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Software developers are not necessarily bright people

AdamK47

AdamK47

Lifer
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I'm reminded of the story about the guy(s?) who scarfed fractions of cents off bank transactions between banks. Something like the fifth or sixth decimal point. Went on for years before getting busted. Don't remember the details, dates, or even if it was fact or fiction.
 
AdamK47 said:
Take for example this guy.

fortune.com

Employee arrested and charged with stealing over $302,000 after authorities say he was inspired by the movie ‘Office Space’ | Fortune

No fax machines were injured in the process.
fortune.com fortune.com

He was able to create code that took shipping fees and place it in his own account.

He wasn't able to grasp how easy that would be to track. The icing on the cake to prove his idiocy was that he put it all in GameStop stock options. Total dumbass.
Click to expand...
Here's a non-firewalled version

www.yahoo.com

Employee arrested and charged with stealing over $302,000 after authorities say he was inspired by the movie ‘Office Space’

No fax machines were injured in the process.
www.yahoo.com www.yahoo.com
Lost_in_the_HTTP said:
I'm reminded of the story about the guy(s?) who scarfed fractions of cents off bank transactions between banks. Something like the fifth or sixth decimal point. Went on for years before getting busted. Don't remember the details, dates, or even if it was fact or fiction.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that story goes way, way back and probably involved some assembler level coding.
 
Lost_in_the_HTTP said:
I'm reminded of the story about the guy(s?) who scarfed fractions of cents off bank transactions between banks. Something like the fifth or sixth decimal point. Went on for years before getting busted. Don't remember the details, dates, or even if it was fact or fiction.
Click to expand...
www.quora.com

Can a programmer embezzle money by shaving fractions of a cent from many bank transactions?

Answer (1 of 4): It only worked the first time it was done in the 1970s. Controls in any competent financial organization will detect any unusual activity to accounts that historically don’t receive any or such abnormal activity. A newly created account suddenly receiving thousands of small depos...
www.quora.com www.quora.com

 
You'd think someone with that level of access would be able to do it in a more stealthy and smater way. At least start a label company and funnel money over to that so it looks legit. Works for Doug Ford!

As a side note anyone see my red stapler?
 
Smart is a tricky thing. Especially so in technical professions.

Techbros are sort of the new blue collar tradesmen. Their pay is dependent on completing a technical task well, not unlike a plumber or an electrician or a painter.

This isn't to denegrate the work or the intelligence of people who do this work, but it can be done well, sometimes very very well, without the kinds of traits we think of as smart (perceptiveness, ability to think abstractly about problems, open-minded approach to problems, etc).

It's always been weird to me, growing up with a software engineer as a father, that engineers are automatically lumped into the "smart people" group. Educated, learned, dogged and determined? Sure. All good qualities for a person to have.

Smart? Not always, not by a long shot.
 
I worked in IT for about 15 years and I didn't run into a lot of dumb people. In fact, my experience was quite the opposite. But I sort of came up through the ranks and had a fairly unique perspective. I started setting up all of the necessary parameters needed to run the nightly batch jobs. That was extremely painstaking work that had to be absolutely correct or the batch process could end up shitting the bed and piss off all of the senior pgmers.

From there I started taking evening courses in COBOL/CICS, JCL,VSAM and a few others. As I learned more they gave me more responsibility and after a couple of years I was ready to be an entry level coder.

I never really considered it a difficult job, but my previous "careers" had been associate attorney at a crimlaw firm, legal research and a financial analyst for a mortgage bank. So from my perspective, coding was much easier for me because either your program works or it doesn't. None of the uncertainties involved with those other areas of expertise.
 
VirtualLarry said:
It was the plot of "Superman IV" (?)
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pmv said:
Which then gave the idea to the characters in Office Space, no? (If I remember rightly).
Click to expand...

Superman III, Tsk tsk, you lazy nerds!

It's the one with Richard Prior, for some reason, but is also strangely entertaining. He writes the code to steal fractions of fractions of pennies from bank transactions that then siphons all of those from multiple banks into a series of rando servers that then eventually deposit in that secret lair-based-bank or whatever. That creepy old lady eats a can of metal, and is eaten by the robot lair that then turns her into a robot-Borg thingy.

It's the strangest thing going on in any of those Superman movies, but it's also way better than anything in Superman IV, (The Quest for Truth?) which is the one where evil He-Man Superman starts collecting nuclear weapons and hurtling them around
 
VirtualLarry said:
Thanks for the clarification. Much nerd cred. I haven't watched those since the 80s/90s.
Click to expand...

I just chuckled because when I first read the subject, my only thought was: "You NumbNUTS thief! Everyone already knows this is the plot of Superman III and is such easy trash these days, that the morons in Office Space preached it to the world years ago! Everyone loves that movie!" 😀

It means many of us are basically thinking the same thing, haha.
 
zinfamous said:
Superman III, Tsk tsk, you lazy nerds!

It's the one with Richard Prior, for some reason, but is also strangely entertaining. He writes the code to steal fractions of fractions of pennies from bank transactions that then siphons all of those from multiple banks into a series of rando servers that then eventually deposit in that secret lair-based-bank or whatever. That creepy old lady eats a can of metal, and is eaten by the robot lair that then turns her into a robot-Borg thingy.

It's the strangest thing going on in any of those Superman movies, but it's also way better than anything in Superman IV, (The Quest for Truth?) which is the one where evil He-Man Superman starts collecting nuclear weapons and hurtling them around
Click to expand...
That scene with the older lady turning into an evil android killing machine is the most memorable from that movie. Probably the same for most kids like me at the time watching it at home on those new fangled VCRs.
 
There's an album out there called Wicked Cool, Coming Attractions. It's all made up silly songs intended to spoof 50s and early 60's Rock and Roll. Most of it's pretty good. One track is basically a take off of 'Monster Mash'. Another called 'Keep Your Eyes on Me' is about some celebrity that demands constant attention and the limelight. There's one section in it:

She had an operation
Did something to her face
And now she looks like something
That came from Outer Space.

I saw a picture of Hatcher that reminded me of that, but really looked more like the Scream mask.

 
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