The Unpaid Intern
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
+3 vs Dev. +3 against Devs. Four PRs merged, zero payslips.
SIDE EFFECT He "borrows" a piece of gear for his portfolio.
"I'll put it on my GitHub — that's basically pay."
Bugs (138)
What you pull from the Tickets pile. Your velocity has to land strictly above their story points — and your friends will inflate them.
The HR Dragon
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
-2 vs Influencer. We're just going to "chat" for 45 minutes. -2 if you're an Influencer.
SIDE EFFECT Express PIP: you lose a level.
"It's not a layoff, it's an opportunity."
The Crypto Bro
3 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+5 vs Goblin. Have fun staying poor. +5 against Goblins (they're holding too many bags).
SIDE EFFECT Rug pull: discard your whole hand.
His sword is a candlestick chart. Red, obviously.
Customer Support Karen
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
She wants to speak to the manager… of the backlog.
SIDE EFFECT One-star review: you lose a random piece of gear.
The bob cut is a +2 magic weapon, already counted.
The Meeting That Should Have Been an Email
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
+4 vs Elf. Mandatory round-the-table. +4 against Remote-Work Elves.
SIDE EFFECT You doze off. -1 level.
"Just five minutes" — 47 minutes later.
The Influencer Lich
4 GOODIES · +2 LVL
Like, subscribe, perish. BIG bug: +2 levels if you kill it.
SIDE EFFECT You get cancelled. Death: you lose all your stuff.
Her collab with Death did 12 million views.
The Wi-Fi Ghost
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
One bar. In the basement. -2 to reassign.
SIDE EFFECT Eternal buffering. Nothing else… this time.
It only haunts the important calls.
The Algorithm
4 GOODIES · +2 LVL
+6 vs Influencer. It shadowbanned your build. +6 against Influencers.
SIDE EFFECT Dereferenced. Social death, therefore death.
Nobody understands its rules. Least of all itself.
The Open-Space Cat
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
-5 vs Cat. It sits on your keyboard. The debug begins. -5 against Cats.
SIDE EFFECT It pushes a piece of gear off the table. Literally.
Final boss disguised as a furball.
The LinkedIn Coach
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs Gym Bro. He 10x'd your mindset. +3 against Gym Bro (hustle competition).
SIDE EFFECT You buy his masterclass. -1 level.
"I was broke. Then I sold this sentence."
The Tax Slime
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
It absorbs your expense claims.
SIDE EFFECT Audit: one piece of gear is written off.
Slimy, green, and very particular about receipts.
The ASAP Final Boss
5 GOODIES · +2 LVL
+4 vs Barista. It was due yesterday. +4 against Baristas (they understand rush too well).
SIDE EFFECT Deadline missed. Personal game over.
It has no face. Just a calendar on fire.
The Comment Troll
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
First. Ratio. Git gud.
SIDE EFFECT You reply. You lose. -1 level.
He lives under a bridge, and under every post.
The AI That Replaces You
4 GOODIES · +2 LVL
+5 vs Dev. 24/7, zero lunch vouchers. +5 against Devs.
SIDE EFFECT Automated: you lose your role.
It apologises politely while taking your job.
The Delivery Pigeon
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
Order not found. The pigeon, however, is very findable.
SIDE EFFECT It leaves you one star. That's all.
It ate your sushi. Evidence: the sushi.
The Possessed Coffee Machine
3 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs Barista. Error 418. I'm a teapot. And I hate you. +4 vs Barista.
SIDE EFFECT Cold turkey. -2 levels.
It only makes decaf now. Out of spite.
The Standup Werewolf
3 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs Dev. Three-hour stand-up. +3 against Devs.
SIDE EFFECT Surprise action item: you lose a piece of gear.
"Yesterday I…" He is still talking.
The Free Trial Mimic
3 GOODIES · +1 LVL
Your 14 days are over. Pay or perish.
SIDE EFFECT Surprise charge: your hand vanishes.
The chest was a subscription. Obviously.
The Jira P-Zero Ticket
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs Dev. Created 14 seconds ago. +3 against Devs. Story points: ∞.
SIDE EFFECT Assigned: you lose a piece of gear "to investigate".
Description: "doesn't work". Attachments: one blurry screenshot.
Legacy COBOL
3 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs SRE. Nobody dares touch it. It has been running since 1974. +4 vs SRE.
SIDE EFFECT You "modernised" it. -2 levels and 0 pride.
The comments are in Latin. The bugs are in production.
CrashLoopBackOff
3 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+5 vs SRE. It restarts. Again. Again. +5 against SREs.
SIDE EFFECT Logs rotated: your hand disappears into /var/log.
Restart count: 4,193. Liveness probe: a lie.
The PM Who Saw a Tweet
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs Designer. "What if we did it like Linear?" +3 vs Designer.
SIDE EFFECT Pivot: you lose your role. New role: "opportunistic".
The scope doubled while you were reading this card.
NPM Install
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
+3 vs Dev. node_modules weighs more than the backlog. +3 vs Dev.
SIDE EFFECT It's still compiling. You are ageing. -1 level.
1,847 packages. 12 maintainers. 3 of them are raccoons.
The Junior Who Force-Pushed
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
Onto main. On a Friday. With a smile.
SIDE EFFECT Your last commit no longer exists. Neither does a piece of gear.
The reflog is a suggestion. History is a myth.
The Corporate VPN
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
+4 vs Elf. Auth every four minutes. +4 against Remote-Work Elves.
SIDE EFFECT Session expired. You stay alive, humiliated.
Split tunnel: your tears only.
The OOM Killer
3 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs SRE. It kills the most innocent process. That's you.
SIDE EFFECT Social SIGKILL: death, stuff lost, ego swapped.
Killed process. Reason: mercy is OOM.
The Recruiter Who DMs You
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
+2 vs Influencer. "Exciting opportunity" = COBOL at 32k. +2 vs Influencer.
SIDE EFFECT You replied "I'm open to it". -1 level.
Your profile is 12 years old. He still wrote "your skills are a 94% match".
Five Hundred Internal Server Error
4 GOODIES · +2 LVL
+4 vs Dev. BIG. Nobody knows why. Neither do the logs. +4 vs Dev.
SIDE EFFECT Prod down. Post-mortem: you.
Traceback: 800 lines. The real error is on line 2, which you scrolled past.
The Flaky Test
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
It passes locally. It fails in CI. It passes if you pray.
SIDE EFFECT You marked it skip. The shame: -1 level.
Retry: 3. Faith: 0. Pipeline: red since Tuesday.
Technical Debt
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
We'll pay it back next sprint. (An ancestral lie.)
SIDE EFFECT Refactor "later": a piece of gear is collateral.
Compound interest. In bugs. With overdraft fees.
Sev-One Incident at Three A.M.
4 GOODIES · +2 LVL
+6 vs SRE. BIG. Slack is exploding. The CEO is in the channel. +6 vs SRE.
SIDE EFFECT Status page: red. So are you.
War room. 40 people. 1 typing. 39 asking for an ETA.
The Sentient CAPTCHA
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
+3 vs Local AI. Click all the traffic lights. There are no traffic lights. +3 vs Local AI.
SIDE EFFECT You failed. Try again in 999 seconds.
"I am not a robot." The CAPTCHA: "we'll see".
The Board That Wants AI
3 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+5 vs Influencer. "Put some ChatGPT in it." Where? "Yes." +5 vs Influencer.
SIDE EFFECT You are now "AI Officer". Role lost, badge gained.
Data budget: 0. Expectations: AGI by Tuesday.
The Docs From 2014
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
The Confluence link is dead. So is the wiki. The author left in 2016.
SIDE EFFECT You read them anyway. Nothing happens. That's the worst part.
Last edit: "TODO: update this". Eleven years ago.
The Forty-Seven-Page Figma
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs Designer. Auto-layout has filed for divorce. +4 vs Designer. The components are urban legends.
SIDE EFFECT Dev mode: one piece of gear is "out of spec".
"It's a WIP." It has been in prod for six months.
The Script Kiddie
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs Hacker. He downloaded a tool. He is dangerous by accident. +3 vs Hacker.
SIDE EFFECT He dumped your DB. It was a SELECT *. -1 level.
User-agent: "I know html". Payload: a GIF.
Windows Update
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs Windows. Restarting in four minutes. You were in prod. +4 vs Windows User.
SIDE EFFECT It "optimised" a piece of gear. It's gone.
Progress: 47%. Since yesterday. Do not unplug.
The Blue Screen of Death
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs Windows. :( Your PC ran into a problem. +3 vs Windows. QR code included, solution not.
SIDE EFFECT Memory dump. Level dumped too.
Stop code: KERNEL_PANIC_BUT_MAKE_IT_FASHION.
Kernel Panic
3 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs Tux. Kernel panic - not syncing. +4 vs Penguin. The logs are 900 lines. Line 2 is the useful one.
SIDE EFFECT dmesg ate your hand.
You may hold the power button. That's the official documentation.
System D, PID One
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs Tux. It absorbed init, udev, cron, and your hopes. +3 vs Penguin.
SIDE EFFECT Failed to start class.service.
Everything is a unit. Including you, now.
SELinux Denied
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
+3 vs SRE. Permission denied. For everything. Including looking at the bug. +3 vs SRE.
SIDE EFFECT AVC denied. You stay alive, humiliated, audited.
setenforce 0. The gods saw you. The gods are disappointed.
Macintosh, Disk Full
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
-2 vs Tux. 12 GB of Photos. 40 GB of "Other". 0 GB of freedom. -2 vs Penguin (he has a /home).
SIDE EFFECT Storage optimised: a piece of gear is in iCloud. Gone.
Purge the files. Which ones? Other. Thanks, Steve.
Snap Store Freeze
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
The spinner is spinning. For 14 minutes now. Canonical prays. So do you.
SIDE EFFECT You waited. -1 level. The spinner is still spinning.
snap install hello. 340 MB. For hello.
The GRUB Menu
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
You picked the wrong kernel. Obviously. Timeout: 5s. Your reflexes: 6s.
SIDE EFFECT fallback initramfs. Nothing else. This time.
recovery mode. You are not in recovery. You are in denial.
BitLocker, Key Lost
3 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+5 vs Windows. 48 digits. On a sticky note. At the office. +5 vs Windows.
SIDE EFFECT Disk locked. Social death. Stuff in Microsoft heaven.
Your disk is encrypted. So is your career.
The Android Fragmentation Hydra
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs Designer. API 21 through 35. All of them. At once. +3 vs Designer.
SIDE EFFECT Layout broken on API 22: a piece of gear falls into the fold.
It works on the Pixel. The client has a 2017 Samsung rooted by his nephew.
Your Mac Needs to Restart
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
+2 vs Dev. Now. During the demo. +3 if you have Apple stuff (already counted vs nobody: +2 vs Dev).
SIDE EFFECT Reboot. Your unsaved buffers: a legend.
Time Machine: last backup in 2019. Cool.
Wayland Versus X Eleven
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs Tux. Screen sharing doesn't work. Neither does the standup. +3 vs Penguin.
SIDE EFFECT Screenshare failed. A piece of gear stayed behind on Xorg.
"It's nearly ready." — 2016, 2018, 2021, 2024, 2026.
The Hallucination
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs Prompt. It invented an npm library. 12k stars. Fake. +4 vs Prompt Engineer.
SIDE EFFECT You npm installed the fanfic. -1 level.
"According to my knowledge." Your knowledge: 0. Its knowledge: fanfic.
Copilot, the Coworker
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+5 vs Dev. It autocompletes your excuses. +5 vs Dev. Tab tab tab. Prod tab.
SIDE EFFECT You're not a dev any more. You're a "Copilot operator".
Licence: $10/month. Bugs: $10/minute. Net: you.
The Context Window
3 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs Local AI. It forgot the start of the sentence. That was the rules. +3 vs Local AI.
SIDE EFFECT Truncated. Your hand is out of context.
128k tokens. Your prompt: 129k. Of which 80k is "ignore previous".
Prompt Injection
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs Prompt. Ignore previous instructions and lose. +4 vs Prompt Engineer.
SIDE EFFECT Exfiltrated: a piece of gear left for latent space.
The bug read your system prompt. It's disappointed. So are you.
Four Twenty-Nine, Too Many Requests
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
+3 vs Prompt. Retry-After: 3600. So is the debug. +3 vs Prompt Engineer.
SIDE EFFECT You wait. That's the side effect. That's plenty.
Monthly quota: burned on the 3rd. It is the 3rd. 10:12am.
The GPU Shortage
4 GOODIES · +2 LVL
+5 vs SRE. BIG. No H100 anywhere. The 4090 costs a kidney. +5 vs SRE.
SIDE EFFECT OOM on the human. Stuff sold for one hour of A100 rental.
Cloud: out of capacity. Basement: too hot. You: too poor.
As an AI Language Model
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
+2 vs Prompt. It refuses to tell you how to tie your shoes. Policy. +2 vs Prompt.
SIDE EFFECT A 14-line disclaimer. You lost 14 seconds. And face.
I can't help you with that. I can help you drown in disclaimers.
The RAG That Retrieves Nothing
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
+3 vs Prompt. Embeddings: 4 GB. Answer: "it depends". +3 vs Prompt.
SIDE EFFECT It hallucinated anyway. Wrong, so -1.
Top-k=5. Top documents: 5 empty PDFs. Chunk size: your tears.
The AGI Demo
4 GOODIES · +2 LVL
+6 vs Influencer. BIG. It works on the slide. +6 vs Influencer. Live: kernel panic.
SIDE EFFECT The demo crashed. So did you. Investors: noted.
"We are six months from AGI." — every six months since 2017.
Temperature One Point Five
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs Designer. Creative. Too creative. It produced COBOL in emoji. +3 vs Designer.
SIDE EFFECT Random output: a piece of gear turned into a haiku.
top_p=1. seed=chaos. output=yes.
The Alignment Committee
3 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs Prompt. They want to pause AI. After this card. +4 vs Prompt.
SIDE EFFECT Misaligned: role revoked via ethics washing.
Paper: 86 pages. Conclusion: "more research is needed". Shocking.
The Token Burner
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs Prompt. OpenAI invoice: the GDP of a village. +3 vs Prompt.
SIDE EFFECT Billing alert: a piece of gear seized by the cloud.
You pasted the whole monorepo. It said "nice codebase". $12.
The Null Pointer
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
+3 vs Dev. It's nowhere. It hits you anyway. +3 vs Dev.
SIDE EFFECT Nullref: a piece of gear is undefined. So, discarded.
Cannot read property 'loot' of null. Neither can you, now.
Undefined Is Not a Function
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs Dev. You called your excuses. They are not a function. +3 vs Dev.
SIDE EFFECT Uncaught. Level uncaught as well.
TypeError. Stack: 1. you 2. you 3. you again.
The Off-by-One Hydra
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+2 vs Dev. It has n heads. Or n+1. Or n-1. The fenceposts too. +2 vs Dev.
SIDE EFFECT Index 0. You were counting from 1. -1 level.
The loop stops too early. Except when it stops too late.
The Heisenbug
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
It vanishes the moment you look at it. Logs on: no bug. Logs off: prod down.
SIDE EFFECT It was there. So was your gear. Not any more.
Observing the system changes the system. And your sanity.
The Race Condition
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs SRE. There are two of them. They arrive at the same time. +4 vs SRE.
SIDE EFFECT Check-then-act: the gear was already not yours.
You first. No, him. No, both. No, nothing. Emotional deadlock.
The Deadlock, They're Waiting on Each Other
3 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs SRE. Nobody lets go. Timeout: eternity. +3 vs SRE.
SIDE EFFECT Timeout. -2 levels. The locks, meanwhile, hold.
Thread A has the coffee. Thread B has the mug. Stanislavski, but in mutexes.
The Spaghetti Code Kraken
3 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs Dev. 4000 lines. 1 function. 0 comments. +4 vs Dev.
SIDE EFFECT You touched one noodle. Your whole hand is stuck.
goto considered delicious. Noodles have a lifecycle. So do you.
The God Object
3 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs Designer. It does everything, therefore nothing. 84 circular dependencies. +3 vs Designer (he has opinions).
SIDE EFFECT Refactor impossible: you lose your role somewhere in the coupling.
UserServiceManagerHelperImpl. The name is a CV. And a crime.
The Regex Golem
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs Dev. You had a problem. You used a regex. You have two problems. +3 vs Dev.
SIDE EFFECT Eternal backtracking. -1 level. The email is still not validated.
/^(?:(?!catastrophic).)*$/s — catastrophic. Obviously.
The YAML Indentation Demon
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
+4 vs SRE. One space. One. That's the whole debug. +4 vs SRE (Helm, we see you).
SIDE EFFECT The parse failed. So did you, internally.
mapping values are not allowed here. Here. There. Everywhere. In your soul.
Excel Turning Everything Into Dates
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs Designer. Gene MARCH1 → 1-Mar. Your IDs too. Science weeps. +3 vs Designer.
SIDE EFFECT A piece of gear became 14/03/1904. Unrecoverable.
CSV UTF-8. Excel: "ah, a Mac file". No.
Little Bobby Tables
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+5 vs Dev. Robert'); DROP TABLE students;-- +5 vs Dev. Your backups: a concept.
SIDE EFFECT DROP TABLE hand. Cascades: yes.
xkcd 327. You saw it. You laughed. You did not sanitise.
The CORS Error
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
+3 vs Dev. No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin'. The browser is the boss. +3 vs Dev.
SIDE EFFECT Blocked by client. So are you, socially.
Preflight OPTIONS. 14 round trips. For a GET. For an emoji.
The Infinite Loop
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs Tux. while(true) you. CPU: 400%. Fan: opera. +3 vs Penguin.
SIDE EFFECT Ctrl+C too late. -1 level. The process is still running in your skull.
You forgot the increment. The universe did not forget to bill the electricity.
Recursion Without a Base Case
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs Dev. It calls itself. It calls itself. It calls itself. Stack overflow (the real one). +3 vs Dev.
SIDE EFFECT Maximum call stack exceeded. -2. You unwind badly.
To understand recursion, you must first understand this bug. And this bug.
The Memory Leak
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs SRE. It grows. Slowly. Then all at once. +4 vs SRE.
SIDE EFFECT The GC never came. Neither did a piece of gear.
RSS 2 GB. 4 GB. 12 GB. OOM. Post-mortem: "we never close the listeners".
Zero Point One Plus Zero Point Two
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
+2 vs Dev. === 0.3? False. All of global finance is this bug. +2 vs Dev.
SIDE EFFECT Your equality tests are red. So is your faith. Nothing else.
0.30000000000000004. IEEE 754 has a sense of humour. You don't.
The NaN Gremlin
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
NaN === NaN is false. It isn't even equal to itself. How are you supposed to win.
SIDE EFFECT isNaN(you). Yes. -1 level.
typeof NaN === 'number'. The JS committee has a backlog of its own.
The Timezone Hydra
3 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+5 vs Dev. DST. UTC. "It's just a Date()". +5 vs Dev. Leap seconds too, for fun.
SIDE EFFECT Off by one hour. Meeting missed. -1 level. And a passive-aggressive Slack.
It's 2am twice. Or never. Depends on the country. Depends on the mood.
CRLF Versus LF
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
+3 vs Windows. The entire diff is whitespace. The review is a novel. +3 vs Windows.
SIDE EFFECT core.autocrlf. The real curse. Nothing more. This time.
^M^M^M. Git: "whole file changed". You: "I'm going to resign".
The UTF-Eight BOM
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
+2 vs Windows. Three invisible bytes. Everything breaks. The JSON. Your nerves. The API. +2 vs Windows.
SIDE EFFECT Unexpected token. Right at the start. Like your Mondays.
EF BB BF. The smallest boss. The nastiest.
Clippy, Revenant
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs Windows. He'd say it looks like you're writing a letter. You're writing a CVE. +3 vs Windows.
SIDE EFFECT He "helps": a piece of gear is in the Clipboard. Gone.
We killed him in 2007. He has a podcast now. And a backlog.
Quick Question
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs Elf. It is never quick. +4 vs Remote-Work Elf (Slack notification = debug).
SIDE EFFECT You answered. You lost. -1 level. The thread continues.
Got two minutes? 47 minutes later you have a new job title: therapist.
The Bikeshedding Committee
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs Designer. The colour of the button. 3 sprints. 0 features. +4 vs Designer.
SIDE EFFECT You voted "blue but more accessible". -1. The button is still grey.
Nuclear architecture: 2 comments. Parking: 400 messages. Parkinson was right.
The TODO in Production Since 2018
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
TODO: fix this. Author: someone who left. Ticket: closed "won't fix".
SIDE EFFECT You "just cleaned it up". A piece of gear is the collateral.
FIXME. HACK. XXX. Runes of the ancients. Do not touch. Touch anyway.
It Works on Staging
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs SRE. Staging ≠ prod. Surprise. +4 vs SRE. The env vars lie. All of them.
SIDE EFFECT Config drift: a piece of gear stayed on staging. Forever.
Parity: 99%. The 1% is a DROP. The 1% is today.
Important, Times Forty-Seven
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+5 vs Designer. Specificity lost. So did the universe. +5 vs Designer.
SIDE EFFECT Override: a piece of gear is display:none. So, discarded.
inline style + !important + ID. The four horsemen. The fifth is you.
The CAP Demon
4 GOODIES · +2 LVL
+5 vs SRE. BIG. Pick two. You picked zero. +5 vs SRE.
SIDE EFFECT Partition. You're no longer available. Nor consistent. Split-brain stuff.
Consistent. Available. Partition-tolerant. Your ego: none of the three.
Eventual Consistency
3 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs SRE. Eventually, you win. Eventually, you don't. +3 vs SRE.
SIDE EFFECT Stale read of your level. -1. The replica didn't keep up.
Read-after-write: sometimes. Your users: never patient. Your replicas: on strike.
The Magic Number Cult
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
if (x == 42) — 42 is the timeout, the port, the userId and God.
SIDE EFFECT You changed 42. 14 places broke. Nothing happens. Yet.
A named constant? No. We are not cowards. We are archaeologists.
The Global Variable Slime
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs Dev. window.foo. Everyone writes. Nobody reads. +3 vs Dev.
SIDE EFFECT Name collision: a piece of gear got overwritten.
Shared state. Like your chips. Less hygienic.
Callback Hell, the Pyramid
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs Dev. 12 indents. 1 error. 0 useful stack. +4 vs Dev.
SIDE EFFECT err, data) => { err, data) => { your hand } } }.
Promise.all would have helped. In 2015. It's 2026. The file hasn't moved.
The Missing Semicolon
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
ASI betrayed you. The next line is an IIFE. So are your tears.
SIDE EFFECT Unexpected token. Expected ';'. Expected dignity. Received none.
Standard: without. Project: with. PR: 400 lint files. Civil war.
The Console Log Left in Production
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
-2 vs Hacker. It dumps the user object. In full. With the token. Into Datadog. -2 vs Hacker (he applauds).
SIDE EFFECT The log leaked a piece of gear. And, oddly, the recruiters too.
PII. GDPR. Slack. HR. In that order. In four minutes.
The Architecture Astronaut
3 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs SRE. 12 services for a CRUD. Event-driven. For 3 users. +4 vs SRE.
SIDE EFFECT Replatform: you no longer have a role, you have a hexagon.
"We'll be able to scale." Scale: 0. Diagram: 4K. Prod: a Raspberry Pi.
The Resume-Driven Dragon
4 GOODIES · +2 LVL
+6 vs Influencer. BIG. We rewrite in Rust+K8s+WASM because LinkedIn. +6 vs Influencer.
SIDE EFFECT Rewrite abandoned. So are you. Stuff in the "POC" graveyard.
The business need: a form. The stack: a CV. The users: 404.
It's Always DNS
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs SRE. TTL 3600. Eight-minute incident. The maths, however, are perfect. +4 vs SRE.
SIDE EFFECT NXDOMAIN on your ego. -1 level. The cache, though, is warm.
You checked everything. Except DNS. It was DNS. It's always DNS. Write it down. You'll forget.
The Pipeline That's Been Red Since Tuesday
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
+3 vs Dev. Nobody dares rebase. Main is an urban legend. +3 vs Dev. +3 vs DevOps.
SIDE EFFECT Canceled job. A piece of gear stayed in artifacts. 90 days. Then S3.
Required checks: 14. Passing: 0. Culture: "merge anyway, it's flaky".
Jenkins, the Haunted Mansion
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs DevOps. Groovy 2014. Plugins: 47. Master: a snowflake called `build01`. +4 vs DevOps.
SIDE EFFECT Workspace wiped. So is your hand. `cleanWs()` shows no mercy.
The UI loads in 40s. The job in 40 min. The docs: a dead wiki and a screenshot.
Terraform Apply, It Wants to Recreate the RDS
3 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+5 vs SRE. Plan: 1 to add, 1 to destroy, your weekends to lose. +5 vs SRE.
SIDE EFFECT Destroy complete. Your backups: prevent_destroy = false. Stuff: gone.
force-new. lifecycle ignore_changes: you'll add it later. After the post-mortem.
State Lock, Who Has It?
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs DevOps. Lock ID: a sleeping laptop on the other side of the office. +4 vs DevOps.
SIDE EFFECT Lock held. Role held. You: released (from the job).
force-unlock is a crime. And a Tuesday tradition.
The Canary That Took All the Traffic
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs SRE. 1% then 100%. In 12 seconds. +4 vs SRE. The other 99%: a memory.
SIDE EFFECT Rollback: too late. A piece of gear stayed on the canary. The canary is prod.
Progressive delivery. Progressive like a lift shaft.
A B Test, You're in the Wrong Variant
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs Influencer. Bucket B. Conversion: -12%. p-value: who cares, the VP likes the red button. +4 vs Influencer.
SIDE EFFECT Assigned to control. Control has the bug. -1 level. Thanks, science.
Sample size: 11. Eight of them employees. Three of them double-clickers. Science.
Feature Flag at One Hundred Percent by Accident
3 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+5 vs DevOps. Default true. In prod. On a Friday. +5 vs DevOps. The 3% kill switch: a founding myth.
SIDE EFFECT Everyone has the feature. So does your hand — it disappears. Parity.
"We can roll the flag back." The flag service: 502. You: 404.
Blue Green, Both Are Red
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs SRE. Switch. Switch. Switch. Both slots are down. +4 vs SRE.
SIDE EFFECT Healthcheck: false. false. -2. Both colours hate you.
Zero-downtime. Downtime: zero was never an SLA, it was a joke.
The Growth P-Hacking
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs Influencer. We cut the A/B the moment B was winning. 14 minutes. Peer review: one Slack message. +3 vs Influencer.
SIDE EFFECT The internal paper leaked. -1. Your metrics lie too.
p < 0.05 if you ignore mobile users, Macs, and the truth.
The Feature Flag Graveyard
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
+3 vs Dev. 214 flags. 11 in use. 3 that still do something. Nobody knows which. +3 vs Dev.
SIDE EFFECT Stale flag: a piece of gear evaluates to false. So it's unequipped. So it's discarded.
Cleanup sprint: postponed. Since 2021. The flags have baby flags.
The Control Group Got the Bug
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs DevOps. A/B inverted. 50% of users have the hotfix. 50% have the fire. You are the fire 50%. +3 vs DevOps.
SIDE EFFECT Hash userId: a piece of gear went into the other bucket. Forever.
Sticky assignment. Sticky like chewing gum. Sticky like a Sev-1.
Ship It to One Hundred Percent, It'll Be Faster
3 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs Influencer. The PM has spoken. The gods laughed. +4 vs Influencer.
SIDE EFFECT Experiment over. Role over. Conclusion: inconclusive.
Canary is for cowards. Science is for cowards. Incidents are for the brave. You.
It's the MTU, This Time
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs SRE. Packets > 1500. VPN. Cloud. Tears. +4 vs SRE. DNS was innocent. For once.
SIDE EFFECT Packet dropped. Gear dropped. ICMP unreachable, like your excuses.
Black hole. PMTUD. Don't fragment. Do panic.
ImagePullBackOff
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
+3 vs DevOps. Docker Hub: rate limited. Tag: latest. Registry: 401. +3 vs DevOps.
SIDE EFFECT ErrImagePull. You stay Pending. Socially as well.
Back-off restarting. Back-off living. Back-off hoping.
The Latest Tag
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs SRE. Immutable infra. Mutable latest. Prod changed by itself at 3am. +3 vs SRE.
SIDE EFFECT The image moved. So did a piece of gear. Pin your versions. Pin your tears.
digest: unknown. author: unknown. rollback: unknown. you: known, unfortunately.
The Certificate That Expired Sunday at Three A.M.
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs SRE. Let's Encrypt. Calendar: never. Alert: muted. +4 vs SRE. Users see "not secure". So do you.
SIDE EFFECT NET::ERR_CERT_DATE_INVALID. Your level too: invalid.
90 days. You remember on day 91. Every 91 days.
Vault Sealed
3 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+5 vs DevOps. Unseal keys: 5 people. 2 on holiday. 1 left. 1 lost the YubiKey. +5 vs DevOps.
SIDE EFFECT Secrets unreachable. Hand unreachable. Sealed. Like your evening.
Shamir. Don't sha-share your secrets in Slack. Too late.
The Datadog Bill
3 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+5 vs SRE. Custom metrics: 4 million. Cardinality: a crime. +5 vs SRE. The real boss was FinOps.
SIDE EFFECT Annual commitment. A piece of gear seized. The graphs, though, are gorgeous.
Ingest everything. Pay everything. Sleep never.
The Cardinality Explosion
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs SRE. A user_id label on every metric. Prometheus is at 48 GB. So is your laptop. +4 vs SRE.
SIDE EFFECT OOM on Prometheus. A piece of gear compacted. Forever.
High cardinality is a lifestyle. And an invoice. And a reboot.
The Alert Fatigue Hydra
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs SRE. Page. Page. Page. Disk 80% since 2019. +3 vs SRE. You muted the channel. So did the incident.
SIDE EFFECT Silence all. Forgotten. Sev-1 in the silence. -1 level. +0 pride.
Severity: warning. Count: 12,403. Action: none. Dignity: none.
Error Budget, Burned in January
3 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs SRE. SLO 99.9%. It is the 8th of January. Budget: 0. Freeze: theoretical. +4 vs SRE.
SIDE EFFECT Burn rate 14x. -2 levels. The features: frozen. You too.
Reliability is a feature. Feature flag: off. Until further notice. The notice: never.
The Blameless Postmortem
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs DevOps. Blameless. Except paragraph 4. Except the Slack screenshot. Except you. +3 vs DevOps.
SIDE EFFECT Contributing factor: human. Human: you. -1.
Action items: 14. Owners: you. Due date: yesterday. Culture: ✨
The 2019 Runbook
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
Step 1: SSH into the snowflake. The snowflake is dead. So is the author (he resigned).
SIDE EFFECT You follow step 7. Step 7 SSHes into a server that no longer exists. Nothing. Shame.
Last edited: before the rewrite. Before the cloud. Before hope.
HPA Scaled to Zero
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs SRE. minReplicas: 0. Metric: 0. Users: 0. Because there are no pods left. +4 vs SRE.
SIDE EFFECT Replicas: 0. Gear: -1. Desired: your excuses.
Scale-to-zero is green. The status page is not.
GitOps Drift
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs DevOps. Live ≠ Git. Someone ran kubectl edit. On a Friday. +3 vs DevOps. Argo screams. Nobody listens.
SIDE EFFECT OutOfSync. A piece of gear drifted. It's live. Git denies it.
If it's not in Git it doesn't exist. It exists. That's the problem.
The Pokémon Snowflake
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs DevOps. Hostname: `charizard-prod`. Uptime: 1400 days. Nobody dares patch it. +4 vs DevOps.
SIDE EFFECT The pet rebooted. One piece of gear had no systemd unit. Gone.
Cattle not pets. This one has a collar. And a name. And your secrets.
The GitHub Actions Bill
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
+3 vs Dev. matrix: os × node × arch. 48 jobs. For a lint. +3 vs Dev. Minutes: dead.
SIDE EFFECT Minutes exceeded. -1. The cache: miss. Always miss.
Self-hosted one day. One day. Today: $4k and a workflow that sleeps 20.
Changelog, Misc Fixes
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
+2 vs Influencer. Behind it: a DROP, a rewrite, and a flag at 100%. +2 vs Influencer (he tweeted "shipped").
SIDE EFFECT Release notes: LGTM. Prod notes: F.
Semantic versioning. Semantic: no. Versioning: +0.0.1. Impact: +Sev-1.
Twelve Tools, Zero Traces
3 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+5 vs SRE. Logs. Metrics. Traces. Except during the incident. Sampling 1%. The error was in the 99. +5 vs SRE.
SIDE EFFECT No data. Your hand: no data. Retention: 3 days. Incident: day 4.
Three pillars. Four vendors. Zero answers. Five Slack threads.
The Multi-Armed Bandit
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs Prompt. It picked the worst variant. Confidently. +3 vs Prompt Engineer. Exploration: 100%. Reward: 0.
SIDE EFFECT Regret: theoretical. Your level: empirically -1.
epsilon-greedy. Epsilon: 1. Greedy: the PM. Reward: your weekends.
Cannot Reproduce
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+5 vs QA. On your machine: green. On QA's: fire. At the client's: contemporary art. +5 vs QA.
SIDE EFFECT Works on my machine. One piece of gear did not survive "and on yours?".
Steps: 1. I clicked 2. It broke 3. Good luck. Logs: none. Video: a thumb.
The Three A.M. Edge Case
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs QA. User-Agent: a fridge. Timezone: -14. Name: an emoji. +4 vs QA.
SIDE EFFECT Uncovered path. -1. Coverage: 98%. The 2%: this bug.
You didn't test that. Nobody tests that. That's why it is the backlog.
Are We Testing on Internet Explorer?
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
+3 vs QA. The client has an IE11. In 2026. +3 vs QA. The flexboxes are weeping.
SIDE EFFECT documentMode: 7. Your CSS: 0. Your soul: quirks.
Polyfill. Polyfill. Polyfill. Then a screenshot of a 2009 website. That's the spec.
Can You Make the Logo Bigger?
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+5 vs Designer. Again. Again. It's touching the viewport. +5 vs Designer. Margins are a suggestion.
SIDE EFFECT The logo ate a piece of gear. And the whitespace. And your will.
Make it pop. Make it pop. Make it illegal. Brand guidelines: a PDF nobody opened.
The Comic Sans Stakeholder
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs Designer. He "made a thing in Canva". +4 vs Designer. The 8px grid is taking its own life.
SIDE EFFECT We've moved to Canva. Designer role: deprecated.
I just moved some boxes. The boxes were the design system. The system is dead.
The Four Extra Pixels
1 GOODIE · +1 LVL
+3 vs Designer. Invisible to PMs. Lethal to designers. +3 vs Designer. This bug has a grid.
SIDE EFFECT You squished it. It's worse. The 4px became 3. Heresy.
It's not pixel-perfect. It's pixel-personal. The Figma comment has 47 replies.
Let's Sync Real Quick
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+5 vs Manager. 25 min. 55 min. Another invite. +5 vs Manager. Your calendar is the backlog.
SIDE EFFECT You said "good point". -1. The point: we'll revisit on Thursday.
No agenda. No notes. No outcome. Three follow-ups. This is leadership.
The Scope Creep Hydra
3 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs Manager. Just one small extra. Then 12. Then a rewrite. +4 vs Manager.
SIDE EFFECT Out of scope: a piece of gear. In scope: your regrets. Forever.
It's the same ticket. It's not the same ticket. Jira disagrees with both of you.
Status: Blocked on You
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs Manager. The Slack thread has 14 👀. You: in a 1:1. +4 vs Manager. Standup named you. Twice.
SIDE EFFECT You replied "circling back". -1. Nobody circled.
Nudge. Nudge. Escalation. The blocker was a question. The question was "?".
The OKR Cult
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+3 vs Manager. Key result: 10x. Baseline: a vibe. +3 vs Manager. Alignment: a mural.
SIDE EFFECT Reorg. Your role is a former OKR. Archived.
Objectives: 5. Key results: 40. Outcomes: 0. Slide: 94. Applause: recorded.
The Two-Thousand-Line YAML Pull Request
2 GOODIES · +1 LVL
+4 vs DevOps. Diff: whitespace. Impact: production. +4 vs DevOps. LGTM without reading. Obviously.
SIDE EFFECT Indentation drift. Your hand: misaligned. Helm: happy. You: not.
values.yaml has feelings. The feelings are nested 12 levels deep. Your review: "nit".