Earlier quoted context omitted.
Itoh should have been fired.
Why? How did Itoh demonstrate that the company would be better without him than with him?
He was the one who was more responsible for the incident than the intern.
Count to ten when a plane goes down
241–250 of 284 posts
Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meanwhile, the Apple II+ had the reset button right above the return key.
I was about to argue, then I realized my first computer was the Apple IIe. Reset button offset a bit to the right. http://images.cdn.fotopedia.com/flickr-144862832-hd.jpg
And on the IIe or later you had to press Ctrl+Open Apple+Reset. (Similar to the IBM PC.) On the earlier models, if you mistyped, BEEP, the system rebooted.
Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
He's used a longer version of that story to view this as a management lesson – it's definitely not just “blame the intern”: http://globis.jp/774-2
Sorta weird how the 2 articles differ from one another about being "fired". Count to ten article: > I, naturally, felt terrible and was, appropriately, fired. Honesty Wins article: > But, naturally, that day was my last day of work at the American Embassy. But, not because I was fired; although, I might have been fired if that day didn’t just happen to be the last scheduled day of my summer internship.
Bureaucratic jit-jitsu:
http://johncbeck.tumblr.com/post/92502108047/so-what-did-you...
“Oh, don't worry boss, we sacked the fool who made that mistake!”
Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
You forgot the part where the only reason he was fucking with the F6 key in the first place was to play a game. That's irresponsible and grounds for firing.
Actually, from the article he was a system administrator and another employee had been playing a game which froze her own terminal. The author did nothing wrong except press the wrong button (and to your point: not report his coworker for playing games on her terminal in her free-time).
> not report his coworker for playing games on her terminal in her free-time).
I was enlisted in the Marines, MOS as a programmer (4063), 1989 - 1993. I never really programmed, but spend my time as a small computer support guy.
Computer games were officially forbidden, but unofficially tolerated, provided one was discrete. I suspect the same 'don't ask don't tell' policy applied to EUCE at the embassy in question.
Sea story. My team was once directed by our boss, the Major, to 'sweep' the command for 'games' and remove them from computers. This took the better part of two weeks, and was massively unpopular with our peers. 'A Marine On Duty Has No Friends', we repeated to ourselves. We even got into the spirit of things and deleted games from _our_ computers.
Near the end of this evolution I hand-carried some paper into my Major's office. He was, yes, playing a computer game.
He did at least have the grace to look embarrassed.
Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down
#245Scapegoat. The ritual expulsion of the evil spirits wrapped neatly in a little parcel to appease the elders and thereby prevent them blaming each other - harmony continues in the hall of power. Meanwhile the problem was in the process, not the employee, so nothing has been fixed, and the guy who had learned the lesson is no longer there, and so the problem will recur with the next lamb to the slaughter.
Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
The worst unix disaster ever? Could you elaborate for non-unix people such as myself?
The important character here is the '>'. This redirects output to a file and overwrites the file. The lrwxrwxrwx will only print an error, but the redirect to the target executable will erase the target. For example: $ echo "asdf" > foo $ cat foo asdf $ lrwxwrwxrwx 1 root root -> foo lrwxrwxrwx: command not found $ cat foo $ So basically, this zero'd out every executable on the system.
Yep, that's bad.
Out of curiosity, what was the solution to fix all that?
Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? How did Itoh demonstrate that the company would be better without him than with him?
He was the one who was more responsible for the incident than the intern.
As acdha above notes, he was. But the author incredulously blurted out that he himself had hit the button when he was told his supervisor had been fired over the event (maybe ten minutes later).
The reality was that his boss took the fall for him, which is awesome and terrible. Much of the discussion in this thread has been a tempest in a teapot due to missing context.
His supervisor took the fall to protect him, he was fired on paper, but it was his last day anyway, and he did actually get to work at the embassy again, as it really was a simple innocent mistake.
Though certainly one with serious, long-lasting consequences.
Edit: http://globis.jp/774-2
Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down
#248Firstly, firing the intern doesn't make sense - it was a mistake waiting to happen and he just happened to do it at the wrong time. Secondly, the punishment meted out should be: 1. Proportional to the degree of carelessness (in this case not that much since he accidentally hit a wrong key adjacent to the right one, didn't mow down anybody while driving drunk) 2. Inversely proportional to the likelihood of the error (…
He's used a longer version of that story to view this as a management lesson – it's definitely not just “blame the intern”: http://globis.jp/774-2
I bet this entire article comment thread would be completely different with this additional context. Thanks, it certainly paints a better light on the situation!
Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
The important character here is the '>'. This redirects output to a file and overwrites the file. The lrwxrwxrwx will only print an error, but the redirect to the target executable will erase the target. For example: $ echo "asdf" > foo $ cat foo asdf $ lrwxwrwxrwx 1 root root -> foo lrwxrwxrwx: command not found $ cat foo $ So basically, this zero'd out every executable on the system.
Yep, that's bad. Out of curiosity, what was the solution to fix all that?
Possibly a cp or an scp from a remote system with a working set of binaries.
Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
The important character here is the '>'. This redirects output to a file and overwrites the file. The lrwxrwxrwx will only print an error, but the redirect to the target executable will erase the target. For example: $ echo "asdf" > foo $ cat foo asdf $ lrwxwrwxrwx 1 root root -> foo lrwxrwxrwx: command not found $ cat foo $ So basically, this zero'd out every executable on the system.
Yep, that's bad. Out of curiosity, what was the solution to fix all that?
scp was in /usr/bin, so we could at least copy enough basics from another system and recover the rest from a backup. Needless to say we lost the client contract.