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Admin
Frist to ask if this was article was reviewed before it was committed? Descends into confusing gibberish in the last three paragraphs.
Admin
TRWTF is that nobody thought about setting branch politics. Really, it's amazingly easy - create policy that master can be merge'd only by leader from release branch. Develop can be merge only from PRs, which then have to obey a few simple rules (for example 2-3 accepts from the team).
It's not rocket science. And if team cannot even comprehend this - it's their fault as much as Teds..
Admin
It's not hard to inspect source and see that it's George Boole
Admin
That's all very well, except that it would not have been enough. They would also need to remove Ted's access to the live servers, which (before the build-up to the Big Event) would have probably caused the shitstorm to end all shitstorms.
Admin
Sounds like a developer career.
Admin
Excuse me, but how could Ted have the ability to make changes to the live site?
BTW. I lost one week of my life once because a highly experienced idiot disliked a C statement "if (p != NULL)" and changed it to "if (!p)". Without a code review, which was mandatory.
Admin
They probably either didn't have a testing environment because they "do code reviews" or had the build process set up in a way where everyone could start production deploys without first going through testing. Both of which are WTFs themselves.
Admin
Well, he shouldn't have access to live servers from the beginning, that's even more basic security..
Admin
Sounds like me in my early days. But after years of experience, this 'team programming' thingy is starting to catch on. Besides, keeping on receiving paychecks is also a nice thing to have.
Admin
I have a tattoo of him on my ballsack, actually.
Admin
if (p != NULL)? Next thing you'll be writingif (b != FALSE)...(Obviously there is no justification for the typo.)
Admin
Indeed, but hands up who hasn't worked in a place where such crazy comic capers weren't SOP? The only odd bit is how Teflon Ted managed to get sacked, usually that sort has someone else lined up to take the fall long before you've worked out enough of what he really did to present the case to management (who already adore him and wonder why all you awkward young upstarts struggle to get along with the "brillant genius").
Admin
It does? How?
Admin
George Boole. I claim my bonus points. And, math nerd that I am, I didn't even need to cheat by looking at the html. I just looked at the picture, and said to myself, that's George Boole, that is. (Because I check my work, I then googled George Boole to make sure.)
Now, back to reading the story.
Admin
Pinning my own colours to the "idiots need to properly manage their access rights" mast. If you allow a Ted to directly deploy to Prod without going through the proper procedure, you're asking for trouble.
Admin
ROFL.... You would think! But lately I have been feeling that things like "separation of duties" and "no developer access to production" and "approval before release" are unicorns. Then again, I've been dealing with dev teams that were recently Silicon Valley startups where such crazy ideas just slow down the awesomeness.
Admin
Sounds like they needed a honeypot repository and site for Ted. Just let him do his own thing in his own little playground without realizing it was a dummy. That's easier to pull off since he's not in the office.
Of course firing is better, but usually it takes a disaster like this to happen first.
Admin
He fixed it! There were two different versions of the penultimate paragraph both mangled word soup. Just thought it a tad ironic!
Admin
Where's Ted's version of this story?
Admin
Main problem, Ted was apperently there first and it was a small team, so probably no real ops department.
This means that Ted probably had all sorts of permissions like root, and removing those required approval from management that knew ted was there from the beginning.
In those cases you need the smoking gun to start moving things around.
I know, have been in a situation very close to Teds, not working remotely, but I built the network and set up most of the servers ;)
So there was nothing preventing me from changing things except my own judgement and a more humble understanding that being the oldest is not the same as never making mistakes . Have done enough of them ;)
It also meant that removing my ability to do this was also not possible without me noticing, and for some one like Ted, that would have cased him to complain, which in turn would have required the smoking gun to justify.
Admin
It doesn't sound that person was as experienced as they thought they were, if they didn't see that that change could have unintended consequences.
Admin
Yes, I expect so. We have various people who have permission to all sorts of things that are against the policy we now have, because when the company was 10 people it made sense, and removing their permissions adds friction for no good reason. (I have permissions on the server our core VCS repo and JIRA installation is on, for example.) But our people are not Ted so it is ok.
Admin
Did you not think to yourself that it was truly Boole?
Admin
If you've only got one customer, you're probably screwed whether they can purchase from the web site or not.
Admin
I heard he gives talks now. You know, because he's a teacher.