• tecxx (unregistered) in reply to DrFloyd5
    DrFloyd5:
    It was a mistake to fix their code.

    1. The company paid for a product, he should have not altered the product. They didn't pay him to make the website. In fact they paid him not to.

    2. Fixing their code, only invalidated his claims and strengthened their position.

    He should have left it alone and let management get egg on their face and then ASK him to fix it.

    That is the real WTF.

    i absolutely share your opinion.

  • (cs) in reply to A Nonny Mouse
    A Nonny Mouse:
    who's Brian?

    I think it's another one of those organization/organisation things. In England, I think Brian == Brandon...

  • Bob (unregistered) in reply to JimM
    JimM:
    That bit I do understand. Contract a company to do this work and pay for it and you have some kind of support to fall back on. If you take this from a volunteer you risk reaching a point where you can't update or change your site anymore!
    We all see your point.

    The one thing we don't know is where you could possibly be getting drugs that haven't killed you yet but are strong enough to make you believe that the quality of the "support" is going to be any better than the complete and utter crap that was supplied in the first place.

    No, seriously, if you actually read the posted article you'ld have noticed that there were several significant flaws in the product that was paid for, yet somehow you seem to assume that paying for something gets "support" but not paying for it creates "risk" that can only be banished by money.

    Even on a good day, you never know if support means "someone will be there before you've finished explaining the problem" or "someone will be there the month after we finish landing the next sucker."

    All that said, competent people should be paid for the work they do. It's just sad that so many of our customers are screwed over by the promise of "support" backed by code that a retarded cabbage would be ashamed of.

    The price paid for a product is often percived as either a measure of quality or at least a promise of "support", but in reality price and quality have no actual relationship. I wish you did get what you paid for, but whether you pick the top bidder, the low bidder, or the secretary's husband's cousin's nephew who took a class in school last year, you might as well roll dice trying to pick which will give the best quality work.

  • (cs) in reply to Charles400

    Been working like a champ for me. I wouldn't browse the web without it (well, that and AdBlock Plus).

  • CynicalTyler (unregistered)

    It's been said a few times, but I just have to reiterate: this is a serious Brandon fail. I would have happily gone home, dropped every table in the database, and then arranged another nice little conference call. Let their weasel project manager try to dance around that! And if Brandon couldn't express the blatantly unacceptable nature of the consulting firm's delivery, he is either an idiot or his bosses are lumps of rotting meat on a stick with all the brain power of a two-by-four.

    I guess I'm just bitter that such con-shops can operate because their patsy companies won't stand up for themselves in these situations, which just takes away business from the honest software shops.

  • Some Wonk (unregistered) in reply to A Nonny Mouse
    A Nonny Mouse:
    who's Brian?

    I'm Brian, and so is my wife!

  • Herman (unregistered)

    Holy testicle tuesday that is horrible.

    I don't think I'd be able to, well ... not start screaming and beating their faces to a pulp.

    I can't believe how insanely stupid some companies are. Blindly following any buzzword without having a clue of how and why.

  • (cs) in reply to Technical Thug
    Technical Thug:
    harold:
    128 bytes! what a waste of bandwidth! why not use this? ;-) <script src="code.js"/> which contains (as the last line) assemblePage();
    This is actually different. The original renders the blank page and then stuffs things into it. Your version starts stuffing things into the web page before it's done loading.
    <script src="code.js"> is actually considered invalid HTML due to some certain browsers expecting a </script> tag. <p>The real WTF is that Firefox is the one that breaks there, not IE.</p> </script>
  • Asiago Chow (unregistered) in reply to darkmage0707077
    darkmage0707077:

    I agree with ALMOST everything you've said, Asiago, except for one thing: add a step where the IT professional asks their bosses for permission to fix the bugs in the code he pointed out and documented. ...

    I see your point but disagree. At least about "professional".

    Professionals have specialized knowledge unlikely to be known by those outside their field. They are therefore given certain decisionmaking leeway, and held to certain standards, due to their special knowledge. That is what makes a job a profession -- not the degree or license; we had professionals before either of those -- the need for people with specialized knowledge to make decisions for their employers even when the employer might prefer a different answer.

    If you tell a professional engineer to build a stone bridge in a particular location the engineer can come back and say, "that's going to be hard because of X, Y, and Z, you'd be better off building it of steel or over there instead." That's like the initial memo describing why using a particular web site isn't optimal in providing for business needs. If you tell the engineer to go ahead and do it anyway he has a professional obligation to build a safe bridge. He doesn't need to explain what would be needed to make it safe and ask permission. He designs it safely and tells you, "this is what it will be, and what it will cost." Your decision is go/no-go at that point. If he tries to accomodate you and comes up with an unsafe bridge it is his ass on the line. He was the one with the knowledge, he was the one who should've known better, he is the one that will be blamed for the failure.

    Professionals are ethically obligated to exercise their best judgment in good faith for their clients. That means they must make certain kinds of decisions even when, or especially when, their employer doesn't understand the question. Engineers, doctors and lawyers are all in the same boat. The bad part about being a professional is that your judgment will be questioned and you may end up looking for a new job even though you acted in good faith. The essential part, though, is that you operate in good faith to provide what your knowledge tells you is the best outcome for the situation as presented even when your employer doesn't understand why it was necessary to do certain things. That doesn't mean refusing to vaccinate because you would've aborted...you aren't involved in the abortion decision...it means using the right vaccinations to ensure that the patient will have the best chance to be healthy whoever they are even though they don't understand what you are doing or why.

    So...no, an IT professional wouldn't have listed the changes and asked for permission any more than a surgeon would ask his patients to approve everything he might do to remove a cancerous growth. She would recognize the need and say, "the IT deployment costs for the proposed solution will be _______ which includes re-writing certain components, adding firewalls, and doing whatever else is necessary to safely deploy this solution." She might get fired, she might cause management to realize that they need to re-evaluate other decisions, but doing less means she isn't a professional. She has an obligation to use her specialized knowledge for the benefit of her employers even if her employers don't...no, especially because her employers don't...understand the problems she is solving.

    It may be good politics to have that dialog, to make the employer aware what you are doing to deploy what they think of as a simple web site, but in the end a professional will do what she thinks is best while accomplishing the goals she agreed to accomplish for her employer.

  • Asiago Chow (unregistered) in reply to Rootbeer
    Rootbeer:
    "As an IT person your job is to support the business needs of the company that pays you."

    No, as an "IT person" your job is the specific duties listed in your job description. Which are of course intended to contribute to supporting the business needs of the company that pays you, but that's not the point.

    A job description lists the scope, not the purpose, of your employment.

    Whether your job description is "oversees the coffee machine in the secondary break room in building C", or, "oversees all aspects of operation for the entire company", your job is to support the business needs of your employer. The scope..the breadth of opportunity for action, the range of perceptions, the area covered...is all the job descriptions tell you.

    In other words, I disagree with you.

  • (cs)

    One of the correct ways to handle this is to send an e-mail to your manager outlining the problems. And that's it.

    BCC it to yourself at an external address.

    You've left a paper trail showing that there was a problem including a date and time stamp.

    You've done your due diligence. It's up to them to figure out how to proceed from there.

    A common failing is to try to fix things when we find problems. The hardest thing to learn is to just leave it alone and document what you find when it's not your project.

  • Ken B (unregistered) in reply to DrFloyd5
    Fortunately, Brandon was able to sneak in a handful of fixes and patches to the Web site so that it could be indexed and not brought down by a SQL-injection attack.
    DrFloyd5:
    It was a mistake to fix their code.

    1. The company paid for a product, he should have not altered the product. They didn't pay him to make the website. In fact they paid him not to.

    2. Fixing their code, only invalidated his claims and strengthened their position.

    He should have left it alone and let management get egg on their face and then ASK him to fix it.

    That is the real WTF.

    The correct way to fix the problem was to demonstrate the vulnerability directly. Or, better yet, find a vulnerability in the comment form which would do the injection, and ask the "programmer" to type in a specific comment.

  • (cs) in reply to Bob
    Bob:
    No, seriously, if you actually read the posted article you'ld have noticed that there were several significant flaws in the product that was paid for, yet somehow you seem to assume that paying for something gets "support" but not paying for it creates "risk" that can only be banished by money.
    No, seriously, if you actually read the thread you're replying to, you'd have noticed that they weren't speaking about the article but a somewhat similar incident that JimM came across personally.
  • Mr.'; Drop Database -- (unregistered)

    I was using this nickname before Little Bobby Tables was cool.

  • K (unregistered) in reply to ubersoldat
    ubersoldat:
    Totally true, but I still don't know why this organizations (with a 'z' btw)

    You are assuming that the poster is American. If he's from the UK (or uses Brittish English), it is quite acceptable to replace "z" with "s".

  • (cs) in reply to Asiago Chow
    Asiago Chow:
    Professionals have specialized knowledge unlikely to be known by those outside their field. They are therefore given certain decisionmaking leeway, and held to certain standards, due to their special knowledge.
    In another world and another lifetime (circa 1977), I worked as a fuel pump repairman. It was a two-man operation: my boss and me, except for when we had heavy work to do, like jackhammering through concrete to get to a checkvalve on an underground tank. Then the boss would take along another guy named Paul who was generally available part-time.

    For six months the boss took me with him on every call and taught me the business. Then, for about a year and a half, he sent me out by myself on most of the calls. During that year and a half my knowledge of the business increased and stayed sharp from constant use. His began to go a little fuzzy.

    At that time there were two kinds of pumps: the older manual reset, and new electric reset. For manual reset, you had to twist a handle on the side of the pump to set the price and gallon readout back to zero. Electric pumps do this automatically when you turn them on.

    The collection of gears and wheels that display the readouts is called a "computer" (no, really!). Manual computers had a cam on the outside, covered with grease, that interacted with other parts to perform the reset. Electric computers don't have this cam. Sometimes the grease on the cam would dry up, causing erratic behavior, and greasing it up again would fix the problem.

    I know, long story, but I'm getting to the point.

    One day the three of us went out. We had a jackhammer job to do, but before that a piddly pump repair, so we went to the little one first. Boss started taking the covers off the pump and, having made a diagnosis in his head based on the caller's description of the problem, he said to me, "Get the grease can."

    I knew from looking at the pump that it was electric, and I also knew what he was thinking: the cam needed greasing. Of course, there was no cam; it was electric. So I said, "We don't need it."

    As he fumbled with the covers, he repeated, "Get the grease can," and I repeated, "We don't need it."

    He stopped what he was doing, looked hard at me, and said a third time, "Go get the grease can."

    So I turned and walked toward the truck, saying as I did so, "Okay, I'll get the grease can, but we don't need it. That's an electric pump."

    And he yelled at me, "Then don't get it, smart aleck," and stayed in a foul mood all day long.

    Later, Paul and I were discussing it. I said, "I was just trying to save us a little time. I don't see why he got upset about it."

    And Paul said, "Code, he didn't want you to tell him how to fix the pump. He wanted you to go get the grease can."

    Me: "But Paul, if I know it's wrong, should I do it anyway?"

    Paul: "In a situation like that, when he's not listening to you, the best thing is to say, 'Leonard, are you sure that's what you want me to do?', and if he says yes, then go ahead and do it. Because ultimately, what he's paying you for is to do what he tells you."

  • (cs)
    "The last thing we want to do is risk our huge investment," the product manager reasoned. "Not only could our developers overcomplicate things, but they could very well neglect key features such as search engine optimization and usability, either of which would be disastrous to a successful product launch."

    WTF? The company failed to produce the thing they were hired to produce, the thing the product manager wanted. I mean sure, they optimized SEO, the optimized it right away.

    Why didn't brandon point out to the product manager that their site would never show up on Google, let alone show up near the top of the rankings?

    Forget everything else. Well sure you can bring that up to, but the product manager probably won't understand some of the technical issues. So get him to understand the problems with the issues he does understand.

  • Kahawe Dawnstrider (unregistered)

    I love that. The eager tech trying to tell the obvious truth (tm) got shot down by random marketing bullshit yadda yadda and on top of that now the product manager thinks Brandon is a pompous ass and a busy body (just like all those other damn techs...) and will give even less a fsck about anything the tech has to say in the future.

    CAPTCHA: esse - isnt that with just one s?

  • (cs)
    that's only a problem for the government and huge corporations

    I don't know about you, but if I hired someone to write software, and he told me not to worry about the security holes because I'm not important enough to be a target for attack anyway, I'd want to smack him.

  • Asiago Chow (unregistered) in reply to Code Dependent
    Code Dependent:
    And Paul said, "Code, he didn't want you to tell him how to fix the pump. He wanted you to go get the grease can."

    "...Because ultimately, what he's paying you for is to do what he tells you."

    Which is the essence of being a tradesman. A tradesman, however skilled, is not a professional. She may have abilities that took a lot of practice to gain. She may even have an insight into the problem being faced, but she is being paid to do what she is told. Servicing pumps is a trade, not a profession.

    There is tradecraft. Running backups, assembling and configuring networks, building computers, fixing pumps... There is profession. Taking responsibility for data security. Taking responsibility for a patient's health. Taking responsibility for designing functional software. Taking responsibility for a person's civil rights in a trial. Doing things that require more than orders from on high -- things that require independent judgment and thought.

    People around here throw the word professional around all the time. "I'm an IT professional!" But they also want to hide from professional responsibility. "I only responsible for doing what I'm told!" If you really are a professional you have ethical obligations a tradesperson doesn't have. Sometimes that means doing more than you are told..or less.

    If you don't feel the ethical obligation you are a tradesman. That's not a bad thing...most of mankind's greatest accomplishments have been executed by tradesmen...it is just isn't professional. So make up your mind, be what you want to be, and use the right terms to describe yourself.

  • Amateur (unregistered)

    I hate to be the guy who brings up dictionary definitions in discussions on the internet, but this discussion seems to consist of you trying to redefine the word "professional", so it seems appropriate.

    While there are narrow definitions of the word, it is commonly and correctly(even from a prescriptive point of view) used in a more generic sense, e.g.:

    Merriam-Webster Online:
    2 a: participating for gain or livelihood in an activity or field of endeavor often engaged in by amateurs
  • morkk (unregistered)

    here's the TRWTF:

    The site shared the look and feel of the company's existing Web site, but with its own unique color and layout.

    how can it be both?!?!?

  • Barack Obama (unregistered) in reply to MiffTheFox
    jeremypnet:
    ubersoldat:
    JimM:
    ... I know at least two small charitable organisations ...
    Totally true, but I still don't know why this organizations (with a 'z' btw) waste precious money ...
    "Organisations" is standard spelling in the UK.
    The OED spelling is organizations.
  • Barack Obama (unregistered) in reply to vt_mruhlin
    vt_mruhlin:
    Technical Thug:
    harold:
    128 bytes! what a waste of bandwidth! why not use this? ;-) <script src="code.js"/> which contains (as the last line) assemblePage();
    This is actually different. The original renders the blank page and then stuffs things into it. Your version starts stuffing things into the web page before it's done loading.
    <script src="code.js"> is actually considered invalid HTML due to some certain browsers expecting a </script> tag. <p>The real WTF is that Firefox is the one that breaks there, not IE.</div></BLOCKQUOTE> It is supposed to be <script src="code.js" /> with a space if you want to use the empty form and it might be that they did not use a DOCTYPE so Firefox is expecting the HTML form.</p> </script>
  • Barack Obama (unregistered) in reply to ;DROP TABLE users
    ;DROP TABLE users:
    Didn't want to let the "Little Bobby Tables" person down!

    http://xkcd.com/327/

    Bobby Tables only visits the websites of large companies and government organizations.

  • (cs) in reply to DeLos
    DeLos:
    ubersoldat:
    Totally true, but I still don't know why this organizations (with a 'z' btw) waste precious money on this kind of stuff when many people would do them for free, as volunteer work. At least I would show them the right direction.

    Wow you attempt to correct someone because they use an alternate (and correct) spelling all while making a grammatical error yourself. Nicely done!

    Welcome to Muphry's Law.

  • Jimmy (unregistered) in reply to DrFloyd5
    DrFloyd5:
    It was a mistake to fix their code. 1) The company paid for a product, he should have not altered the product. They didn't pay him to make the website. In fact they paid him not to.
    1. Fixing their code, only invalidated his claims and strengthened their position.

    If the site weren't fixed, their million-dollar investment might go nowhere, the company might go bankrupt, he and his co-workers might lose their jobs.

    Besides, he's paid to do what's best for the company, not to do whatever gives him the most bragging "Ha ha, I was right" points.

    The sensible thing to do is whatever will maximize the chance of the product succeeding, and carefully document somewhere exactly what/if anything was done, in a traceable, reversible way, i.e. that he had a discussion with the outsourced site development and "took care of" an issue with the site.

    It's better for the company (and for his job) for him to invalidate his own claims.

    Than to embarrass management, who will then go looking for someone to blame...

    He was involved. He was even on a conference call. He would be near the top of the list of people for management to blame in any case.

  • Bobby html tables (unregistered) in reply to Barack Obama
    Barack Obama:
    vt_mruhlin:
    Technical Thug:
    harold:
    128 bytes! what a waste of bandwidth! why not use this? ;-) <script src="code.js"/> which contains (as the last line) assemblePage();
    This is actually different. The original renders the blank page and then stuffs things into it. Your version starts stuffing things into the web page before it's done loading.
    <script src="code.js"> is actually considered invalid HTML due to some certain browsers expecting a </script> tag. <p>The real WTF is that Firefox is the one that breaks there, not IE.</div></BLOCKQUOTE> It is supposed to be <script src="code.js" /> with a space if you want to use the empty form and it might be that they did not use a DOCTYPE so Firefox is expecting the HTML form.</div></BLOCKQUOTE></p> <p>If you run it through a validator, I think script is one of the few tags that needs to have a closing tag (you can't self close it).</p> </script>
  • David (unregistered) in reply to mxsscott

    Given that English is spoken by over 1,000 million people worldwide, and only around 250 million of those are in the US, it might almost be said that the spelling using the 'z' is the alternate.

  • David (unregistered) in reply to mxsscott

    Given that English is spoken by over 1,000 million people worldwide, and only around 250 million of those are in the US, it might almost be said that the spelling using the 'z' is the alternate.

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    What /should/ you do in cases like that?

    There are (business) cultural differences at work here.

    http://www.ericsink.com/No_Programmers.html Eric makes everything better.

    Borrowing Eric's parlance, a Developer is the type who'd pay attention, and give a f++k, and would lean in and fix the website, because it's in the interest of the business; bending the rules to do so. A Programmer would be... more professional?

    Truth is, all this comes down to styles of management (both upwards and downwards - the former being almost universally neglected in the real world).

    "What you should do" is p+ssing in the wind. Who cares? It bares little relationship to the outcome that will actually result. What will actually go on is a function of the relationship between the individual, his manager, and their places within the organisation, evaluated against the culture of the business itself. It's political.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Asiago Chow
    Asiago Chow:
    If you tell the engineer to go ahead and do it anyway he has a professional obligation to build a safe bridge. He doesn't need to explain what would be needed to make it safe and ask permission. He designs it safely and tells you, "this is what it will be, and what it will cost."

    SNIP

    So...no, an IT professional wouldn't have listed the changes and asked for permission any more than a surgeon would ask his patients to approve everything he might do to remove a cancerous growth.

    The problem with these analogies is that your forgetting there is three parties in the original story. The management, the contracted "professionals" and the employed professional.

    A more appropriate analogy would be two engineering companies. One offers to build a bridge out of MDF and cardboard, and the other company uses proper materials. Now management chooses to go with cardboard because it's cheap, and tells the second company not to interfere with their decision.

    The bridge is built and is a real safety hazard, now company B sneaks in at night and reinforces the bridge to make it safe.

    Lives are saved, but company A takes all the credit. Then when there is a problem with the bridge because of the initial flaws, company A blames B for making unauthorized changes, and company B is to blame.

    Likewise with a surgeon hijacking the operating room and taking over the surgery mid-operation without the patients consent. Even if the first surgeon was going to do it wrong, it who the patient chose.

  • Hans (unregistered)

    Any company who values the opinion of some outsourced company over their own internal I.T. staff deserves to fail. That's all there is to it. I would have handed in my resignation then and there.

  • Ggreg (unregistered) in reply to DeLos
    DeLos:
    ubersoldat:
    Totally true, but I still don't know why this organizations (with a 'z' btw) waste precious money on this kind of stuff when many people would do them for free, as volunteer work. At least I would show them the right direction.

    Wow you attempt to correct someone because they use an alternate (and correct) spelling all while making a grammatical error yourself. Nicely done!

    Indeed - Muphry's Law. One of several things I've learned on this site ...

  • Vic Tim (unregistered)

    I have a friend who's opening Dreamweaver (for the first times ever) and talking about how great his site's gonna be. And I'm going to become a real jen-yoo-wine ASSHOLE and point out that he's such a tool, Dreamweaver is using HIM. Then direct him to this site and call it required reading.

    Professionally cocked up javashit just stung me earlier today. I was actually on the phone with him at the time bitching about how Discovery.com (as in, the cable channel) is that sort of disaster. Had to use IE to see the forum at all, fucking bullshit.

  • Mark (unregistered) in reply to Code Dependent
    Code Dependent:
    Asiago Chow:
    Professionals have specialized knowledge unlikely to be known by those outside their field. They are therefore given certain decisionmaking leeway, and held to certain standards, due to their special knowledge.
    In another world and another lifetime (circa 1977), I worked as a fuel pump repairman. It was a two-man operation: my boss and me, except for when we had heavy work to do, like jackhammering through concrete to get to a checkvalve on an underground tank. Then the boss would take along another guy named Paul who was generally available part-time.

    For six months the boss took me with him on every call and taught me the business. Then, for about a year and a half, he sent me out by myself on most of the calls. During that year and a half my knowledge of the business increased and stayed sharp from constant use. His began to go a little fuzzy.

    At that time there were two kinds of pumps: the older manual reset, and new electric reset. For manual reset, you had to twist a handle on the side of the pump to set the price and gallon readout back to zero. Electric pumps do this automatically when you turn them on.

    The collection of gears and wheels that display the readouts is called a "computer" (no, really!). Manual computers had a cam on the outside, covered with grease, that interacted with other parts to perform the reset. Electric computers don't have this cam. Sometimes the grease on the cam would dry up, causing erratic behavior, and greasing it up again would fix the problem.

    I know, long story, but I'm getting to the point.

    One day the three of us went out. We had a jackhammer job to do, but before that a piddly pump repair, so we went to the little one first. Boss started taking the covers off the pump and, having made a diagnosis in his head based on the caller's description of the problem, he said to me, "Get the grease can."

    I knew from looking at the pump that it was electric, and I also knew what he was thinking: the cam needed greasing. Of course, there was no cam; it was electric. So I said, "We don't need it."

    As he fumbled with the covers, he repeated, "Get the grease can," and I repeated, "We don't need it."

    He stopped what he was doing, looked hard at me, and said a third time, "Go get the grease can."

    So I turned and walked toward the truck, saying as I did so, "Okay, I'll get the grease can, but we don't need it. That's an electric pump."

    And he yelled at me, "Then don't get it, smart aleck," and stayed in a foul mood all day long.

    Later, Paul and I were discussing it. I said, "I was just trying to save us a little time. I don't see why he got upset about it."

    And Paul said, "Code, he didn't want you to tell him how to fix the pump. He wanted you to go get the grease can."

    Me: "But Paul, if I know it's wrong, should I do it anyway?"

    Paul: "In a situation like that, when he's not listening to you, the best thing is to say, 'Leonard, are you sure that's what you want me to do?', and if he says yes, then go ahead and do it. Because ultimately, what he's paying you for is to do what he tells you."

    Man, I want to buy you a beer and get some more stories out of you. That was great!

  • Mark (unregistered) in reply to Asiago Chow
    Asiago Chow:
    Code Dependent:
    And Paul said, "Code, he didn't want you to tell him how to fix the pump. He wanted you to go get the grease can."

    "...Because ultimately, what he's paying you for is to do what he tells you."

    Which is the essence of being a tradesman. A tradesman, however skilled, is not a professional. She may have abilities that took a lot of practice to gain. She may even have an insight into the problem being faced, but she is being paid to do what she is told. Servicing pumps is a trade, not a profession.

    There is tradecraft. Running backups, assembling and configuring networks, building computers, fixing pumps... There is profession. Taking responsibility for data security. Taking responsibility for a patient's health. Taking responsibility for designing functional software. Taking responsibility for a person's civil rights in a trial. Doing things that require more than orders from on high -- things that require independent judgment and thought.

    People around here throw the word professional around all the time. "I'm an IT professional!" But they also want to hide from professional responsibility. "I only responsible for doing what I'm told!" If you really are a professional you have ethical obligations a tradesperson doesn't have. Sometimes that means doing more than you are told..or less.

    If you don't feel the ethical obligation you are a tradesman. That's not a bad thing...most of mankind's greatest accomplishments have been executed by tradesmen...it is just isn't professional. So make up your mind, be what you want to be, and use the right terms to describe yourself.

    Asiago, you're bringing these comments up to a level never before seen on TDWTF. I think you're scaring away the script kiddies.

  • John English (unregistered) in reply to JPhi
    JPhi:
    A Nonny Mouse:
    who's Brian?

    I think it's another one of those organization/organisation things. In England, I think Brian == Brandon...

    Well of course Brian == Brian. That's what we call a tautology.

  • Mark (unregistered) in reply to Hans
    Hans:
    Any company who values the opinion of some outsourced company over their own internal I.T. staff deserves to fail. That's all there is to it. I would have handed in my resignation then and there.

    Apparently you don't work with incompetent, internal IT staff...

  • (cs) in reply to Jimmy
    Jimmy:
    DrFloyd5:
    It was a mistake to fix their code. 1) The company paid for a product, he should have not altered the product. They didn't pay him to make the website. In fact they paid him not to.
    1. Fixing their code, only invalidated his claims and strengthened their position.
    Besides, he's paid to do what's best for the company, not to do whatever gives him the most bragging "Ha ha, I was right" points.

    There is an enormous difference between demonstrating your reasonable concerns and 'claiming bragging rights'. Demonstrating (in terms that can be understood by non-technical staff) a serious problem is part of your responsibility to your employer, not a game of one-upmanship. Some people do play it the latter way, so YMMV. In my experience, anything that encourages interdepartmental trust is a good thing - developers understand marketting priorities better, and marketting understand that developers aren't being awkward just for the hell of it.

    There tends to be a world of difference between the priorities of different departments [citation needed], and it's important that the priorities of each are at least recognised (if not actively understood) - and taken seriously by other departments. If there is a critical problem in an application it's down to IT to document it, demonstrate it, and keep track of the response from management downwards (AKA 'covering your arse'). If your concerns are over-ruled by other considerations you can at least demonstrate that you have carried out your contracted duties to the best of your capability.

    'Bragging rights' has little to do with it. Accountability and carrying out your duties does.

  • (cs) in reply to morkk
    morkk:
    here's the TRWTF:

    The site shared the look and feel of the company's existing Web site, but with its own unique color and layout.

    how can it be both?!?!?

    Icon themes (etc...) FTW?

  • Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    What /should/ you do in cases like that?

    There are (business) cultural differences at work here.

    http://www.ericsink.com/No_Programmers.html Eric makes everything better.

    Borrowing Eric's parlance, a Developer is the type who'd pay attention, and give a f++k, and would lean in and fix the website, because it's in the interest of the business; bending the rules to do so. A Programmer would be... more professional?

    Borrowing the crap asiago spewed about trades vs. professions, a tradesman would ignore the problem, a junior professional would fix the site on the down low, and a veteran would point out the problems, allow it to explode and embarass the moron web shop that built the site, then fix things.

  • Tojo (unregistered)

    Whatever sins have been committed using Dreamweaver pale in comparison to the atrocities of code generated by iWeb.

  • argh (unregistered) in reply to Asiago Chow
    Asiago Chow:
    darkmage0707077:

    I agree with ALMOST everything you've said, Asiago, except for one thing: add a step where the IT professional asks their bosses for permission to fix the bugs in the code he pointed out and documented. ...

    I see your point but disagree. At least about "professional".

    Professionals have specialized knowledge unlikely to be known by those outside their field. They are therefore given certain decisionmaking leeway, and held to certain standards, due to their special knowledge. That is what makes a job a profession -- not the degree or license; we had professionals before either of those -- the need for people with specialized knowledge to make decisions for their employers even when the employer might prefer a different answer.

    If you tell a professional engineer to build a stone bridge in a particular location the engineer can come back and say, "that's going to be hard because of X, Y, and Z, you'd be better off building it of steel or over there instead." That's like the initial memo describing why using a particular web site isn't optimal in providing for business needs. If you tell the engineer to go ahead and do it anyway he has a professional obligation to build a safe bridge. He doesn't need to explain what would be needed to make it safe and ask permission. He designs it safely and tells you, "this is what it will be, and what it will cost." Your decision is go/no-go at that point. If he tries to accomodate you and comes up with an unsafe bridge it is his ass on the line. He was the one with the knowledge, he was the one who should've known better, he is the one that will be blamed for the failure.

    Professionals are ethically obligated to exercise their best judgment in good faith for their clients. That means they must make certain kinds of decisions even when, or especially when, their employer doesn't understand the question. Engineers, doctors and lawyers are all in the same boat. The bad part about being a professional is that your judgment will be questioned and you may end up looking for a new job even though you acted in good faith. The essential part, though, is that you operate in good faith to provide what your knowledge tells you is the best outcome for the situation as presented even when your employer doesn't understand why it was necessary to do certain things. That doesn't mean refusing to vaccinate because you would've aborted...you aren't involved in the abortion decision...it means using the right vaccinations to ensure that the patient will have the best chance to be healthy whoever they are even though they don't understand what you are doing or why.

    So...no, an IT professional wouldn't have listed the changes and asked for permission any more than a surgeon would ask his patients to approve everything he might do to remove a cancerous growth. She would recognize the need and say, "the IT deployment costs for the proposed solution will be _______ which includes re-writing certain components, adding firewalls, and doing whatever else is necessary to safely deploy this solution." She might get fired, she might cause management to realize that they need to re-evaluate other decisions, but doing less means she isn't a professional. She has an obligation to use her specialized knowledge for the benefit of her employers even if her employers don't...no, especially because her employers don't...understand the problems she is solving.

    It may be good politics to have that dialog, to make the employer aware what you are doing to deploy what they think of as a simple web site, but in the end a professional will do what she thinks is best while accomplishing the goals she agreed to accomplish for her employer.

    If the engineer's employer hired another professional company to build the bridge, the engineer should not meddle with the work they do in their professional capacity unless she wants to bring the liability upon herself when it collapses and the police find her fingerprints on the steel beams that she installed one night.

  • (cs) in reply to Asiago Chow
    Asiago Chow:
    A tradesman, however skilled, is not a professional. She may have abilities that took a lot of practice to gain.
    She's a tradesman?
  • jim steichen (unregistered)

    "But wait! There's more! Our new Server Wipe (TM) feature will ensure that your hard disk will never have to be replaced with more storage space ever again!" Yeesh, the crap MFWICs will believe is the Gospel Truth (TM). Jim

  • Maximum CRM (unregistered) in reply to ajax fun
    ajax fun:
    I hope I'm not the only one furiously searching, trying to find such a website? Free copy of Mosaic for the winner.

    Mcssl's (1automationwiz) cart requires javascript, else someone cannot complete a purchase for some weird reason. It seems similar to the system described in the post.

  • Pez (unregistered) in reply to jeremypnet
    jeremypnet:
    ubersoldat:
    JimM:
    ... I know at least two small charitable organisations ...
    Totally true, but I still don't know why this organizations (with a 'z' btw) waste precious money ...

    "Organisations" is standard spelling in the UK.

    And, let's face it, the RIGHT spelling

  • Mario and Luigi (unregistered) in reply to Pez

    While I was used to say z in the past, I now consider it the Right Thing, too, as english english is the "De Facto World Language" Nb. 2 (according to wikipedia), not american english. And it's also not "cool" or very "1337" nor "uber" to speak american english and be ignorant about the the Z's and the S's, it's just non-standard.

    The only more correct Right Thing would be Mandarin Chinese, of course :D

  • (cs) in reply to Mark
    Mark:
    Asiago, you're bringing these comments up to a level never before seen on TDWTF. I think you're scaring away the script kiddies.
    Tell me about it. For a second there I thought I was in the wrong forum.
    Asiago Chow:
    <snip>
    I like the idea of taking responsibility and putting your foot down when the situation calls for it. But I don't know how well that translates in real life. In fact the saying "No good deed goes unpunished" comes to mind. But maybe I'm just a little bitter. I think that this whole thing goes beyond a single incident and has more to do with your relationship with your employer. If in the past you have clearly shown that you know what you're doing and (more importantly) made/saved the company some money, it's less likely to have your objections simply brushed aside. It also helps if you know how to talk to people. If that doesn't help, however, and I were to find myself in the OP's situation, I would warn management and if that didn't work, I would have to go with a neutral hands-off approach. I have long ago realized that sometimes people will make up their mind to run head-first into a wall and the only thing you'll gain from trying to prevent it is resentment. So I'd come up with a contingency plan to prevent me from taking the blame if/when the outsourced code sinks and put the whole thing out of mind. If that invalidates me from being a professional, then so be it. That said, of course, this is strictly a personal choice. In the end you make your bed and you sleep in it.

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