Not me, but a friend... but boy did it affect me...
I still don't know how to react to this one. Not so long ago an old friend revealed that he'd passed bored moments at work fiddling with colleague's code...

This was old mainframe days, and the little scamp, who was slightly senior to me, had worked out how to make changes to the code library without it showing up on change logs. Basically, he was hacking.

And what he did, when bored, was to play with things. Little things. Sometimes he'd introduce errors into people's code. Subtle ones, but there nonetheless.

I used to get bollocked for stupid errors in my code. Or for misspelling my own name in comments. Problem was, I had no recollection of making the error so I had little in the way of defense except to shrug. For a while this went on, my confidence slowly sapping under the weight of repeated bollockings for things I couldn't really explain.

One of my colleagues later became a good friend. Then I discover what a twat he'd been. Someone he didn't actually like had much worse things done than I had to her code and it led to her having a breakdown.

Now, these days the guy's generally a good all round egg, but it's hard to feel close any more when I realise how he'd amused himself at work... and the fact that it quite possibly caused a lot of damage to my career. Did I really forget that there are twelve months in a year, or was it his hackery for his own amusement that introduced that error?

So when I read some of the comments about sabotaging the work of a colleague, I find myself wondering just how much damage that bit of fun actually caused - especially if it never came out into the open.

I guess I'm feeling like a right miserable git right now....
(clopinettes, Tue 13 Jan 2009, 22:31, 2 replies)

No, you were right first time,
HE'S the git. He's untrustworthy. Why are you still friends with him? Sack the twat off.
(Juan Quar is clinging to her front teeth on, Wed 14 Jan 2009, 7:42, closed)

I don't think sucking him off's the answer, personally
Oh
( Monty Boyce, My cheese game is strong, Wed 14 Jan 2009, 9:18, closed)