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What is the Biggest IT Cockup You've Ever Made?

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    #21
    1st one, not in IT but electronics.

    Did a quote to supply some electronic gizmos in the defence world - not really my job as I was a designer usually.

    Visited the big chief to deliver the quote and spiel. As I slid the quote over, I spotted that I had printed the internal copy with all the mark-up calculations included! Fair play to the big chief, we still got the order!

    2nd one
    Being a permie for 6 years before seeing the light and contracting

    3rd one
    First few days in IT - un-racking a decommissioned small business server but successfully removed its replacement! As SBS does everything, cue one dead, but thankfully small, company for a while.

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      #22
      Originally posted by psychocandy View Post
      Can't remember any huge screw ups apart from one. Managed to overwrite part of a DB of an app managing a global network. Customer couldnt manage their network (or reroute it) for hours until it was fixed. Luckily no outages so nothing lost otherwise it would have cost them (they reckon) £1million an hour in costs if they lost links.

      My only ever verbal warning as an employee was a bit of a stitch up. They gave me an expensive sparc laptop (about £10K) when I started. I hardly ever used it so locked it in desk where I was. Moved desk a week later and there was no lockable desk so I left it where I was.

      Week later went to retrieve it - gone. Plus a few of my manuals etc. Of course, an investigation took place and it never turned up. I was a bit miffed to get a verbal warning for "losing it". I even asked HR in the meeting - "So what exactly should I have done in this circumstance?" and they just shrugged their shoulders. I should have appealed but didnt bother in the end.
      Why am I not surprised?

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        #23
        I once put in some multithreaded code that ended up hitting a buggy low level library that manipulated some shared memory. This unexpectedly impacted other parts of the process that I had not worked on. As a result, the system wide date format was occasionally (randomly) flipped to US for a fraction of a second, then flipped back.

        The result was, very occasionally a message sent to a position keeping system would have the wrong date format in it. But, for some dates they would be valid whichever way round they came out, eg.11.04.1998 instead of 04.11.1998. So this wasn't getting flagged as invalid until much later than the error had occurred. So the system receiving this message would adjust balances for the wrong date. Some traders were looking at those balances to base trading decisions on.

        The head trader came to my desk asking why the positions were out by hundreds of millions of dollars. I had to debug and fix that while they were stood behind me watching over my shoulder.

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          #24
          Originally posted by BrilloPad View Post
          No you didn't, Wilmsolw did

          http://forums.contractoruk.com/gener...rk-moment.html
          Originally posted by Stevie Wonder Boy
          I can't see any way to do it can you please advise?

          I want my account deleted and all of my information removed, I want to invoke my right to be forgotten.

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            #25
            Yonks ago, when I first started out, I landed a job in London for a bank. My first (and only task as it transpired) was to upgrade DOS on a PC. It was running DOS 3 which could only do 32mb partitions. This PC was getting DOS 5 (IBM DOS) and offered me the option of moving the partition so that all the data could be on one partition. Thinking it would warn me of any data loss I decided to let it move it.......formatting 1%, 2%....tulip! Disk repartitioned and all data lost. It turned out that the PC belonged to the IT director and I was out of the door before I'd even had a chance to taste their coffee.
            Rule Number 1 - Assuming that you have a valid contract in place always try to get your poo onto your timesheet, provided that the timesheet is valid for your current contract and covers the period of time that you are billing for.

            I preferred version 1!

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              #26
              I once flew out to an RAF base in (then) Western Germany with a software update consisting of about a dozen UV-EPROMs in an anti-static stick. Because the stick was too long for my bag ( hand baggage only) it stuck out one end. As I got my bag from the car I fumbled it and the end EPROM fell out of the stick onto the concrete, neatly breaking off one corner and the corner leg. Not sure what had become of the retaining pin that was supposed to keep the PROMs in the tube....

              Fortunately, facing an embarrassing return trip to Blighty, I managed to solder a replacement leg onto the device and copy it onto a good 2716/32?.

              Then there was the time I landed in Zeebrugge with a CARNI that I had forgotten to get signed at Dover.
              Zeebrugge customs suggested I go back to Dover, get it signed, and come back on the next ferry.
              After a heated discussion, I returned to my car, at which point I noticed that there was nobody manning the gate.........
              Last edited by RSoles; 6 June 2017, 08:50.

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                #27
                Not had any major ones. Had a slightly embarrassing one when I was working at home on some satellite image software in C++. Had been doing a bit of simple debugging by writing to a file called arse.txt and forgot to remove the lines before I sent it to client.
                bloggoth

                If everything isn't black and white, I say, 'Why the hell not?'
                John Wayne (My guru, not to be confused with my beloved prophet Jeremy Clarkson)

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                  #28
                  You lot do realise that potential clients will be checking this thread and trying to link any posts to you before they take you on?
                  bloggoth

                  If everything isn't black and white, I say, 'Why the hell not?'
                  John Wayne (My guru, not to be confused with my beloved prophet Jeremy Clarkson)

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                    #29
                    Not an IT person, but I remember whilst working for a small company we'd got a new server with RAID5 which we hadn't seen before. I thought it was a good idea to test it by pulling a drive out whilst the system was running, which apparently you weren't meant to do. No data was lost or anything, but I think we ended up returning the drive and getting a warranty replacement.

                    I can remember leaving something that logged to c:\log.txt in a release build that went out to customers. And I'm sure I've once or twice made the mistake of commenting out a line that enabled some major piece of functionality, forgetting, committing it and then getting back a bug report that major-new-piece-of-functionality wasn't working. Doh.
                    Will work inside IR35. Or for food.

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                      #30
                      Not had any major ones
                      Not that have come out yet anyway. Done quite a bit of work on aircraft control systems. If you are on a 747 just make sure you don't flush the toilet at exactly 24301ft 7.5inches
                      bloggoth

                      If everything isn't black and white, I say, 'Why the hell not?'
                      John Wayne (My guru, not to be confused with my beloved prophet Jeremy Clarkson)

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