I ran my colleague's code - should I get fired?
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Hey guys, would love your two cents on this. Being the careful guy that I am, I need som pointers to figure out if I've been the victim of a cross over-reaction (my own estimate) or if I should start getting my act together (always a possiblity). The short version: I'm in a minitry of education government stats department. We're three asp.net guys who churn out various web-surveys for the schools to fill out. Recently we went public with one particular survey. Being the ever curious and eager to learn individual, I thought I'd take a look at the code behind it. This is the day after it's gone public. One reason being that I'd recently been put to the task of supporting another guy's project when he was unforseenably away, and I anticipated that situation might creep up again, that I'd have to support this one too. Another reason being that I simply like to look at other people's code, to try and learn something new. In this case, alas, not so much new stuff had gone into it. I say 'new', because I wrote the bulk of the code myself, before a brief last-year hiatus which saw this guy, we'll call him 'Lars', take over. So I export the code from the SubVersion repository. I didn't check it out - only exported it. Any changes won't be persisted back into the repository. And I ran it. Guilty as charged. I took a look at the default.aspx, went a bit further from there, nothing serious, application or server-threatning c# stuff going on here, let's fire this one up and see how it looks... Nope, stops with a error - some server controls dll missing. I had originally authored some server controls to go with the project, but in my youth's inexperience I included these not in a seperate project to be referenced but as stand-alone must-be-compiled-seperately. Would do that differently now, but anyways, I put it down because I had other things to attend to. Alas, the web.config healthmonitoring has dispatched an e-mail to Lars, informing him of the run-time error. And 'Lars' goes ape-shit. He send an e-mail to yours truly, CC three bosses and all of my co-workers, lambasting me for running his code. Heck, I thought all the code we wrote was 'ours'. I'm judged irresponsible (quote "you don't know what you're dealing with, you could've done serious damage to a project in production") for checking out the code (wrong) and running it (true). His argument - and, I suspect, his justification behind CC'ing pretty much everybody I know - is that the crime is severe because the code is in production now. I
Reply to all: Lars, I am somewhat surprised by your reaction. My intention was to learn what (whatever it is) does, so that I would be able to help with any production problems that may arise when you are not available -- on holiday, for example -- and so that duplication of functionality (and therefore unnecessary work and expense) can be avoided in future I ran an independent copy of the (whatever it is) to see how its functionality has changed since it was originally developed by myself (and whatever others), so I cannot see how running it could do any damage, unless the code itself directly interacts with the production system -- but I find it hard to believe that you would have made such a dangerous and possibly expensive error. If I have offended you by looking at the code, I apologize, but I must remind you that the code is the property of the company, and that it is not in the company's interest for any production material to be understood by and familiar to only one employee. Many companies have suffered great losses because of code that was only understood by a single individual, who may not always be present, or indeed may not stay with the company. Such losses could put all of our futures at risk, so I believe that taking steps to avoid them can only be beneficial. Again, I apologize if I have offended you, but look forward to meeting with you to discuss the code, so that we can both understand its inner workings. (Edited because I used angle brackets instead of parentheses, so they disappeared)
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Reply to all: Lars, I am somewhat surprised by your reaction. My intention was to learn what (whatever it is) does, so that I would be able to help with any production problems that may arise when you are not available -- on holiday, for example -- and so that duplication of functionality (and therefore unnecessary work and expense) can be avoided in future I ran an independent copy of the (whatever it is) to see how its functionality has changed since it was originally developed by myself (and whatever others), so I cannot see how running it could do any damage, unless the code itself directly interacts with the production system -- but I find it hard to believe that you would have made such a dangerous and possibly expensive error. If I have offended you by looking at the code, I apologize, but I must remind you that the code is the property of the company, and that it is not in the company's interest for any production material to be understood by and familiar to only one employee. Many companies have suffered great losses because of code that was only understood by a single individual, who may not always be present, or indeed may not stay with the company. Such losses could put all of our futures at risk, so I believe that taking steps to avoid them can only be beneficial. Again, I apologize if I have offended you, but look forward to meeting with you to discuss the code, so that we can both understand its inner workings. (Edited because I used angle brackets instead of parentheses, so they disappeared)
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
^This! If he's calling you out and spouting (what is apparently) incorrect infront of co-workers and bosses in an email, a great thing to do would be replying to all, giving both sides of the story, in a completely reasoned and calm manner.
He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man
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^This! If he's calling you out and spouting (what is apparently) incorrect infront of co-workers and bosses in an email, a great thing to do would be replying to all, giving both sides of the story, in a completely reasoned and calm manner.
He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man
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Hey guys, would love your two cents on this. Being the careful guy that I am, I need som pointers to figure out if I've been the victim of a cross over-reaction (my own estimate) or if I should start getting my act together (always a possiblity). The short version: I'm in a minitry of education government stats department. We're three asp.net guys who churn out various web-surveys for the schools to fill out. Recently we went public with one particular survey. Being the ever curious and eager to learn individual, I thought I'd take a look at the code behind it. This is the day after it's gone public. One reason being that I'd recently been put to the task of supporting another guy's project when he was unforseenably away, and I anticipated that situation might creep up again, that I'd have to support this one too. Another reason being that I simply like to look at other people's code, to try and learn something new. In this case, alas, not so much new stuff had gone into it. I say 'new', because I wrote the bulk of the code myself, before a brief last-year hiatus which saw this guy, we'll call him 'Lars', take over. So I export the code from the SubVersion repository. I didn't check it out - only exported it. Any changes won't be persisted back into the repository. And I ran it. Guilty as charged. I took a look at the default.aspx, went a bit further from there, nothing serious, application or server-threatning c# stuff going on here, let's fire this one up and see how it looks... Nope, stops with a error - some server controls dll missing. I had originally authored some server controls to go with the project, but in my youth's inexperience I included these not in a seperate project to be referenced but as stand-alone must-be-compiled-seperately. Would do that differently now, but anyways, I put it down because I had other things to attend to. Alas, the web.config healthmonitoring has dispatched an e-mail to Lars, informing him of the run-time error. And 'Lars' goes ape-shit. He send an e-mail to yours truly, CC three bosses and all of my co-workers, lambasting me for running his code. Heck, I thought all the code we wrote was 'ours'. I'm judged irresponsible (quote "you don't know what you're dealing with, you could've done serious damage to a project in production") for checking out the code (wrong) and running it (true). His argument - and, I suspect, his justification behind CC'ing pretty much everybody I know - is that the crime is severe because the code is in production now. I
Hi Morten, Sorry to hear you're going through this ! Companies I worked at before (like Adobe) had specific legal language in the contract that specifically said whether you had access to source or not; in my case I chose the option not to have access to the source code for PostScript figuring it was in my long-range interests not to. You may have already "written this job off," or decided it's best you leave, or it may be too late for you to do anything, but the only constructive idea I can come up with is the idea to try and arrange asap a face-to-face with you, the "ranting party," his manager, and your manager. My suggestion would be to try and take "situational control" of the meeting by : 1. immediately : when everyone's there : announce firmly that you called this meeting because you first wish to apologize for the stress and discomfort caused to "ranting party" which, you now realize, while unintended, on your part, has upset many other people. 2. second, hopefully before anyone can interrupt you, say that your intention was in what you thought was the best technical interests of the company, and that you are not aware of anything in your employment agreement that specifically prohibited you from doing what you were doing. and then you can mention the facts you've presented here about the fact you knew much of the code was your own, you were concerned about a few issues that might result from what you now understand was some issues in YOUR code rather than the code of "ranting party," (this, in Thai, would be called "giving face"). 3. if you've gotten this far without being shouted down or whatever : just say with quiet dignity : now I want to listen respectfully to what you have to say. Well, such things are easy for me to write, but I know "reality" doesn't pour into such containers of fantasy so fluidly. Good luck ! best, Bill
"Many : not conversant with mathematical studies, imagine that because it [the Analytical Engine] is to give results in numerical notation, its processes must consequently be arithmetical, numerical, rather than algebraical and analytical. This is an error. The engine can arrange and combine numerical quantities as if they were letters or any other general symbols; and it fact it might bring out its results in algebraical notation, were provisions made accordingly." Ada, Countess Lovelace, 1844
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Hey guys, would love your two cents on this. Being the careful guy that I am, I need som pointers to figure out if I've been the victim of a cross over-reaction (my own estimate) or if I should start getting my act together (always a possiblity). The short version: I'm in a minitry of education government stats department. We're three asp.net guys who churn out various web-surveys for the schools to fill out. Recently we went public with one particular survey. Being the ever curious and eager to learn individual, I thought I'd take a look at the code behind it. This is the day after it's gone public. One reason being that I'd recently been put to the task of supporting another guy's project when he was unforseenably away, and I anticipated that situation might creep up again, that I'd have to support this one too. Another reason being that I simply like to look at other people's code, to try and learn something new. In this case, alas, not so much new stuff had gone into it. I say 'new', because I wrote the bulk of the code myself, before a brief last-year hiatus which saw this guy, we'll call him 'Lars', take over. So I export the code from the SubVersion repository. I didn't check it out - only exported it. Any changes won't be persisted back into the repository. And I ran it. Guilty as charged. I took a look at the default.aspx, went a bit further from there, nothing serious, application or server-threatning c# stuff going on here, let's fire this one up and see how it looks... Nope, stops with a error - some server controls dll missing. I had originally authored some server controls to go with the project, but in my youth's inexperience I included these not in a seperate project to be referenced but as stand-alone must-be-compiled-seperately. Would do that differently now, but anyways, I put it down because I had other things to attend to. Alas, the web.config healthmonitoring has dispatched an e-mail to Lars, informing him of the run-time error. And 'Lars' goes ape-shit. He send an e-mail to yours truly, CC three bosses and all of my co-workers, lambasting me for running his code. Heck, I thought all the code we wrote was 'ours'. I'm judged irresponsible (quote "you don't know what you're dealing with, you could've done serious damage to a project in production") for checking out the code (wrong) and running it (true). His argument - and, I suspect, his justification behind CC'ing pretty much everybody I know - is that the crime is severe because the code is in production now. I
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Hey guys, would love your two cents on this. Being the careful guy that I am, I need som pointers to figure out if I've been the victim of a cross over-reaction (my own estimate) or if I should start getting my act together (always a possiblity). The short version: I'm in a minitry of education government stats department. We're three asp.net guys who churn out various web-surveys for the schools to fill out. Recently we went public with one particular survey. Being the ever curious and eager to learn individual, I thought I'd take a look at the code behind it. This is the day after it's gone public. One reason being that I'd recently been put to the task of supporting another guy's project when he was unforseenably away, and I anticipated that situation might creep up again, that I'd have to support this one too. Another reason being that I simply like to look at other people's code, to try and learn something new. In this case, alas, not so much new stuff had gone into it. I say 'new', because I wrote the bulk of the code myself, before a brief last-year hiatus which saw this guy, we'll call him 'Lars', take over. So I export the code from the SubVersion repository. I didn't check it out - only exported it. Any changes won't be persisted back into the repository. And I ran it. Guilty as charged. I took a look at the default.aspx, went a bit further from there, nothing serious, application or server-threatning c# stuff going on here, let's fire this one up and see how it looks... Nope, stops with a error - some server controls dll missing. I had originally authored some server controls to go with the project, but in my youth's inexperience I included these not in a seperate project to be referenced but as stand-alone must-be-compiled-seperately. Would do that differently now, but anyways, I put it down because I had other things to attend to. Alas, the web.config healthmonitoring has dispatched an e-mail to Lars, informing him of the run-time error. And 'Lars' goes ape-shit. He send an e-mail to yours truly, CC three bosses and all of my co-workers, lambasting me for running his code. Heck, I thought all the code we wrote was 'ours'. I'm judged irresponsible (quote "you don't know what you're dealing with, you could've done serious damage to a project in production") for checking out the code (wrong) and running it (true). His argument - and, I suspect, his justification behind CC'ing pretty much everybody I know - is that the crime is severe because the code is in production now. I
Hello everyone, many thanks for your valuable input, I really appreciate it. You've offered a lot of insight. Especially the thing about checking in production connectionstrings, which is a practice here - for no other reason than the small size of the projects. Being practice, I've never considered not doing this, but your arguments to the contrary have made me reconsider. I'll personally implement a test/production environment from here onwards, running my stuff of a local sql server express before moving into production - and do a build which will only run on the production database if the machine is the production server. A valuable eye-opener, which will also ensure I won't run into this sort of mess again. Truly, thanks a lot. /Morten
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Hey guys, would love your two cents on this. Being the careful guy that I am, I need som pointers to figure out if I've been the victim of a cross over-reaction (my own estimate) or if I should start getting my act together (always a possiblity). The short version: I'm in a minitry of education government stats department. We're three asp.net guys who churn out various web-surveys for the schools to fill out. Recently we went public with one particular survey. Being the ever curious and eager to learn individual, I thought I'd take a look at the code behind it. This is the day after it's gone public. One reason being that I'd recently been put to the task of supporting another guy's project when he was unforseenably away, and I anticipated that situation might creep up again, that I'd have to support this one too. Another reason being that I simply like to look at other people's code, to try and learn something new. In this case, alas, not so much new stuff had gone into it. I say 'new', because I wrote the bulk of the code myself, before a brief last-year hiatus which saw this guy, we'll call him 'Lars', take over. So I export the code from the SubVersion repository. I didn't check it out - only exported it. Any changes won't be persisted back into the repository. And I ran it. Guilty as charged. I took a look at the default.aspx, went a bit further from there, nothing serious, application or server-threatning c# stuff going on here, let's fire this one up and see how it looks... Nope, stops with a error - some server controls dll missing. I had originally authored some server controls to go with the project, but in my youth's inexperience I included these not in a seperate project to be referenced but as stand-alone must-be-compiled-seperately. Would do that differently now, but anyways, I put it down because I had other things to attend to. Alas, the web.config healthmonitoring has dispatched an e-mail to Lars, informing him of the run-time error. And 'Lars' goes ape-shit. He send an e-mail to yours truly, CC three bosses and all of my co-workers, lambasting me for running his code. Heck, I thought all the code we wrote was 'ours'. I'm judged irresponsible (quote "you don't know what you're dealing with, you could've done serious damage to a project in production") for checking out the code (wrong) and running it (true). His argument - and, I suspect, his justification behind CC'ing pretty much everybody I know - is that the crime is severe because the code is in production now. I
Beware of developers who don't want you looking at their code. The team should have frequent code reviews -- especially before things go into production.
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Hey guys, would love your two cents on this. Being the careful guy that I am, I need som pointers to figure out if I've been the victim of a cross over-reaction (my own estimate) or if I should start getting my act together (always a possiblity). The short version: I'm in a minitry of education government stats department. We're three asp.net guys who churn out various web-surveys for the schools to fill out. Recently we went public with one particular survey. Being the ever curious and eager to learn individual, I thought I'd take a look at the code behind it. This is the day after it's gone public. One reason being that I'd recently been put to the task of supporting another guy's project when he was unforseenably away, and I anticipated that situation might creep up again, that I'd have to support this one too. Another reason being that I simply like to look at other people's code, to try and learn something new. In this case, alas, not so much new stuff had gone into it. I say 'new', because I wrote the bulk of the code myself, before a brief last-year hiatus which saw this guy, we'll call him 'Lars', take over. So I export the code from the SubVersion repository. I didn't check it out - only exported it. Any changes won't be persisted back into the repository. And I ran it. Guilty as charged. I took a look at the default.aspx, went a bit further from there, nothing serious, application or server-threatning c# stuff going on here, let's fire this one up and see how it looks... Nope, stops with a error - some server controls dll missing. I had originally authored some server controls to go with the project, but in my youth's inexperience I included these not in a seperate project to be referenced but as stand-alone must-be-compiled-seperately. Would do that differently now, but anyways, I put it down because I had other things to attend to. Alas, the web.config healthmonitoring has dispatched an e-mail to Lars, informing him of the run-time error. And 'Lars' goes ape-shit. He send an e-mail to yours truly, CC three bosses and all of my co-workers, lambasting me for running his code. Heck, I thought all the code we wrote was 'ours'. I'm judged irresponsible (quote "you don't know what you're dealing with, you could've done serious damage to a project in production") for checking out the code (wrong) and running it (true). His argument - and, I suspect, his justification behind CC'ing pretty much everybody I know - is that the crime is severe because the code is in production now. I
I would probably go with Mark Wallace's response. From your side, it sounds like Lars is trying to bully you and thinks that you need to be put in your place. A carefully worded reply, including the bosses, would tend to put him in his place and show the bosses that you have a professional attitude rather than the immature and totally unprofessional situation that this caused.
Why is common sense not common? Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level where they are an expert. Sometimes it takes a lot of work to be lazy Individuality is fine, as long as we do it together - F. Burns Help humanity, join the CodeProject grid computing team here
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Hey guys, would love your two cents on this. Being the careful guy that I am, I need som pointers to figure out if I've been the victim of a cross over-reaction (my own estimate) or if I should start getting my act together (always a possiblity). The short version: I'm in a minitry of education government stats department. We're three asp.net guys who churn out various web-surveys for the schools to fill out. Recently we went public with one particular survey. Being the ever curious and eager to learn individual, I thought I'd take a look at the code behind it. This is the day after it's gone public. One reason being that I'd recently been put to the task of supporting another guy's project when he was unforseenably away, and I anticipated that situation might creep up again, that I'd have to support this one too. Another reason being that I simply like to look at other people's code, to try and learn something new. In this case, alas, not so much new stuff had gone into it. I say 'new', because I wrote the bulk of the code myself, before a brief last-year hiatus which saw this guy, we'll call him 'Lars', take over. So I export the code from the SubVersion repository. I didn't check it out - only exported it. Any changes won't be persisted back into the repository. And I ran it. Guilty as charged. I took a look at the default.aspx, went a bit further from there, nothing serious, application or server-threatning c# stuff going on here, let's fire this one up and see how it looks... Nope, stops with a error - some server controls dll missing. I had originally authored some server controls to go with the project, but in my youth's inexperience I included these not in a seperate project to be referenced but as stand-alone must-be-compiled-seperately. Would do that differently now, but anyways, I put it down because I had other things to attend to. Alas, the web.config healthmonitoring has dispatched an e-mail to Lars, informing him of the run-time error. And 'Lars' goes ape-shit. He send an e-mail to yours truly, CC three bosses and all of my co-workers, lambasting me for running his code. Heck, I thought all the code we wrote was 'ours'. I'm judged irresponsible (quote "you don't know what you're dealing with, you could've done serious damage to a project in production") for checking out the code (wrong) and running it (true). His argument - and, I suspect, his justification behind CC'ing pretty much everybody I know - is that the crime is severe because the code is in production now. I
Putting CC to his manager in this case is OK, but CC to entire company is hysteria. Explain the situation to YOUR manager using the facts and the facts only and forget about the case – shits happen. Also ask your manager if he wants you to send a response to the other managers involved in the case from Lars. And Lars also needs to learn that there is subordination in the company.
The narrow specialist in the broad sense of the word is a complete idiot in the narrow sense of the word. Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.
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Hey guys, would love your two cents on this. Being the careful guy that I am, I need som pointers to figure out if I've been the victim of a cross over-reaction (my own estimate) or if I should start getting my act together (always a possiblity). The short version: I'm in a minitry of education government stats department. We're three asp.net guys who churn out various web-surveys for the schools to fill out. Recently we went public with one particular survey. Being the ever curious and eager to learn individual, I thought I'd take a look at the code behind it. This is the day after it's gone public. One reason being that I'd recently been put to the task of supporting another guy's project when he was unforseenably away, and I anticipated that situation might creep up again, that I'd have to support this one too. Another reason being that I simply like to look at other people's code, to try and learn something new. In this case, alas, not so much new stuff had gone into it. I say 'new', because I wrote the bulk of the code myself, before a brief last-year hiatus which saw this guy, we'll call him 'Lars', take over. So I export the code from the SubVersion repository. I didn't check it out - only exported it. Any changes won't be persisted back into the repository. And I ran it. Guilty as charged. I took a look at the default.aspx, went a bit further from there, nothing serious, application or server-threatning c# stuff going on here, let's fire this one up and see how it looks... Nope, stops with a error - some server controls dll missing. I had originally authored some server controls to go with the project, but in my youth's inexperience I included these not in a seperate project to be referenced but as stand-alone must-be-compiled-seperately. Would do that differently now, but anyways, I put it down because I had other things to attend to. Alas, the web.config healthmonitoring has dispatched an e-mail to Lars, informing him of the run-time error. And 'Lars' goes ape-shit. He send an e-mail to yours truly, CC three bosses and all of my co-workers, lambasting me for running his code. Heck, I thought all the code we wrote was 'ours'. I'm judged irresponsible (quote "you don't know what you're dealing with, you could've done serious damage to a project in production") for checking out the code (wrong) and running it (true). His argument - and, I suspect, his justification behind CC'ing pretty much everybody I know - is that the crime is severe because the code is in production now. I
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Putting CC to his manager in this case is OK, but CC to entire company is hysteria. Explain the situation to YOUR manager using the facts and the facts only and forget about the case – shits happen. Also ask your manager if he wants you to send a response to the other managers involved in the case from Lars. And Lars also needs to learn that there is subordination in the company.
The narrow specialist in the broad sense of the word is a complete idiot in the narrow sense of the word. Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.
He didn't CC the entire company, thankfully, 'only' my colleagues in the tech-department. I've taken some time - a few weeks - to contemplate the episode, and I'm somewhat weary of taking it up with my boss now that time has passed. I should've reacted sooner, but I was kinda shocked and missed my opportunity. The more I hear from you guys, though, the more I'm convinced there's a valid case for a calm reply such as the one suggested by Mark (and thanks for that!). Thanks for your 2 cents, appreciate it.
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