, and their sole job is to find a warm body and plug it into a warm body receptacle.

    On the other side of the coin, "Stan" is not qualified to stand in as the straw man for all contractors any more than he was qualified to fill that warm body receptacle. Are there others like Stan out there? Of course. Are they the rule rather than the exception? Not in my experience. I'd say that, of all the other contractors I've worked with, only 2 out of the several dozen stand out as being so appallingly bad. Furthermore, in both of those cases it was actually the other contractors who pushed for their removal from the project.

    Seriously, all you guys with your cushy salaried jobs, Aeron chairs and Wii tournaments would be appalled at some of the crap these desk jockeys try to push over on us. Clearly, since we're not really employees we barely count as "real people" so we don't really need sane working conditions. And whatever you do, make sure that we're excluded from anything remotely useful around the office such as door access cards. I love signing in and out at the front desk every morning, noon and evening. But since I'm sitting on a folding chair at a folding table in a tiny room with 7 other contractors, 3 of whom are currently speaking loudly in Hindi on their cell phones and the other 4 of whom apparently had garlic for breakfast, I'll be sure to get right on that undocumented change request for you, just to take my mind off of things.

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous contractor
    Anonymous contractor :
    Also, you can never overcharge, such a thing doesn't exist. What I mean is that you ask for a set amount of money and they either agree or disagree and it's their choice. That you make triple the salary of the guy next to you or a tenth, in the end it all boils down that you and the client agreed on a price that satisfies both of you.

    This. I think I'll have this printed on cards and hand them to people whenever I hear them complaining about people being overpaid.

  • Daniel (unregistered) in reply to re:me

    I believe at least it was the QA db...

  • (cs) in reply to re:me
    re:me:
    The Real WTF is that a contractor had write access on his first day to production data.
    Sorry, no. This is no WTF at all. This is true genius.

    Aaron knew perfectly well that if the guru had write access, then eventually he'd do something stupid like this. And he knew that this was the only way to get HR to find him some real help.

    It's a tribute to Aaron's utter genius that he was willing and able to allow this to happen. If only all managers were so smart!

  • Hired Gun (unregistered)

    I really need to hear more stories like this one. I am a contractor, and I honestly feel bad most of the time that I don't walk in being an expert on every technology involved in the project. I learn everything I can about the business and their functions, and everything I can about the technology they use, and what might be useful in the future. In the last industry I worked in, I'm now considered one of the top 10 most knowledgeable people in the country within that technology.

    And I STILL have self-confidence issues about what I don't know.

    ...And then there's the "Stan's" out there...

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    You guys are missing the point. It was automatically assumed by Aaron that the "guru" was going to fail. He wanted a new permanent position and a way to end the constant stream of dim-bulb consultants. Double-checking that your backups are good then giving the "guru" write access to the live DB is genius. It practically ensures an epic fail by the "guru" thus, unless HR is completely clueless or downright evil, producing the desired outcome.

    When you put it that way, there's no WTF here at all. Everything went exactly according to Aaron's plan. Brilliant!

    The WTF here is that Aaron needed a genius plan at all to dupe the HR mooks...

    fjf:

    Occum's Razor (phrase): The most esoteric explanation for a typo is usually the correct one. (See also: Muphry's Law)

    I think Finagle's law (which, due to itself, is usually attributed to Murphy) would dictate that you were going to misspell Murphy and cause me to publicly point out this misspelling for you.

  • Smitty (unregistered) in reply to GalacticCowboy
    GalacticCowboy:
    Having now worked as a contract/consultant for more than 3 years, which works out to about 1/4 of my total career, I can confidently state that TRWTF is definitely the HR position that workers are warm bodies, job openings are warm body receptacles, and their sole job is to find a warm body and plug it into a warm body receptacle.

    On the other side of the coin, "Stan" is not qualified to stand in as the straw man for all contractors any more than he was qualified to fill that warm body receptacle. Are there others like Stan out there? Of course. Are they the rule rather than the exception? Not in my experience. I'd say that, of all the other contractors I've worked with, only 2 out of the several dozen stand out as being so appallingly bad. Furthermore, in both of those cases it was actually the other contractors who pushed for their removal from the project.

    Seriously, all you guys with your cushy salaried jobs, Aeron chairs and Wii tournaments would be appalled at some of the crap these desk jockeys try to push over on us. Clearly, since we're not really employees we barely count as "real people" so we don't really need sane working conditions. And whatever you do, make sure that we're excluded from anything remotely useful around the office such as door access cards. I love signing in and out at the front desk every morning, noon and evening. But since I'm sitting on a folding chair at a folding table in a tiny room with 7 other contractors, 3 of whom are currently speaking loudly in Hindi on their cell phones and the other 4 of whom apparently had garlic for breakfast, I'll be sure to get right on that undocumented change request for you, just to take my mind off of things.

    Win.

  • facilisis (unregistered)

    TRWTF is someone thinks hiring an IT employee negatively affects revenue.

  • (cs)

    To be fair to Stan, he did remove a surrogate key.

  • (cs) in reply to frits
    frits:
    "a smiling cotton-swab wrapped in plaid" confused me. Was he an old lumberjack? An albino grunge throwback? A Ska fan wearing a fuzzy white hat?

    That line made me smile and check to see who'd written today's post. Welcome to TDWTF, Lorne. I definitely appreciate your style.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to GalacticCowboy
    GalacticCowboy:
    Seriously, all you guys with your cushy salaried jobs, Aeron chairs and Wii tournaments would be appalled at some of the crap these desk jockeys try to push over on us. Clearly, since we're not really employees we barely count as "real people" so we don't really need sane working conditions. And whatever you do, make sure that we're excluded from anything remotely useful around the office such as door access cards. I *love* signing in and out at the front desk every morning, noon and evening. But since I'm sitting on a folding chair at a folding table in a tiny room with 7 other contractors, 3 of whom are currently speaking loudly in Hindi on their cell phones and the other 4 of whom apparently had garlic for breakfast, I'll be sure to get right on that undocumented change request for you, just to take my mind off of things.
    Swings and roundabouts. I avoid the contracting life for the very reason that I want to be the driving force behind the projects that I work on, not some outsider who does what they're told and doesn't get involved in any important decisions. So I do my job as a salaried employee, make sure my company always needs me more than I need them (very important to get into this position) and accept that I'll earn less than if I was contracting. But I have my office and my responsibility and my paid holiday/sick leave and my regular pay raises and all the other perks that come with working for a company that need me. I'd rather have that than the extra money any day. But if you're the sort who would rather have the extra money then that's your choice and you just have to "suck it up", as they say.
  • Ozz (unregistered) in reply to Shoruke
    Shoruke:
    I think Finagle's law (which, due to itself, is usually attributed to Murphy) would dictate that you were going to misspell Murphy and cause me to publicly point out this misspelling for you.
    No, you mis-spelled Muphry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry's_Law
  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Hired Gun
    Hired Gun:
    In the last industry I worked in, I'm now considered one of the top 10 most knowledgeable people in the country within that technology.
    Nice to meet a fellow MUMPS coder. Have you ever met any of the other 8?
  • Phillip (unregistered) in reply to round.crow
    round.crow:
    "Unbridled hatred is the only reason to inflict Crystal Reports on someone."

    This.

    My favorite line in awhile on here. so much truth.

  • Ozz (unregistered) in reply to Ozz
    Ozz:
    Shoruke:
    I think Finagle's law (which, due to itself, is usually attributed to Murphy) would dictate that you were going to misspell Murphy and cause me to publicly point out this misspelling for you.
    No, you mis-spelled Muphry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry's_Law
    And TRWTF is me, for fscking up the URL... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry's_law
  • (cs) in reply to Ozz
    Ozz:
    No, you mis-spelled Muphry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry's_Law

    Actually I did mean Murphy and Finagle, the law about the universe tending towards perversity. I wasn't even aware of Muphry's law. So... thanks for the reference I guess, now my knowledge of tropish trivia has expanded slightly.

    (Also, your link was bad, the one you want is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law)

    EDIT: oh dears, I've been ninja'd too.

  • ShatteredArm (unregistered)

    Getting kind of sick of all the blanket derision towards contractors on this site. Did Alex get beat up by a contractor or something?

    Or maybe I just work in some sort of backwards company. Here, we contractors actually are competent, we have to do hand holding for some of the FTEs (though some of them certainly do know their stuff), and they're more expensive to boot (when you factor in their job benefits). That, and it has become a bit of a joke how little work some of the FTEs actually have to do. That's not to say the FTEs are worthless--many of them are great--but I've been told that we are the only thing keeping our project from being a total disaster.

    Yes, there are bad contractors. But there are good contractors, and bad FTEs, too. The constant "contractors are a joke" drivel that has recently been so ubiquitous here is getting a little tired.

  • filo (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Hired Gun:
    In the last industry I worked in, I'm now considered one of the top 10 most knowledgeable people in the country within that technology.
    Nice to meet a fellow MUMPS coder. Have you ever met any of the other 8?

    You will recognise them by their distinctive ‘hamster face’ appearance.

  • (cs) in reply to ShatteredArm

    Aaron didn't get beat up by a contractor, he had to deal with Crystal Reports. And from his tone at the start of the article, I'd say that wasn't the first batch of inadequate contractors he'd had to clean up after.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Ozz
    Ozz:
    [Removed due to Akismet]
    Twice?

    [link removed]

    Well obviously Akismet isn't going to let me post this. After all, it has one whole link! Screw you Akismet.

    Oh come on, this is stupid.

    Now?

    WTF Akismet, one lousy link?

    This is bullshit, I honestly prefered the Chinese spammers to this crap (some people are never happy, right?).

    I've removed the link so my post is now completely meaningless, since I was just fixing a link from the previous post. Thanks Aksimet, you buggy piece of shit.

    Mother fucker, removed ALL LINKS and Akismet still says its spam. This spam blocker is offically broken.

    I've now removed the previous poster's quotes, so this post has aboslutely no context at all. Anyone who is actually reading this will have no idea what the hell I'm saying or why. Thank Aksimet for that.

  • ADINSX (unregistered)

    Aaron sounds like a dick, I hope Stan enjoyed his early termination money and had a good time hanging out with his well adjusted friends

  • The Real Aaron (unregistered)

    I'm the Aaron that submitted that story, and while some artistic license was taken (I don't think I was that much of a jerk!) the story is generally correct and I enjoyed it!

    The QA system was a development system; it wasn't production so no real harm came of it. There was some backend work the contractor was expected to perform so ALTER TABLE was a must.

    In the months since I've submitted this story, we found a competent contractor that successfully answered the "JOIN" question in the interview.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to ADINSX
    ADINSX:
    Aaron sounds like a dick, I hope Stan enjoyed his early termination money and had a good time hanging out with his well adjusted friends
    Stan doesn't get the money, idiot. At best he got a severe reprimand.
  • (cs) in reply to A Nonny Mouse
    A Nonny Mouse:
    Although in this case it looks like the fault of the agent at placement company who presumably isn't technical enough to know a guru (or not) when they see one, and thinks that anyone in IT can do any*thing* in IT. Either way, Stan is lying...
    I had something similar happen to me. A recruiter called me saying that he saw my resume online and had a "Great Opportunity" for me. I asked him to explain it. He said it was for a senior developer position for a web shop nearby. I told him to go on, as I was intrigued. He went on to describe the job and the company. I told him to email me the job description and I'd get back to him. When I checked my email, I saw the job. It was for a ASP.NET developer with a PHD in CS and significant C++ experience. I'm an open source developer (without even a Masters), and have little to no relevant experience with ASP (I have hacked a few thing in my spare time, but nothing I'd take a "senior" or even a "junior" developer role with. I called the guy back and told him there was no way I could even come close to fitting the requirements. He said "Don't worry about it, I'll just massage your resume a little bit to make it look better to the client. I said No. He kept pressuring me, saying that their requirements were "just for show".

    I told him no, and called the company to tell them what this recruiter was trying to pull (so they knew what to expect from any potentials he sent). The company appreciated it so much, they invited me in for an interview for another development position they had. I went in for the interview, but turned it down for other reasons.

    SOME recruiters will do anything to make the sale. Some are good, but the bad ones are slime...

  • (cs) in reply to I really need to find my logon info again
    I really need to find my logon info again:
    The more of this kind of thing I read, the more I hate being a contractor with morals and ethics - I'll turn down work that's (too far) beyond what I know - I'm honest with my reporting in hours, and I do a fair chunk of work for free simply because I might be learning some things as I go (and thus not truly 'earning' the money for which I'm being paid).

    I don't overcharge (so I seem cheap an inexperienced?), I tell people what they need to know (not what they want to), and I put the client's needs above my own when I'm working for them. Am I alone in this kind of mentality?

    No. When I was contracting, I had much the same work ethic. So did many of my colleagues. Unfortunately, it often seemed we were the minority.

    I witnessed these acts of "Contractors behaving badly": Blatantly trying to steal from the Contractee. Doing drugs on the job. Reading <Some Software> for Dummies to learn the job they were hired for. Doing absolutely nothing. (Still took two weeks before THAT contractor was terminated) Refusing to do the job they were hired for while explaining what they should REALLY be doing.

  • blindman (unregistered)

    Excuse me? It is not Crystal Reports responsibility to do type checking. That should have been enforced in the database with proper datatypes, and none of those UPDATE statements should have succeeded.

    That said, Crystal Reports should still crawl into a corner and die quietely. There are no Crystal Reports "Gurus", because any IT worker with even a smattering of competency stays as far away from it as possible.

  • blindman (unregistered)

    Oh my God. I just saw the ALTER table statement. That is truly horrible, and the DBA's head should roll for allowing it.

  • sadwings (unregistered) in reply to xMob

    Please alter the column first or only your insert statement will fail, not everyone else's code.

  • (cs)

    The stupidity! It burns! It burns!

  • Finder Seeker (unregistered) in reply to GalacticCowboy
    GalacticCowboy:
    find a warm body and plug it into a warm body receptacle.
    Oh, good, we're going to start talking about Irish Girl again! And just in time for St. Pat's.
  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to GalacticCowboy

    I'd feel bad for you except I know 3 years ago you had images of working out of starbucks dancing in your head.

  • fjf (unregistered) in reply to Shoruke
    Shoruke:
    fjf:
    Occum's Razor (phrase): The most esoteric explanation for a typo is usually the correct one. (See also: Muphry's Law)

    I think Finagle's law (which, due to itself, is usually attributed to Murphy) would dictate that you were going to misspell Murphy and cause me to publicly point out this misspelling for you.

    Actually I didn't misspell Muphry's Law (so I probably violated Meta-Muphry's Law).

  • (cs) in reply to frits
    frits:
    Steve the Cynic:
    frits:
    "a smiling cotton-swab wrapped in plaid" confused me. Was he an old lumberjack? An albino grunge throwback? A Ska fan wearing a fuzzy white hat?
    Duh, he had no fashion sense (plaid!), and no intelligence (small pieces of cotton wool aren't known for brains).

    Way to kill the silliness. Sorry for never, ever having seen "cotton swab" used as a euphemism for unintelligent person.

    How many readers of this site have any type of fashion sense, anyway?

    I was picturing Herb Tarlek but with a fuzzy white afro. http://idiotflashback.wordpress.com/2009/12/13/wkrp-in-cincinnati/

  • (cs) in reply to fjf
    fjf:
    Shoruke:
    fjf:
    Occum's Razor (phrase): The most esoteric explanation for a typo is usually the correct one. (See also: Muphry's Law)

    I think Finagle's law (which, due to itself, is usually attributed to Murphy) would dictate that you were going to misspell Murphy and cause me to publicly point out this misspelling for you.

    Actually I didn't misspell Muphry's Law (so I probably violated Meta-Muphry's Law).

    Been there, had that conversation, fixed it. Read above.

  • (cs) in reply to steenbergh
    steenbergh:
    Hi Lorne,

    Welcome to TheDailyWTF.

    I noticed something about your article.

    Every sentence has its own line.

    This does not enhance readability.

    Just sayin'.

    The article appears in paragraph-shaped paragraphs if you make your browser window narrower.

  • (cs) in reply to FriedDan
    FriedDan:
    re:me:
    The Real WTF is that a contractor had write access on his first day to production data.
    To quote the original
    All of QA's…
    He had read/write to a QA system, not production.

    In other words, Stan was given plenty of rope to hang himself with!

  • .Net Dev (unregistered) in reply to ircmaxell

    " ASP.NET developer with a PHD "

    Oh, hoho, hahahaha! Oh jeeze! Oh. Let me wipe the tears form my eyes. People came over to see what was so funny.

    Thanks for the laugh.

  • (cs)

    Does it not strike anybody that this isn't beating up on contractors in general, but instead it's beating up on HR's inability to source a competent contractor? TRWTF is that HR were let assign this guy without him being vetted by Aaron first.

    Anyway, I knew exactly what was going to happen here, but that still didn't stop me from getting the crawling horrors over it.

  • Stan (unregistered)

    Dear Aaron. I've finished reading SQL for n00bs. Are there any permie positions open?

  • CrystalReportIsEvil (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:

    I've now removed the previous poster's quotes, so this post has aboslutely no context at all. Anyone who is actually reading this will have no idea what the hell I'm saying or why. Thank Aksimet for that.

    Don't worry, we all see you point. Lowercase rules and Askimet sucks, isn't it?

  • monkeyPushButton (unregistered) in reply to ShatteredArm
    ShatteredArm:
    Getting kind of sick of all the blanket derision towards contractors on this site. Did Alex get beat up by a contractor or something?

    <snip>...

    Yes, there are bad contractors. But there are good contractors, and bad FTEs, too. The constant "contractors are a joke" drivel that has recently been so ubiquitous here is getting a little tired.

    I think it's more to the fact that people reading this site are the ones that will notice a screw up in a position. For the FTEs, the screw ups will be the contractor some HR or headhunter moron sent for a job they couldn't do. For the competent contactor, it's the moron FTEs that can't do the job they were hired for.

    It's just more of us are FTEs than contractors so it skews that way.

  • Bim Job (unregistered) in reply to Finder Seeker
    Finder Seeker:
    GalacticCowboy:
    find a warm body and plug it into a warm body receptacle.
    Oh, good, we're going to start talking about Irish Girl again! And just in time for St. Pat's.
    Well, it's been a while, but oldies are goldies. Or in Erica's case, russetties.

    Btw: what was all that nonsense about "brilliant" up there? Everybody knows that ... wooden table ... complicator ... Codethulhu ...

  • sino (unregistered) in reply to mc
    steenbergh:
    Hi Lorne,

    Welcome to TheDailyWTF.

    I noticed something about your article.

    Every sentence has its own line.

    This does not enhance readability.

    Just sayin'.

    mc:
    Nice WTF today. On a related note, I really like your writing style, Lorne. Looking forward to more!
    Dude:
    I don't know what this WTF was about, because the writing style was so bloody awful that I didn't even bother getting to the end.

    Ever heard of paragraphs?

    Shriike:
    The formatting of this post is not the best, but it's not so bad that I noticed it before every else posted about how bad it was. But the actual writing style (paragraphs aside), I think is really good. And especially considering this is from a first time writer, I think this is pretty amazing.

    Oh yes, and just so I fit in.

    The real WTF here is that that consultant had write access to the production data on day one!

    LMAO, you guys are killing me! keep up the good work! XD

  • sino (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Ozz:
    [Removed due to Akismet]
    Twice?

    [link removed]

    Well obviously Akismet isn't going to let me post this. After all, it has one whole link! Screw you Akismet.

    Oh come on, this is stupid.

    Now?

    WTF Akismet, one lousy link?

    This is bullshit, I honestly prefered the Chinese spammers to this crap (some people are never happy, right?).

    I've removed the link so my post is now completely meaningless, since I was just fixing a link from the previous post. Thanks Aksimet, you buggy piece of shit.

    Mother fucker, removed ALL LINKS and Akismet still says its spam. This spam blocker is offically broken.

    I've now removed the previous poster's quotes, so this post has aboslutely no context at all. Anyone who is actually reading this will have no idea what the hell I'm saying or why. Thank Aksimet for that.

    RagePost+1! XD

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    I avoid the contracting life for the very reason that I want to be the driving force behind the projects that I work on, not some outsider who does what they're told and doesn't get involved in any important decisions.

    Then instead of a contractor, what you want to be is a Consultant. Then you get to be the driving force behind things, and you're an outsider who gets to make all the important decisions. And when the whole thing goes nuclear, you won't be around to get blown to bits :)

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