The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2011-03-11 Reply Admin

DocBrown:
There was a newly hired guy on my team who was painfully slow with understanding programming. He liked to talk how he'd rather be a manager instead. (NB: He'd freshly graduated with Economics and CS masters.) We helped him along the best we could... and rewrote (had to) almost all his code after he moved on to another project.
Last I heard of him, they promoted him to a team developing complex analytic reports. The first thing I thought at the moment was "Oh, gods, what were they thinking?" And the second: "Yay, not us!"

Didn't you know - programming is easy! Any damn fool can do it. <blink> And many do...

2011-03-11 Reply Admin

Ol' Bob:
Had a situation similar to this once. Junior programmer from another department was to write a critical portion of our project (a Windows service, the first one written at this company, *and* it had to multi-thread, *and* launch sub-processes to run legacy code, etc, blah) "to gain some experience with Windows NT". Her manager told her not to spend more than 10% of her time on it, so we got Friday afternoons from her. She didn't know (or care) anything about writing services, didn't know squat about multi-threading, couldn't spell C if given a dictionary, etc. Of course the only thing reliable about the code was the crash frequency. I'd done the design but had been told that I was to "mentor" her and not to touch the codebase. However, when she went on vacation with deadline looming I begged the project manager to be allowed "to clean up a few issues". Took two days to unravel the ball of yarn but I got it running solidly. (Can you say "race conditions"? I knew you could). When she came back from her week in the Caribbean she was *furious* that I had dared to touch HER deathless code! How dare I?!? And I'd even changed some variable names (e.g. from 't' to 'hThread') as well! She was so mad she checked the code out and refused to check it in until ordered to by the head of the department. Last I heard she was working as a manager at Intel, which is probably good as it means she'll never code again. Last I knew, that service was still going strong. :-)

I don't understand. What was your motivation for covering her ass?

HellKarnassus · 2011-03-11 Reply Admin

???:
Ol' Bob:
:-)

I don't understand. What was your motivation for covering her ass?

FTFY to reveal the answer

2011-03-11 Reply Admin

snoofle:

So....

Inept management hires inept arrogant conceited glory hogging twit
Inept management promotes twit at twit's urging
Twit hires more twits for personal gain
Twit blames remaining competant workers for downward spiral
Remaining competant worker leaves
Company does well-deserved tail spin, crashes and burns
(yes I can see a little bit into the future on this one)

Assuming their business is software. Which it probably isn't. I've worked at least one place where this sort of crap and waste goes on all the time, but since the core business is so massively profitable, the enormous wasted IT budget is a drop in the ocean

2011-03-11 Reply Admin

hoodaticus:
C-Octothorpe:
hoodaticus:
When I say "VB", I mean the .NET version. I have nothing but contempt for VBA, VB6, and its predecessors.
We do not speak it's name here! We shall henceforth refer to it as "that damned langauge for the unwashed masses which won't go away and gives me nightmares to this very day"...
What?
You just reminded me of a 14 page long function we have in our most mission-critical piece of "software" - written in that damned language. And it just keeps growing, and growing...

shivers<

Maybe you should stop compounding to the problem..

2011-03-11 Reply Admin

Power Troll:
hahaohwow.jpg
This article has it all. Everyone got trolled by an article that was about as exaggerated as the average internet male's penis size. Then some dude got baited like a 1000 lb bass by Nagesh, who is probably cackling behind his keyboard and rolling blunts, lighting up, and waiting to type up another terrible post. Really the only thing we're missing here is a post by my man Bert G.

A++.

No wonder this site sucks nowadays. Some f@ckers think this is 4chan.

hoodaticus · 2011-03-11 Reply Admin

suscipit behaviour:
hoodaticus:
C-Octothorpe:
hoodaticus:
When I say "VB", I mean the .NET version. I have nothing but contempt for VBA, VB6, and its predecessors.
We do not speak it's name here! We shall henceforth refer to it as "that damned langauge for the unwashed masses which won't go away and gives me nightmares to this very day"...
What?
You just reminded me of a 14 page long function we have in our most mission-critical piece of "software" - written in that damned language. And it just keeps growing, and growing...

shivers<
Maybe you should stop compounding to the problem..

It's legacy. I don't have the authority to force a re-write... yet.

ClaudeSuck.de · 2011-03-11 Reply Admin

[quote user="C-Octothorpe"][quote user="ClaudeSuck.de"][quote user="Remy Porter"][quote user="ClaudeSuck.de"][/quote]

Old code: X = X + Y

Brandnew code: int a = Integer.parseInt(args[0]); int b = Integer.parseInt(args[1]); int sum = a + b;

Can anybody tell me how much processing is involved in either of these methods and, therefore, which one is better, faster, more efficient? [/quote]

Since the new code does two things - it converts the variables from String to int and then adds them - while the old code just adds two numbers, the comparison is a little inane. If both are in the same language, the old code will execute faster, but where does your old code get its data from? If it's from the args array, it'll have to execute the new code at some point, and it'll take just as long to do it.

In other words,

Your not too smart, are you?[/quote]

No, I am not so smart. A thoughtful programmer should be able to handle in and output properly whatever the means. However, I always thought that creating an object instead of a mere integer takes a little more time and resources. Creation of objects on the other side introduces the use of garbage collectors because not so thoughtful programmers are not able to destroy their objects after use and so on. And also the not so smart may understand that allocating some 5 or 6 bytes (data + type) should not create the same overhead. [/quote]

What I like to do is throw them off with something like this:

What's the difference between these calls:

void DoFoo(MyObject myObject) and void DoFoo(ref MyObject myObject)

or what would the value of 'z' be after this runs:

void Main(params object[] args) { int x = 1; DoBar(ref x);

int y = 1; DoFoo(y);

int z = x + y; }

void DoFoo(int y) { y = 10; }

void DoBar(ref int x) { x = 4; } [/quote]

I'd say the answer is 5, but maybe 42. It depends.

2011-03-11 Reply Admin

Sudo:
Pontormo:
On this theme, I'm wondering which executive she was sleeping with.
Because everyone knows that the only way an incompetent coder can get work is by sleeping with the boss.
Perhaps, just maybe, she got the job in the same way an incompetent male programmer gets a job - by waving meaningless certifications, spouting trendy jargon, and generally over-selling themselves in the interview. This happens all the time, and no sexual favours are ever exchanged.

Seriously guys, some of these comments are just embarrassing. It's like being in a 1950's working men's club in here. Some of you have clearly spent more time with porno than you have with real women.

Who said she had an interview? She was already working there. She went and complained to management and they made her, a NEW HIRE, head of ICT. I've seen it happen in the past; the expectation that they might get laid leads them to do exactly what they did.

2011-03-11 Reply Admin

+11 point for finding the culprit of SandyBridge fiasco.

2011-03-11 Reply Admin

oops, wrong button.

Ol' Bob:
Had a situation similar to this once. Junior programmer from another department was to write a critical portion of our project (a Windows service, the first one written at this company, *and* it had to multi-thread, *and* launch sub-processes to run legacy code, etc, blah) "to gain some experience with Windows NT". Her manager told her not to spend more than 10% of her time on it, so we got Friday afternoons from her. She didn't know (or care) anything about writing services, didn't know squat about multi-threading, couldn't spell C if given a dictionary, etc. Of course the only thing reliable about the code was the crash frequency. I'd done the design but had been told that I was to "mentor" her and not to touch the codebase. However, when she went on vacation with deadline looming I begged the project manager to be allowed "to clean up a few issues". Took two days to unravel the ball of yarn but I got it running solidly. (Can you say "race conditions"? I knew you could). When she came back from her week in the Caribbean she was *furious* that I had dared to touch HER deathless code! How dare I?!? And I'd even changed some variable names (e.g. from 't' to 'hThread') as well! She was so mad she checked the code out and refused to check it in until ordered to by the head of the department. Last I heard she was working as a manager at Intel, which is probably good as it means she'll never code again. Last I knew, that service was still going strong. :-)

+11 points for finding the culprit of SandyBridge fiasco.

2011-03-11 Reply Admin

AndyCanfield:
Seriously guys, some of these comments are just embarrassing. It's like being in a 1950's working men's club in here
Any time a beautiful incompetant female gets hired and promoted, the natural suspicion is that she's screwing her way to the top. The safe thing to do is to stay out of her way, whether it's true or not. Treat her like she's the CEO's girlfriend - be polite but work around her.

why? if she's screwing her way to the top, wouldn't you want to stand in her way? won't you get screwed?

2011-03-11 Reply Admin

grrr:
AndyCanfield:
Seriously guys, some of these comments are just embarrassing. It's like being in a 1950's working men's club in here
Any time a beautiful incompetant female gets hired and promoted, the natural suspicion is that she's screwing her way to the top. The safe thing to do is to stay out of her way, whether it's true or not. Treat her like she's the CEO's girlfriend - be polite but work around her.

why? if she's screwingher way to the top, wouldn't you want to stand in her way? won't you get screwed?

Precisely - nobody would say anything, because if it turned out (as is most likely) that she isn't sleeping her way to the top, the complainer would expose himself as the ignorant, chauvinist prick that he truly is.

It's one thing to suspect something due to an under-sexed and over-active imagination, but it's quite another to provide a shred of evidence to back it up.

Please guys, try to remember that: a) not all women are "hot" b) very few women are whores

2011-03-12 Reply Admin

ClaudeSuck.de:
BTW, I must be a good programmer. I never made my way (some 20 years) into management.

That may be entirely due to personality issues since you attacked the above poster entirely on supposed nationality instead of anything whatsoever to do with the subject matter. Let's get back to writing about one of the many incompatible incarnations of VB instead of ethnic rants OK?

2011-03-12 Reply Admin

Bryan the K:
Matt B:
I take that back - things are doomed as soon as your manager starts creating "productivity reports" that use lines of code as a metric.

Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight. - Bill Gates.

Even that analogy is too fair. At least weighing an aircraft gives you some indication of progress, however skewed. We know how much the finished product is supposed to weigh, right?

2011-03-12 Reply Admin

ClaudeSuck.de:
Nagesh:
visual basic is not for serious programmer. experience in visual basic is totally useless. in our company we don't hire any visual basic programmers. java and c are real languages, but any talk of it, then it become flaemwar in forums. so i try to stay away from such talk.

You are useless, too, because you don't know what you are talking about. India is Javaland (because it's free). Doesn't mean that the programs are better. Programming quality does not depend on the programming language. You should listen and learn. Apparently, you are too young and too stupid to judge programming language and keep that apart from the discussion of how to write good programs. Indian programs are usually a horrible conglomeration of unproductive code. You can actually see in the code that the people didn't know what they were doing. Indian programming means: do process a lot but with no effect. At the end they are paid by the line, aren't they?

When you're quite finished, there is a long queue of other hungry trolls that also need feeding...

2011-03-12 Reply Admin

Bob Slydell:
C-Octothorpe:
Some Jerk:
Simon:
I was hired for a job for which I feel vastly underqualified about 9 months ago. I think they were desperate. Having seen the calibre of the developers I've come to realise I could never be a real developer. I'm not that smart. I was shit-hot at all my previous jobs but now I feel like an idiot.
Luckily, I tell everybody that asks me to do something that I can't, I don't have a clue how to, I've no idea what my job is and I don't understand how I got through the interview. They laugh and go and ask someone else. I figure, when the shit eventually comes down and they rumble me, I can point to the fact that I've been completely honest all along.

This might be the best post here so far. Too often I wish all ignorant fools could just be honest about it. I suspect that many of my previous work environments would have been more enjoyable that way.

I don't know "Simon", but AFAIK, inexperienced != ignorant. Ignorant is being inexperienced and thinking that you know everything.

Simon sounds like a nice guy, but he would have been canned pretty quickly in most places (unless it was government, in which case, everybody is Simon).

I'd like to move us right along to a [Simon]. Now we had a chance to meet this young man, and boy that's just a straight shooter with upper management written all over him.

Umm, yeah... I'm going to have to go ahead and sort of disagree with you there...

2011-03-12 Reply Admin

George:
Bryan the K:
Matt B:
I take that back - things are doomed as soon as your manager starts creating "productivity reports" that use lines of code as a metric.

Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight. - Bill Gates.

Even that analogy is too fair. At least weighing an aircraft gives you some indication of progress, however skewed. We know how much the finished product is supposed to weigh, right?

It fits more closely if you assume 'building' means 'design and build'.

"Hey, we're doing great! Our new aircraft is already 700 metric tonnes, and increasing by 35 tonnes a day. We'll be ready to fly in no time at this rate!"

2011-03-12 Reply Admin

As others have already pointed out, TRWTF si VB. Apart from that, Jaimy's single biggest mistake was to reaffirm somebody horribly unqualified for the job that she is qualified, especially when she had the attitude of "you there, I have no idea how to do my job, show me now!" Even if she could learn VB quickly using her Excel macros experience, she was still 5 years too early for such job. Not because of her lack of elementary coding skills but because she was not yet past the "Woohoo! I can write Hello world! I'm the best coder in the world!" stage.

Which brings me to an idea how to deal with new hires whose coding skills don't match their overinflated ego. Instead of letting them code right away, make them document the code and give them bonuses for finding and reporting bugs. Most newbie coders suck at reading code and this way, they can familiarize themselves with the project without breaking anything. The rest of the team can spend more time writing code by leaving comments to the newbie.

2011-03-12 Reply Admin

next_ghost:
As others have already pointed out, TRWTF si VB. Apart from that, Jaimy's single biggest mistake was to reaffirm somebody horribly unqualified for the job that she is qualified, especially when she had the attitude of "you there, I have no idea how to do my job, show me now!" Even if she could learn VB quickly using her Excel macros experience, she was still 5 years too early for such job. Not because of her lack of elementary coding skills but because she was not yet past the "Woohoo! I can write Hello world! I'm the best coder in the world!" stage.
Which brings me to an idea how to deal with new hires whose coding skills don't match their overinflated ego. Instead of letting them code right away, make them document the code and give them bonuses for finding and reporting bugs. Most newbie coders suck at reading code and this way, they can familiarize themselves with the project without breaking anything. The rest of the team can spend more time writing code by leaving comments to the newbie.

TRWTF is striving for more comments. Please actually read that response before jerking knee...

2011-03-12 Reply Admin

The wtf is this idiot "Jaimy" subverting the meritocracy we're supposed to produce.

2011-03-12 Reply Admin

Gibbon1:
userulluipeste:
It's like the company get infected, and dies from something like a cancer, isn't it?

Usually it's more like leprosy. As the rot spreads the good competent people start to bail out.

Like the first company I worked for after college. The founder was a smart guy but didn't think twice about making management decisions in his own narrow interest. This led to him hiring people who weren't up to the task (like me), and leaving the real engineering talent out in the cold.

Everyone who's come in contact with him since then has said that he has to be kept on a short leash. The corporation passed through several hands until finally a former senator grabbed it up and made it a holding company for homeland security contractors. The system works I guess.

BertBert · 2011-03-14 Reply Admin

C-Octothorpe:
Some Jerk:
This might be the best post here so far. Too often I wish all ignorant fools could just be honest about it.

I don't know "Simon", but AFAIK, inexperienced != ignorant. Ignorant is being inexperienced and thinking that you know everything.

Is that so? I never saw the word ignorant as having inherent negative connotations. I'm not a native speaker, so I'm wondering whether I'm wrong.

Perhaps 'ignorant' means that the person could/should know? And 'inexperienced' that the person has not have had the chance to learn?

Related, the reason I never bough a "... for dummies" book, is that I'm arrogant enough to not consider myself a 'dummy'. Even though the subject of the book might be entirely new for me and be written on the appropriate level.

token_woman · 2011-03-14 Reply Admin

Captain Oblivious:
You are sorely mistaken if you think being a manager amounts to writing Excel macros. They work to optimize business efficiency, by optimally allocating resources. Knowing how to do that often involves performing complex probability and statistics calculations you couldn't understand with 2 years of training. That isn't even an insult -- there are just many prerequisites, including calculus, probability and statistics, combinatorics; economics on many domains; etc.

For every programmer that doesn't know enough about calculus, probability, statistics and combinatorics (and Lord, I know, I'm one), there are a billion managers who don't know a mean from a mode from a medi...um?

The managers Captain Oblivious describes sound spot on and I'm sure some exist. But to suggest that level of knowledge is in any way usual, or required, is completely mad.

Or was the whole thing supposed to be sarcastic and I just didn't get it? That can happen.

frits · 2011-03-14 Reply Admin

token_woman:
Captain Oblivious:
You are sorely mistaken if you think being a manager amounts to writing Excel macros. They work to optimize business efficiency, by optimally allocating resources. Knowing how to do that often involves performing complex probability and statistics calculations you couldn't understand with 2 years of training. That isn't even an insult -- there are just many prerequisites, including calculus, probability and statistics, combinatorics; economics on many domains; etc.

For every programmer that doesn't know enough about calculus, probability, statistics and combinatorics (and Lord, I know, I'm one), there are a billion managers who don't know a mean from a mode from a medi...um?

The managers Captain Oblivious describes sound spot on and I'm sure some exist. But to suggest that level of knowledge is in any way usual, or required, is completely mad.

Or was the whole thing supposed to be sarcastic and I just didn't get it? That can happen.

Nah, he was just tootin' his own horn.(Strangling the penguin)

2011-03-14 Reply Admin

???:
I don't understand. What was your motivation for covering her ass?

At a guess, his motivation was "continued employment". (Note that he had been ordered to mentor her, and had to beg for permission to fix the problems she'd created.)

It's easy for us to say we wouldn't put up with stuff, but if you don't have a new job lined up already and can afford to make the transition, the satisfaction of telling it like it is to your boss may end up seeming a bit hollow.

2011-03-15 Reply Admin

This is probably the saddest post I've ever read on the dayly wtf... and it is the saddest because it feels so close... so... who doesn't know of underqualified ppl raising to management positions? who hasn't suffered from them being leads to otherwise fine hard-working teams? This case is sure extremme, but nevertheless, it doesn't sound to far away... so so sadly

2011-03-15 Reply Admin

Anyone believing this story is real is seriously naive.

2011-03-15 Reply Admin

See people, this is why we need to carry guns to work. I'd stuck a foot in her arse the first time she said "Excel". NEVER give an idiot a chance. You'll thank me later.

2011-03-15 Reply Admin

This is guy sure is patient to stay diplomatic. I'd have given up evil after meeting #2. Point out the problems to test and let her drown in the unrelenting wave of production defects.

2011-03-15 Reply Admin

I had an opening for a senior developer and had been looking for the right person for months. My PHB hired someone for the position without checking with me, because the candidate had years of experience in so many languages, and was really intent about producing quality code.

I discovered that my new senior developer couldn't code in any languages, because he "wasn't a bits and bytes kind of guy." Instead of writing code he spent his time trying to find ways to get IT to "delight our internal customers!" and bitching at me because I so unreasonably expected him to produce something.

It turned out that whenever he used a program of any kind, he'd find out the language in which it had been written, and then put it down on his resume as one of his languages. So his resume reflected that he knew RPG, RPG3, VB, C, C++, CL, COBOL, BASIC, SQL, PL/SQL, etc. It also reflected that he was an Oracle DBA, since he'd once used an app that ran on top of an Oracle 6 db.

It took me over a year to get HR to let me fire him.

2011-03-15 Reply Admin

I love VB.

I had my first programming job in VB and this one line of code saved my ass sooo many times. :-D Didn't really know what I was doing, but hey, it paid pretty well. :-D

2011-03-15 Reply Admin

ON ERROR RESUME NEXT

"But boss, this is how I learned to write VB."

Bonus points if you comment it with "This should never happen."

2011-03-15 Reply Admin

What kind of slack-jaw is Jaimy anyway?

2011-03-15 Reply Admin

Alicia is nothing more than an over-pampered spoiled brat. Jaimy should have ended the discussion right away and told her that if she didn't want to be (air quotes here) "misunderappreciated" then she should do her job well, do it quickly, and do it without whining and without destructive behavior.

But her very employment is a sign that Jaimy works for a company run by mentally retarded baboons. Good luck with his resume and finding a better place to work.

I can relate to this. And I finally had to leave and let the combative monkeys fling their crap around without me to clean up after them. They didn't appreciate me until the day I walked out on them.

2011-03-15 Reply Admin

What an asshole. Teaching programming to an "Excel professional" using unpaid overtime. If not for such retarded "team players", the workplace could be free of morons.

2011-03-16 Reply Admin

Wait - is this a story about how the Republicans took Congress?

2011-03-16 Reply Admin

What a stuck up beech-tree. Lady's lucky she didn't a mouth full of code-backed knuckle sandwich.

2011-03-17 Reply Admin

Wow. The real WTF is that the author spent his time on somebody else's code [WITHOUT her permission !] and actually allowed his OWN WORK to slip.

The outcome is EXACTLY what it should have been. Alicia's projects got done on time, the author's projects did not, she got promoted, he did not.

Almost impossible for me to believe the author's level of numbnutedness.

2011-03-17 Reply Admin

Are these stories real or is this the IT version of wrestling? While this story was entertaining, it sounds a bit too far fetch to be real.

2011-03-18 Reply Admin

SouthernBelle:
Are these stories real or is this the IT version of wrestling? While this story was entertaining, it sounds a bit too far fetch to be real.

Welcome to IT. Give it a few years and you'll learn that this sort of shit is just par for the course.

2011-03-18 Reply Admin

Reminds me of the day my (former) boss called me into his office, closed the door, and asked me how to unzip a file.

2011-03-18 Reply Admin

Man, I'd really like to watch Alicia's interview for that job. Come to think of it, maybe there wasn't one. Did this company hire people purely off the placement agency's suggestions? Either way, FAIL!

2011-03-18 Reply Admin

That's awesome :) and oh so sad :(

2011-03-18 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
SouthernBelle:
Are these stories real or is this the IT version of wrestling? While this story was entertaining, it sounds a bit too far fetch to be real.
Welcome to IT. Give it a few years and you'll learn that this sort of shit is just par for the course.

Damn, I failed...

That's awesome :) and oh so sad :(

2011-03-29 Reply Admin

it reminds me IT Crowd

2011-04-21 Reply Admin

This is so frustrating!

2011-04-21 Reply Admin

The moral of the story is, sometimes it's better to be "that guy".

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