A "support" guy my boss got in. I had told my boss numerous times, "Get rid of this guy, he's only wasting our time and money. And he's going to end up doing something where we will end up having to put out the fires."

Sure as a pair of nuts on a squirrel, this crazy bastard goes and DELETES a client's database. Yes folks, in fucking production. A live database. The heart of the business' transactions are... *poof*... GONE!!!

No backups for the day! No synchronisation beforehand! No nothing... just GONE!!! Fucking flat-lining!

Well, when I realised what he has done, I had to remove myself from the room before shit got outta hand!

I told the boss man that is the last straw and he needs to go...

The long and short of it...
- The client had luckily only lost about half a days data.
- I'm no longer at the company.
- This dumb fuck still is.

Worst documentation I've seen?

Our "Coding Standards" 20+ page document. The team who put it together got so detailed, there wasn't much 'wiggle room' for natural deviations in a developer's coding style. For example, a section devoted to no abbreviations. So if you had a variable 'invoiceId', they complained you violated 'standards', even though 'invoiceId' matched a field name in a database table. Using Dapper or another ORM that relied on the 1:1 name match? Nope, you were still forced to inject your own mappers so the code didn't violate standards.

As you can probably guess, such a long, detailed document would have contradictions. I pointed out one of the contradictions. Example:

Page 5: Section B, sub-section B-5, paragraph 3 : "To minimize network traffic, when querying the database, request all the data necessary for the application."
Page 8: Section K, sub-section K-2, paragraph 4 : "For maximum performance, when querying the database, request only the most minimum amount of data necessary for the application ."

In a review I pointed out this contradiction (there were several more)
Me: "If we satisfy A, one could say the code is in violation of B. Which is it?"
<Pointy-Hair-Boss throws his pencil on the table>
PHB: "WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM WITH STANDARDS! It couldn't be more clear! We are a company of standards because without standards <blah blah..straw man argument..blah blah>"
<deciding not to die on that hill, I move on>
Me: "On page 12, paragraph 9 code is in violation if a method has more than 3 parameters. That seems a little restrictive given our interaction with 3rd party products."
PHB: "There you go again. As stated in the document, ALL code used by the company will comply to our standards. What part of 'ALL' do you not understand?"

Was he bluffing about requiring 3rd party vendors complying with our standards? Heck no. That's a story for another day.

Behold the straw man

Hey everyone, I want to showcase today a master class in divisiveness.

The topic, the white house has just reacted to the "Elon is not elected" allegations. Explaining in a "civics lesson," that only the president is elected, the rest of his staff appointed. A good point, on the surface.

But also, a master class of divisiveness. From both sides.

May I introduce our characters: We have Smart Left (SL), Dumb Left (DL), Smart Right (SR), and Dumb Right (DR).

And me, Tray, your omniscient (read, unreliable) narrator.

Scene 1, act 1 - The left side:
SL enters stage, below him a crowd of DL.
SL: "Elon is not elected!"
Tray: "SL was not malicious, he did mean it. He knew how government works. It is but an ironic jab, pointing out his believe Elon having more influence over Trump than vice versa. Looking down at the DLs, they did not understand it."
DLs take up the chant: "Elon is not elected."

Act 1 Scene 2 - The right side.
DRs irritated about the accusation.
SR: "It is called an appointment."
Tray: "SR is aware what SL meant, however an explanation is warranted for DL. Yet, is it already misleading not to point out that SL knew? The original accusation remained unanswered. That doesn't mean it is correct, nor incorrect. It only means that it is most advantageous to not draw attention to it."
DRs chant: "Lefties need civic lesson."

Act 1 Scene 3 - The left side.
DLs: Outraged about being lectured at.
SL: "Of course we know about appointments, that is just a straw man attack."
Tray. "SL is aware that many of their own do need a civics lesson."
DLs chant: "Straw man Trump, straw man Trump."

Act 1 Scene 4 - The right side:
SR: "The accusation of straw manning is insulting. They make claims and do not stand to them."
Tray: "Also here a malicious act. They could explain their original target audience. But they do not want to give an inch, not admitting a point the other side made.
DRs chant: "Straw manning left. Straw manning left."

And that's the drama in 4 scenes. We are at scene 2 right now. But that's just a single act. The original accusation was not debated. Neither by L nor by R. The accusation was always dominated by the chants of those who carry the the prefix "D" in the name. "S" doesn't speak to "S." "S" only speaks to "D." Has to be, they have to react to the loudest.

It is in the nature of democracy. If all of our voices are worth the same, then bigger clusters of voices are more important. We should not assume that truthfulness and scientific rigor will prevail. After all, in human's evolutionary history, science and engineering was hampered by people and only developed to this degree because the environment positively selected for it. After all, being correct is a survival advantage. Democracy does not select for being correct, but for creating the biggest unity.

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