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

Stoned!

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2010-08-26

When Greg was shopping for jobs at his college’s career fair, there was a whole lot of business as usual.

The larger banks were on-hand looking to swoon the upcoming Financial grads. Several representatives from a few big name manufacturing corporations were there to interview the Chemistry majors and a few IT firms were on the lookout for the soon-to-be CS grads, like Greg, to add to their ranks. However, amid the ocean of pamphlets and suits there was one aerospace corporation with one particular position that caught Greg’s attention. The position that he applied and was ultimately hired for could be summed up in one sentence:

87 comments - Last comment @ 2010-10-16

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

Is Your PC Frozen?

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2010-08-19

Bob was in the process of shutting down a software company that he had built over the past seven years. He had found a buyer for all of the software that he'd developed, collected his "eff you money" and was now retiring.

In fact, things were at the point where Bob had already closed the building and redirected the phones to his home phone with a distinctive ring so that he could tie up loose ends while the building was up for sale.

171 comments - Last comment @ 2021-12-31

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

Tables Turned

by Alex Papadimoulis in Feature Articles on 2010-08-10

Bert Glanstron, Greg thought to himself, why does that name sound so familiar? Bert… Glanstron… did I work with him? Did he go to my high school?

Saying the name a few more times didn’t help jog Greg’s memory, so he shrugged his shoulders and double-clicked on the résumé. It was the eleventh in a row he had reviewed for a programmer analyst position, and it somehow was even less impressive than the previous.

200 comments - Last comment @ 2013-04-24

Best of the Email: Aloe Vera, The Cables that Store the Internet, and more!

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2010-08-05

It's baaaaaack...yep it's THAT time again. It's Share Your Bizarre Email day!

"This one by far is the greatest email I have ever received," wrote Kelly, "Apparently, corporate IT support is the great know it all!"

132 comments - Last comment @ 2010-08-14

We Use BobX

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2010-08-03

Christian’s first day at his new job started out just like many others in the professional IT world.

“Welcome aboard!” exclaimed Brian with an outstretched hand, “Great to see you again, c’mon in and we’ll get you all set up.”

217 comments - Last comment @ 2023-07-14

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