The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Fast Fix

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2010-08-31

"Do you think it's wise to have consultants running our IT department?" Holger asked. It was an honest question, worded as diplomatically as possible. Holger's company had more consultants on hand than actual IT staff.

"Holger, these folks are experts," his manager replied. "It isn't cost effective to hire-on this level of expertise full time. We may pay a little more up front, but when we don't need the consultants anymore, we can hand it off to our internal people."

119 comments - Last comment @ 2012-03-06

Large Blockage

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2010-08-24

The words "Enterprise Integration" strike fear into the most stalwart of developers. When coupled with "in-house developed" and "B2B", one is almost guaranteed to find complex code, arcane requirements, and a thicket of poorly understood file formats. Dan was made of sterner stuff. When the contract was explained to him, he didn't flinch. There were between 40 and 80 partners that used a web app to extract data about multimedia assets? Gigantic recordsets of them? In formats ranging from Excel to iTunes-compatible databases? No problem.

Steve, the project manager, explained: "Our original lead developer was one of those rockstar types. Real cutting edge, pushing the envelope type guy. He's since moved on to bigger and better things, so we've just muddled on the best we could. We really need you to step up and take on that rockstar role for us, because there are a few problems we'd like you to fix. And we need a real quick turn-around on this."

135 comments - Last comment @ 2010-10-16

Powerful Stupidity

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2010-08-17

Everything went dark and a chill wind went up Simon's back. A deep rumble rattled his brain in his skull. He glanced behind him to see Noel looming over him. "Simon, can you ping the Exchange server?"

When the trained bear that doubles as your IT manager asks that question, it's a bad thing. Simon tried to ping Exchange and failed. He then tried to ping an app server. And a database. And the outside world. All dead.

207 comments - Last comment @ 2024-10-13

Production Promote

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2010-08-12

"John, it's about time I showed you how to do a production install," Dave said.

John had only been at the job for a few weeks, and was still learning the ins-and-outs of their shop. It was a small team, with the stereotypical alpha-geek at the top, people like Dave in the middle, and John at the bottom. They lived to support a complex pile of applications that all existed to extend or manage their flagship application.

234 comments - Last comment @ 2010-08-25