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Admin
Permiere
Admin
wow... no frist?
probably lost it during the database sweep
Admin
Ah yes, one of the worst situations to be in. When there's a mistake or a bug by your subcontractor, or in your third-party-purchased library (ahem ExtJS) but from your customer's perspective, its YOU who screwed up. This bites me in the a$$ very frequently. I've tried to read and study how to handle these types of issues (proj management, systems engineering, etc) but frequently the answer is "yep, it sucks".
CAPTCH: illum(inated, which is what I need to be)
Admin
There was a reader who displayed their pleasure at being the earliest commenter on this article. In the style of the article, he proceeded to indicate this in French, along with the customary spelling mistake to avoid the word filter.
Admin
Ah yes, one of the worst situations to be in. When there's a mistake or a bug by your subcontractor, or in your third-party-purchased library (ahem ExtJS) but from your customer's perspective, its YOU who screwed up. This bites me in the a$$ very frequently. I've tried to read and study how to handle these types of issues (proj management, systems engineering, etc) but frequently the answer is "yep, it sucks".
CAPTCH: illum(inated, which is what I need to be)
Admin
I find it fairly ironic that your username is "DoEverythingMyself" given that the answer to your question is, "do everything yourself."
Admin
LOL, yeah, that name was intentionally ironic, I am very self-aware that I need to address that. I do need to learn how to vett my subs better, and how to QC the whole system. Seems like SwissMedia needs to learn the same lesson with Datamaniaks.
Admin
And why did Jeremy not have a copy of the backup in the first place? Test-databases are meant to be mutilated, that's their whole point, odds are you will need to do a couple of restores before whatever procedure you intend to perform has been perfected.
Admin
Exactly what jkupski said.
If your subcontractor screwed up, the customer has all the right to say you're at fault because he didn't choose the subcontractor. You (as in, your company) did, under the assumption that they would do a decent job. The fact that they didn't means it was (most likely) a poor job choosing which subcontractor to pick, ergo: YOUR fault.
Granted, there could be ways they screwed up that couldn't be avoided, like them suddenly replacing all their staff with wet-behind-the-ears interns "analists". But from the customer's perspective it doesn't matter: you were hired to provide a job and you didn't.
Admin
Wow, what database engine would allow you to move a database file that's in use?
Admin
Admin
Find the dependencies -- and eliminate them.
Admin
That's pretty clear what is wanted and can't be chalked up to a "misunderstanding". Even if it was in French, "send" doesn't look anything like "restore"
Admin
We all know that would never happen on a windows-box. If a process even thinks about maybe having access to a file, then that file's going to be there untill you reboot. I finally understand why.
Admin
Admin
I'm gonna go with: Jeremy's the fool here.
a) He sent an overly-casual email to his (3rd party) supplier with a request that assumed knowledge and experience. Everybody knows that if you want a 3rd party to do something, this has got to be a formally-raised request vith a copy sent to your boss (which of course means you got to fess up to pulling a boner in the first place, sux to be you innit).
b) Having experienced the 3rd-party person fuck up really, really badly, he then learns his lesson and does not give him any further opportunity to fuck up again, using any techniques up to and including driving over there in a fucking Chieftain tank and demanding the head of the fuck-up on a pole to parade through the streets to frighten the fucking peasants from doing any such thing again.
In practical terms, though, this includes what another geezer said up above, that he should guide the perpetrator step-by-step through exactly what he wants him to do, and make sure this is monitored really really carefully by both Jeremy and his boss andthe boss of the perpetrator of the original mistake.
c) He should not have sent a caps-locked email because that will do one of two things. Either it will panic the guy at the other end who will then just hit keys at random and do even worse damage. Or it will anger the guy who will say "Who is this prick?" and then proceed to perform the most destructive act of sabotage he can possibly blame on the excuse of "simple mistake".
The resulting termination of contracts is all well and good, and I would also make sure that Jeremy never ever gets put in a position where his job requires him to communicate with anyone apart from his immediate supervisor ever again.
Admin
"SwissMedia outsourced their data storage"
There's your problem.
Admin
Perhaps I expect too much from other people but I would assume knowing the difference between words like "send" or "when you get a chance" and "overwrite a production database" to be a basic skill anyone would have.
I would interpret "SEND ME A COPY OF THE PRODUCTION BACKUP, NOT RESTORE FROM BACKUP" as being a fairly specific instruction for even the most untrained monkey to deal with.
Admin
I don't think BONER means what you think it means.
Admin
[quote user="Matt Westwood"]a) He sent an overly-casual email to his (3rd party) supplier with a request that assumed knowledge and experience.[/quote]
[quote user=Charles Robinson]“Hey, Sebastien,” his email started, “I’m sure I’ll have a good laugh about this later, but I totally trashed the test DB. Could you send me today’s 2AM backup when you get a chance?” He laid out the specific database backup he wanted, and where it needed to be delivered.[/quote]
Maybe I'm just overly casual and assume too much, but I read that last sentence as saying that Jeremy laid out the specific database backup he wanted and where it needed to be delivered. The only assumption that I can see is that Jeremy is capable of reading and hasn't spent the entire morning eating paste.
Perhaps he should have followed every sentence with the phrase "...and please don't erase any production data or set fire to any of the servers", and maybe his follow-up email should have included the words "Are there any grown-ups there with you? Can I speak with them?", but unless there was prior evidence that Jeremy had absolutely no clue of what he was doing, the original request looks reasonable.
Addendum (2014-08-21 11:21): (What is unreasonable is that I can't format a quote tag properly. But don't worry, I'll just upload a new comment over top of the production database and that will fix everything.)
Admin
this is the real wtf: this website still exist
Admin
i went to what.tfwtf and i looked at comments people are being mean to blakey they have him tagged as "mediocre poster" u guys r just nothin but stupid haters
Admin
what could jeremy have done with the backup to undo the restore anyway? nothing, that's what.
Admin
You where missing quote marks around Charels Robinson. Why this destroyed the quote from Matt as well I have no idea.
Admin
The BBCode parser clearly prefers to take the Samson Option when interpreting tags. I believe that Jon Postel described it as the "Eff Robustness Principle" (or something like that)
"Be conservative in what you send, but don't be afraid to pitch a fit if you see something you don't feel like accepting."
Admin
Isn't that the opposite of ironic?
Admin
He means it's ironic that "DoEverythingMyself" doesn't do everything himself :|
Admin
The badge that he set as his title?
Admin
Admin
And you can just guarantee that you weren't in the meeting where management decided to use that vendor's software which, six months down the line, you could have built yourself.
AND your version would be more maintainable, cheaper to build, and generally a better use of time than acting as a liaison between your dumba$$ vendor, whose first instinct to any questions is to get defensive, and the client who has a lot of questions, because your vendor's only marketable skill is overselling their useless software, which you're now stuck with until apparently the end of time.
Admin
He's lucky (?) was a small database. We have a few where I work that would present a real challenge for any email system.
("Your mailbox is currently over your assigned limit of 1 gigabyte by 12.4 terabytes. You will be unable to send any messages until you reduce the size of your mailbox below your limit.")
Admin
Jeremy is clearly the Prime WTFer in this scenario.
If YOU are working with a test DB, then YOU ensure that you have the ability to instantly restore from snapshot, not take lunch.
The "Forgotten WHERE" is NOT a classic boner. The classic boner is "Forgotten WHERE outside a transaction", which is only a serious problem if the original "Forgotten test SELECT prior to UPDATE to ensure I don't hose the entire table" occurs.
On what planet does "sub made a mess" combined with "customer is angry" not imply "get the boss". At the very minimum, the boss can be placating the customer while you work the problem. Or maybe he can work the sub while you placate the customer. That's what a boss's job is. To make those kind of decisions.
As mentioned, TYPING IN ALL CAPS IS A POOR WAY TO COMMUNICATE. But really, it has taken a lot of discipline to avoid it in this case.
If I were Jeremy, I would be worrying about my own contract...
Admin
Yes, he should have had a local copy of the database, and restored from that.
He should have not "gone for coffee" -- should have stayed on the line while the database was restored. And verified that what was being done was the correct procedure.
The french guy should have said -- wait, I'm going to restore the production database from the backup. Are you sure that's what you want???
The "2AM" backup, for someone in the US, is probably a different backup than the "2AM" backup for the guy in France (by about 8 hours or so). So specifying exactly which backup, is important.
Why does a 3rd-party contract guy have write access to the production database? With enough privs to restore from backup? Sure, give him access to muck with the individual tables, maybe, but not the ability to completely gut the database.
Admin
When you are in a critical situation, and you know that someone you are communicating with has trouble understanding your instructions (be they ever so clear), the thing to do is either step in and fix things yourself, or to make absolutely sure that the person on the receiving end is completely clear on what you want him to do. Not: "fire off a quick e-mail and leg it".
We do not know why the miscommunication happened, but that it happened twice, between the same two people, would support the notion that at least one of them has trouble communicating - or that the contractor is a complete and utter idiot, which is only more reason not to trust him and to watch his every mouse-click.
Hell, if I just caused a major problem for a big (?) client that could in theory be fixed in about ten minutes, I would not even dream of going for lunch until I had seen to it that the crisis was averted (and that everyone involved was informed, the solution tested, and no immediate additional problems were expected). Of course, the way articles on here get rewritten, this might just have been an attempt at making a complete story out of a two-sentence twitter message.
Admin
To say that Jeremy never communicates with anyone aside from his immediate supervisor ever again is very extreme. How does one have the chance to learn with those sorts of consequences?
You need to raise a couple of children. That'll wise you up.
Admin
Communicating on here feels like raising a couple of fucking children.
But seriously folks, this sort of behaviour is career-limiting to such an extent ("Oh look, here's the guy that lost us the biggest contract we've ever had by his complete inability to communicate!") that his bozo bit has now been well and truly set -- at least in the company he currently works for.
The only way to get out from under this embarrassment is by leaving and going somewhere to make a completely new start.
Admin
Admin
Indeed. The first rule of outsourcing is "Don't ever think of outsourcing anything related to your core business".
If contractor messed up and caused problem to your critical operation, it's your fault.
Admin
With email you get it black and white, with additional benefit of able to CC the email to his supervisor and manager at the same time to make sure recovery step is properly supervised.
Admin
Admin
Finally, a real WTF!? after two boring not-really-WTFs.
Admin
Admin
Admin
It's true that there could potentially be confusion between CE(S)T and UTC, but a) this isn't the first communication about copies of backups of prod, because Jeremy had one to bork, so there's some context which might imply a timezone to those who know it; b) Jeremy is asking for a copy to restore over his test DB. He probably doesn't care whether it's a copy of the 02:00 UTC backup or the 02:00 CE(S)T backup.
Admin
Why is every paragraph SEXY?
Admin
The wtf site seems to have had a SEXY make over recently
Admin
I agree.
Unless your shop has some very serious competency problems, servers and code/VCS are easily backed up and restored.
Although it can vary based one what you are doing, usually data is the most important thing and can be the hardest to back up well or restore quickly. There's a lot of it, it has the highest rate of change and it's hard or impossible to replace (redo, etc). If they outsourced it to idiots, they have a big problem.
Language barrier could be a problem but it sounds to me like this Sebastion characters never should have been let near a database in the first place.
Otherwise it's like saying a patient is supposed to tell the surgeon exactly what to do or saying the passengers of a plane need to tell the pilot which controls to operate. You some occupations, you don't hire untrained people or people that can't follow/interpret instructions unless you have a death wish.
Admin
Admin
I am loving this story, but some mysteries are not yet resolved
Admin