[HN Gopher] A prank cursor resulted in an employee being fired b...
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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.
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