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The $500M Dollar Typo

cockroachlabs.com

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Re: The $500M Dollar Typo

#21

Post by etrevino »

sokoloff wrote: post #8
d1sxeyes wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think even the USPS can order your bank to transfer money to them, you would have to order it. As a result, I guess that the 'take it all back' refers to adjusting pay.

I'm pretty sure that the agreement I signed to enable direct deposit allowed for errors and overpayments to be removed from my account.

This was 20 years ago and a lot of people were paid by check. So the only way to reclaim the money from them was to underpay folks. They probably just handled it that way for everyone.

Even now, at my Federal government job when someone is overpaid we issue them a "debt letter" and then reduce their pay until the account is balanced. I assume it's because of the same reg/statute that fixes the clawback to 16.7%.

Re: The $500M Dollar Typo

#22

Post by dharmab »

znkynz wrote: post #2

TL;DR - it probably cost the Post Office several houndred thousand dollars in internal time to fix this, rather than $500M.

They did have to borrow A good chunk of that $500M from the US Treasury for several months, though.

Re: The $500M Dollar Typo

#23

Post by omarfarooq »

echelon wrote: post #12

I viscerally hate seeing the name of this company. It's gross. I have a strong sense memory, and it immediately triggers bad images and smells. My brain just does that. Why on earth would they choose this name? Don't they know some nontrivial subset of their customers can't handle it? I'm a CEO. I won't question what my team wants or needs if they make the case, but I'd really have a tough time stomaching a choice fo…

I think it's more to do with the resilience of the cockroach.

Re: The $500M Dollar Typo

#24

Post by plorg »

This is interesting, but the telling is fairly vague. It cites a congressional report, which would be interesting to read, but there's no reference that helps me track down such a report.

Re: The $500M Dollar Typo

#25

Post by ibcj »

pmontra wrote: post #19

In a company a worked for many years ago I was in charge of delivering a weekly report to the board with What went wrong this week, Why it went wrong, How we fixed it, How we are making sure that it doesn't break again. I'd really like to know which checks the USPS added to prevent for something else to cost them $500 M again. OK, there is the usual read the report check which worked on Saturday that time, but it did…

This seems like the most obvious fix. Create the Payroll Job in the "WAITING FOR APPROVAL" state instead of the "APPROVED" state.

Perhaps the OG JCL cutely encoded the job state into a single bit and no one has dared touch it since the Ford Administration.

Begs a loosely related question: what VCS do you suspect the JCL is stored in? I'm going with the "incremental .BAK system", if any.

Re: The $500M Dollar Typo

#26

Post by Redoubts »

> If a federal employee is accidentally overpaid, the government can only recoup 16.67% of the amount of the overpayment per paycheck pay period.

Very curious to hear the story of that rule

Re: The $500M Dollar Typo

#27

Post by miki123211 »

pmontra wrote: post #19

In a company a worked for many years ago I was in charge of delivering a weekly report to the board with What went wrong this week, Why it went wrong, How we fixed it, How we are making sure that it doesn't break again. I'd really like to know which checks the USPS added to prevent for something else to cost them $500 M again. OK, there is the usual read the report check which worked on Saturday that time, but it did…

People who live paycheck-to-paycheck not getting paid at all is potentially a much bigger issue, particularly when you have laws and unions involved. The conditions for that issue are also far less stringent, you don't need an extremely unusual operator error and an unplanned federal holiday happening at the same time, all you need is a single person forgetting to click "approve".

Re: The $500M Dollar Typo

#28

Post by HeatrayEnjoyer »

echelon wrote: post #12

I viscerally hate seeing the name of this company. It's gross. I have a strong sense memory, and it immediately triggers bad images and smells. My brain just does that. Why on earth would they choose this name? Don't they know some nontrivial subset of their customers can't handle it? I'm a CEO. I won't question what my team wants or needs if they make the case, but I'd really have a tough time stomaching a choice fo…

Cockroaches are the classic can-survive-a-nuke animal. Maybe that's what they were going for?

Re: The $500M Dollar Typo

#30

Post by jalapenos »

thefounder wrote: post #16
echelon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. My brain just starts thinking about mold and rot and disease and I can't divert it. It's weird, because I can watch nature documentaries of lions eating prey without flinching.

Think about them fried

With butter
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