The day my script killed 10k phones in South America

These are my options, some shared by others in the threads here, some opposite.

> It would lock the low-level features that allowed you to make calls, use Wifi, or even post pictures on Instagram/Facebook (the horror!) until you paid up. ... > Except for the poor sod in Peru who couldn't make phone calls or post duck-face pictures to Instagram, but no one asked him.

Both of these quotes seems like you don't quite understand the impact on your end users, or just don't care. Neither are good options as you grow your career.

> Our own internal tool worked well (I would like to say it was all due to me, which would be an arrogant thing to say, but also 100% true, so I will say it: It was all or mostly due to me).

Your internal tool, which you are taking complete credit for, is what didn't have protections in place that ended up harming users. Also, it comes across as bragging or something. People that are too obsessed about credit usually are not ones I'd like to work with. Team efforts are hard to define and split up and people that over index on that usually are just bad team members.

> But one mobile phone manufacturer (that I will call the K-Pop Phone Manufacturing Company), based in Korea (yes, that one)

Say it or don't. These games where you can act all cheeky about how you didn't 'actually' say it is just juvenile IMHO.

> Because of time pressures, there was no time (or political will) to check the script was well written. As soon as I banged it out, it was live. And I mean literally, 10 seconds after I pressed save, the script was running on live production servers.

This is beyond just the org's failure. As engineers, we're responsible for what happens on our watch. We hold the line and try to enforce engineering practices, not shrug and yolo and then blame the org.

> I could have tested it better, but that would have meant working late into the night. No thanks. I had already worked a few late nights/weekends and I was done.

This comes across as again, you don't actually care at all. Not a hiring quality IMHO

> My colleague was helping me, so we got it all done in about an hour. By 18:30, we had unlocked all phones.

Oh no! You worked an entire hour between 5:30 pm and 6:30 pm! The horror! Most people work much much longer hours, later into the evening or night when things fail. The difference is they don't complain about it and care.

> A project manager confirmed it, and I took a breath of relief and quickly logged off before more fuckups could be found.

Great! You fixed it, but rather then trying to verify you fixed everything, you logged off at 6:30 and screw anyone else effected. Not a great look.

> The Lessons we learnt (or more likely, didn't learn)

If you didn't learn the lessons, why are you writing about it? Just as a war story? Or do you think this comes across as a positive for your career?

> The lesson here is: Do some f'king checks before you lock someone's phone, but I don't know if that lesson applied to us or K-pop (most likely, both of us).

You know. You're in control of what you can do, so you do what you can to prevent issues from happening under your watch.

> This is not just good QA, but good security as well. But bah! None of that silliness for us, thanks.

Again, you come across as uncaring. Why are you working in this industry?

> We assumed that because our own software checked for this sort of thing, that the K-pop phone's software would do as well.

Great. Your software failed. Don't blame downstream if you can't even get your first layer correct.

> Everyone pretended it was an honest mistake.

It was an honest mistake. The difference is if you learn and grow, or if you just shrug and make the mistakes over and over again.

Honestly, this is just my two cents. Take it all with grains of salt, and ignore as you wish. I don't intend to be personally attacking you or any of the sort. Just expressing where my mind is reading it.

If I was you, I'd take this down and seriously consider if engineering is the right career path for you. It doesn't seem like you actually enjoy it or care about it and just working for the easy money doesn't lead to a fulfilled life at the end. And living a fulfilled, happy life, is the most important thing after all.

Best of luck in the future.

In my country, if someone's life is in danger and someone else sees that, they are legally obligated to help. Failing to do that is criminal negligence. When those people are in front of a judge being asked why they didn't help, what will they answer? "Oh, I tried but the phone company locked me out." Will the judge care about the fact that the company locked them out because they owe them money? No, the judge is going to make it even more expensive for them at the very least and that's honestly a pretty generous outcome.

Failing to call for help because you don't have a phone? That's tough, a difficulty of life. Having one but being unable to because some idiot company locked you out? Yeah, that's extremely fucked up. Emergency services are rights and no company on earth gets to deny people those rights. Nobody really cares that the user didn't pay for the phone. What matters is that the phone was in the user's possession and could have saved a life had the company not locked the user out. Nobody deserves to die because of some company's entitlement.

Well, I highly doubt that it doesn't. Given how little attention the company paid to these important details, who's to say they didn't simply brick the user's phone?

> They prevent the vehicle from being started, not stop them in the middle of the road.

Like I said, nobody will randomly disable somebody's car engine. These people at least have enough foresight to wait until it's safe.

> The police don't repo a thing.

They do where I live. Bank loans money with car as collateral, consumer defaults, bank seeks justice, judge authorizes police to repossess the car so the bank can sell it and minimize losses. Police can enter private property and even use force if necessary.

What is even the point of police if they aren't gonna do things like this? Outsourced to tow trucks? Really? When some random citizen reposseses property, it's robbery.

> if someone dies because of it, the only person whose conscience it is on is the person who bought a phone they couldn't afford and then didn't pay for it

No. The fact that person didn't pay for the phone doesn't matter matter at all. The company can always negotiate new terms or seek justice later.

What matters is the fact that in an emergency the only thing standing between the consumer and a call for help was the phone company. Worse, they got in the way on purpose, as if it was their job to punish the consumer. There is no defending this.

> Just like if someone died because the car got repo'd and they couldn't drive to a hospital.

Not really. If you don't have a car, you can still call emergency services. At least you would have been able to if some stupid company had not locked your phone.

sure there isn't. Guess there's no financing, either, then, huh?