Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!sri-unix!quintus!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!munnari!mulga!ausmelb!ejp
From: ejp@ausmelb.oz.au (Esmond Pitt)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re:  Re:  Request for human interface design anecdotes
Message-ID: <514@ausmelb.oz.au>
Date: 9 Dec 87 04:19:00 GMT
References: <10659@brl-adm.ARPA>
Reply-To: ejp@ausmelb.oz.au (Esmond Pitt)
Organization: Austec International Limited, Melbourne
Lines: 23


In article <10659@brl-adm.ARPA> niuvax!sys1@anl-mcs.arpa (Systems Programmer) writes:
<     In an article in UNIX-WIZARDS-DIGEST (V4#088) paul@umix.cc.umich.EDU 
<writes:
<	> One rm-ed an entire directory of source ...
<	> Well, we hadn't done backups in about two months.
<	> So, I fired him.
<	
<I submit that in that case perhaps the wrong person was fired.  Perhaps the
<manager of a system that is not backed up in two months or more has already
<demonstrated a considerably more significant level of incompetence and danger
<to his installation than someone who makes a typing error.

Hear hear. Once upon a time a manager fired a payroll programmer for updating
only one of the two occurrences of the tax rate in a program.
He should have fired himself, for not manifesting the constant or putting
it outside in a file, when he wrote the program some years before.

Managers have occupational hazards too.

-- 
Esmond Pitt, Austec International Ltd
...!seismo!munnari!ausmelb!ejp,ejp@ausmelb.oz.au