A prank cursor resulted in an employee being fired before they started (2020)
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A prank cursor resulted in an employee being fired before they started (2020)
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Re: A prank cursor resulted in an employee being fired before they started (2020)
#2You had me in the first half. I thought that during that time "no blame culture" wasn't a thing, especially since Bill Gates's leading style was yelling a lot. Either way, it's great that they kept the employee.
Re: A prank cursor resulted in an employee being fired before they started (2020)
#3To be fair, if they fired him, they should have fired everyone else in the chain of command that knew about this and left it in the codebase.
Re: A prank cursor resulted in an employee being fired before they started (2020)
#4Bad title. As stated in the article, the employee was not fired, he's just an intern that left for 2 weeks before returning as a full-time. PR team reported (truthfully) that the employee is no longer with the company, but the article seems to indicate that company still honored the full employment after.
Re: A prank cursor resulted in an employee being fired before they started (2020)
#5Bad title. As stated in the article, the employee was not fired, he's just an intern that left for 2 weeks before returning as a full-time. PR team reported (truthfully) that the employee is no longer with the company, but the article seems to indicate that company still honored the full employment after.
That's the joke.
Re: A prank cursor resulted in an employee being fired before they started (2020)
#6Bad title. As stated in the article, the employee was not fired, he's just an intern that left for 2 weeks before returning as a full-time. PR team reported (truthfully) that the employee is no longer with the company, but the article seems to indicate that company still honored the full employment after.
That's the joke.
I know that jokes are ruined by explaining them, but... could you explain the joke here? I also read it as misdirection.
Re: A prank cursor resulted in an employee being fired before they started (2020)
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the joke.
I know that jokes are ruined by explaining them, but... could you explain the joke here? I also read it as misdirection.
The joke is that Microsoft was truthfully able to say "the individual responsible is no longer with the company", a phrase which normally implies that someone has been fired as a direct consequence of the event, without actually firing anyone. The statement was true because the individual responsible had finished their internship, and hadn't yet been brought back as a full-time employee.
Re: A prank cursor resulted in an employee being fired before they started (2020)
#8Fun anecdote, but do you buy it? An intern can really get this kind of change through approval to a test build? Who are they, Jia Tan?
Re: A prank cursor resulted in an employee being fired before they started (2020)
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know that jokes are ruined by explaining them, but... could you explain the joke here? I also read it as misdirection.
The joke is that Microsoft was truthfully able to say "the individual responsible is no longer with the company", a phrase which normally implies that someone has been fired as a direct consequence of the event, without actually firing anyone. The statement was true because the individual responsible had finished their internship, and hadn't yet been brought back as a full-time employee.
That's not "the" joke, or even a joke, that's just an amusing case of PR spin.
The title doesn't say that employee was fired to refer to that "joke". It says it because it's more clickbaity this way.
Re: A prank cursor resulted in an employee being fired before they started (2020)
#10Fun anecdote, but do you buy it? An intern can really get this kind of change through approval to a test build? Who are they, Jia Tan?
You might be shocked to learn that code review processes more than 30 years ago might not have been quite as ubiquitous and robust as they are now.
Back in the day, there were all kinds of hidden Easter eggs in MS products, some of them much more elaborate than this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Easter_eggs_in_Microso...