Pig-Headed Developer Uses His Own Code, Loses 100% Of Company's Revenue

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Eric Lund
Nov 9, 2021 10:00 PM EST

When developing something for a company, it's probably a good idea to include a way for that company to actually make money. This guy had a bone to pick with the existing code, which would have been fine if he could have actually provided a better solution. But he couldn't. And then he decided to double down. For another absurd tale from the realm of technology, here's a coworker who demanded a mathematically impossible computer and was proven incompetent.

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  • 01
    Font - Posted by u/RhyderZA 21 hours ago O 3 23 3 5 Don't Hotfix My Code!!! A company loses commission on 1000s of sales oc L Preamble: So this is a story shared to me, with permission to share, by a work colleague that I have recently reacquainted with. I will be writing this as if it was me in the situation, as that is how he told it, and I think it will read better too.
    via RhyderZA
  • 02
    Font - Background: I worked as a developer for a company that built and managed the software behind a rapidly growing online E-commerce store that sells tech gadgets and accessories (which I will refer to as “MegaStore" for this story), in a Central African country. The "MegaStore" started off small, and my boss built the original website on risk, for a cut of the commission that MegaStore earned.
    via RhyderZA
  • 03
    Font - Side note as it is important later: The commission that "MegaStore" gained from the sale of an item on the site, would be split on purchase. The majority of the commission would be paid directly into “MegaStore's" bank account and a smaller portion would be paid into my boss's bank account. As the popularity of MegaStore grew, so did the demands on my boss, and he was able to build a company around servicing "MegaStore". While he did try to grow his client base, none were the same size or
    via RhyderZA
  • 04
    Font - "MegaStore" was approached for a buyout by a company (we can call them "Bad Company Inc") with their own internal development team. Part of the buyout deal included ending the revenue-sharing arrangement with my boss (an external development company). At the beginning of the process, everything was very positive, as my boss arranged a big payday, and the deal was signed. He had managed to get this great deal because he had positioned that this buyout would kill his company and thus he and
    via RhyderZA
  • 05
    Font - The buyout took several months and by the end, the relationship between "Bad Company Inc" and my boss had completely broken down. My boss had managed to secure another large client and thus didn't need to close his company. Because of this, "Bad Company Inc" said that they didn't need to pay my boss a payout. A lot of these meetings were above my pay grade. The setup: So we are in the final days of handing over the entire site to "Bad Company Inc" and their internal CTO ("DickDev"), who h
    via RhyderZA
  • 06
    Font - So back to my boss, he had managed to keep some version of the original deal in place, but in the preceding weeks, he had made a big threat to "Bad Company Inc " that he would do something funny with the code that handled the commission split. It was very much a threat and blowing off steam, as he couldn't legally do it, nor was it actually in his nature to do it, all talk, no bite. However, this outburst did create a situation where "DickDev " did not trust us to remove our code that han
    via RhyderZA
  • 07
    Font - D-Day: So D-Day arrived, we had actually completed the build a few days earlier, with commission sharing code completely removed, and were just sitting on this version, so we could hand it over on the day, as contractually required to do so. So we handed it over in the morning and were all planning to head out for a long lunch. Just before we left, we checked “MegaStore" for the last time and noticed that "DickDev" had already deployed the handed-over version. Puzzled as we assumed that a
    via RhyderZA
  • 08
    Font - We immediately reached out to "DickDev" via multiple calls, which he rejected until he eventually answered, and yelled that he was busy and that we should stop calling him, followed by him hanging up the phone. So my boss, concerned that this somehow would be thrown back into his face as the funny thing he threatened to do, instructed us to do a hotfix and deploy it to the server without the "DickDev's" approval. Which we did. It was a messy fix, using the old code, we put all the money i
    via RhyderZA
  • 09
    Font - 10 minutes after deploying the hotfix, "DickDev" called accusing my boss of stealing. Many heated words were shared, followed by my boss putting "DickDev" on speaker and instructing all of us to quickly record the conversation on our phones. "DickDev" informed us that he had already implemented the code, as he had noticed the completed build two days earlier. We tried to tell him that something was wrong, and he just replied that we were too simple-minded to understand custom code, as we
    via RhyderZA
  • 10
    Font - Aftermath: Because "D-Day" was an end-of-the-month kind of deal, it happened to land on a Friday. So the loss of income was only reflected in the bank on the Monday or Tuesday of the following week. This meant the problem was only picked up after running commission-free for 3-4 days, my Boss is aware of the amount of money lost, but we are not, however, we assumed it to cost the company the commission on between 1000 to 4000 individual sales. The CTO did supposedly tried to spin a story t
    via RhyderZA

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