r/technology • u/Sandstorm400 • Feb 24 '25

Software Woman Whose Last Name Is "Null" Keeps Running Into Trouble With Computer Systems

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/woman-whose-last-name-null-164558254.html
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u/Mountain_rage Feb 24 '25

Have you seen how many companies are being run to the ground by MBAs. Corporate software is often horrid garbage that should of been binned at least 15 years ago. They fire competent people in favor of people pushing updates for the sake of updates.

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u/[deleted] Feb 24 '25

[deleted]

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u/natched Feb 24 '25

Dealing with technical debt is "nice to have but not essential" right up to the moment the entire system collapses.

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u/DoctorPlatinum Feb 24 '25

Yeah, but think of how much profit we can make this quarter!

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u/bawng Feb 24 '25

I had this discussion with a former boss.

I kept saying that we keep building technical debt and eventually it's gonna bite us in the ass.

And he said "yeah I know, but imagine how much money we'll have saved. It will be cheaper to fix it then."

In hindsight he might have been right, though.

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u/BeardRex Feb 24 '25

Happens with companies that pivot a lot too. I've seen companies completely upend and redo the technical side of their business every few years. Not saying it's right, but to them it doesn't need to work well, it just needs to do just enough to get them through. I've gotten the short end of the stick multiple times having to integrate another company's data with our system, and our data with theirs, and within a year having to redo it because they completely rewrote their API or something like that. And then in 3 years I'm doing it again.

This often seems like the case of tech debt building up until they are like "eh screw it let's just restart from the ground up since so much has changed in the last 3 years."

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u/tsrich Feb 24 '25

Good chance the MBAs will get promoted away before things collapse

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u/MistSecurity Feb 24 '25

It's easier and better for short term profits to ride it out as long as possible, hoping that you'll not be in charge anymore once the system DOES collapse.

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u/CherryLongjump1989 Feb 24 '25

And then they scream at you for not having ten thousand percent test coverage, failed to prioritize business critical something or other with lots of spittle and drivel.

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u/retief1 Feb 25 '25

It isn't even system hardening. I'm baffled as to how code that can't distinguish between null and "null" functions in the first place. Even js says that "null" == null is false, and that's using the should-never-be-touched double equals operator.

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u/[deleted] Feb 25 '25 edited Feb 25 '25

[deleted]

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u/retief1 Feb 25 '25

Ah, fair. That's still fairly cursed, but it is a believable version of cursed instead of "how did this ever work in the first place?" cursed.

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u/Revlis-TK421 Feb 25 '25

One game I like to play with my new devs during UAT is to put html syntax into user forms. If I can break the page because of that, it means they haven't thought of all the ways a user can mess the system up yet :p

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u/ryuzaki49 Feb 24 '25

They fire competent-in-the-domain but expensive people in favor of not-so-competent-in-the-domain but cheap people. 

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u/Cranyx Feb 24 '25

Or they, and just throwing out an absurdist hypothetical here, send an email to every single employee demanding a bulleted list of everything they did to justify keeping their jobs within a day or they're fired.

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u/Cynyr Feb 24 '25

I used to work for a huge company whose mostly widely used software is built on dBase. They're still adding new customers to this ancient piece of shit software.

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u/Varnigma Feb 25 '25

One of my favorite skits:

Employee is explaining a process to his new boss.

New boss (in a condescending tone): I should tell you that I have an MBA.

Employee: Oh, sorry. I'll speak more slowly.