This happened to me once, as in my first month at a new job, I came in one day to find I had caused a bug in production. But I hadn't deployed any software!

It turned out that the department had carefully orchestrated a system whereby all checked-in code would move automatically to alpha the next day, then beta, then production the next week. But nobody told me.

A manager there later told me, "If the code we write is strong enough, it does not need to be released--it will escape."

And the student understood.

What did you understand?

- That the manager decides what gets pushed into production?

- That the manager decides not to inform the programmers concerned?

- That you have a clown for a manager?

- That it's probably time to quit the company?

I imagine that the answer would be "Yes".

Was this at a company owned by the richest man in NYC?

It's like something out of a hacker action flick.

"You have 60 minutes to code a security patch for a vulnerable payment processing app."

"Congratulations, you shipped to a million people and saved the company from hackers."

I laughed pretty hard at that, and the "aggressive integration bit"...I'd probably leave if a company decided to ship something I coded in an hour in an interview.

So much so that I feel the birth of a new slang expression.

Does this make Facebook the ultimate expression of Ender's Game?

I actually LOL'd, which is rare.

Telling us about it should be even more rare :)