Here's This American Life telling the story (very, very entertaining): http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/284/s...
Unemployed Programmer Kept Sneaking Into Apple to Finish the Job
21–30 of 38 posts
Re: Unemployed Programmer Kept Sneaking Into Apple to Finish the Job
#22You know you have a good company when people sneak in to do more work after they're not being paid anymore
Not necessarily. After some layoffs at Atari, there was a guy who daily got past the receptionist with an old badge (not electronic) and hung out in our building's machine room. He was logged onto a Vax as some innocuous account. There was a lot of turmoil, so he got away with it for a while.
When we discovered him (I was flushing old accounts, and found this guy in our Vax room who shouldn't have been there) we ejected him, and he had the chutzpah to ask for a tape of his directories.
Re: Unemployed Programmer Kept Sneaking Into Apple to Finish the Job
#23You know you have a good company when people sneak in to do more work after they're not being paid anymore
Not necessarily. After some layoffs at Atari, there was a guy who daily got past the receptionist with an old badge (not electronic) and hung out in our building's machine room. He was logged onto a Vax as some innocuous account. There was a lot of turmoil, so he got away with it for a while. When we discovered him (I was flushing old accounts, and found this guy in our Vax room who shouldn't have been there) we ejec…
To be fair, a computer the caliber of VAX wasn't something you just pulled out of your pocket and complained about in those days. I was only born in 1985 but I remember craving the computer so bad I'd even endure my bachelor fathers filthy apartment for hours just to play in DOS.
Re: Unemployed Programmer Kept Sneaking Into Apple to Finish the Job
#241. Dig up old stories from slashdot. 2. Write a blog post summarizing them. 3. Post to HN / Reddit. 4. PROFIT. Smart business plan.
For what it's worth, I appreciated reading this story. Just because it may be old hat to HN and/or ./ veterans doesn't necessarily mean that it's not a reasonable contribution. However, I assume you are inferring that the OP made this contribution specifically to boost his/her karma points - a practice I do not support either.
It sounds like you would enjoy http://folklore.org/
Re: Unemployed Programmer Kept Sneaking Into Apple to Finish the Job
#251. Dig up old stories from slashdot. 2. Write a blog post summarizing them. 3. Post to HN / Reddit. 4. PROFIT. Smart business plan.
For what it's worth, I appreciated reading this story. Just because it may be old hat to HN and/or ./ veterans doesn't necessarily mean that it's not a reasonable contribution. However, I assume you are inferring that the OP made this contribution specifically to boost his/her karma points - a practice I do not support either.
Read the original, linked at the top. This version lacks the insight into the process and the thrill of the hack.
Re: Unemployed Programmer Kept Sneaking Into Apple to Finish the Job
#26Some people would have open-sourced the code and then there would be no need to sneak into Apple headquarters and lurk in the bathrooms waiting for facilities people to leave. But I guess in 1994 it might not be as natural as it is now. I wish more companies would open-source their "not quite worked out" projects instead of just burying them.
Re: Unemployed Programmer Kept Sneaking Into Apple to Finish the Job
#271. Dig up old stories from slashdot. 2. Write a blog post summarizing them. 3. Post to HN / Reddit. 4. PROFIT. Smart business plan.
I'm pretty sure this is actually the 2nd or 3rd time this one's been on HN.
My guess is higher but I don't care to research it.
The '500 mile email' and 'The story of Mel the Real Programmer' are trotted out on a regular basis also.
As long as you can glean the story from the headline, you can ignore it. It's a tiny bit annoying but I'm not asking for a refund.
Re: Unemployed Programmer Kept Sneaking Into Apple to Finish the Job
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
You know you have a bad company when you fire people who would sneak in to do more work after they're not being paid anymore
But he wasn't fired. His project was cancelled so Apple offered him to work on something else and he declined. I don't get why the manager would want to throw him out though. A capable employee working for free sounds like every managers dream.
If management knows he's working for free they probably are vulnerable to all kinds of labor problems.
Re: Unemployed Programmer Kept Sneaking Into Apple to Finish the Job
#29You know you have a good company when people sneak in to do more work after they're not being paid anymore
It's not clear that he wasn't getting paid:
On the last day of the canceled project, Avitzur’s manager called him into her office to say goodbye. He hadn’t completed the length of his contract, but the company would pay it in full anyway.
“Just submit your final invoice for what’s left,” she told him. That’s when it clicked: If Avitzur didn’t submit the invoice, his contract stayed in the system. And if his contract stayed in the system, his ID badge would keep getting him in the front door.
The article doesn't specify, but I would imagine that he submitted his invoice once his badge was deactivated.
Re: Unemployed Programmer Kept Sneaking Into Apple to Finish the Job
#30A link for downloading the Graphing Calculator program http://www.pacifict.com/FreeStuff.html
That is the viewer. It does not allow you to input the functions to plot. Fun, but not half as much as the real tool.
Max OS X has Grapher (in Applications/Utilities). That likely is a descendant of this tool.