Recent Feature Articles

May 2008

Completing the Circle

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Sergio couldn't have woken up in a better mood. When his radio turned on at 6:00AM, the weatherman predicted nothing but sunshine, warmth, happiness, smiles, and hugs. He shaved, dressed up, and got ready for the drive to the Federal Department of Government. Sergio's company had just scored a major contract after a long negotiation process, barely passing the obstacle course phase of the Federal Department of Government's rigid requirements for a bid to even be considered.

Sergio was so happy because he was, to a large degree, in charge. He'd determine the architecture, the database design, and he was in charge of gathering requirements for the six-month contract.

75 comments - Last comment @ 2008-06-25

Overdue Retirement

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"I started work in my new job as Technical Manager full of enthusiasm, only to be thwarted by a flabbergasting array of absurd working practices imposed by the despotic dinosaur of a Development Manager I have to report to," Amanda L. writes.

"What makes this more fascinating is that:

  1. "this list is not a collection of experiences or anecdotes picked up from different sources.
  2. "this list is not an embellishment of any existing practices at this company.
  3. "this list is a genuine and accurate description of the real working practices currently being practiced at this company — nothing here is invented, it is all true.
208 comments - Last comment @ 2009-08-21

Productivity 2.0

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We've all heard of ridiculous metrics used to measure job performance, often with disastrous results. When productivity is incentivized, employees figure out how to game the system.

Milo's boss, "Greg," familiar with other failed performance metrics, abandoned traditional methods and invented his own — gauging productivity by SVN Checkins per Week.

84 comments - Last comment @ 2008-09-17

Skills.Equals(null)

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All eyes were on Darrell as he swaggered past the rows of cubicles. Darrell was different than the other developers -- sharply dressed in an expensive suit with designer sunglasses dangling from his breast pocket. He left shortly after arriving with a huge smile on his face.

The interview had gone well. The company -- a midsize logistics software provider out of New England -- had been falling behind schedule and delivering their custom reporting tools with more and more bugs. Darrell had successfully sold himself as the company's savior who could improve code quality and deliver faster than the others.

150 comments - Last comment @ 2013-04-18

Anything You Can Do Lyle Can Do Better

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If Lyle could be summed up in one word, it'd be "competitive." If he could be summed up in three words, it'd be "ultra-competitive jackass." If you had $21.00 on you, Lyle would make it a point to have $21.50. If you estimated that a task would take you twelve hours, it'd take Lyle eleven hours and 45 minutes. If a distant relative died, somehow two of Lyle's distant relatives died. He was the kind of guy that would play basketball against a nine year old to win, then he'd make fun of the kid for losing, then he'd make fun of the kid for crying. If a stranger asked Lyle what time it was, he treated it as a challenge.

Lyle was two levels above James W. in the company hierarchy (or, as Lyle would probably call it, "winning"). James reported to Rob, who reported to Lyle. Another team of the same size reported to Lyle as well. James and one of his colleagues knew about Lyle's obsession with winning and exploited it at every opportunity, usually teasing him to the point that he'd leave them alone. As is the case with most bullies being called out on their bullpucky, Lyle got defensive and eventually stopped visiting James during the day.

118 comments - Last comment @ 2019-12-30

The Quick Meal (Off Topic)

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As you probably have guessed, I spend a whole lot of time running The Daily WTF when going through submissions, writing articles, and sending out free stickers. While I do this primarily for fun and hobby, it does tend to interfere with my day job at Inedo and, as a result, I tend to earn much less than I could otherwise. But I don’t mind. All I have to do is sacrifice a few, small things. Things like a decent lunch.

Normally for me, lunch is all about getting as much nutritional value for the least amount of money possible. This means my lunch-time staples include things like sticks of butter ($0.23/ea), discarded military MREs (free… if you know where to look), and grocery store free-sample binges (free… if you have no dignity). Today, however, I decided to treat myself, so I scrounged up a dollar and headed on over to the Dollar Tree. After an exhaustive search through bins of expired food items, I stumbled across a wonderful treasure: the Chow Mein “Quick Meal”.

269 comments - Last comment @ 2013-11-30

Unhappy Hour

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Everything was lined up for some seasonal specials at Chotchkie's (as we'll call it), a mid-size chain of family restaurants. Starting just in time for the weekend on Friday, there would be specials on Pizza Shooters, Shrimp Poppers, and Extreme Fajitas.

The special had been promoted, ads circulated, table cards and menus updated — everything was ready to go. That is, aside from setting up the discount in the PoS system on their antiquated Panasonic 7000-series cash registers. Because of the old architecture and a confusing interface, what should be a simple change for restaurant staff to update item pricing actually required the involvement of a developer; in this case, Mike L.

176 comments - Last comment @ 2011-04-28

Dead Man's Switch

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"This is how you set up the monitoring?" Shawn G. looked down at the system in disbelief. There was a watchdog connected to a power relay to ensure that it was always running. The power relay sat right next to the power switch in a sealed environmental enclosure.

Oh well, Shawn thought, this is what I'm here to work on. I'll get this set up right. He reached into the dark enclosure for the power switch to reboot the system. And missed the switch.

194 comments - Last comment @ 2018-02-26

Two Weeks Notice

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"Welcome aboard, Colin!" Colin P. gave his boss a firm handshake, excited about his first day on the job. He'd be a member of the team that worked on an application that ran on a managed information appliance. "I'll set you up with Mike, who can show you the ropes."

Colin's boss turned him over to Mike, who started describing the system architecture immediately. "So here's what we've got," he began. "The core is the email processing module. It takes in an email, logs a little information, and stores attachments in the file system. Easy, right?" Mike gave him a little more background, but reasoned that Colin should be able to figure it out.

145 comments - Last comment @ 2020-12-14

The Webcam DoS Attack

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Where are my keys? Cam S. had checked under every couch cushion, in every jacket pocket, under every bed, everywhere for his keys. While checking the kitchen counter for the third time, he glanced at the oven clock. 8:35. Even if the skies had opened up right that minute and his keys descended on a golden platter, he'd still be at least ten minutes late for work.

It was then that he peeked in the garage and beheld a beautiful sight — his keys sitting on the drivers' seat of his truck. If he drove unreasonably, dangerously fast, he might still be able to get to work on time! Cam breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the keys in his truck. His locked truck. Damn it! The only other key was with his wife, who had left for work a while ago. It was clear that it just wasn't in the stars for Cam to go to work that day.

176 comments - Last comment @ 2010-10-12

The Annual Reboot

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According to Wikipedia, caching is a method of storing a collection of data for which the time it takes to compute said data is longer than the time it takes to retrieve from the cache. Also, the concept of caching was invented by Mr. T. I suspect that last part may have been added by Wikipedia vandals, though...

One of Eli A.'s predecessors took Mr. T.'s concept and ran with it. He cached everything he could get his hands on — configuration values, event dates, phone numbers, everything. Why tax the hardware with an expensive lookup when everything's right at your fingertips in a giant, hideous blob of a cache?

119 comments - Last comment @ 2014-01-16
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