Revenge Of The Week: An Engineer's Tale

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mattstaff
May 21, 2021 3:00 PM EDT

Well oh well, this is definitely one of those stories that just leaves a good feeling in the back of your brain. This very easily could've worked its way into the rotation of solid tech support tales. It's a true crying shame that tech support has to put up with so much ignorance, just because of what they do for a living. 

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  • 01
    Rectangle - r/ProRevenge u/BoredBSEE • 1d + Join 1 1 Project Skunk: An Engineer's Tale Ok originally this was posted over in e r/rbi, and they suggested a longer version would go well here. So here goes. Thope you enjoy it. Decades ago I worked the worst crap job of my life as a software engineer, writing code for an OBD Il car code scanner at a completely dysfunctional business I'm not going to name, but l'll drop a hint and say all their products are all orange.
    via u/BoredBSEE
  • 02
    Font - It was right after 9/11, I was laid off, and jobs were nearly impossible to find. But I managed to land one there and out of desperation I took the job. And there I met probably the best friend I ever made at work, l'll call him AgentS. AgentS was a coder's coder, a real laid back guy, and an all around good egg. Imagine if "The Dude" could code, you'd pretty much have AgentS. We had many wonderful overlong lunches working there. And I needed the calm he taught me, because that place was
    via u/BoredBSEE
  • 03
    Font - Maybe a few days earlier, the paranoid Czar of engineering gave us this odd missive. "When you leave your desk for any reason, you are to take your papers on your desk and lock them in your desk. You are to lock your computer. You are to put a password in your BIOS and shut down your machine when you leave for the night. You are to erase your marker boards. Leave no scrap of paper out or any hint of what you are working on." And no explanation why, which was standard for him. Just do it.
    via u/BoredBSEE
  • 04
    Font - He found out. Engineering Czar got word somehow that people in the Sales department were working late and waiting for Engineering to leave. Once we left, they were going through our desks and computers looking for clues as to what we were working on. They would then copy this stuff down, claim it as "a project I'm heading up" and present the materiel to their superiors so they could look valuable and get raises and all that fun sales stuff. Yes I know – Sales is supposed to query their cu
    via u/BoredBSEE
  • 05
    Font - So AgentS had had enough. We made "Project Skunk". All projects in this place were named after an animal. We decided to leave a hint in the name that all was not as it should be. And we dreamed up the most amazing OBD |I scanner in the world. Here are some of the specs: Since everyone knows 32 bit processors are more expensive than 8 bit processors, we would save money by using a 2 bit processor. The EEPROMS that held the automotive database were expensive as well. So to save space, we wo
    via u/BoredBSEE
  • 06
    Font - We spent a happy afternoon drawing up box diagrams (with flux capacitors and n-dimensional grommets and Yoyodyne compensators), lots of specs and analyses and other assorted bits of utter nonsense. We scattered them all over AgentS's desk, then went home. The very next day, our "man in the field" Bond gives us the news. "Project Skunk is a HIT. The entire building is buzzing over it. Sales people are tripping over each other taking credit." It took about a week before the stolen goods wer
    via u/BoredBSEE
  • 07
    Font - AgentS had left by then, but I tracked him down and we had lunch, and I told him the results of the ill harvest he had left behind. Sales had been seriously embarrassed in front of their superiors, and the ones over them as well. I don't know if anything came of it. It was an old-boy's network there, and I'm sure they covered for each other somehow. But they were embarrassed and they were hurt. How do I know? Every day from that day on, any time a person from Sales passed me in a hallway
    via u/BoredBSEE

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