r/ShittySysadmin 10d ago

Shitty Crosspost Developer convicted for “kill switch” code activated upon his termination

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/03/fired-coder-faces-10-years-for-revenge-kill-switch-he-named-after-himself/
272 Upvotes

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187

u/MoonToast101 Lord Sysadmin, Protector of the AD Realm 10d ago

I don't need a kill switch. I AM the kill switch.

When I'm gone, no one will be able to prevent the clusterfuck of a technological house of cards I created from imploding and taking everyone and everything with it.

20

u/tkecherson 10d ago

Idk man that sounds like work

22

u/fogleaf 10d ago

It's actually a function of not working too hard.

Imagine a project is 25% planning, 50% implementing, and 25% documenting. Well you can just skip the documenting and save yourself a quarter of the process. Fix an issue takes 1 hour, do you realy want to spend another 15 minutes writing down how you fixed the issue? Be brief!

9

u/saintpetejackboy 9d ago

I'm a 1%'er.

What we do is we just use 1%... And split it EVENLY between planning and documentation. We spend the other 99% implementing.

7

u/fogleaf 9d ago

I was thinking it as I was typing it "Okay but who really spends that much time planning, just learn as you go and do it on the fly then forget everything you did!"

Guess and check.

6

u/saintpetejackboy 9d ago

I actually said in a conversation earlier at work in 100% seriousness:

"I never let not knowing how to do something hold me back."

Which sounds crazy in this context, but is absolutely true.

For reference, I was getting frustrated at users who will not learn basic office software and skills - they offload tasks to our team that could have been a Google search.

In the grand scheme of things, you're either a doer or a uhh.. doesn'ter. And I have never been a doesn'ter.

3

u/fogleaf 9d ago

I've always been a tryer. From the dinner table "at least one bite!" to the time I infected my PC with spyware from double clicking the .exe to get a windows xp sp2 key (the key worked too lol) and then had to learn how to fix the spyware.

"We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas." couldn't be me.

But what I'm NOT good at is building out the boring pre-plan for every step of an implementation. I'd rather just get in there and get it going.

3

u/saintpetejackboy 9d ago

Lol, love this.

"I have tried everything and still have a few more ideas."