Recently, I paid ATT $500 to close my account and zero it out.
Fast forward 6 months, they send me a letter saying they need $300 more for cancellation fees or it will be sent to collections.
Write all the bad code you can, papi.
One line of code caused AT&T to lose $60 million
Submitted 11 months ago by rglullis@communick.news to programming@programming.dev
https://engineercodex.substack.com/p/how-one-line-of-code-caused-a-60
Comments
beefpeach@infosec.pub 11 months ago
heeplr@feddit.de 11 months ago
Sure it’s cancellation fees? This doesn’t seem legal.
olafurp@lemmy.world 11 months ago
There are contract breaking fees attached to contracts sometime to prevent switching providers. I’m pretty sure everybody agrees it reduces competition.
cynar@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Interestingly, this software was not tested. Testing was actually bypassed as per management’s request because the code change was small.
I don’t think much needs to be said about this…
ultratiem@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
;
There I fucked up your entire codebase.
boredtortoise@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Someone should write more of those lines
rglullis@communick.news 11 months ago
So you want more people to lose full phone service?
Sanctus@lemmy.world 11 months ago
No, we’re suffering, and most people just want these “people” with billions in revenue to pay their fair share instead of having twelve full time tax representatives whose only job is to make sure the public doesn’t see a dime after using public spaces and resources all year.
lemann@lemmy.one 11 months ago
Would get more people upset that they don’t have an alternative (assuming this affects one of those cable monopoly communities)
drolex@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
I work for the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company, and I think I talk for everyone when I say: yes, why not
spudwart@spudwart.com 11 months ago
Damn, if only the systems your phone network were ran on hadn’t been forcibly closed source and scared good devs from interacting with you because of your sue-happy nature regarding BSD/Unix.
0x0@programming.dev 11 months ago
And it wasn’t COBOL.
Neato@kbin.social 11 months ago
darkfiremp3@beehaw.org 11 months ago
I feel like anyone doing any automation with aws could hit this
drolex@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
If one single line of code can make you lose $60M, surely you’ll ensure due review processes and independent QA and clear requirements and regular audits and a middle management not only doing KPI monitoring for a failing upper management. Right? Rrrright?
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 11 months ago
AT&T made 120.74 billion in 2022. They can afford a lot of bad code.
NewNewAccount@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Revenue is not profit.
MxM111@kbin.social 11 months ago
“60,000 people lost full phone service, half of AT&T's network was down, and 500 airline flights were delayed”
BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk 11 months ago
Hahahaha, you’re kidding right? I shit you not, I’ve literally seen a single line change almost cost a company £150MM during testing because “we need to test in prod because the guy we need to run the test hasn’t got access to the QA environment”
Best part was the actual change, there was a bug where a number that should’ve been divided by 100 was being multiplied by 100, the Dev somehow managed to implement the fix in such a was that the number was multiplied by a further 100.
snowe@programming.dev 11 months ago
Knight Capital Group lost $440 million in just 45 minutes due to a repurposed feature flag.
henricodolfing.com/…/project-failure-case-study-k…
Kinda makes the att one seem tiny in comparison.