'He had no idea what he was doing': Nepo-baby's "brilliant idea" causes website to break

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Mar 11, 2024 3:00 PM EDT

As long as this person got their instructions in writing, they were happy to break a website. As a developer, you're usually doing the exact opposite. But when pushed too far, this person just shrugged their shoulders and did as they were instructed. 

Having a nepo-baby as a colleague can cause friction in any workplace. A nepo-baby (also called a nepo-hire) is the boss's relative---someone who is near and dear to your boss, but who isn't really qualified to hold their job. In this case, the CFO's son miraculously found a job at dad's company, working on projects he has no idea how to accomplish. This nepo-hire was very insistent that his ideas would work, though. The original poster, a programmer, writes that this dude was requesting all these random changes to "flex his power." This seems to happen frequently, too. Nepo-hires realize they're not respected by their peers, so they try to boss everyone around, as if that will make people admire them more. 

You can read u/SchalkLBI's malicious compliance tale below, as well as comments from people who loved their strategy. Then, read about one frustrated person who just wanted to buy a donut in an empty donut shop, only to be instructed they had to order the hard way. 

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  • 01
    .. wwww 'After two days of trying to convince him that these changes will break the website, I relent'
    via Gema Saputera on Unsplash
  • 02
    Want me to break your website? Sure, can I get that in writing?
    via u/SchalkLBI
  • 03
    This happened to me at the same place as my previous post, however this time it wasn't compliance towards the directors/company itself but towards one of the clients.
    via u/SchalkLBI
  • 04
    One of the 4 projects I was working on was a client/customer website for a medium sized financial service provider/investment/portfolio company. While most of the actual logic behind the financial services was done with Excel programs or by hand, the reporting, portfolios, documents, and the like was done on this site.
    via u/SchalkLBI
  • 05
    The person from the FSP I initially dealt with was every developer's dream client. Tech savvy, patient, and realistic. He was so tech savvy, he was the one that coded the importing program for the website since he knew which data points to import and how to calculate them correctly. If he didn't do this, I'd have had to spend about a month learning the math behind the finances before I could do it.
    via u/SchalkLBI
  • 06
    Fast forward a few weeks, and the person I was dealing with (let's call him David) is put on other projects. The person I'm dealing with now (let's say Tom) is an incompetent who requested all sorts of nonsensical changes just to flex his power. He had no idea what he was doing, and in some cases even went directly against the software specs I had, which clearly outlined the intended behaviour. So how did he manage to get put onto this project? Well, turns out he's the son of the CFO.
    via u/SchalkLBI
  • 07
    One day I get an email from Tom saying he had a brilliant idea to streamline the reporting system. Now the reporting system had a ridiculous amount of extremely confusing terminology - some of which sounded very similar even if they were completely separate. The graphs, charts, and tables the reporting system generated was by no means pretty to look at, by they weren't supposed to be - they were supposed to display as much information as possible about as many things as possible.
    via u/SchalkLBI
  • 08
    Tom, in his infinite wisdom, wanted to "merge" a lot of the data to make it more sleek. He asks me to completely get rid of a specific group of data, called a universe (which, if I remember correctly, was essentially related to a client or a group of clients), and to merge a number of other columns and terms to make it look better. I bring up the fact that the importing system is designed to work this specific way. He tells me "so then rewrite the importing" and won't listen to reason when I try
    via u/SchalkLBI
  • 09
    After two days of trying to convince him that these changes will break the website I relent, and ask him to just email me what he wants and I'll get right on doing exactly what he tells me. I change the database (completely dropping any tables relating to a universe or now "obsolete" data points), I change the code, and then I set to work rewriting the importing system. Now this is the important part - because we didn't write the import program, we have no backups or version control, so the chan
    via u/SchalkLBI
  • 10
    A day after the new "improved" version is released I get an extremely concerned phonecall from one of the analysts at the FSP, telling me the data on the website is missing and the importing is missing a bunch of information. I just tell them I know, I was the one that made the changes. A pause, a why, and a sigh later they hang up to talk to the CFO about the situation. I forward the email I got from Tom to the CFO and the CEO of the FSP, but removed any trace of his name for now - I wanted tha
    via u/SchalkLBI
  • 11
    me in a panic, asking if I have any backups of their data. I assure the CFO that while the database and code changes can be rolled back (I did make a SQL dump of the data before dropping the tables, I'm not a complete tool), the importing system will have to be written from scratch. He asks me who I received the instructions from, and the second the word "Tom" leaves my mouth he sighs a deep, heavy, long, pained sigh.
    via u/SchalkLBI
  • 12
    Later that day I'm on the phone with David, discussing how he's happy to be back on the project and talking about how we'll have to spend the next month writing a new import system - which means in the meantime all the reporting will have to be done manually.
    via u/SchalkLBI
  • 13
    I like to imagine Tom was the one that had to do the reporting that month.
    via u/SchalkLBI
  • 14
    TL;DR - Incompetent client asks me to break his company's website and I oblige.
    via u/SchalkLBI
  • 15
    outline01 we have no backups or version control, so the changes will essentially permanent unless I back it up at this point. I wanted to make a backup of the program before I started, but, wouldn't you know it, nowhere in Tom's email did it mention I should do this. It might be for dramatic effect, but surely you backed it up? Simply backing it up would've made Tom look stupid and made you look competent when you foresaw the issues and were able to correct them quickly.
    via u/outline01
  • 16
    achT Tung I love how the CFO sighs as if he had been waiting for the shoe to drop and when it did it was even worse than what he was expecting that leech to be able to do.
    via u/achTTung
  • 17
    ecstatic-shark And remember! You're asking for it! Well played.
    via u/ecstatic-shark
  • 18
    dragontmi Never upset your tech people
    via u/dragontmi
  • 19
    DOG CROTCH life-is-a-hobby Did David have a Github account? 5 Reply Share SchalkLBI OP No, but he had a backup of the code. We ended up using the original as a reference, as well as reusing all the formulas, but we rewrote the program to bring it up to more modern standards.
    via u/life-is-a-hobby

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