Reply #16: You won't get an argument from me... [View All]

[regnaD kciN]

At one software company I worked for, one of the other programmers started using meth, and really became psychotic. It got to the point where I might say hello to him as he passed by my office, and he would turn and yell "FUCK YOU!" at me, storm off, and start packing up his belongings because he could not work in a place with such harrassment. We would be in meetings, and he would suddenly go off and start ripping everyone else, then storm out. He once refused to release a game engine to my project until I had signed a statement (without having looked at the code, needless to say) admitting that his engine was perfect and that any problems in implementing it would be due to my own incompetence rather than anything he had done wrong. He also thought that drug dealers had built a tunnel under his house and were going to break in, and so he wanted a handgun to defend himself. Needless to say, at that moment, all my fellow employees started thinking about getting their own handguns to defend themselves from him. Finally, he flipped out entirely, stopped coming to work, and disappeared with one of our computers containing all the code for which we had already paid him. Our owner and one project's producer actually had to track him down, bounty-hunter style, corner him at a cheap motel where he was hiding, apparently from his new girlfriend's ex-boyfriend, and force him to return our equipment. In case you couldn't guess, most of his resulting code turned out to be gibberish, and had to be re-written from scratch.

Why didn't he just get fired? Our owner was a compassionate sort, and thought he could "help" him out of his problems. Needless to say, once meth-head had cleaned up and re-established himself as a game programmer, he gave a long, bitter on-line interview where he essentially blasted everyone at our company, and especially the owner who tried to help him, for being unworthy of being in the industry. :eyes: