The Software Engineer Strikes Again

The World's Worst Software Engineer - Part 2

Heeee'sssss Backkkkkkkkkkkk.....

Yep, lock up your servers, changes your passwords and take the phones off the hook. The world's worst software engineer is back to perform an upgrade and it's not going to be pretty.

It's eight months later and a new version has been released. They don't know what they are or what they do, but the staff have decided that it's new features are essential to the company and must be installed as soon as possible. Lucky us!

They decide to perform the operation on the same week that we, IT Support will be having several systems down for maintenance. Of course they do; it is absolutely vital that the upgrade is performed during a period with half the resources (including internet access) and our entire team unavailable. We make this warning clear to all involved; however it falls upon deaf ears.

To make things worse the guy is finally taking my advice and is going to attempt to rid the server of its resource draining SQL Express, and move the database to a proper SQL server; or so he says. It surprised me that he even knew what SQL was.

The entire upgrade will take him exactly three days, somehow I believe it will take longer.

Monday:

All was quiet. Mainly because we had our entire phone system down for maintenance and our office is void of personnel as we work to improve our systems. Sadly the same can not be said for the software engineer.

When I finally get back to the office there are three messages for me to call him. This was impressive as the phone system had only been back up for 20 minutes. I take a deep breath and dialed his number. He answers almost immediately. He must have been waiting.

"I can't seem to do anything on the server" he informs me after he has explained who he was and where he was from (it's not like I would forget in a hurry: Sadly.)

"What are you logged in as?" I ask.

He gives me a username that turns out to be one of the managers for that department. A username without admin rights, He had been logged on all day trying to work out why he had no access to anything. Why didn't he ask for Admin rights before he even started the upgrade?

I get him sorted with an account; he logs in and hangs up.

Tuesday:

My colleague answers the phone as I am working with another user on the other side of the room. I know who it is the moment he looks at me with a giant frown and a false smile that quickly changes to a grimace.

I hear the conversation as it goes back and forth, as the guy repeats himself to my colleague over and over again. Apparently repetition it the quickest way to get things fixed.

He needs passwords.

The phone conversation gradually gets louder and my colleague looks at me pleadingly. I make my apologies to the user I am dealing with and grab the phone.

The passwords he needs are for the software's services accounts. Passwords that he set for his software. Passwords that apparently he set as a standard and took a note of when he (attempted) to install the software originally.

Fortunately, foreseeing this eventuality after the diabolical trials and tribulations last year, and knowing that the guy had the IT intellect of a jam doughnut, I had taken a note of them myself. I look them up and two minutes later I put the phone down with a sigh of relief.

The fun didn't end there.

Wednesday:

Another phone call and this time he wants me to change some settings for him on the server. He wants me to change the software's service accounts to use the local Administrator account to log on with. Now these services, although should be running as something else entirely, were seen to be running as SYSTEM. SYSTEM is the same as the Administrator account only it is designed to "run as a service."

I shake my head in disbelief and humour him by making the changes anyway. I look at the services an hour later and see that he has changed them back again. I wonder why they didn't work..?

Thursday:

A surprisingly quiet day. And not because we had the phone system down again. Maybe the guy managed to finish the job on time. OK, who am I kidding?

Friday:

The Pièce de résistance.

It's late afternoon and the inevitable happens. The phone rings and the voice on the other end is in a panic. The guy is talking fast, he's jabbering on, and I am sure the guy's temple was running with a cold, nervous sweat as he fidgeted in his chair.

The software wasn't working. In fact after I finally got him to make some sense, he hadn't managed to perform the upgrade at all. Well that's not strictly true. He had run the upgrade, several times, but had failed miserably at every attempt. The end result being that the guy, the computer whizz that he was had realised that after the umpteenth time of trying, he was never going to be able to upgrade the software. He had settled for rolling back to the previous version. And broken it.

He hadn't attempted to move the database. If he had, we could have been looking at another three weeks of nightmarish mayhem. The only silver lining being that I would have something else to blog and you would have something amusing to read over your morning coffee.

The guy witters on for another minute, repeating himself a few more times and bringing up the old "its server 2008" excuse. I ask him if he has spoken to his developers (the guys who did the install for him last time.) He told me they couldn't be reached. More likely, they knew he was out in the field and had vacated their offices in dread.

I took pity on the guy and had a quick look. Mainly because I knew that I wouldn't hear the end of it if I didn't.

I run a couple of checks, while the guy sounds like he is hyperventilating on the phone. I know very little about the software and how it works, but I figure out that it runs, amongst other things, from a webpage which isn't loading.

"What run's the web page?" I ask: A reasonable question I thought, between two IT professionals. Well one IT professional, one IT Nightmare.

"What do you mean?" He asks.

I was expecting this and knew I would have to find out for myself, but I ask anyway. "Does it use Apache or IIS?"

"What's that?" He asks. I can hear the confusion in his voice.

"The web server application?"

Silence... I root around on the server and find it uses IIS.

"I see your problem" I tell him. "The application pool in IIS has stopped."

"What's that?"

"It's what runs your software." I explain, wondering how this guy got his job. Didn't his company even teach him how their software works and what it needs to run? Simple answer. No. Or maybe he was away that day.

I attempt to start the pool, but it's having none of it. His constant upgrade attempts and eventual roll-back must have changed something vital to its functionality.

"I can't get it to start" I tell him. "Do you know what user the pool is supposed to run as?"

"Errrm, no. I don't know what it is. I have never heard of IIS." He explains.

I bite my tongue and decide that I can't make it any worse. Using a little logic, a concept completely lost on this guy, I try matching the user with the one used by all of the other pools.

An IISReset later and the pool pings to life. The webpage loads and the guy on the end of the phone almost passes out with relief. I have quite literally save his bacon from being fried by the bean counters, if they found out he had trashed there precious system. After all they are not going to be pleased anyway that they have not aquired the latest version of the software.

Happy as Larry, the guy thanks me and hangs up. OMG! WTF! Etc etc...

Question 1: Why do we continue to use a company that sends incompetent engineers to install their software?

Question 2: Why do we continue to allow this guy to administer our system?

Question 3: How much are we paying this guy?

Question 4: Do I get his commission?

Mr Software Engineer, consider your admin rights revoked!

Sadly, this was just the beginning. Want to know what happend next? Read Part 3