[TRENCHES] Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - Oratory

Geth

Oratory
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/oratory

Long Distance Relationship

Anonymous

As my first job in the game industry, I began working for a small game company in 2007 as a tester for a multiplatform shooter. The company I was with was on the West coast, but was working closely with a company on the East coast. In order to control revisions on the game, we both used a program called Perforce, which basically just saves everything to a central server so no one will lose whatever they are working on. I had never worked with this program before this.

About a week into my job, I arrived to work and went to the morning meeting as usual. I could tell something was off. My manager began by reading an email he had gotten at about 4 AM that morning. It simply said:

“USER (my username) HAS SHIT ALL OVER PERFORCE!”

Apparently, the night before I left my computer with a file locked out and it unleashed some sort of digital-demon onto Perforce, causing the East coast company to be unable to work on anything. To say they demanded blood would be a bit of an exaggeration, but they were clearly very upset.

Luckily, I had the best manager ever. He went into work that morning at 4:30 AM and fixed everything. He even withheld my name from the other company, so they could not send a ninja after my family to which I am very grateful.

DiannaoChong

I've had this happen. Things get locked down. I have even seen that email. Thats an email that would go out nightly(for the users, not just me who happened twice in five years). Problem is these emails were over something so silly, and so much effort was put in over these emails, over an issue where the building locked at 7pm. They could of automatically lifted the lock at 7:01 pm, logged users out at 7:01pm, or actually just ignored the issue at 7:01pm becuase the building was locked and it wouldnt of been an issue if someone else tried to mess with it, because they couldn't be there. Did I mention the next morning it wouldnt of effected anyone due to how the software worked?

But instead they decided to create an entire bureaucracy around bullshit where they get to run around and send those emails and yell at people. Where I worked was also a call center (you can put CSR at the level of tester in this case I believe), because I think it was just another mechanism in place to be able to run around and fire whoever they didn't like becuase they wanted to take out faux rage on someone. Luckily I wasn't in the trenches, but had to deal with the worst of the mentality of their systems and the worst of those users:the people dumb enough to try and keep that job. Just for clarification, I don't care how bad the economy is, CSR phone rep is revolving door and constantly rehiring near minimal wage position.

Pony

hahahahah this isn't the first horrible Perforce story i've read

jackal

I think Perforce was the terrible version control system the company I work for used (luckily I never had to use it and I think they've moved on). Someone told me they couldn't have to files with the same name anywhere. \Project1\Humdinger.cs would keep you from creating \Project2\Humdinger.cs. I'm not sure if it was true.

Warlock82

I don't really understand what the story is saying. I guess I've never heard of Perforce before. So he was using some file and somehow locked out EVERY file? Wouldn't he have just locked one?

twesterm

I'd be calling for blood too if someone was sitting on a file I needed. :-D

FILE SQUATTING IS SERIOUS BUSINESS

pslong9

Warlock82 wrote: »

I don't really understand what the story is saying. I guess I've never heard of Perforce before. So he was using some file and somehow locked out EVERY file? Wouldn't he have just locked one?

Yeah, that's pretty much it. And you'd think that it would only be one file, but sometimes shit happens and somehow everything gets locked down. Buggy version control software is a really bad thing.

El Skid

Man, I really want to like Cora. She's cute, and that stunned look she gets sometimes is adoreable.

And she seems to have a good sense of ethics, caring about the user community and such.

But that speech just didn't quite get me there for some reason. (not a complaint, just an observation).

Pony

yeah version control software bugs can shut down an entire company

it's just like

welp none of the developers can do ANY work now!

great!

Rend

Holy crap

Remind me never to consider perforce for my version control needs

XiaNaphryz

Perforce isn't as terrible as the story makes it sound, we've used it for at least the past 7 years. If you have an actual Perforce admin in place, it can make quite a difference. But unless a company is large enough to warrant having one hired, admin duties end up shared across other folk who may not be able to respond in a timely manner or always keep an eye out for reported issues.

Pony

it's also refreshing to see a Trenches story where the person telling the story made a whoopsee instead of "oh and this horrible sweatshop shot my dog"

ninja.iceberg

I've had issues with locked files on Perforce before and yeah it is a pain. This is why you have to remember to release files when you're done with them. I've never had an issue with Perforce itself, just users who don't know what they're doing. And we also have like two people who deal with build integrity only so this doesn't really happen.

Zython

Pony wrote: »

yeah version control software bugs can shut down an entire company

it's just like

welp none of the developers can do ANY work now!

great!

Never worked with Perforce, but I've had my share of committing issues with Subversion. Version control is a powerful tool, but when it backfires...

Ori Klein

New guy is unfamiliar with software. Does something. It ends up freezing the process. Money was lost (devs sitting unable to do work). Ok. Not the end of the world. Teach the dude how to avoid pitfuls. Improve company policies on instructing new employees with a revised FAQs on what sort of things can cause problem. Lesson learned. Problem solved. Moving on.

New guy was new. Made a mistake, happens. Termination was not necessary. Manager was an alright dude not allowing his subordinate get lynched.


As a horror trench story, this was lacking.
But it's nice to hear things that actually work themselves out instead of ending in a tragedy.

liquiddark

Is that middle panel supposed to be completely screwed?

JohnnyricoMC

El Skid wrote: »

And she seems to have a good sense of ethics, caring about the user community and such.

Like screwing over a colleague by letting him take the fall for her NDA-breach (by leaking information the company wanted to keep secret)? There's a huge difference between idealism and ethics. Cora has an irrational amount of the first and not jack squat of the last. Q should retake the helm.

tech_hunter

So what is going on in that middle panel?

Ori Klein

JohnnyricoMC wrote: »

Q should retake the helm.

Since when is Q any better than the rest of them?
IMHO as time evolve it seems to me they're all mundane people who'll more or less resolve to only look after themselves/their agenda unless they have some kind of high authority power to protect everyone from harm.
So in the end, they very well deserve each other. They're neither criminals nor saints. Just ordinary people who happen to not be the most nice ones around.

Tyrsis

It fucking takes two seconds for a P4 admin to go in there and revert the file. Not sure what their problem was.

JohnnyricoMC

Ori Klein wrote: »

JohnnyricoMC wrote: »

Q should retake the helm.

Since when is Q any better than the rest of them?

Q was the one who was truly dedicated to trying to help make the game good with the oars (staff) he had. He got offered a position at the dev team themselves when it shipped and who wouldn't take such a position? It more than likely means better pay, higher job security and the ability to contribute in ways he couldn't at QA.