[HN Gopher] A prank cursor resulted in an employee being fired b... ___________________________________________________________________ A prank cursor resulted in an employee being fired before they started (2020) Author : lazyjeff Score : 271 points Date : 2022-06-13 16:08 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (devblogs.microsoft.com) (TXT) w3m dump (devblogs.microsoft.com) | astrobe_ wrote: | To me, that would certainly be less irritating than the | artificially friendly, helpful, engaging tone of the current | product. | layer8 wrote: | One particular point being the "we" style of communication | (https://docs.microsoft.com/en- | us/windows/apps/design/style/w...). It only occurs to me now | that Microsoft apparently intends "we" to include the user, | while in reality it comes across as "we the people behind this | software". | MichaelDickens wrote: | Maybe I'm misreading it but it sounds like your intuitive | interpretation is correct? | | > Always address the user as "you." > > Use "we" to refer to | your own perspective. It's welcoming and helps the user feel | like part of the experience. | | Sounds to me like "you" = user, "we" = the app. | layer8 wrote: | How is that "welcoming and helps the user feel like part of | the experience"? It introduces a "you vs. us" dichotomy, | with a touch of "we are are a group and you're just one | person", and more often than not also "we know better | what's good for you". Since the app is obviously not a | "we", it also suggests that it's people doing stuff to your | device and your data ("we're setting up some things for | you"), which feels intrusive. The user doesn't want "them" | to meddle with his/her stuff, they want a neutral tool that | just works and does what it's told to do. | wyager wrote: | I was reading the new Apple app UI guidelines, and under the | section about "inclusive language" it basically said "You are | not to make jokes. You must speak as if to an idiot. You must | write like a PR release.". Horrible stuff. Absolutely not | utilitarian to make all software products bland corporate | pablum in the name of not offending people. | paulcole wrote: | Curious if you have a link so we can read what it actually | says rather than your interpretation? | krylon wrote: | Reminds me of a story from "I Sing The Body Electronic" by Fred | Moody where a programmer leaves a playful entry titled " _Slayer | Sucks Live A Vacuum_ " in an almost-relase-version of Microsoft | Encarta. | | Fortunately, the good people at Microsoft knew that Slayer | definitely do not suck, but it was too late to remove the entry, | so they had to kind of hide it. | Rolpa wrote: | The fact that Tom Arraya bares a resemblance to RMS probably | had something to do with it. :) | robszumski wrote: | No screenshot!? C'mon. | Arnavion wrote: | He'd have to recreate it in CSS, and I doubt he wants to. | p1mrx wrote: | It probably looked similar to https://imgur.com/a/AwJbbY0 | [deleted] | altacc wrote: | Beware of tests and their data. Long ago the consultancy I worked | in took on a tobacco company as a client, which a lot of people | didn't like. One of the copy writers testing the CMS used text | from an anti-tobacco campaign that was very critical of the | client. The content accidently got deployed. Not a happy client! | alexklarjr wrote: | Now he is a VC of windows update and telemetry departments. | jdoliner wrote: | This title is really misleading, they weren't fired at all, maybe | they were almost fired. And it was before they started as a full | time employee, but it was for something they did while working as | an intern. | aleksiy123 wrote: | A non misleading title would ruin the punchline. I think its | acceptable in this case. | sieabahlpark wrote: | zucker42 wrote: | I think the joke is they were fired before they started, and | then hired again. | [deleted] | layer8 wrote: | Apparently the person went on to work on GTA V: | https://gtaforums.com/topic/564391-the-pointer-finger-on-the... | thrwyoilarticle wrote: | Satirising something that was done 20 years ago is very on- | brand for GTA. | jmkni wrote: | Why do I feel like the author was the employee in question? | joemi wrote: | I'm surprised they hired him after that. If it was a big enough | deal that they had to make a statement saying he was no longer | with the company, why would they hire him after that? | linsomniac wrote: | The guy pointed out that there was a lack of QA in their beta | release process. Should have gotten a promotion. | ajmurmann wrote: | To some degree this was a system or process failure. The build | should have never become a beta build that gets send to the | public. Many years ago I worked on an Android game where on | April 1st one of the other devs swapped the game's theme for | Never Gonna Give You Up as a similar prank directed at the QA | team. If we had shipped this more widely, it would have been a | larger organizational failure, similar to this case. | heleninboodler wrote: | There's an infamous case from Adobe where an engineer added | an unauthorized easter egg that caused a runtime problem and | was fired for it. The firing spurred widespread shock among | the employees, and management quickly rescinded his | termination. He quit shortly afterward. The takeaways here | are that a rash firing for this sort of thing isn't always | the best course of action, and that being fired-then-unfired | leaves a bad taste in an employee's mouth. Oh, and test your | easter eggs. | kevinmgranger wrote: | "Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who | made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I | just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to | hire his experience?" | | It's more like the PR / social interaction version of this. | charcircuit wrote: | That's an example of the sunk cost fallacy. If a business | makes a $600k investment sometimes it's better to just cut | their losses instead of trying to continue with something | they have already invested time and money into. | Taywee wrote: | That's not a sunk cost fallacy. A sunk cost fallacy depends | on expected future cost still being higher than future | benefit. | | In that anecdote, the implication is that the employee | gained insight or learned from that mistake. In fact, | firing them might not be justified from a business | perspective, because you're firing somebody even though | they are less likely to make such a mistake in the future. | It's not really logical to fire somebody for a mistake | unless it's reasonable to assume it indicates ongoing | liability. You have to decide and plan for the present and | future, not the past. | ignoramous wrote: | Blaming an individual for systemic failures is bad form (even | for Microsoft). If you read the post, you'd see the _QA_ org | saw that Easter Egg, took it in the right spirit (like they | should), and signed it okay for beta release (mistakenly, I 'd | presume) followed by everyone else in the bureaucratic chain | that might have okay'd it as well. | colinmhayes wrote: | > Blaming an individual for systemic failures is bad form | | I agree if the failure is actually a mistake. The developer | in this scenario included the gesture on purpose. Pretty | clearly shows they don't have the best judgement imo. | coryrc wrote: | It's harmless. It's funny. Some of you just need to relax | and bring back some joy to programming. | colinmhayes wrote: | I'm a bit torn. Yea, it's harmless, but making your OS | flip people off isn't really funny. I just feel like it | would be hard to trust this programmers judgement if they | thought this was an appropriate joke to make. | throwaway675309 wrote: | Given that one of the original mouse cursors for | Microsoft windows was an actual index finger that's | pointing, I find it actually pretty amusing. | | Oh noes the middle finger, there goes the neighborhood... | grp000 wrote: | Yeah, it's not funny, it's hilarious. | Verdex wrote: | It's not great, but I think the real question is twofold. | Is the programmer far enough in their career to have been | expected to already learn this lesson and did the | programmer in fact learn the lesson. | | If they're young and they never do it again, then I think | it would be fine to keep the hire. If they keep on doing | it, then it's time to go. If they're 25 years into their | career, then they should almost definitely have known | better. | gnulinux wrote: | Isn't this a bit backwards? | | I expect a new hire to understand that they can't put all | their initiatives into the product, certainly not a joke, | unless they're explicitly told otherwise. I'd expect a | new hire to understand there is a natural pace for | everything to grow -- as in all relationships -- so they | can't go all out on day 1. | | On the other hand, I'd want a senior engineer to use | their initiative a lot more often. They would also | understand that their job is to contribute confidently to | the best of their ability. | pvg wrote: | You won't end up with many senior engineers using their | initiative if you beat it out of them before they get to | being senior engineers. | Closi wrote: | Depends what we mean when we say harmless - It's not | harmless to brand image, consumer trust and ultimately | sales if those drop. | | Intentionally hiding offensive things in the code does | show poor judgement to me. If it was a sad face, fair | enough, and if it triggers based on an intentional set of | actions by the user as an Easter egg that's another | thing, but using a swear symbol in an error check and | committing that to the codebase? Pretty poor judgement | imo | [deleted] | cpeterso wrote: | As with most system failures, there is no (one) "root cause": | | The intern developer should not have committed the middle | finger cursor. | | A code reviewer should not have approved the code change. If | there was no code review (and there probably wasn't during | the Windows 3.1 era), especially of an intern's code, then | that's another problem with the system. | | QA should not have approved the beta build with a bug that | could impact the company's reputation. | | A bug report was filed, but whoever triaged the bug report | didn't escalate the issue before the beta release. | | Finally, the engineering manager probably should not have | rehired the intern as a full-time employee. | watwut wrote: | This was not root cause. This is analysis of contributing | factors. | | Root cause of middle finger cursor is individual who made | middle finger cursor. That review could have caught it does | not make the above less of actual root cause. | gweinberg wrote: | No, that's backwards. Sloppy qa was the root cause of | this getting to the beta testers, the fact that it was a | prank rather than a mistake is irrelevant. Microsoft was | lucky their sloppy qa was reveled by something so | innocuous instead of by a genuinely harmful commit. | UnpossibleJim wrote: | >>If you read the post, you'd see the QA org saw that | Easter Egg, took it in the right spirit (like they | should), and signed it okay for beta release (mistakenly, | I'd presume) followed by everyone else in the | bureaucratic chain that might have okay'd it as well.<< | | As mentioned above, there were a string of failures. | Don't just blame QA for finding the bugs that don't get | fixed. If it gets signed off, it gets signed off, there | are a bunch of departments that can look at the bug | database as well. And, in the end, 9/10 of the people who | found this people probably loved the fact that Microsoft | finally showed a little bit of soul. | Dylan16807 wrote: | > should not have committed the middle finger cursor. | | > should not have approved the code change | | Disagree. | | > impact the company's reputation | | In a bad way? | | > A bug report was filed, but whoever triaged the bug | report didn't escalate the issue before the beta release. | | Yeah probably a problem. | | > Finally, the engineering manager probably should not have | rehired the intern as a full-time employee. | | Jesus, learn to handle a joke. | ufmace wrote: | I wouldn't necessarily fire an intern for not knowing it, | but they should have been more closely watched by someone | with more wisdom. Anyone who's been around the block a | few times knows it's not a good idea to put potentially | offensive or unprofessional things into the product, | including in test environments, code comments, or other | things that aren't supposed to ever make it out of the | company. There's a lot more ways for that sort of thing | to end up in front of a customer than you could ever | predict, and it's not worth the reputation hit to the | company. | | I would agree that they should still re-hire him. This | poor fellow probably learned the lesson that there's a | time and place to joke around plenty well enough now. | ok_dad wrote: | > Finally, the engineering manager probably should not have | rehired the intern as a full-time employee. | | In your org there is no room for mistakes, like humans will | routinely make; sounds like hell. | alpaca128 wrote: | > If there was no code review (and there probably wasn't | during the Windows 3.1 era) | | Just recently an ex MS employee talked about this topic on | YouTube in the context of possible backdoors [0]. Some | developers were each responsible for a component of the | system and would indeed check code changes, which led to an | intern not getting a job at MS after he decided to | integrate an easter egg. | | [0] https://youtu.be/CR7i1UfBtQM?t=10 | snickerer wrote: | I disagree with the last sentence. | | Why should I not hire a person that does pranks (as a | general rule)? | | For a creative job, like an engineering job, I want | creative, humorous, witty, and interesting people. Someone | who does funny pranks at the right time gets a pro-hiring | indication mark from me. | | And another argument for the prankster is that we need fun | to stay sane in the gray industrial business world. | simonh wrote: | It doesn't say QA approved it before it went to beta testers. | Just that it went to beta testers. That may well have | happened before it completed thorough QA (though it probably | went through a quick sanity check). | jaywalk wrote: | I'm _glad_ they hired him after that. | mig39 wrote: | "the individual responsible for this regrettable act is no longer | with the company." | | Technically correct. The best kind of correct. | | They hired him a couple of weeks later. | chrisseaton wrote: | > They hired him a couple of weeks later. | | Says that in the article. | silisili wrote: | I got a laugh out of that. | | It makes me wonder how many 'no longer with the company' | replies to mobs are similarly a technicality. Like, giving an | employee unpaid leave until the mob dies down. | blowski wrote: | Apparently, this used to be a thing in department stores. If | someone complained, the manager would make a deal out of | "firing" the scapegoat employee and the customer would be | happy. | ericmcer wrote: | What kind of psycho feels satisfied when someone loses | their job. Unless the offense was like... spitting in my | food or something actually dangerous I would feel bad if my | complaint about general negligence or attitude resulted in | someone losing their job. | cogman10 wrote: | I feel the same way. However, some people are more "eye | for an eye" types and nothing makes them feel better than | seeing someone punished that "wrongs" them. | | There are more than a few people that fetishize punitive | actions for evil doers. | feydaykyn wrote: | I don't know about the reality, but it's the job of a | character in a very well known book, Monsieur Mallaussene, | by Daniel Pennac. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/81030 | .Monsieur_Malauss_n... | snakeboy wrote: | Note the first in the saga is Au Bonheur des Ogres[1], or | The Scapegoat in the English edition. | | [1] https://www.complete- | review.com/reviews/pennacd/scapeg.htm | gswdh wrote: | red_phone wrote: | What happened when the customer encountered the same | employee on a future visit? | ALittleLight wrote: | I assume they fired the manager. | blowski wrote: | I don't know, I just remember reading about it on here. | Might not even be true, but it's a good story. | GuB-42 wrote: | This is a problem SaaS can solve, scapegoat as a service. | | When needed, get a professional scapegoat to fire, less | chance to see him again. And you can get the performance | you want. Do you want an asshole who deserves it, or | maybe you prefer a clueless bootlicker. | | Of course, bosses will also be available to do the firing | if you can't supply your own. | | And while I am imagining things, I am sure that something | like that exists in some form. | GravitasFailure wrote: | This is sounding like a Frankenstein's Monster built from | a performance art troup and a reputation management | company, maybe with a sprinkling of a staffing agency. | It...sounds like something that might even have a proper | niche if someone wanted to pursue it. | | I look forward to the Launch HN. | dividuum wrote: | Sound like I should finally do something useful with my | scapegoat-consulting.com domain I purchased years ago. I | intended to put up a prank site offering basically just | that :) | technothrasher wrote: | I had that happen at a car dealer. I complained when a | salesman told me I owed him an apology for not believing | his numbers (this was after I'd caught him lying). The | general manager told me they had fired him over it. The | next time I was in the dealer, probably six months later, | the same salesman came over and started to chat me up. He | obviously remembered me but not why he did. I just | laughed, I wasn't surprised in the least. I'd only | complained in the first place so I could get a different | sales person. | wincy wrote: | My wife used to work for a mom and pop shop in New York. Had | about 50 employees, and most of the work was talking to | customers and contractors in the phone all over the US. One | day a customer threw a fit about my wife. The manager assured | the customer she would be fired, and that was that. Manager | turns to my wife and says "your name is Rachel now". So | that's how she'd answer the phone from then on. | deanCommie wrote: | > Like, giving an employee unpaid leave until the mob dies | down. | | All the time. But, usually, that's not a laughable or | desirable outcome. This is how bad cops who commit civil | liberty violations or use excessive force continue to work | for decades, or are eventually sidelined but continue to | receive a salary. | | While in this specific case we can excuse an intern who | definitely didn't know better, and ultimately nobody was | harmed, we shouldn't minimize or normalize administrative | technicalities as a way to get away from outrage. | CodeBeater wrote: | I think that in most scenarios it's fair to assume that | public servants (especially those wielding force) should be | held to higher standards. | dolni wrote: | Our entire justice system exists "as a way to get away from | outrage" and we're better off for it. | | Angry mobs don't produce good outcomes. That's true even | when they're angry about bad cops. | Spivak wrote: | Angry mobs are a signal of our justice system either | having a gap or otherwise not working. The whole point of | having a justice system at all is to transform mob rule | into a dialog so when mobs form it's usually because | justice isn't being served. You don't see people showing | up at a murderer's house with pitchforks or workers | breaking down the doors of factory owners because we have | laws that (roughly) enforce the outcomes the people want. | | Angry mobs produce _fantastic_ outcomes at identifying | when the justice system's outcomes fall outside of the | norms they're supposed to be enforcing but they're | terrible at functioning as judge and jury in individual | cases. | bbarnett wrote: | _Angry mobs are a signal of our justice system either | having a gap or otherwise not working._ | | Lately, most angry mobs start on twitter/facebook, and | often are based upon exaggerations or lies, and have the | aide of twitter/facebook amplification effects, which | purposefully try to fan anger to drive more engagement. | fleddr wrote: | "Angry mobs are a signal of our justice system either | having a gap or otherwise not working" | | Or...radicalized always-online bullies that simply takes | joy in taking a political opponent down. | andrewflnr wrote: | Angry mobs are a signal of humans being stupid pack | animals. It's sheer luck if they coalesce around a good | cause. | deanCommie wrote: | Not every dispute in our society involves the justice | system. Far from it. Especially inside private companies. | | But when it comes to police, the problem is even worse. | The justice system there is charged with enforcing | itself, and the conflict of interest is apparent. | | Dealing with police brutality is no different than | dealing with bullying or harassment at work - it usually | involves some form of "internal affairs" or "human | resources", whose primary job is to minimize damage to | the company, not bring justice to the aggrieved party. | hsbauauvhabzb wrote: | I think viral PR backlash would scare people away from this | in anything but the most benign situations. That, and I'm | sure HR would take issue with it (both for legal | implications, and meta reasons). | justin_oaks wrote: | That'd be a clever attempt at damage control, but in today's | world the truth would probably would get leaked. Then the | company would have to deal with the fallout from that. | | I'd rather have the people who run companies grow a spine and | stand up to the mob. They should put out a message like "We | will investigate this incident. We take the decision to fire | people seriously and will make a decision that is best for | this company." In essence, "We hear all you loud-mouths, but | we get to decide whether to fire people, not you." | tablespoon wrote: | > That'd be a clever attempt at damage control, but in | today's world the truth would probably would get leaked. | Then the company would have to deal with the fallout from | that. | | The mob is loud, but it has a short attention span. The | truth probably would get leaked, but (depending on the | issue) the mob would likely have moved on to the next thing | by then. | | > I'd rather have the people who run companies grow a spine | and stand up to the mob. They should put out a message like | "We will investigate this incident. We take the decision to | fire people seriously and will make a decision that is best | for this company." | | That's probably an all around better response, too. Just | "investigate" and give no updates until the controversy is | old news. | fsckboy wrote: | eh, the names of computer programmers don't really leak. We | know a lot of programmers because of open source, but who | was on the team that released each version of the Microsoft | Office Suite...? If they have a blog sure, but otherwise, | who knows. | ajb wrote: | _in today 's world the truth would probably would get | leaked_ Today's world causes us to overestimate how much | information is, or will become, public. Much is still | confined to small groups. Only the people who worked with | this intern would know the plan, other people at Microsoft | could maybe check in version control to see who introduced | the bug, but they'd have to be fairly obsessive to check if | he got re-employed. | no-reply wrote: | If the team in question is the police, "we investigated | ourselves and found nothing wrong." | fleddr wrote: | When a random internet citizen directly approaches your | company with the explicit request to fire a named employee, | this by definition is insane. | | The reporter is not interested in reporting a particular | offense, instead they are already playing the executioner. | They do not want a solution, they want punishment and | retaliation. That behavior is both arrogant (not their call | to make) and sadistic. | | The reporter is not interested in what is best for your | company either, as the "request" typically comes with | threats. Comply or else... | | The very nature of such requests means the reporter is the | type of person to dig up personal information or old | "offensive" posts, which is unhinged behavior. Likewise, | the reporter was unable to come to a resolution with the | "offender", so plays the snitch card instead. | | It's a pile of red flags. Normal and reasonable people do | not go after a person's job, even less so collectively. I | wouldn't do that to my biggest enemy. That doesn't mean | employees can't screw up, perceived or real. When they do, | mob justice does not satisfy the very basic principles of | justice. There's no defense, and without defense, there is | no justice. | | Most companies can safely ignore such requests. The mob has | no patience nor are they typically a customer in the first | place, so all economical threats are in vain. It's largely | a temporary PR threat that is emotionally inflated versus | the actual PR impact: close to zero. | | Of course, I know, there's exceptions to all of the above. | | I'd say it would be a good thing if there's legislation | that protects against mob-triggered terminations. The | reason I would opt for that is that mob justice goes beyond | just the termination of a few. It has a larger societal | impact in the sense that those few are to be seen as | examples for other people to increasingly feel like they | need to walk on egg shells: extreme political correctness, | large silent majority, you get what I mean. | [deleted] | nsxwolf wrote: | Does this build exist somewhere? | djrockstar1 wrote: | The bonus chatter bit made this worth the read. | sdoering wrote: | I need to remember the "sorry for the 'off-by-one' error" when | I flip the bird in the future. | | It could even become a hilarious t-shirt. Maybe I should look | for relevant vector graphics and start designing. | wiredfool wrote: | My kids used to tell me that it was the sign for a binary 4. | JohnL4 wrote: | Waddya mean, your kids? I learned that as a teenager myself | in the 1930s, after an article in Scientific American. | heleninboodler wrote: | The joke is a reference to the index finger cursor. It | doesn't really work unless you're using the middle finger in | place of a index-finger-pointing-up gesture. | vishnugupta wrote: | > index-finger-pointing-up gesture | | This exact gesture is used by umpires in Cricket to signal | a batsman out. | lupire wrote: | Cute story, nicely ambiguous title. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-06-13 23:00 UTC)