The Dennis Howell I had the misfortune to work with was the stereotypical 50-ish, plaid shirt wearin, black framed glasses, pocket-protector type. I am told he was brilliant in his own way. He was also an incredibly abrasive person. Once we recorded him bitching someone out who worked under him. The recording said things like "How can you be that stupid?" and "Your are totally worthless". When played back to him in the subsequent meeting this event generated, he swore it was edited together. He claimed to remembered saying things like "That could use some work" and "Here...Let me help you".
BJ was personable enough, but his code proved the old proverb - If carpenters built buildings the way programmers write programs, the first woodpecker to come along would have destroyed civilization. His ineptitude is haging over us like the sowrd of Damacles every day. On one of our core systems, in a panic one day he applied a hot fix. But then he didn't document it or change the source-safe copies, so if we had to recompile it and rebuild the system, we couldn't. It was common for these knob-jobs to apply program changes to RUNNING PRODUCTION SYSTEMS rather than test systems and then be astonished that while the production system was crashed and all the customers were calling, that we felt ill will towards them and their efforts.
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branchandroot
Re: grok oh too well...
Date: 2007-04-27 20:38 (UTC)The recording said things like "How can you be that stupid?" and "Your are totally worthless".
When played back to him in the subsequent meeting this event generated, he swore it was edited together. He claimed to remembered saying things like "That could use some work" and "Here...Let me help you".
BJ was personable enough, but his code proved the old proverb -
If carpenters built buildings the way programmers write programs, the first woodpecker to come along would have destroyed civilization.
His ineptitude is haging over us like the sowrd of Damacles every day. On one of our core systems, in a panic one day he applied a hot fix. But then he didn't document it or change the source-safe copies, so if we had to recompile it and rebuild the system, we couldn't.
It was common for these knob-jobs to apply program changes to RUNNING PRODUCTION SYSTEMS rather than test systems and then be astonished that while the production system was crashed and all the customers were calling, that we felt ill will towards them and their efforts.
Buffoons