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Comment by happywolf | Hacker News Reader

The horror story that I heard was a disgruntled engineer silently replaced the source codes (C++ based) in the project with compiled binary object files and he kept the source codes on his local computer, not checking those in. He did this over an extended period of time to make sure this crept into the backup tapes as well. No one found out because each engineer owned a code module of their own. Then he resigned.

When his successor tried to debug and enhance the code base, the core files were basically all stripped binary object files...

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Some people who aren't critical to the company just have to go and try to prove the company wrong.

This is so childish and stupid it aggravates me. It only proves that the engineer was probably not a valuable asset and he really proved the company point with these actions. Hopefully he was on a performance plan or something similar.

At companies where there have been poor code control practices I have maintained git repositories locally of various files in the system to avoid exactly this thing, and to find issues/when things have changed (this too often is because operations teams don't like to maintain their files properly, so I go out to web servers and pull down configuration files on a daily basis and check them in somewhere. Now I'm telling them when their files changed).

Regardless, I have to assume this is before git/svn/mercurial. At least I hope it is.

The company used svn.

Not sure how viable to check file changes regularly since 1) everybody had their plates full 2) the system was complex with a lot of black magic that 'just worked', thousands of source files, within the mix were compiled binaries (mainly 3rd party hardware drivers) and a lot of libraries (Qt, Boost, etc.)

A friend of mine did something similar, not that long ago.

His employer told him to complete a 1-year masters in computing at his expense, including a course on ethics, or see them in court. He chose the degree course.

That's almost benevolent on the part of the employer -- having more degrees can only be good for the person's employability, and it was most likely an enriching experience to boot. Oh well, i guess some people have larger hearts than i do! :)

I suspect my friend had friends in high places, or else the employer (a well-known name) was looking to avoid public embarrassment.

My god, i'm surprised that person didn't land up in court :/

Is that illegal though? Sure, if you can PROVE it is done on purpose then maybe, but assuming you cannot then is it? Because if it is then any misconfigured version control or any employee that doesn't do what is expected of them is also breaking the law.

Is it worth the risk to find out? Court ain't cheap, even if you win.

As an employee of a company that provides you a paycheck, you "owe" them your best effort. If you don't want to try, quit - but don't sabotage. That is juvenile and perhaps illegal and certainly unethical.

> you "owe" them your best effort

Yeah, and the company "owes" you as high a salary as they can possibly afford...

I'd argue that committing compiled binary instead of source is a minimal effort, something you learn the first 2 weeks on the job.

> Yeah, and the company "owes" you as high a salary as they can possibly afford...

When a company makes a job offer, you agree on the salary. For X dollars, you agree to be their employee and do your job. Your job is not to sabotage a project or commit binaries where people should commit source code...

Pretty sure if you had employees you would not love it if they did that.

I'm not a lawyer but isn't provability kind of orthogonal to legality?

Seems pretty straightforward to me: the intellectual property of the code this employee was developing lies with the company (per default).

Either he still has the code, in which case he's supposed to hand it over.

Or he deliberately destroyed it, which means destruction of company property. Deliberate? Yes, because a programmer claiming "oh didn't realize you wanted to keep the source codes!" is not going to fly very far in court.

(BTW I'm modelling this on my assumptions about how this would play in Dutch court, which can be delightfully pragmatic. So there might be some differences how this would work in the USA, such as others commented, ability to afford justice in the first place)

Nope, the CEO decided to move on. Small company.

this is why we have code. reviews. haha. Yeah...I'd file a criminal lawsuit on his ass though.

Well, if the troublemaker is allowed to show the code from his own laptop, you might not see the problem.

Normally, when we do code reviews, I just ask for the repository location and branch or tag name. I check it out myself to review before we meet as a group.

"Criminal lawsuit"

These two things don't go together in most jurisdictions.

In the US, only the "State" can file a criminal lawsuit. Imagine trying to explain this crime to a county prosecutor!

It's called "private prosecution". And there are still a few parts of the US where it is possible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prosecution#United_Sta...

That's insane.. He must have really hated his job.

and everyone else. Seriously. No sympathetic human being would do this without a deep-rooted hatred to everyone involved.

my theory is that in every case where this has ever happened, all of the saboteur's ex-coworkers afterward said "I'm not surprised in the slightest."

Or they talk about her like the neighbors of a mass murderer. "She was a quiet woman, always kept to herself."

That's a good way to get your ass sued, or worse. Most employment agreements specifically state the company owns the code, which you have now stolen.

what happened as a result? im curious to know.

The CEO decided to just move on because it was a small company with less than 30 people. Litigation would take too much time and money.

The engineering team took a couple of months to figure out what that module did and rewrote from scratch.

thanks for replying. i can see where the cost would outweigh just re-writing.

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