• Sumocat@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    41
    ·
    5 months ago

    My uncle was in that story. Decades ago, he told his boss a program would stop working in eight years (8-bit limitation, yeah, that long ago). His boss told him to ship it because they weren’t going to be there in eight years. Sure enough, they weren’t. Eight years later, their IT guy contacted my uncle because he couldn’t figure out why it stopped working, and my uncle showed him the math.

    • Ferrous@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      28
      ·
      5 months ago

      Sounds like your uncle did end up working for the company again, if only for an hour or day.

      • xmunk
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        17
        ·
        5 months ago

        Hopefully at a really high hourly rate!

        • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          edit-2
          5 months ago

          I’d do it just to style on the new guy, start with something like “ah, so humanity has lost the skills that we possessed in the days of yore…”

          (TL note: this is in reference to companies refusing to up the pay for their skilled workforce, and ending up paying more to new guys that’ll have to learn it all from scratch)

      • Sumocat@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        5 months ago

        Nah. Everyone knew everyone back then, and my uncle loves sharing his stories. Basically all he did was tell that then-eight year old story, which still holds up.