Tales from a slowly graying beard

I am closing in on 30 years in the industry. One thing I did not imagine when I just started out was that the list of “things I have seen” would constantly grow over the decades. How naive I was, believing people know what they are doing, management making decisions based on data and the market not being a dice roll for who can lie the best. On the bright side this makes for some really good stories. Usually these are stories to share over a scotch or two. To help people save face. To not expose them to any form of liability. To not make them look bad. And to acknowledge it happened a long time ago and everyone at this point surely matured and grew into a more responsible professional who would not make the same decision again. Some of the stories are simply funny and I still laugh thinking about them. Some are a testament to how broken and stupid our industry can be - who would not want to hire a team to write an internal SSL library just because you think auditing OpenSSL is to…