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I am surprised no-one mentionned the to me obvious explanation for Derrek's behavour: wilfull obfuscation, at-least partly aware of the consequences, with a cal

I am surprised no-one mentionned the to me obvious explanation for Derrek's behavour: wilfull obfuscation, at-least partly aware of the consequences, with a calculated maximization of the consulting fee. If the incentive structure is set up in such a way as to provide an easy local maximal for the individual that is not a good outcome for the compoany, then it is a management failure. Having such a situation where all individuals up the management chain are doing short-term local maximization that medium term leads to a bad outcome for everyone is societal failure.

ludicity 3y ago
Derek wasn't paid spectacularly well (though above the national average), and also slapped a bunch of copyrighted code into the codebase, then uploaded medical data to GitHub. All of which could have instantly ended his career if the other engineer had the time to review his work sooner. I think there are some (many?) people that willfully obfuscate - I have been this person when dealing with narcissists or saving management from themselves - but I just don't see a version of this where he was a very savvy operator. To quote Patrick McKenzie, the correct calibration is that some amount of evil exists in the world, but the whole world isn't evil. I.e, this is Incompetent Derek, and at some other company is Evil Derek.