As a proper Mad Genius, and a charter member of the Evil League of Evil (I have a badge to prove it), it’s very important that I stay in practice. After all, proper Evil is hard work. You can’t just cackle and expect the world to flee in terror.
So naturally, I use my day job to stay in practice.
It’s easy – I test software for a living, so I’m already engaging in evil (just ask the developers whose code I’ve tested). When I start looking at a piece of software and have multiple bugs logged, plus half a dozen questions to the project lead within half an hour of starting, well, I just have to suppress the really evil laughter because I kind of want to keep the job. But I do rub my hands together and my eyes spark and I get a really evil smile as I wonder what other little goodies I can dig up and make that poor innocent piece of software do for me.
Yes, my coworkers learned very quickly that the phrase “Hey, you want to see something neat?” is one to fear, at least unless I’m merciful and follow up with, “It’s not your code.” Because when I say that it’s a bug I find amusing – which translates to “humiliating to the programmer who coded it”.
The ones I get on well with miss the evilest of Evil League of Evil practice. They don’t get the full bug tracking system used to report their typos. Nor do they get five bug reports for five minor issues on a single page. The one who insists I not “bother” him with technical details (cost him at least sixteen hours of work last time I did that), refuses to touch anything that isn’t in the specifications, then doesn’t read the issue reports I send him (complete with helpfully highlighted quotes from said specifications), he gets the full set. Detailed bug reports. “See Spot. See Spot run.” reproduction steps.
See, proper Evil isn’t just about the rubbing hands together with malicious glee, or possessing the right kind of Evil Pet (fluffy cats work). It’s not even about a proper Evil laugh (although I’ve been told my Evil Giggle is not for the faint of heart). No, proper Evil is about putting the fear of you into your minions, co-workers (after all, how many of us Evil League of Evil members have day jobs?) and – of course – enemies, and for that they need to know deep in the soles of their shoes that you will torture them in infinitely imaginative ways, whether burying them in bug reports that you can type faster than they can read or exposing their every brain fart to the world (or at least the management…), or just grinning at them as you go past and leaving them to wonder what you’ll do to them next.
All of this is excellent practice for when the Evil League of Evil takes over and cleans up the mess then ruthlessly and with malice aforethought leaves people alone. They’ll be cowering in their boots wondering what we’re going to do to them. And we don’t have to do anything – unless they make themselves targets in what’s sure to be a target-rich environment (being Evil, I firmly believe that Too Stupid To Live and He Needed Killing are reasonable justification).
So, I shall laugh one more evil laugh and go to practice my evil some more.
Mad Genius Club 
28 responses to “Training for the Evil League of Evil”
Someday the world will learn it’s just easier and quicker to learn to do and think for themselves.
Until then, “Do you really want me to get involved?” is a perfectly good way frame a threat.
😉
I’ve found the promise to leave a written record for the Higher Authorities also works. Especially after the first and second times, because by then word has gotten out that the Higher Authorities pay attention to those little notes, since I leave them so rarely.
I test software, too, with a side job of writing science fiction adventure romps. Fortunately, I rarely have adversarial relationships with my developers, but there was one guy…
This guy seemed to find it an affront if anyone reported bugs in his code. He got so worked up, we in the QA department unanimously voted him the Developer Most Likely to Quit in a Huff. He argued over many reported bugs, but when a co-worker presented him with a set of steps in his code which crashed the entire application, he said, “That’s not a bug. You’re using the software wrong.”
The QA team let him escape our pod with his life, but it was a close thing.
Yeah – the developers have an acronym for those bugs you find by doing what the customer WILL do, but they didn’t design for:
DDT (Don’t Do That!) – it doesn’t get them anywhere, but to delay the inevitable a little, but it makes them feel better to have a comeback.
As a former programmer, I’d say those programmers deserve your “evil”. Most places I worked didn’t have a separate tester. The programmer was required to test his/her work and better have tested it very well. Otherwise, the 1 am phone calls would cost you sleep and management would be going “why isn’t the system back up”. [Very Big Evil Grin]
For real evil, you need to have A System. Or rather, The System. It has evil baked right in. For example, where I work, if you FINALLY manage to fight your way through the layers of Manufacturing Representatives, to Liason Engineers, to the actual Design Engineers, and they finally start taking an interest in maybe looking at your issue, they will get transferred, and your issue will be lost.
And heaven help you if you want to have the kit changed to have five bolts in it instead of four of the wrong length. They’ve had three different systems in three years, and not one of them has successfully made any changes to any kits.
Bureaucracy will trump the lone operator for sheer evil any day of the week (well, not counting weekends, and only 9:30 to 4:00, with an hour and a half lunch break), with very few exceptions.
Now, lets all sing the theme song to Brazil.
I thought bureaucracy even used their hours against you? After all… they’re never open when you can actually talk to them.
I had to take a screenshot once of the eye-care company’s website, which only allowed access during certain hours. Seriously, the website closed overnight and had limited hours on the weekend….
Someone was missing the point.
Oy, the only time I’ve seen that is when the server was someone’s personal computer and never for a professional website… definitely a missed point!
I’m also in test, though I do more hardware than software. The worst I’ve seen was at a certain unnamed defense contractor, where the design engineers developed the tests, handed it off to the test equipment group, who installed and maintained it, but it was run by a different test group (mine). When we pointed out that we could improve a test, we ran into the bureaucracy, but we bravely battled through it until I reached an actual design engineer, whose attitude was, “I designed it, so it’s perfect the way it is.”
The best revenge? We were told by a customer (another defense contractor) to fix a test or be fired. So I and a technician designed it, got it built, and showed it to the customer. And when the customer said it was a better job than there engineers would have done, I gave all the credit to the technician. I heard heads explode all through the engineering department. Mwahahahahaha!
And then you got fired for not following the Process and going around the System. 🙂
Engineers should be forced to spend a significant period of time as a Mechanic (but god no, not on anything that will go to a customer!) to help “inspire” them to design better solutions.
Years ago, working for a large company, I was amused to notice that in the yearly evaluation form, there was a section entitled “Ability to work around the system.” To get a good evaluation, you had to score reasonably well on the ability to circumvent the system. My boss convinced me that I should not write a complaint to HR indicating that including this in the yearly evaluations was a key indicator of how broken the system was. He did agree with me, though. I still think having widespread high scores on that section should have been taken as a measure of whether the system needed to be fixed or not…
as the technician in charge of making the machine work in a real world environment , i long ago lost count of the times i cursed design engineers and their evil minions the production engineers. no / it works when everything is perfect/ does not mean no designed in faults. i wish all engineers spent at least some time ,preferably several years, dealing with the repair and maintenance of the machines they design. learn what breaks and what is involved in repair and scheduled maintenance while under pressure to keep things running. then think about these issues when designing virtually anything.
I hear you man.
Those of us who’ve worked for small-to-medium companies usually do get that opportunity. Or did, in the olden days when I was a lad. Large companies/nowadays? – Probably the union would fuss too much if an engineer took it into his head to touch a wrench (or soldering iron, or…)
When I worked at the helpdesk I spent 7 years on, I volunteered to help test the alternate Public School website (online school which qualifies as Public School via Charter School provisions) that another department was developing.
I was given a set of papers with detailed instructions on what to do, and was told to do EXACTLY what the instructions said, and DO NOT DEVIATE from them, as if a school-age kid would ever do things in exactly the way the programmers expected. And if I noticed something wrong that wasn’t part of the test, I was not supposed to report it. Strangely, after it went live, all sorts of bugs popped up out of nowhere. Whodathunkit?
“Congratulations, you have helped make the system fool-proof. Unfortunately, it is not being used just by fools.”
I’m with Dr. Mauser. Sigh. Before I got sidetracked into computers, I was trying to learn how to be an “engineer.” (I got out, because they were teaching us to be “design” engineers, not the real thing.) I always tried to see. “How can I break this code, in the stupidest possible way?” (I spent years doing support in a college level student computer lab.)
True story follows. I was working on a program (ultimately had to give up, due to a second knee injury) for job hunt tracking. I was listening to Christmas Music, and on about the fourth try, I got a “clean compile.” At that moment, the Hallelujah Chorus started to play. Four months later, I was hit by a car, taking out the Left knee. It also ended my computer career.
More fun – My department where I currently work does a lot of data import/export work. I’m the low end of the capability scale in our group, and even I still get people leaving high praise for things I think are barely adequate, but I have to put them out because of time constraints.
One of my coworkers is currently rewriting his import code to use a widget that was added by the developers of a system whose purpose I’m not really certain of (We often don’t much care – we just need to make data fit their specs), AFTER he had already had the import working fine without having to route through that widget. And a large part of the justification for forcing him to use it? The development team “put a lot of work” into developing it. Even though it’s crap.
well, I do have minions (which is pretty cool) and I can work both sides of the street. I can sic my minions on some deserving person, or I can curb and heel them with a very simple “come here a minute” and pull the dreaded Red Pen from the desk drawer. “your narrative needs work” is the lowest level. actually printing out their narrative and then marking it up with the Red Pen, wow, you’d think I had the oil boiling and the whips already in play . . . .
sometimes keeping a straight face is difficult, , , ,
To viscously leave people alone, what a concept
I’m an evil librarian and I catalog books. I don’t have minions but my opinion of academia goes lower when I see the nonsense going into many textbooks.
Mine drops every time I read conference announcements and calls for papers. The day’s winner was one up in Canada in a week about “the picaresque novel as a tool for exploring environmental inequalities in the global south” (or grey goo books about eeeevil Yanqi corporations and harmless Natives, especially in India. The Bhopal accident was corporate tyranny, apparently. I took it to be corporate carelessness and gross negligence, rather than active eeeevil, but apparently I was wrong.)
*chuckle* You reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend back when I lived in the Philippines. I don’t remember what I was thinking, but it made me grin widely, stopping in mid-conversation.
J: What? What?! What evil has that brain of yours come up with NOW?
Me: *start going ‘tee hee hee hee’
J: STOPPIT. STOP GRINNING LIKE THAT. It’s scary.
Me: *grinning even wider at his reaction*
J: GAAAH
me: *unable to stop grinning* stop making me laugh!
…I really wish you could hang out with my husband.
You know the animated Joker, voiced by Luke Skywalker? (in a dozen series)
He smiles like that when he’s a mischief. (is also a total fan)
I think you’d get along…..
I’d love to hang out with you guys~! It sounds like it would be LOADS of fun!
And think of all the
troublemischiefcreativity your hubby and mine could come up with. It’s both terrifying and delightful to contemplate!XD XD XD
At my office, “Hey, you want to see something neat?” is usually responded to with a laugh and “Wow, how did you make that happen?”, followed by “So what did I miss that would let that happen?” and a fix.
Unless it gets out into customer hands. Then there are issues.
All of this is excellent practice for when the Evil League of Evil takes over and cleans up the mess then ruthlessly and with malice aforethought leaves people alone.
I’m in.