I loved it when it happened. My boss “Delspe” was miffed that his H1-B Work permit was rejected. I celebrated in silence! He went about telling everyone that he could about how unfair life was to him. Between you and me, I think his VISA application was rejected since he’s a manager. Have you ever seen a manager who works? And do they really expect the US govt. to give managers a “work permit”? But don’t tell him that I told you the above, ok?

And a very upset Delspe spied me taking a coffee break and tagged himself along with me. That’s his way of connecting with the team to improve team morale. I hate it when my boss invites himself to have lunch or coffee with me. Well, don’t I deserve at least some time alone? And over coffee, he was telling me that he would have taken up a government job in India, if not for the corruption factor. And this month’s story is about corruption in IT. Well, does corruption exist in IT?

Hmm… this is what happened to me and I leave it to you folks to tell me if corruption exists in software.

This is a three part episode. I have encountered different stories of corruption and will try to write about each one over the next 3 months… And here goes

The Onsite manager that bribed the tester

“IknowitAll” was the name of my onsite manager. If you look at the designations in “Ele Info Systems”, they start from Junior IT Engineer, IT Engineer, Senior IT Engineer, and go on to Junior SQA Tester, SQA Tester, Senior SQA Tester, Junior Software Tester, Tester, Senior Software Tester, Junior Module Tester, Module Tester, Senior Module Tester, Junior Feature Tester, Feature Tester, Senior Feature Tester, Junior Lead Tester, Lead tester, Senior lead tester, Junior assistant test manager, assistant test manager, senior assistant test manager, junior associate test manager, associate test manager, senior associate test manager, junior test manager, test manager, senior test manager.. and so on.

When we joined “Ele Info Systems,” we were told that if we work hard enough we could get a promotion. But with so many designations, promotions and level changes are very periodic over here. They happen almost once a year to everyone.

Well, coming back to the story, we were just 3 days away from completing the project. And as usual, I had to sacrifice all my daylight and nightlight hours for the project. I even missed the IPL finals. And that’s when I found the problem.

I found that if the application were to be deployed, it would break at least 4-5 downstream systems, which can bring business to a halt. This occurred because nobody cared to give enough thought of testing outside the scope of the project. Just because the scope was clearly documented, all of us had conveniently ignored this part of testing the critical downstream systems after our systems go live into production. I would have logged a defect, but we had clear instructions from “Delspe” and “Iknowitall” to call them when we find any high priority defects. The client had access to our defect logs and who wants to be truthful to the client?

Anyways, I decided to call “Iknowitall” and talk to him. I ignored “Delspe” since he would not understand much about this, anyways. And when I talked with “Iknowitall”, I realized that he’d missed including this in our plans. Apparently, the client had clearly called out about this and this was a miss from his end.

“Iknowitall” was looking for a promotion and he understood that this would put him in jeopardy. That’s when he made the suggestion. He told me, “Don’t talk about this”. I asked “Why?” He said “Well, you know, it’s best for you and me that we don’t discuss this at all. When it goes to production, I’ll talk about this and convince these people that it’s their goof up”. I told him”It’s not fair. What’s best is that we both sit together to try and fix this”. He said “It’s too late to fix it. Let’s just ignore it”. and the call went on for half-an-hour. And then it happened.

“Iknowitall” said, “If you promise not to talk about it, a reward would be awaiting”. I was flabbergasted. “What reward?”

“Let’s say that you can maybe get a trip over here for some time. Let’s just ignore that you found out the entire thing and go on with life. Revealing this defect now means that we’d have to answer a lot of questions to a lot of people. And the company might lose the contract”.

And the next 30 minutes went on him convincing me to take up this offer. I refused. I refused to be a part of this mockery.

And do you know what happened next? Well, I got re-assigned to a different module that was tested a 1000 times before and my friend “Ihavenobrains” was assigned this piece of testing for the next week. The bug was not fixed, it went to production and it bombed.

“Ihavenobrains” was made the scapegoat in front of the clients and “Iknowitall” shouted at him in front of the clients. Apparently, the clients were not too concerned since some of the downstream systems were not in use anymore and that helped bring down the criticality of the issue. The team worked over the next 72 hours and got a solution in the next 3 days and “Iknowitall” reaped the rewards and the promotions. And I am still here, writing this note to you, since that’s all that I could do.

How much more corrupt can life get?

Fake Software TesterA Fake Tester's DiaryFake Tester,Fake Tester's DiaryI loved it when it happened. My boss “Delspe” was miffed that his H1-B Work permit was rejected. I celebrated in silence! He went about telling everyone that he could about how unfair life was to him. Between you and me, I think his VISA application was rejected since...