I'm surprised they hired him after that. If it was a big enough deal that they had to make a statement saying he was no longer with the company, why would they hire him after that?
The intern developer should not have committed the middle finger cursor.
A code reviewer should not have approved the code change. If there was no code review (and there probably wasn't during the Windows 3.1 era), especially of an intern's code, then that's another problem with the system.
QA should not have approved the beta build with a bug that could impact the company's reputation.
A bug report was filed, but whoever triaged the bug report didn't escalate the issue before the beta release.
Finally, the engineering manager probably should not have rehired the intern as a full-time employee.
Root cause of middle finger cursor is individual who made middle finger cursor. That review could have caught it does not make the above less of actual root cause.
As mentioned above, there were a string of failures. Don't just blame QA for finding the bugs that don't get fixed. If it gets signed off, it gets signed off, there are a bunch of departments that can look at the bug database as well. And, in the end, 9/10 of the people who found this people probably loved the fact that Microsoft finally showed a little bit of soul.
In your org there is no room for mistakes, like humans will routinely make; sounds like hell.
Why should I not hire a person that does pranks (as a general rule)?
For a creative job, like an engineering job, I want creative, humorous, witty, and interesting people. Someone who does funny pranks at the right time gets a pro-hiring indication mark from me.
And another argument for the prankster is that we need fun to stay sane in the gray industrial business world.
> should not have approved the code change
Disagree.
> impact the company's reputation
In a bad way?
> A bug report was filed, but whoever triaged the bug report didn't escalate the issue before the beta release.
Yeah probably a problem.
> Finally, the engineering manager probably should not have rehired the intern as a full-time employee.
Jesus, learn to handle a joke.
I would agree that they should still re-hire him. This poor fellow probably learned the lesson that there's a time and place to joke around plenty well enough now.
Just recently an ex MS employee talked about this topic on YouTube in the context of possible backdoors [0]. Some developers were each responsible for a component of the system and would indeed check code changes, which led to an intern not getting a job at MS after he decided to integrate an easter egg.
> Finally, the engineering manager probably should not have rehired the intern as a full-time employee.
Slap on the wrist? Sure. Fix the qa and bug triage process? Be my guest. Fire the intern? A bit extreme for my taste.
I agree if the failure is actually a mistake. The developer in this scenario included the gesture on purpose. Pretty clearly shows they don't have the best judgement imo.
If they're young and they never do it again, then I think it would be fine to keep the hire. If they keep on doing it, then it's time to go. If they're 25 years into their career, then they should almost definitely have known better.
I expect a new hire to understand that they can't put all their initiatives into the product, certainly not a joke, unless they're explicitly told otherwise. I'd expect a new hire to understand there is a natural pace for everything to grow -- as in all relationships -- so they can't go all out on day 1.
On the other hand, I'd want a senior engineer to use their initiative a lot more often. They would also understand that their job is to contribute confidently to the best of their ability.
Oh noes the middle finger, there goes the neighborhood...
Intentionally hiding offensive things in the code does show poor judgement to me. If it was a sad face, fair enough, and if it triggers based on an intentional set of actions by the user as an Easter egg that’s another thing, but using a swear symbol in an error check and committing that to the codebase? Pretty poor judgement imo
My surprise that they hired him has nothing to do with whether or not _I_ think they should have hired him. It has everything to do with the fact that they publicly blamed the individual, and that it was Microsoft. I would expect their hiring decision to be informed by whatever corporate higher-ups caused them to publicly blame the individual.
It's more like the PR / social interaction version of this.
In that anecdote, the implication is that the employee gained insight or learned from that mistake. In fact, firing them might not be justified from a business perspective, because you're firing somebody even though they are less likely to make such a mistake in the future. It's not really logical to fire somebody for a mistake unless it's reasonable to assume it indicates ongoing liability. You have to decide and plan for the present and future, not the past.
And that manifests as keeping the employee as opposed to replacing him with a more experienced person who already knows how to not make expensive mistakes.
In the context of SWE, specifically with a blameless culture, these expensive mistakes aren't training for people, but training for the business as new checks and protocol get established to reduce the change of the same thing happening again. Someone making an expensive mistake is independent to whether they get to stick around. In the example this expensive training is a reason to keep the guy around.
I can imagine that a junior is not able to assess the risk and consequences involved.