Thursday, June 14, 2007
IT people of a sensitive nature, who are familiar with the UNIX operating system, are advised to look away now.
Gay Harry, the oldest and most experienced UNIX programmer at The Company, today logged onto a major customer's UNIX system as root and did the following:
cd /
rm -rf *
The command (delete everything in the current directory and beneath the current directory) only ran for 20 seconds before Gay Harry broke into it but, Hey! How long does it take to detonate an atom bomb?
When Gay Harry came over to me he was as white as a sheet, was sweating and his eyes were on stalks. I thought he was having another heart attack. (Gay Harry had a heart attack in the office a couple of years ago. It was a very shocking thing to witness. A first aider, a very disagreeable but brilliant programmer named Norman Grizzly, saved Gay Harry's life that day. I'm convinced of it.)
"John. I think I've fucked up."
Er... Yes.
My first thought. No problem. We can restore the whole of the system to last night's backup.
Er... No we can't. The customer had logged a call this morning letting us know that their backup had not worked since last Thursday. They had watched it fail, day after day after day, and had only bothered to tell us today.
Oh, shit! Then I think I shit myself.
I told Gay Harry to go for a walk and then I told Salvador Full, the product Boss, what had happened. He was remarkably calm.
"Did you do it?"
"No."
"Who did it?"
"Does it matter?"
"Yes."
Shit.
"Gay Harry. It was an accident."
There was a bit of chat about what Gay Harry had intended to do, which was kosher enough, and then Salvador shrugged his shoulders and said the happy phrase, "It's a tech problem now, isn't it? Give it to them. Tell Harry not to worry."
I kissed him on both cheeks and flung the problem on Terry Pig's desk.
Long story short, Terry is booked on an early plane tomorrow. The customer is abroad and Terry needs to be on site to rebuild their UNIX system. The data is fucked though.
I'm going to have a lie down. It's been a long day.
Gay Harry, the oldest and most experienced UNIX programmer at The Company, today logged onto a major customer's UNIX system as root and did the following:
cd /
rm -rf *
The command (delete everything in the current directory and beneath the current directory) only ran for 20 seconds before Gay Harry broke into it but, Hey! How long does it take to detonate an atom bomb?
When Gay Harry came over to me he was as white as a sheet, was sweating and his eyes were on stalks. I thought he was having another heart attack. (Gay Harry had a heart attack in the office a couple of years ago. It was a very shocking thing to witness. A first aider, a very disagreeable but brilliant programmer named Norman Grizzly, saved Gay Harry's life that day. I'm convinced of it.)
"John. I think I've fucked up."
Er... Yes.
My first thought. No problem. We can restore the whole of the system to last night's backup.
Er... No we can't. The customer had logged a call this morning letting us know that their backup had not worked since last Thursday. They had watched it fail, day after day after day, and had only bothered to tell us today.
Oh, shit! Then I think I shit myself.
I told Gay Harry to go for a walk and then I told Salvador Full, the product Boss, what had happened. He was remarkably calm.
"Did you do it?"
"No."
"Who did it?"
"Does it matter?"
"Yes."
Shit.
"Gay Harry. It was an accident."
There was a bit of chat about what Gay Harry had intended to do, which was kosher enough, and then Salvador shrugged his shoulders and said the happy phrase, "It's a tech problem now, isn't it? Give it to them. Tell Harry not to worry."
I kissed him on both cheeks and flung the problem on Terry Pig's desk.
Long story short, Terry is booked on an early plane tomorrow. The customer is abroad and Terry needs to be on site to rebuild their UNIX system. The data is fucked though.
I'm going to have a lie down. It's been a long day.
Labels: Computers, Stress, Work
# posted by Pynchon @ 7:27 pm 
Comments:
<< Home
That is one almighty fuck up. Good on the boss for passing the buck though. Fuck ups happen and staff shouldn't be scapegoated. Unless they're generally shit in which case it's a good excuse.
I'm weak at the knees myself after just reading that. Still, as Stef says, shit happens. As long as he didn't do it deliberately, it should all blow over. Blame it on the back-up failures.
As I've been told by my (very nice) manager:
"In the end, we're all human. If you make a mistake, you've made a mistake."
Wise words
"In the end, we're all human. If you make a mistake, you've made a mistake."
Wise words
As of Friday evening the problem had still not been fixed.
Gay Harry retires in 18 months or so, so I hope that he isn't made a scapegoat.
Post a Comment
Gay Harry retires in 18 months or so, so I hope that he isn't made a scapegoat.
<< Home
