• SilverEyes (unregistered)

    That's pretty funny. It reminds me of a similar incident at my office.

    (...and Frist!)

  • Jimmy (unregistered)

    WTF!!!!

    Sure companies are not always that quick to detect people that know nothing at all but seriously????

  • (cs)

    dear lord tell me it isn't so

  • (cs)

    This sound too bad to be true!

  • Innocent Bystander Passing By (unregistered) in reply to madchicken
    madchicken:
    This sound too bad to be true!
    This sounds so bad it must be true ;)
  • Matthew Greet (unregistered)

    The phrase needed here is:-

    Run! Get out while you can!

  • Some Guy (unregistered)

    They promoted her to Lead Developer?

    I Didn’t Know You Could Do That!

  • hmmmm.... (unregistered)

    "...promoting Megan to the Lead Developer"

    Sometimes you can do a company a favour by not (covertly) helping an incompetent co-worker and letting them get 'found out', <cynical>they'd probably still get the promotion though</cynical>.

  • (cs)

    Who was she sleepin' with ? CEO ?

  • Sweetness & Light (unregistered)

    Now I know where Paula ended up.

  • (cs) in reply to MustBeUsersFault

    SWE!

  • (cs) in reply to MustBeUsersFault
    MustBeUsersFault:
    Who was she sleepin' with ? CEO ?
    LOQ

    --

    It always amazes me (and makes me ponder the ingenuinity of the human mind) when people lacking some very basic skill or knowledge tackle a problem that would otherwise be easy to solve.

    "'Ere, I just added a pointer to every piece of data that points to the next piece of data! ... What do you mean, 'array?'"

    I love it when people come up with a hack just because they don't know the simple way to do something. (Not implying anything about linked lists here)

  • Jonathan (unregistered)

    "...promoting Megan to the Lead Developer"

    The message here is: "Be bad at your job, if you are too good at it, you'll never get a promotion because you're too good to be replaced by someone else."

  • hmmmm.... (unregistered) in reply to aib
    aib:
    LOQ

    It always amazes me (and makes me ponder the ingenuinity of the human mind) when people lacking some very basic skill or knowledge tackle a problem that would otherwise be easy to solve.

    It always amazes me when people lacking some very basic skill or knowledge gain employment, especially in roles requiring specific/advanced skills or knowledge !

  • Harrow (unregistered)

    Sebastian was way too kind to Megan and consequently screwed over everyone else in the company. He should have let her slip beneath the waves after about the second or third time she fell out of the boat.

    "Megan, I'm keeping a log of all your dumb questions, and I'm counting up the ones that prove that you shouldn't be employed here."

    "How many of them is that?"

    "Pretty much all of them. And I'm giving your boss a copy."

    "But you'll get me fired!"

    "I'm afraid so."

    "Oh. I didn’t know you could do that!"

    -Harrow.

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    Seriously, after reading that I want to throw up. Oh, the management ..

  • Corvus Corax (unregistered)

    "...promoting Megan to the Lead Developer"

    Sometimes, it's easiest to promote someone to lead, because when they fail it's grounds to fire them (their incompetance has become glaringly obvious). This is useful in cases where the other team members repeatedly save the person.

    Other reasons for promotions are:

    1. The lead is a manager who never touches the code.
    2. The promotion takes the person out of your department.
  • jkndrkn (unregistered)

    So with all the screwups and bad data, the company responded appropriately. By promoting Megan to the Lead Developer for the whole department.

    To be fair, it may have been the case that Megan had skills other than programming that made her valuable. Good people skills, and a pleasant and optimistic attitude can often make you valuable as a leader.

  • Jim (unregistered)

    I think there is a person like that in every Development team. I guess I know who the next person promoted to Lead Developer at my company will be. :)

    CAPTCHA : quake (with fear I suppose)

  • (cs)
    And it took them over two months to discover and fix this bug.
    This line scares me more than any other.
  • (cs)

    This is the kind of story that makes me want to forget everything I ever knew about computers, go back to uni and graduate in something else I was always interested in like archeology.

  • Territan (unregistered) in reply to aib
    MustBeUsersFault:
    "'Ere, I just added a pointer to every piece of data that points to the next piece of data! ... What do you mean, 'array?'"
    Or if you prefer, a linked list. They have their advantages and disadvantages. They're fairly easy to build and maintain, and deleting items from them just requires you to change a pointer and free up the one object, not compress the array. It's especially good to put two pointers on every piece of data and create this wacky construct known as a tree.

    I just mention this because the linked list falls well short of this WTF.

  • Territan (unregistered) in reply to Territan

    Flaming vermillion damnation! I misattributed to MustBeUsersFault what was said by aib. C'est la vie, and sorry about that MBUF.

  • (cs) in reply to Territan
    Territan:
    Flaming vermillion damnation! I misattributed to MustBeUsersFault what was said by aib. C'est la vie, and sorry about that MBUF.

    C'est la vie, Je te pardonne, vas en paix, ami

  • (cs)

    Oracle Forms applications without data bound fields are perfectly possible, but of course it needs some extra work. The Real WTF(tm) is that anyone who ever had contact with Oracle Forms (yes, this includes me) is promoted to Lead Developer, instead of being brainwashed and/or quarantined for the rest of their professional life.

  • Anon (unregistered)

    I just had a similar incident where I work. Afterwards I went to the boss and made it very clear that this person was "the worst programmer I have ever met"

    Now I'm waiting to see if management listens at all...

  • Schmitter (unregistered)

    Promoted to the level of incompetence. Happens every day.

  • Kerri Miller (unregistered)

    Meh.. I call tentative BS - given the amount of grilling I've experienced in interviews due to the disbelief that a woman can program, I doubt this "Megan" would've gotten a position.

  • Tabigarasu (unregistered) in reply to Kerri Miller

    Unless in the process of anonymizing, the offender had a sex-change performed.

    I agree, however, in most places, a woman developer gets a whole helluva lot more scrutiny than our male counterparts.

  • (cs)

    Where can I get a job where hot girls like Meagan will sleep with me for a promotion?

  • (cs)

    The Peter Principle. What an excellent illustration!!

    Isn't is amazing that Dr. Peter wrote about this phenomenon long before computers were a common part of our life; and, now, we see more clear examples of his principle in the computer industry!!!?

  • (cs) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    I just had a similar incident where I work. Afterwards I went to the boss and made it very clear that this person was "the worst programmer I have ever met"

    Now I'm waiting to see if management listens at all...

    Any bets on who gets let go? You or "the worst programmer I have ever met?"

  • Wuisch (unregistered)

    Isn't this the exact thing dilbert is been going on about for 10+ years. Where fiction meets reality... Wonder if they have a pointy haired boss

  • (cs) in reply to T $

    I laughed after the first snippet of code - if you had stopped there, it still would have been funny.

    Later, "Fortunately, with all the programming help and tips, Megan started relying less and less on Sebastian", I started to have (false) hope that she was "getting it".

    Then, there was:

    T $:
    And it took them over two months to discover and fix this bug.
    This line scares me more than any other.
    ...arguably the biggest WTF of all!

    But finally, the promotion made me laugh so loud (in the middle of an intercontinental conference call with 22 people) so much so that people asked me what was so funny, and I had to read them the whole article. We spent sooo much time talking about it that we ran out of time and didn't finish what we were supposed to be doing.

    Kudo's, Alex!

  • sburnap (unregistered)

    Reminds me of the "programmer" who responded with shock and surprise when I explained to him that he didn't need all those "initialize" methods as constructors could take arguments.

    He was promoted to manage the entire department.

  • cynic (unregistered) in reply to Kerri Miller
    Kerri Miller:
    Meh.. I call tentative BS - given the amount of grilling I've experienced in interviews due to the disbelief that a woman can program, I doubt this "Megan" would've gotten a position.

    Unless:

    1. Boss' or board member's daughter (sons, nephews, nieces--same)
    2. In-company transfer
    3. Completely non-technical hiring process.
    4. Completely incompetent hiring manager, or at least a not very objective judge of character. You clearly underestimate the male capacity to lose brain function at a moment's notice.
  • Nodren (unregistered)

    this is why geeks shall inherit the earth, because the incompetence you see in so many companies will eventually cause them to destroy themselves, then we'll rise up, and take all their money! muhaha.

  • hrrmmm (unregistered) in reply to jkndrkn

    Or, she could suck start a leaf blower. Who knows.

  • (cs) in reply to ParkinT
    ParkinT:
    The Peter Principle. What an excellent illustration!!

    Isn't is amazing that Dr. Peter wrote about this phenomenon long before computers were a common part of our life; and, now, we see more clear examples of his principle in the computer industry!!!?

    I think this is more Scott Adams's territory than Dr Peter's - The Peter Principal states that an employee was once competent at something, but Meghan seems more like someone so incompetent she is being promoted out of harms way. Lead developer might lead to Project Manager, and viola, she has been stopped from writing any code.

  • CornedBee (unregistered)

    Yep, that's the Dilbert Principle, not the Peter Principle. And a very fine illustration, too.

  • (cs) in reply to jkndrkn
    jkndrkn:
    > So with all the screwups and bad data, the company responded appropriately. By promoting Megan to the Lead Developer for the whole department.

    To be fair, it may have been the case that Megan had skills other than programming that made her valuable. Good people skills, and a pleasant and optimistic attitude can often make you valuable as a leader.

    So, you're in the 'she must have been sleeping with the CEO|boss|board member|etc.' crowd, then?

  • (cs)

    Is that Pascal in the first example? It has been a long time since I saw Pascal code anywhere.

  • (cs)

    It sounds like she is good at getting others to do more work on top of their own workload. That, to me, sounds like the perfect reason to be promoted. She would be better suited for management than lead developer.

  • Mike McRorey (unregistered)

    lol...if you only knew some of the "tools" I have worked with in the past. the select * from select * from select * snippet is freaking hilarious and true.

  • (cs) in reply to misha
    misha:
    ...viola...

    Hang your head in shame.

  • anonymous (unregistered)

    Is this what happens when an OS/400 RPG programmer joins the team?

  • Adam (unregistered) in reply to Jonathan
    Jonathan:
    The message here is: "Be bad at your job, if you are too good at it, you'll never get a promotion because you're too good to be replaced by someone else."

    You couldn't be any more correct. That is one of the wisest things I've heard in a long while.

  • Egor Egorov (unregistered)

    Definitely a Peter's principle in it's very best: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle

  • Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to ParkinT
    ParkinT:
    The Peter Principle. What an excellent illustration!!

    Isn't is amazing that Dr. Peter wrote about this phenomenon long before computers were a common part of our life; and, now, we see more clear examples of his principle in the computer industry!!!?

    Not really. It's a general principle of corporate life. This isn't a peter principle example, though.

  • Southern (unregistered)

    Wait, Sebastian? From the Never Ending Story :)

Leave a comment on “I Didn’t Know You Could Do That!”

Log In or post as a guest

Replying to comment #:

Log Out

« Return to Article