The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

frits · 2010-09-02 Reply Admin

verto:
frits:
captchaMan:

Joshua:
He scribbled something down on his paper mumbling something about how a bank is probably an ISP and added, "have you troubleshot IIS?"
"Not, but I have maintained several Apache servers."

What, did he say it just to rhyme?

He was doing the short form of a "Not" joke. The long form would be:

"I have troubleshot IIS. Not! But I have maintained several Apache servers."

Dang, you tell that joke almost as good as Borat.

Don't you dare accuse me of stealing from Borat when it obvious that I'm ripping off the entire decade of the 80's.

2010-09-02 Reply Admin

Lets get physical, physical...

pkmnfrk · 2010-09-02 Reply Admin

Franz Kafka:
pkmnfrk:
Apache is iis, in the sense that it is a service that provides information over the internet. The distinction is in the lower case letters.

Why do you even bother justifying the cruiter's idiocy? IIS is a specific product, and the generic term is web server.

Although I was joking, I am unsure if you are.

Franz Kafka:
/i know, don't feed trolls...

Oh shi-

2010-09-02 Reply Admin

NutDriverLefty:
No, but I have written a print job that made the line printer do Beethoven's Fifth. :-)

Back when there were "computer operators" one good way to see if they were awake was to schedule a tight loop of page feeds to the high speed printer at 2:00 AM. You could usually shoot clean through a box of paper before they could run to hit the "online" button.

2010-09-02 Reply Admin

danixdefcon5:
TFA:
His closing words were: "you could have had the best, now you'll just have the rest!"
Am I the only one surprised that a 50-something would actually quote Hackers in a didn't-get-the-job rant?

I think "best/rest" quotes are significantly older than Hackers.

Besides, the actual Hackers quote was "Mess with the best, die like the rest." Not quite the same.

CAPTCHA: esse -> "Who you tryin' to get crazy with, esse? Don't you know I'm loco?"

blakeyrat · 2010-09-02 Reply Admin

wtf:
Matthew:
onitake:
on the other hand, a capable perl coder with zero php experience should be able to grok out at least decent php code with a little learning...

Why? They don't produce decent perl code. Nobody does.

grok = understand, not produce

go read some Heinlein, you'll like it.

They all feature a main character with an uncanny physical resemblance to Heinlein, and who share all his opinions and prejudice, surrounded by gorgeous, intelligent woman half his age and way out of his league.

The funny thing is he has some great ideas, but the self-insertion/fanfic-level wish fulfillment crap completely distracts me from the rest of the book.

2010-09-02 Reply Admin

Lone Marauder:
Lone Marauder:
I usually cut off stuff like this by handing them *my* resume. Had more than one interviewer find it interesting that what I gave the recruiting company is different than what I gave them.
Gaah, stupid distractions. That should read, "Had more than one interviewer find it interesting that what the recruiting company gave them was different than what I gave them."

I found your first wording more interesting, as it would mean the interviewer was blaming you for the different versions. :-)

I hope you explained to the interviewer, in no uncertain terms, that the resume you gave them is identical to the one you gave the recruiter, and that any differences were caused by "editing" by the recruiter.

2010-09-02 Reply Admin

Carl:
Then they showed me two half pages of code in PHP.
So...one page?

Two pages, each half-filled.

2010-09-02 Reply Admin

TRWTF is that they had to use two half-filled pages instead of a single full page.

2010-09-02 Reply Admin

frits:
Me:
"you could have had the best, now you'll just have the rest!"
Yep.

I guess he worked in a pizzeria for a while? [image]

2010-09-02 Reply Admin

wtf:
grok = understand, not produce
go read some Heinlein, you'll like it.

Grok = drink, not understand

go read some Heinlein, you'll like it.

2010-09-02 Reply Admin

sholdowa:
wtf:
grok = understand, not produce
go read some Heinlein, you'll like it.

Grok = drink, not understand

go grok some Heineken, you'll like it.

FTFY

2010-09-02 Reply Admin

Fred:
You could usually shoot clean through a box of paper before they could run to hit the "online" button.

Uh-huh. It's amazing how high in the air the tail end goes when it's thrown by a 1200 line-per-minute printer, too.

lolwtf · 2010-09-02 Reply Admin

Of course Google is an ISP. They provide an Internet service.

2010-09-02 Reply Admin

No they provide an Internet. I've got the google internet in my computer.

2010-09-02 Reply Admin

AndyC:
No they provide an Internet. I've got the google internet in my computer.

What are you using Google internet for? Firefox is a much better ISP...

2010-09-02 Reply Admin

illum:
Anon:
boog:
TFA:
When they came back, I complimented them on the clever examples of bad code and presented them with my rewrite. One of interviewers — the chattier of the two — didn't say another word; he was clearly upset, and I was half-concerned it might get physical.
If it'd been my code, I'd have asked him to not only show his rewrite, but explain what's wrong with the existing code and why his code is better. If he could justify his remarks, I'd hire him and try to learn from my own mistakes. If he couldn't, I'd have told him why he was mistaken, thanked him for his time, and hoped the next candidate was better.
Programmers shouldn't take criticism over code so personal. Code is not art. It's not something that you pour your soul into. It's just code. As long as it gets the job done and other programmers can maintain it, it doesn't matter who "likes" it.

Agreed, but I think this was the bit that did it:

I complimented them on the clever examples of bad code and presented them with my rewrite.

It's one thing to have somebody criticize your code, it's another to have somebody think it's actually a joke.
So, what were they expecting? That he would look at the code and say, "Nope, can't find any problems with it."

Ha, ha, ha. That's funny. Where'd you find such a shitty post? Did that come from a brain-dead weasel? Did you get it from one of those trolling sites on the internet? Well done.

See, big difference between that and me pointing out your mistake of not realizing that there is a vast gulf between "Nope, can't find any problems" and "Is this a joke?". They, presumably, expecting him to find a few places to make improvements and make a couple of suggestions. They weren't expecting him to laugh at it. Now, the fact that he laughed at it, probably means it was bad enough to be laughed at, but that's not the point. I'm not defending their shitty code. I'm saying their reaction is not surprising, and while it's easy to say that you welcome criticism and would take it as an opportunity to learn, I'm sure about 95% of people wouldn't be so ready to learn after being laughed at.

2010-09-02 Reply Admin

I haven't got time to wade through all the bullshit today, so sorry if this has already been said.

TRWTF is that he ignored the e-mail. If some clueless "Technical Recruiter", who thought Google was an ISP, was "fixing up" my CV and shopping it all over town I would want to tell him in the strongest possible terms to cease-and-fucking-desist and delete it from his "server". He obviously doesn't care about his reputation.

2010-09-02 Reply Admin

Anon:
illum:
So, what were they expecting? That he would look at the code and say, "Nope, can't find any problems with it."

Ha, ha, ha. That's funny. Where'd you find such a shitty post? Did that come from a brain-dead weasel? Did you get it from one of those trolling sites on the internet? Well done.

See, big difference between that and me pointing out your mistake of not realizing that there is a vast gulf between "Nope, can't find any problems" and "Is this a joke?". They, presumably, expecting him to find a few places to make improvements and make a couple of suggestions. They weren't expecting him to laugh at it. Now, the fact that he laughed at it, probably means it was bad enough to be laughed at, but that's not the point. I'm not defending their shitty code. I'm saying their reaction is not surprising, and while it's easy to say that you welcome criticism and would take it as an opportunity to learn, I'm sure about 95% of people wouldn't be so ready to learn after being laughed at.

True, being laughed at might push me into the realm of the disgruntled, though to be fair that may be exaggerating what TFA said happened. Either way, I'd say I have to agree that their reaction wasn't surprising.

Nevertheless, I see the missed chance at a useful discussion there. Assuming they got past the "this-code-is-a-joke" awkwardness, discussing their code and his rewrite would not only give them a good idea of the type of developer he is, but he would get a good idea of the type of company/developers they are. I think this type of discussion is something that so many interviews miss out on, many times resulting in a job offer to a lesser candidate.

2010-09-02 Reply Admin

boog:
TFA:
When they came back, I complimented them on the clever examples of bad code and presented them with my rewrite. One of interviewers — the chattier of the two — didn't say another word; he was clearly upset, and I was half-concerned it might get physical.
If it'd been my code, I'd have asked him to not only show his rewrite, but explain what's wrong with the existing code and why his code is better. If he could justify his remarks, I'd hire him and try to learn from my own mistakes. If he couldn't, I'd have told him why he was mistaken, thanked him for his time, and hoped the next candidate was better.
Programmers shouldn't take criticism over code so personal. Code is not art. It's not something that you pour your soul into. It's just code. As long as it gets the job done and other programmers can maintain it, it doesn't matter who "likes" it.

Valid and reasonable argument, but as a corollary...a certain degree of pride is perfectly acceptable, nay, required to be a great programmer. Paraphrasing the jargon file (I think), hubris makes you write the best code you possibly can, precisely to avoid situations like this, where someone else looks at your code and says "Is this a joke? What were you smoking?". Taking ownership of, and pride in, "your" code prevents you from writing hacky shit and throwing it over the wall. Your pride should of course, as you point out, be tempered with the humility to realise that you are not perfect.

TRWTF is academics getting all prissy because, in practice, theory is not the same as practice. Spend too long coddled by university walls and you believe your own hype. Every one of us, to a man, will or will have looked back on code we wrote fresh out of university and be overwhelmed with shame. To. A. Man. (Even the women)

vt_mruhlin · 2010-09-02 Reply Admin

For the third one, would it be considered "too" bad to go ahead and give the guy the references, then when the client calls you, tell them what a moron their recruiter is?

2010-09-02 Reply Admin

Dreadwolf's Jockstrap:
Valid and reasonable argument, but as a corollary...a certain degree of pride is perfectly acceptable, nay, required to be a great programmer. Paraphrasing the jargon file (I think), hubris makes you write the best code you possibly can, precisely to avoid situations like this, where someone else looks at your code and says "Is this a joke? What were you smoking?". Taking ownership of, and pride in, "your" code prevents you from writing hacky shit and throwing it over the wall. Your pride should of course, as you point out, be tempered with the humility to realise that you are not perfect.
TRWTF is academics getting all prissy because, in practice, theory is not the same as practice. Spend too long coddled by university walls and you believe your own hype. Every one of us, to a man, will or will have looked back on code we wrote fresh out of university and be overwhelmed with shame. To. A. Man. (Even the women)

Well said. Short side note, IIRC it was Larry Wall who said hubris, laziness, and impatience were 3 virtues of a good programmer.

Anyway, to clarify, I never meant to imply that one cannot have pride in their code. Rather, my pride in my work would push me to question the applicant's mockery, rather than get grumpy about it (well, maybe a little grumpy, depending on his choice of words). If he calls my code lousy, then offers up a worse solution as a rewrite, and in explaining it all demonstrates a total lack of understanding of the original code and programming in general, then the joke's on him.

"Is this a joke? What were you smoking?"

Crack! But what does that have to do with my code?

MarkJ · 2010-09-02 Reply Admin

Fred:
NutDriverLefty:
No, but I have written a print job that made the line printer do Beethoven's Fifth. :-)
Back when there were "computer operators" one good way to see if they were awake was to schedule a tight loop of page feeds to the high speed printer at 2:00 AM. You could usually shoot clean through a box of paper before they could run to hit the "online" button.

Sure you could do that. You just couldn't expect to have any magnetic tapes mounted drives again. Ever. And no, I don't miss magtapes!

2010-09-02 Reply Admin

Troll Army 3:
TRWTF is that they had to use two half-filled pages instead of a single full page.

TRWTF is that you would've used an entire sheet of paper, rather than half a sheet.

{Completed reading side A. Please remove the disk and turn it over so I can continue reading side B...}

2010-09-02 Reply Admin

Stevie D:
AndyC:
No they provide an Internet. I've got the google internet in my computer.
What are you using Google internet for? Firefox is a much better ISP...

Don't be silly... Firefox is an IIS.

MarkJ · 2010-09-02 Reply Admin

PinkyAndTheBrainFan187:
I haven't got time to wade through all the bullshit today, so sorry if this has already been said.
TRWTF is that he ignored the e-mail. If some clueless "Technical Recruiter", who thought Google was an ISP, was "fixing up" my CV and shopping it all over town I would want to tell him in the strongest possible terms to cease-and-fucking-desist and delete it from his "server". He obviously doesn't care about his reputation.

It may take a court order to get some of these turkeys to desist. Too many recruiters write fiction for a living. Unfortunate, since it gives the few good ones a black eye...

2010-09-02 Reply Admin

MarkJ:
Fred:
NutDriverLefty:
No, but I have written a print job that made the line printer do Beethoven's Fifth. :-)
Back when there were "computer operators" one good way to see if they were awake was to schedule a tight loop of page feeds to the high speed printer at 2:00 AM. You could usually shoot clean through a box of paper before they could run to hit the "online" button.
Sure you could do that. You just couldn't expect to have any magnetic tapes mounted drives again. Ever. And no, I don't miss magtapes!

I wonder how hard it really was to spin the drives around fast enough to either rip them off of their posts, rip the tape in two, or set the entire tape machine a'rockin'. Would have loved to see it.

hoodaticus · 2010-09-02 Reply Admin

I can't stand recruiters who don't know enough to do their job. But then, for a tech recruiter, the amount of knowledge required would merit a quarter-million base salary, and due to unpredictability of candidate success on the job, would yield an insufficient return on investment anyway.

It is therefore Adam Smith's creepy, invisible hand that causes technical recruiters to be ignorant and development staffs to be cursed with nincompoops whose aggressive stupidity compounds ignorance with arrogance.

Indeed, it is capitalism that causes the WTF.

2010-09-02 Reply Admin

MarkJ:
It may take a court order to get some of these turkeys to desist. Too many recruiters write fiction for a living. Unfortunate, since it gives the few good ones a black eye...

Strangely enough, I feel more like giving bad recruiters a black eye ...

2010-09-02 Reply Admin

boog:
... it was Larry Wall who said hubris, laziness, and impatience were 3 virtues of a good programmer.

However it's not possible to be a good PERL programmer.

2010-09-03 Reply Admin

Why be safe? The interviewer handed out the code and basically said "do your worst on this". He should be prepared for any ensuing flames, or not be part of the interview.

2010-09-03 Reply Admin

Fred:
You're not cool unless you've whistled into a modem and had it respond.

Been there, done that. On a genuine Bell 103 modem in fact!

piskvorr · 2010-09-03 Reply Admin

"an older gentleMEN" - oh God, they're multiplying!

(also, "The The Daily WTF Interview"?)

2010-09-03 Reply Admin

danixdefcon5:
TFA:
His closing words were: "you could have had the best, now you'll just have the rest!"
Am I the only one surprised that a 50-something would actually quote Hackers in a didn't-get-the-job rant?

Really? Do you not mean: 'Mess with the best, die like the rest'? Has the words 'best' and 'rest' other than that I don't make your connection....

2010-09-03 Reply Admin

"you could have had the best, now you'll just have the rest!"

Dedication's what you need.

www.bbc.co.uk/cult/classic/titles/recordbreakers.shtml

Kuba · 2010-09-03 Reply Admin

Julia:
And it's not just technical stuff they fake. I had the joys of meeting such an agency once. Told them that as a relatively new mother I wasn't going to relocate or stay away from home. They doctored the resume to tell the victim company I was fine for a contract that involved alternating 3-month periods between UK and Saudi Arabia...

Julia, you made my day. I have to tell this to my wife. She's expecting our second one.

2010-09-03 Reply Admin

boog:
flyboyfred:
You're right, but we're not machines either. It hurts to be corrected and to have your code be called a great example of bad code. Let's hope they learned something from it.
Point taken. I suppose his wording could have been more tactful.
Still, I'd have laughed and said, "really? what's so bad about it?" instead of getting all moody. But I suppose every developer is different.

Would you chuckle "I don't think she's that bad!" if I crack wise about your amazingly ugly baby?

Let's face it, it's a pretty rare (and probably marginally defective) human being that doesn't get defensive about the masterpiece of their craft or the fruit of their loins.

Kensey · 2010-09-03 Reply Admin

I have very little good to say about third-party recruiters. In my experience they're either liars to all parties, lazy, or useless.

Lately though I've been noticing a new twist -- job postings for direct hires that bear little relation to the actual job. E.g. for my last job search I was looking specifically for a VMware-ish admin position (having just gotten my VCP). So I searched for "vmware and linux" on Monster. I interviewed at about a half-dozen places and almost none of them had both VMware and Linux in their actual environments (I think one did) -- several had neither one!

I think a lot of companies are (or were) looking at the rotten economy as a chance to pick up skilled staff at a bargain.

I eventually ended up with a job after a friend fed my resume into his employer's system and an internal recruiter there called me out of the blue offering a Linux admin position.

Indrora · 2010-09-03 Reply Admin

i've always wanted to use this line:

You are promoted to your highest level of incompetence.

obviously, this guy knew nothing about technology, at least on a high level and was asked to interview it.

2010-09-03 Reply Admin

Proud Papa:
boog:
flyboyfred:
You're right, but we're not machines either. It hurts to be corrected and to have your code be called a great example of bad code. Let's hope they learned something from it.
Point taken. I suppose his wording could have been more tactful.
Still, I'd have laughed and said, "really? what's so bad about it?" instead of getting all moody. But I suppose every developer is different.

Would you chuckle "I don't think she's that bad!" if I crack wise about your amazingly ugly baby?
Let's face it, it's a pretty rare (and probably marginally defective) human being that doesn't get defensive about the masterpiece of their craft or the fruit of their loins.

So it's bad enough that these "code poets" treat their code like art, but now we're comparing it to our offspring?

Code is code. It is not a "masterpiece"; it is a set of instructions to carry out a task. Maybe the finished product can be a masterpiece, but not the code itself.

Code is also not the fruit of your loins, unless of course, you type it with your loins.

2010-09-03 Reply Admin

Julia:
He also said that he'd taken the liberty of rewriting my resume to include a couple of things about my experience troubleshooting IIS...

...which is a sure-fire way to plenty of timewasting interviews where every answer meets the riposte "but your resume says you're an expert with (insert WTFware here)".

And it's not just technical stuff they fake. I had the joys of meeting such an agency once. Told them that as a relatively new mother I wasn't going to relocate or stay away from home. They doctored the resume to tell the victim company I was fine for a contract that involved alternating 3-month periods between UK and Saudi Arabia...

Sometimes it works out okay. Some time ago my boss called in a candidate who was an expert in the "Transputer Layer Interface", just to find out what that meant. What it meant was that his agency had decided to rewrite his CV a bit ("Transputer" was a buzzword, once upon a time). As it turned out, he got the job and was very good at it (hi Neil :-)

2010-09-03 Reply Admin

boog:

Code is also not the fruit of your loins, unless of course, you type it with your loins.

A new kind of hunt and peck typing!

2010-09-03 Reply Admin

While that guy may have known the names of the OSI layers he sure as shit doesn't know what they do. Might want to stay on the development side of things.

2010-09-03 Reply Admin

I was going to say, ive seen this interview dozens of times...it must be new to him. You have to treat head hunters like mud puppies. Brow beat them every chance you get because they truly are the dumbest people on earth.

2010-09-03 Reply Admin

I was certain that they had set me up with a TDWTF-style interview, where they'd pick out a fun code WTF (actually, it looked like this one) and have me turn a convoluted two-page mess into a two lines of code.

And I imagine, in true TDWTF tradition, you made it marginally shorter, introduced a slew of new bugs, and translated it into the wrong language.

2010-09-03 Reply Admin

Ah, recruiters.

I walked out on them once.

A recruiter insisted that he needed to meet me in person before referring me to any of their clients, so I drove 40 miles one way to be at his office by 9 am.

I was on time. He was nowhere to be found. They stuck me in a little waiting room and I sat there for a while.

After about 20 minutes I popped my head into the front office and asked if they had any idea what was going on. Someone finally got around to trying the recruiter's cell phone, which worked perfectly. Apparently he was stuck in traffic.

He hadn't bothered to call in to the office to have someone inform his 9:00 appointment that he'd be late, but would I mind waiting another 45 minutes or so until he got in?

Yes, I minded. Had he just made the effort to contact me I would have stayed, but I didn't need the job that badly, so I walked out and drove the 40 miles back home. Waste of a morning.

SuperousOxide · 2010-09-03 Reply Admin

danixdefcon5:
TFA:
His closing words were: "you could have had the best, now you'll just have the rest!"
Am I the only one surprised that a 50-something would actually quote Hackers in a didn't-get-the-job rant?

I thought he was quoting pizza boxes.

2010-09-03 Reply Admin

On the storm out, I can honestly say I feel that tech recruiters are nothing but spineless leaches. GET A REAL FUCKING JOB!

2010-09-03 Reply Admin

Now that the western world is in recession and IT jobs are fewer, the latest trend I've noticed from recruiters is to ring you up to "go through your CV" when want they really want is to find out which companies you've had interviews with recently so they can pester them with offers to undercut their rivals. Best advice here is to say "nope. I've had no interviews recently" and get them off the phone A.S.A.P.

2010-09-03 Reply Admin

[quote user="onitake"]and of course, the wtf here is going from perl to php. :)

on the other hand, a capable perl coder with zero php experience should be able to grok out at least shitty, perl-like php code with a little learning...[/quote]

FTFY.[/quote] You have no idea how correct you are. Sadly, I speak from experience correcting said per-like code.

The Best, The TDWTF Interview, and The Storm-out

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