Spec: allow the internal BI tool to send scheduled reports to the user
Implementation: the server required the desktop front end of said user to have been opened that day for the scheduled reports to work, even though the server side was sending the mails
Why this was hilariously bad - the only reason to have this feature is for when the user is out of office / away from desk for an extended period, precisely when they may not have opened their desktop UI for the day.
One of my favorite examples of how an engineer can get the entire premise of the problem wrong.
In the end he had taken so long and was so intransigent that desktop support team found it easier to schedule the desktop UIs to auto-open in windows scheduler every day such that the whole Rube Goldberg scheduled reports would work.
edit: reminded me of the old joke
A programmer gets sent to the store by his wife. His wife says, “Get a gallon of milk, and if they have eggs, get a dozen.”
The programmer returns home with 12 gallons of milk and says, “They had eggs.”
I mean, it's well known that there's very little engineering in most software "engineers", but you're describing a person I've never seen.
> A programmer gets sent to the store by his wife. His wife says, “Get a gallon of milk. If they have eggs, get a dozen.”
No, that means you're dealing with an early alpha, rigged demo, or some sort of vibe coding nonsense.
You just needed to find another one like him, and bam, +4×.
(It is actually conceivable that two bad engineers could mostly cancel each other out, if they can occupy each other enough, but it’s not the most likely outcome.)