Blue Monday: Efforts to inspire teamwork with swears back-fires for n00b team manager Good Monday morning, dear Reg readers. If you were faced with doing overtime this weekend, rather than going out for beers, this episode of Who, Me? might be right up your street. This time, in El Reg weekly column of readers' trips down memory lane, we meet "Kenneth", who tells us of a time he learned a valuable lesson about …
I do not agree about "when to not". It was his idea, so he should have taken responsibility for it. On the other hand, he should also have been told about the data-skimming, so taking responsilibility and pointing that out could have saved him.
Not that there was much fallout on the whole affair anyway, it seems.
I think I'd've gone for a halfway house.
Admit, "sorry, yes, we got a bit carried away". But point out that this was about morale: having a bit of a laugh being an antidote to tedium and depression. And that, as you say, noone knew it had any consequence.
Not that I'd've gone sweary in the first place. My imagination would more likely have veered off into nature or literature or fantasy worlds for inspiration.
In a bar in Montreal I once saw the "Mike Hunt" crank call successfully played on the attractive young female barkeeper.
She yelled out "Mike Hunt! Has anyone seen Mike Hunt?" and was rewarded with bilingual catcalls from the regulars.
I'd only been in town a few hours and this was a bar I had just ducked into as it looked like the least likely to get me thwacked with a billiard cue for being English.
Reminds me of the time we were all allowed to name our own PC's on the helpdesk. Being a big fan of the wombles I chose Orinoco, which went well with my little stuffed toy version sitting on the monitor.
For some reason I'd pissed off the manager and she suddenly decided that we all had to choose names of rivers. Fortunately for me she was a clueless ding-bat and I was fairly smug when challenged on why I hadn't changed the name of my PC :)
Worked for an investment bank once, had a manager that would take all the glory but none of the blame. Basically, anything that went well, he would crow from the rooftops that it was him that made it happen, anything that went wrong, he would throw to the wolves. I discovered this when I had a rather irate head of European settlements screaming obscenities at me down the phone.
There was a major issue and every day we had a meeting in a seniors manager room for updates, so round the room we would go where everyone would update on their tasks, he would always say "Not done it yet, getting right on it" - for 2 weeks. In the end in the middle of the meeting where he said it yet again, when it came to me I said, "Oh, I've done that". I was moved team the following week!
I got pushed a couple of years later (which I was happy about), I heard he got pushed at some point too.
Recently parted ways* with a company where the head of project management was exactly like that. Every time we asked for an update on any particular project his response was "I'll have the relevant project manager to brief you on this" with no follow up. Eventually we started referring to him as 'Foxhole Norman", after the shirking officer in Band of Brothers.
* I was asked to nominate staff to be subjected to stack ranking (©GE, Microsoft and Goldman Sachs), couldn't find anyone whose performance in my department was under par so put myself on the list .. unfortunately they accepted.
A friend was on such scheme in finance for a very large drug firm and did exactly that. One day her colleagues found she was earning over twice as much as them for the same job and then pretty much shunned her.
In a large multi national we had a development team manager, lets call him Andrew who would report. "yes, on target, my team will be on time with the deliverables", when every other manager in the bear pit status meeting was saying they were having problems with the tight schedule.
When Andrew went on vacation, the team leader came in with the true picture - they were at least 6 weeks late etc. Needless to say Andrew went on to become a senior manager.
As a senior manager he did not like being told bad news. So people did not tell him and his projects were late and had poor quality. What the techie reported as "a pile of horse manure", became "it makes the roses grow"
[QUOTE]
What the techie reported as "a pile of horse manure", became "it makes the roses grow"
[END-QUOTE]
I usually reported it as "the end product of an adult, uncastrated, male head of cattle, aka rose fertilizer". For some reason it took managers always a couple of weeks to translate that to the correct eight letter word (junior devvers got it immediately).
"For some reason it took managers always a couple of weeks to translate that to the correct eight letter word (junior devvers got it immediately)."
Management is the same the world over. As I'm nearing retirement I've been using www.timeanddate.com a lot. It has a date-to-date calculator and will automatically subtract weekends and US federal holidays, leaving "work days". I then subtract out unused vacation (holiday) and expected sick time leaving me the days I'll need to report to work.
When I finally got below one year I had this exchange with my manager, a company senior manager who had asked me for a year's notice (I was there a long time, understood a lot of the IT history and had a lot of tasks to transition):
Me: "I only have 300 days at work remaining before retirement."
He: "What? You only have 300 work days left?"
Me: "No, I have 300 days at work left. There is a difference."
He just looked very confused whilst all of the non-managers in the room immediately broke out laughing.
During my time in one team, we developed our own terminology which endured.
One example was "PV"; the term used for either a promised undeliverable, or something said that born of ignorance and basically wrong. It came from the term "proctoverbosic" or "proctoverbosity" which we used when someone persisted in talking out of their arse.
As a senior manager he did not like being told bad news. So people did not tell him and his projects were late and had poor quality. What the techie reported as "a pile of horse manure", became "it makes the roses grow"
Sounds like a quote out of "Mushrooms) (https://lyrics.wikia.com/wiki/Steve_Savitzky:Mushrooms)
More like the SNAFU Principle:
In the beginning was the plan, and then the specification; And the plan was without form, and the specification was void.
And darkness was on the faces of the implementors thereof; And they spake unto their leader, saying: "It is a crock of shit, and smells as of a sewer."
And the leader took pity on them, and spoke to the project leader: "It is a crock of excrement, and none may abide the odor thereof."
And the project leader spake unto his section head, saying: "It is a container of excrement, and it is very strong, such that none may abide it."
The section head then hurried to his department manager, and informed him thus: "It is a vessel of fertilizer, and none may abide its strength."
The department manager carried these words to his general manager, and spoke unto him saying: "It containeth that which aideth the growth of plants, and it is very strong."
And so it was that the general manager rejoiced and delivered the good news unto the Vice President. "It promoteth growth, and it is very powerful."
The Vice President rushed to the President's side, and joyously exclaimed: "This powerful new software product will promote the growth of the company!"
And the President looked upon the product, and saw that it was very good.
After the subsequent disaster, the suits protect themselves by saying "I was misinformed!", and the implementors are demoted or fired.
If only the bosses had said they were going to abstract from the database to make training examples, then the workers would have known why the guidelines on cleanliness of made-up names. That's the root cause of the problem right there.
Reminds me of test software I wrote for the very first ARM CPUs at (troubled Cambridge micro-maker) Acorn in the 1980s. Testing that the silicon actually did the ISA, as it were. It was for use only within our small friendly team. So one of the fail messages was "Shifter fucked". But later ARM span out, became a monster success, and was shipping that test suite as binaries. You can guess the rest.
Back in the mainframe days ICL's VME O/S had a kernel error which had the test hidden in the kernel source code verbatim is said 'I'm running at ACR2 now but have no idea how I got here so I better crash the system'. (ACR2 was privileged kernel access, 1 level above the hardware). At that stage I was shown the error message by our rather weird Kernel expert who was giggling at a paper kernel dump. Three years later I was doing the same although at least the dumps were digital then.
IBM's VM O/S of the same period had the beauty 'there is an error in your program, correct the error and try again'
My first engineering role the company software (green screen job running on an AS400) had a 4 letter limitation on custom functions. We needed to write a function that did a count. Unfortunately CONT had already been used, so no prizes for guessing what we named it...
A later job and I'd often have to reboot the SEX Service on the machine. To make matters worse one of their previous clients was an online seller of adult toys.
The data will always be re purposed for something you didn't consider. It sounds like the guidelines were sensible, I've done similar things but set the challenge for identifying as many characters in a book or series, the Simpsons, the Hobbit etc.
But be aware anything entered into the test system will end up being projected in a senior stakeholder meeting at a crucial demo or will be used in training systems which will usually be cloned from test to save time. If there is anything you don't want them to see that's what will pop up.
> I kid you not...
I felt sorry for Alex Seary...
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/alexa-seary-siri-waking-nightmare_us_58c80b02e4b081a56def9415
My mother once taught a boy named Russell Hobbs.
I went to school with a Master Myles Arway.
He was frequently the butt of the teacher's little jokes. Poor chap.
"You, boy. Yes, you. Are you listening to me? What's your name, boy?"
"Sorry, sir. Myles Arway."
"Well pay attention in future."
The guy who used to supply all our stainless steel tooling was a Wayne Kerr Engineering.
Time to bring this gem out again: imagine a company that has at least one new starter every week, and the R&D manager decides to test the recruitment process. Shortly afterwards a new PC, name badge, login with email, etc for their latest engineering hire, a Mr Hugh Janus.
Hugh is now working here as a Brexit consultant. Strangely his name badge looks remarkably like Nigel Farage...
But be aware anything entered into the test system will end up being projected in a senior stakeholder meeting at a crucial demo or will be used in training systems which will usually be cloned from test to save time. If there is anything you don't want them to see that's what will pop up.
Source code/test data is sometimes the last resort when all other avenues have been exhausted. No, it probably doesn't help resolve anything, but lets you vent your spleen.
There will be a time when you are past caring about repercussions.
"The data will always be re purposed for something you didn't consider..., I've done similar things but set the challenge for identifying as many characters in a book or series, the Simpsons, the Hobbit etc."
The trouble with that is that as you don't know where the data will and up being exposed coupled with the litigious nature of big media these days you could be heading for a copyright claim.
As a programming exercise I once wrote a windows program that would monitor my Outlook inbox and pop up a message when a new message arrived. To make it fancy, I incorporated the Microsoft Agent, which would pop up an animated figure (Magician, robot, dog etc) and read out the message When testing it I used headphones and got it working really well.
One weekend I took my headphones home for some reason. On the Monday I came back in to find my inbox full of emails with the filthiest of subject lines - hundreds of them. Some of my team were doing overtime over the weekend and one of them sent me an email and was surprised when my machine read the subject out to him - I had not muted the speakers!
They had great fun that weekend, as you can imagine.
A boss of mine once asked a customer what the system should do if someone tried to access part of the system they did not have rights to use. "It should tell them to bugger off" came the reply. My boss took him literally and then was the subject of a complaint when the system went live and was demonstrated to the directors!
Ever worked someplace where on second shift, the shift lead is late to work every single day, does online shopping, personal e-mail, and social media on her PC, there's more socializing than work being done by her and her backup, and only one person (Not her or the backup) is being assigned all of the Service Desk Tickets, and doing most of the work (ME). When the one guy who's actually doing his job on his shift is no longer there to do all the work, things will get interesting...
True story of what happened at [large company] where a friend worked. A team of testers set up tests that displayed messages like "[large company] sucks!" and so on for various test conditions in the program. The testing team thought this was hilarious and was sure nobody else would ever see it, so no problem.
On a weekend their boss, who did NOT know about the content of the "test messages," came in with HIS boss who had asked to see how the testing was proceeding. The boss started the tests running -- and you can guess what happened next.
On Monday, cue wailing and gnashing of teeth as the whole test team were called on the carpet by the big boss. "So you think [large company] sucks? Not a problem for you now because none of you work here anymore!"
After I heard that story, I've always limited my foolish impulses to something more subtle, like printing up test name badges with "Herman Goering," "Atilla T. Hun," "Tamarlane" or something like that. I've gotten a few funny looks at times, but never actually got in trouble.
"Not a problem for you now because none of you work here anymore!"
There's an implication that management decided a test team wasn't important for their product quality. It sounds like the test message was genuine customer feedback.
There's an implication that management decided a test team wasn't important for their product quality. It sounds like the test message was genuine customer feedback.
This seems to apply to a large number of companies these days who should have the slogan: "Our customers are our testers."
I have a script out there in my past. It was still active when I left. There is an edge case that should never happen. I say *should*.
The error message is "The database has shit the bed royally this time."
I was young. Foolish. And somewhat pissed at the DB vendor that week.
'After I heard that story, I've always limited my foolish impulses to something more subtle, like printing up test name badges with "Herman Goering," "Atilla T. Hun," "Tamarlane" or something like that. I've gotten a few funny looks at times, but never actually got in trouble.'
I worked at a remote office of a large services company once. Often we had to go to head office and because we hadn't done the induction course were given hand written visitors badges to wear. We filled these in ourselves......
Over the years I wandered round the offices with name badges such as 'M L King', 'F Domino', 'J F Kennedy', 'J Hendrix', 'W Churchill', 'E Clapton', 'W Gates' etc
7 years, and nobody noticed
courtesy of UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom...
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0022/91624/OfcomOffensiveLanguage.pdf
Full list of words - Figure 3.2, Page 18
Non discriminatory language - Page 47
While covering a world-famous dog show for a world-famous broadcasting corporation many years ago, we had to rig quite a bit of extra gear in a couple of portacabins. We named them Additional Recording and Sequencing Empire and Field Editing and Compilation Kit.
Nobody who thought they mattered spotted it.,
After being charged £20 for a £10 overdraft, 30-year-old Michael Howard of Leeds changed his name by deed poll to “Yorkshire Bank PLC Are Fascist Bastards”. The bank has now asked him to close his account, and Mr. Bastards has asked them to repay the 69p balance, by cheque, made out in his new name.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/1999/nov/05/workandcareers1
Then there was also the time when a colleague was testing our in house incident system. They were on the test system and raised a P1 stating that "<other colleague> is a C**t" unaware that P1s automatically emailed to a list of people. That list contained the live emails of a number of the very senior managers.
Yup, bad system design and all that, but quite amusing when it happened.
We have a piece of software that has been in maintenance mode since before I started. Every so often we track down another bizarre string handling bug and fix it, but beyond that it sits there doing its thing. It's very niche and we license it to a few places that do similar work to us.
One of our people who was trained on this software left to work for one of these other places (we're on fairly good terms). They were keen to expand their skills, and when they moved they became responsible for liaising with us about bugs and building updated versions from source.
So one day I received an email out of the blue. They'd been reading through the auto-generated developer documentation (which nobody has ever read because it's partial), and come across this, basically the only comment in about one hundred colour map definitions:
"Hot pink # if you like your presentations a bit gay."
They saw the funny side (luckily, as they happened to be gay), but suggested we should change it...
I make sure there is a Software Hardware Integration Task (SHIT) job for someone. Why? It becomes immediately flaming obvious whether anyone bothers to review the artifact. On the rare occasion I get caught off base I pull a innocent, "Oh, damn. Thanks. Don't know where my mind was, after squeezing out several hundred lines of tasks..."
Written in honor of a man I went to basic training with, Mr Richard Holden. I will never forget the look on my DI's face when he realized he now had a recruit he could scream "HOLDEN, DICK...!" to. The possibilities were endless.
Always best to be on the safe side and use silly made-up names when testing.
I used to stick to Michael Mouse, Donald Duck, Ronald McDonald etc.
Then I'm demoing a change to my manager. "Why did you pick that name?" she asks, pointing out Ronald McDonald.
"Oh it's just a silly name, I picked a bunch of silly names at random"
"What's silly about it, my husband's called Ronald McDonald" she says.
I just use 'firstname lastname ' now.
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