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Author here. I shared this yesterday, didnt get much upvotes and quickly vanished. Thanks to /u/nixcraft for sharing it again! Looks like 2nd time lucky. Im se

Author here. I shared this yesterday, didnt get much upvotes and quickly vanished. Thanks to /u/nixcraft for sharing it again! Looks like 2nd time lucky. Im seeing the same type of comments here and on Reddit, I'll try to answer a few common ones. 1. Yes, I know it was stupid testing on production. But we'd been told we needed to release the product on Monday (this was Friday), no objections. A previous project manager had been fired for not being fast enough, and the whole test department was at risk of redundancy. Vice president level executives were asking for updates in daily standups. Like I say in the post, sometimes, you do what you're told or you find another job. If it hadnt been the height of Covid , I might have chosen option 2. 2. Why didnt we test on a staging / dev server? We did have those, but they didnt work with the K-Pop companies servers. And we didnt have time (or enough people) to make it work. Lots of other engineers decided to just quit. Besides, we never thought K-pop would actually lock phones we didn't own. 3. Some people have asked about it: This type of app is perfectly legal. If you get a phone on contract, you don't actually own it till you pay it off, and the company is entitled to lock it. This is builtin on iPhones, Android need external apps to enforce this. 4. While it may seem stupid in retrospect (LOL, this guy calls himself an engineer, tests in production)-- at that time, it was just one firefight after another, and there was no time to think or plan. I can joke about it now, but at the time, it was one of the worst pressure cooker environments. Some updates: After we released the 3 products, the whole QA/test department was made redundant. Including my boss, who was fired when he was attending his mother's funeral. Funnily enough, I stayed because I knew details of a legacy product. So far the last 3-4 weeks, I had no boss or anyone to report to.

macintux 5y ago
> Including my boss, who was fired when he was attending his mother's funeral. And people wonder why big companies are generally loathed.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  This is a false generalization. It’s simply not true that this happens everywhere in big companies. Seems like a rare case.
  - EdwardDiego 5y ago
    I think it can happen in every big company, you always have pockets of great culture and absolutely terrible culture once you reach a certain size. But I agree, it's a definite overgeneralisation to say that all big companies are terrible everywhere. Having worked for very small companies, and very big companies, there's very much pros and cons to both. In a small company, culture is far easier to nurture and guide consistently across the entire company. But then, in a small company, you're also far more likely to meet nepotism based hiring - "my wife's friend who has worked nothing but retail needs a job, and we need an HR manager" . And also far more likely to work for CEOs who make decisions that adversely impact employees lives dramatically, because they were in a mood, with few, if any, checks and balances. After all, the new HR manager is a close friend of their wife, their families have been holidaying together for years, and they don't want to jeopardise that friendship by going against the CEO. I'm not saying that these don't exist in big companies, but generally they have more people in the mix who can say "hmm, let's hold up a second on this". And to be fair to small companies, they're great for moving into new positions.
- yokoprime 5y ago
  Please let me know which company this is so i can avoid giving them any money.
diebeforei485 5y ago
> This is builtin on iPhones I've never heard of this. Can you elaborate?
- ronsor 5y ago
  He's referring to the "iCloud Lock" https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201441 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201441
  - DenseComet 5y ago
    iCloud Lock is tied to your Apple account though and I don't think a financing company can use it to remotely lock your phone.
- zaphirplane 5y ago
  Device management? Most famous for work wiping the phone remotely
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> If you get a phone on contract, you don't actually own it till you pay it off, and the company is entitled to lock it. No. You don't turn off somebody's phone while they're using it. You have no idea what they could be doing. Someone could be literally dying in front of your locked out consumer who is now unable to call for help. This is vital infrastructure and you're denying them access. If somebody dies because of this, it's on your conscience. Would you randomly disable somebody's car's engine because they didn't pay? No. You call the police and get them to repossess the car. The police will do it properly without risking collateral damage.
- jfrunyon 5y ago
  1) I highly doubt that the app disables emergency calling. 2) Some (rental, probably also lease) vehicles actually do have disablers. They prevent the vehicle from being started, not stop them in the middle of the road. 3) The police don't repo a thing. That's a civil matter and generally outsourced to the lowest bidder with a tow truck. By the way, if someone dies because of it, the only person whose conscience it is on is the person who bought a phone they couldn't afford and then didn't pay for it. Just like if someone died because the car got repo'd and they couldn't drive to a hospital.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    > I highly doubt that the app disables emergency calling. Well, I highly doubt that it doesn't. Given how little attention the company paid to these important details, who's to say they didn't simply brick the user's phone? > They prevent the vehicle from being started, not stop them in the middle of the road. Like I said, nobody will randomly disable somebody's car engine. These people at least have enough foresight to wait until it's safe. > The police don't repo a thing. They do where I live. Bank loans money with car as collateral, consumer defaults, bank seeks justice, judge authorizes police to repossess the car so the bank can sell it and minimize losses. Police can enter private property and even use force if necessary. What is even the point of police if they aren't gonna do things like this? Outsourced to tow trucks? Really? When some random citizen reposseses property, it's robbery. > if someone dies because of it, the only person whose conscience it is on is the person who bought a phone they couldn't afford and then didn't pay for it No. The fact that person didn't pay for the phone doesn't matter matter at all. The company can always negotiate new terms or seek justice later. What matters is the fact that in an emergency the only thing standing between the consumer and a call for help was the phone company. Worse, they got in the way on purpose, as if it was their job to punish the consumer. There is no defending this. > Just like if someone died because the car got repo'd and they couldn't drive to a hospital. Not really. If you don't have a car, you can still call emergency services. At least you would have been able to if some stupid company had not locked your phone.
EdwardDiego 5y ago
> Vice president level executives were asking for updates in daily standups. The worst kind corporatised Scrum™ in action, apart from when the VP comes to your retro and talks for two hours about why you suck. I can definitely understand why you were so pressured, sounds toxic as all hell.
hoseja 5y ago
>I was just following orders!
culpable_pickle 5y ago
Just replying here so you can see it, but I would caution against continuing to share this story as it's written. If I was a hiring manager and I saw this, I wouldn't hire you, regardless of how well you did during interviews. These are my options, some shared by others in the threads here, some opposite. > It would lock the low-level features that allowed you to make calls, use Wifi, or even post pictures on Instagram/Facebook (the horror!) until you paid up. ... > Except for the poor sod in Peru who couldn't make phone calls or post duck-face pictures to Instagram, but no one asked him. Both of these quotes seems like you don't quite understand the impact on your end users, or just don't care. Neither are good options as you grow your career. > Our own internal tool worked well (I would like to say it was all due to me, which would be an arrogant thing to say, but also 100% true, so I will say it: It was all or mostly due to me). Your internal tool, which you are taking complete credit for, is what didn't have protections in place that ended up harming users. Also, it comes across as bragging or something. People that are too obsessed about credit usually are not ones I'd like to work with. Team efforts are hard to define and split up and people that over index on that usually are just bad team members. > But one mobile phone manufacturer (that I will call the K-Pop Phone Manufacturing Company), based in Korea (yes, that one) Say it or don't. These games where you can act all cheeky about how you didn't 'actually' say it is just juvenile IMHO. > Because of time pressures, there was no time (or political will) to check the script was well written. As soon as I banged it out, it was live. And I mean literally, 10 seconds after I pressed save, the script was running on live production servers. This is beyond just the org's failure. As engineers, we're responsible for what happens on our watch. We hold the line and try to enforce engineering practices, not shrug and yolo and then blame the org. > I could have tested it better, but that would have meant working late into the night. No thanks. I had already worked a few late nights/weekends and I was done. This comes across as again, you don't actually care at all. Not a hiring quality IMHO > My colleague was helping me, so we got it all done in about an hour. By 18:30, we had unlocked all phones. Oh no! You worked an entire hour between 5:30 pm and 6:30 pm! The horror! Most people work much much longer hours, later into the evening or night when things fail. The difference is they don't complain about it and care. > A project manager confirmed it, and I took a breath of relief and quickly logged off before more fuckups could be found. Great! You fixed it, but rather then trying to verify you fixed everything, you logged off at 6:30 and screw anyone else effected. Not a great look. > The Lessons we learnt (or more likely, didn't learn) If you didn't learn the lessons, why are you writing about it? Just as a war story? Or do you think this comes across as a positive for your career? > The lesson here is: Do some f'king checks before you lock someone's phone, but I don't know if that lesson applied to us or K-pop (most likely, both of us). You know. You're in control of what you can do, so you do what you can to prevent issues from happening under your watch. > This is not just good QA, but good security as well. But bah! None of that silliness for us, thanks. Again, you come across as uncaring. Why are you working in this industry? > We assumed that because our own software checked for this sort of thing, that the K-pop phone's software would do as well. Great. Your software failed. Don't blame downstream if you can't even get your first layer correct. > Everyone pretended it was an honest mistake. It was an honest mistake. The difference is if you learn and grow, or if you just shrug and make the mistakes over and over again. Honestly, this is just my two cents. Take it all with grains of salt, and ignore as you wish. I don't intend to be personally attacking you or any of the sort. Just expressing where my mind is reading it. If I was you, I'd take this down and seriously consider if engineering is the right career path for you. It doesn't seem like you actually enjoy it or care about it and just working for the easy money doesn't lead to a fulfilled life at the end. And living a fulfilled, happy life, is the most important thing after all. Best of luck in the future.

macintux 5y ago

> Including my boss, who was fired when he was attending his mother's funeral. And people wonder why big companies are generally loathed.

systemvoltage 5y ago
This is a false generalization. It’s simply not true that this happens everywhere in big companies. Seems like a rare case.
- EdwardDiego 5y ago
  I think it can happen in every big company, you always have pockets of great culture and absolutely terrible culture once you reach a certain size. But I agree, it's a definite overgeneralisation to say that all big companies are terrible everywhere. Having worked for very small companies, and very big companies, there's very much pros and cons to both. In a small company, culture is far easier to nurture and guide consistently across the entire company. But then, in a small company, you're also far more likely to meet nepotism based hiring - "my wife's friend who has worked nothing but retail needs a job, and we need an HR manager" . And also far more likely to work for CEOs who make decisions that adversely impact employees lives dramatically, because they were in a mood, with few, if any, checks and balances. After all, the new HR manager is a close friend of their wife, their families have been holidaying together for years, and they don't want to jeopardise that friendship by going against the CEO. I'm not saying that these don't exist in big companies, but generally they have more people in the mix who can say "hmm, let's hold up a second on this". And to be fair to small companies, they're great for moving into new positions.
yokoprime 5y ago
Please let me know which company this is so i can avoid giving them any money.

diebeforei485 5y ago

> This is builtin on iPhones I've never heard of this. Can you elaborate?

ronsor 5y ago
He's referring to the "iCloud Lock" https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201441 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201441
- DenseComet 5y ago
  iCloud Lock is tied to your Apple account though and I don't think a financing company can use it to remotely lock your phone.
zaphirplane 5y ago
Device management? Most famous for work wiping the phone remotely

matheusmoreira 5y ago

> If you get a phone on contract, you don't actually own it till you pay it off, and the company is entitled to lock it. No. You don't turn off somebody's phone while they're using it. You have no idea what they could be doing. Someone could be literally dying in front of your locked out consumer who is now unable to call for help. This is vital infrastructure and you're denying them access. If somebody dies because of this, it's on your conscience. Would you randomly disable somebody's car's engine because they didn't pay? No. You call the police and get them to repossess the car. The police will do it properly without risking collateral damage.

jfrunyon 5y ago
1) I highly doubt that the app disables emergency calling. 2) Some (rental, probably also lease) vehicles actually do have disablers. They prevent the vehicle from being started, not stop them in the middle of the road. 3) The police don't repo a thing. That's a civil matter and generally outsourced to the lowest bidder with a tow truck. By the way, if someone dies because of it, the only person whose conscience it is on is the person who bought a phone they couldn't afford and then didn't pay for it. Just like if someone died because the car got repo'd and they couldn't drive to a hospital.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  > I highly doubt that the app disables emergency calling. Well, I highly doubt that it doesn't. Given how little attention the company paid to these important details, who's to say they didn't simply brick the user's phone? > They prevent the vehicle from being started, not stop them in the middle of the road. Like I said, nobody will randomly disable somebody's car engine. These people at least have enough foresight to wait until it's safe. > The police don't repo a thing. They do where I live. Bank loans money with car as collateral, consumer defaults, bank seeks justice, judge authorizes police to repossess the car so the bank can sell it and minimize losses. Police can enter private property and even use force if necessary. What is even the point of police if they aren't gonna do things like this? Outsourced to tow trucks? Really? When some random citizen reposseses property, it's robbery. > if someone dies because of it, the only person whose conscience it is on is the person who bought a phone they couldn't afford and then didn't pay for it No. The fact that person didn't pay for the phone doesn't matter matter at all. The company can always negotiate new terms or seek justice later. What matters is the fact that in an emergency the only thing standing between the consumer and a call for help was the phone company. Worse, they got in the way on purpose, as if it was their job to punish the consumer. There is no defending this. > Just like if someone died because the car got repo'd and they couldn't drive to a hospital. Not really. If you don't have a car, you can still call emergency services. At least you would have been able to if some stupid company had not locked your phone.

EdwardDiego 5y ago

> Vice president level executives were asking for updates in daily standups. The worst kind corporatised Scrum™ in action, apart from when the VP comes to your retro and talks for two hours about why you suck. I can definitely understand why you were so pressured, sounds toxic as all hell.

hoseja 5y ago

>I was just following orders!

culpable_pickle 5y ago

Just replying here so you can see it, but I would caution against continuing to share this story as it's written. If I was a hiring manager and I saw this, I wouldn't hire you, regardless of how well you did during interviews. These are my options, some shared by others in the threads here, some opposite. > It would lock the low-level features that allowed you to make calls, use Wifi, or even post pictures on Instagram/Facebook (the horror!) until you paid up. ... > Except for the poor sod in Peru who couldn't make phone calls or post duck-face pictures to Instagram, but no one asked him. Both of these quotes seems like you don't quite understand the impact on your end users, or just don't care. Neither are good options as you grow your career. > Our own internal tool worked well (I would like to say it was all due to me, which would be an arrogant thing to say, but also 100% true, so I will say it: It was all or mostly due to me). Your internal tool, which you are taking complete credit for, is what didn't have protections in place that ended up harming users. Also, it comes across as bragging or something. People that are too obsessed about credit usually are not ones I'd like to work with. Team efforts are hard to define and split up and people that over index on that usually are just bad team members. > But one mobile phone manufacturer (that I will call the K-Pop Phone Manufacturing Company), based in Korea (yes, that one) Say it or don't. These games where you can act all cheeky about how you didn't 'actually' say it is just juvenile IMHO. > Because of time pressures, there was no time (or political will) to check the script was well written. As soon as I banged it out, it was live. And I mean literally, 10 seconds after I pressed save, the script was running on live production servers. This is beyond just the org's failure. As engineers, we're responsible for what happens on our watch. We hold the line and try to enforce engineering practices, not shrug and yolo and then blame the org. > I could have tested it better, but that would have meant working late into the night. No thanks. I had already worked a few late nights/weekends and I was done. This comes across as again, you don't actually care at all. Not a hiring quality IMHO > My colleague was helping me, so we got it all done in about an hour. By 18:30, we had unlocked all phones. Oh no! You worked an entire hour between 5:30 pm and 6:30 pm! The horror! Most people work much much longer hours, later into the evening or night when things fail. The difference is they don't complain about it and care. > A project manager confirmed it, and I took a breath of relief and quickly logged off before more fuckups could be found. Great! You fixed it, but rather then trying to verify you fixed everything, you logged off at 6:30 and screw anyone else effected. Not a great look. > The Lessons we learnt (or more likely, didn't learn) If you didn't learn the lessons, why are you writing about it? Just as a war story? Or do you think this comes across as a positive for your career? > The lesson here is: Do some f'king checks before you lock someone's phone, but I don't know if that lesson applied to us or K-pop (most likely, both of us). You know. You're in control of what you can do, so you do what you can to prevent issues from happening under your watch. > This is not just good QA, but good security as well. But bah! None of that silliness for us, thanks. Again, you come across as uncaring. Why are you working in this industry? > We assumed that because our own software checked for this sort of thing, that the K-pop phone's software would do as well. Great. Your software failed. Don't blame downstream if you can't even get your first layer correct. > Everyone pretended it was an honest mistake. It was an honest mistake. The difference is if you learn and grow, or if you just shrug and make the mistakes over and over again. Honestly, this is just my two cents. Take it all with grains of salt, and ignore as you wish. I don't intend to be personally attacking you or any of the sort. Just expressing where my mind is reading it. If I was you, I'd take this down and seriously consider if engineering is the right career path for you. It doesn't seem like you actually enjoy it or care about it and just working for the easy money doesn't lead to a fulfilled life at the end. And living a fulfilled, happy life, is the most important thing after all. Best of luck in the future.