The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Classic WTF: Aggressive Management

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2014-05-26

It's a holiday here in the US (Memorial Day), so enjoy this Classic WTF, originally published on Nov 1st, 2011.

Not for the first time, Chuck was happy he didn't have any lawn ornaments. First, they were just plain tacky. But more important, is that the screaming lunatic with foam flying from his lips while beating on your door and screaming like his face was on fire might throw them through a window. In a way, the screaming lunatic was all the lawn ornamentation Chuck needed.

37 comments - Last comment @ 2025-05-05

Best of Email: Brains, Security, Robots, and a Risky Click

by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles on 2014-05-22

Before you delete that awful email, think about sending it our way. The Daily WTF inbox loves your terrible emails. Mail in your mail!

When Physicists and Programmers Collide (From Tim)

80 comments - Last comment @ 2014-06-16

Quality De-Surance

by Charles Robinson in Feature Articles on 2014-05-20

Adam was staring at a locked, unmarked door. It was supposed to be his first day on his new consulting job, and his new boss was supposed to meet him in the lobby at 10:30. According to Adam’s phone, it was 11:15. Adam started thinking back to the questionable interview, and was wondering if this job actually existed when Doug, his new boss, burst through the door to greet him.

“Hey, Adam!” Doug clapped him on the shoulder and steered him past the door. “Sorry I’m late, I was stuck in a meeting. But hey! We were just talking about you! This hockey project is way behind, so we need you to lace up your skates and make things right!”

Adam’s main reason for taking this job was that it would allow him to have a hand in creating the official mobile app for his beloved Metro City WTFers hockey team. He couldn’t wait to brag to all his hockey-nut buddies about creating the app they used to keep up with all things WTFers.

110 comments - Last comment @ 2018-02-10

Fear the Puppetmaster

by Dan J. in Feature Articles on 2014-05-15

Russell had been a systems engineer for many years, but he'd only earned a nickname once while working for a comparison shopping site in West L.A.

The DevOps team had been struggling to automate configuration and deployment of servers when Russell arrived with his favorite tool: Puppet. It took some time to hammer the procedure into everyone's heads, but eventually nothing reached their production systems without being recorded in a Puppet manifest first, meaning servers could be built and re-built without manual intervention.

94 comments - Last comment @ 2017-07-13

Flawless Compilation

by Ellis Morning in Feature Articles on 2014-05-13

Back in the heady days of Internet speculation, the giant retailer JumboStores contracted with Fred’s software company, TinyWeb, to develop the region’s first web-based supermarket. Customers would be able to assemble carts online and receive their groceries the next day.

The virtual supermarket had to communicate with JumboStores’s inventory system in real-time. The former was bleeding-edge web technology, the latter a cobweb-laden mainframe with no external point of access.

156 comments - Last comment @ 2016-12-01

Waterfagile

by snoofle in Feature Articles on 2014-05-08

Some folks use Waterfall. Some use Agile. A. W.'s team uses Waterfagile. Now you might ask, wtf is waterfagile? Well...fasten your seatbelts...

A. W.'s manager was charged with designing a black-box replacement for an existing system that was over-engineered, over-complicated, over-interfaced, over-configured and utterly incomprehensible. The highly paid consultants who wrote it have all long been let go. Before they could write up user guides, developer guides, architecture diagrams, or pretty much anything else. All of the records of the licenses for the third party libraries used by the project were lost or misplaced. When something went wrong, the only plausible answer was: sorry, we can't fix it, so incur the loss.

73 comments - Last comment @ 2024-06-13

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