A story of a workplace bully
I was a programmer working at what was then called the M.I.T. Instrumentation Lab. It serviced various engineering contracts, mostly large D.O.D. ones, but other, smaller ones, as well.
My group was working on a contract involving atmospheric study from space. One small part of that small project was Star Occultation.
Looking at a star from space, as it sets behind the earth, the light changes as it starts to get obscured by the atmosphere. Given equations for how various atmospheric components affect the light, it’s possible to work backward from the dimming star light to deduce the make up of the atmosphere it settled behind.
This project had only two people. Myself, the programmer, and Terry, the lead scientist, a PhD student at M.I.T. Terry was to provide the equations, I was to write the program implementing them.
Terry was, well a bit arrogant. I remember him showing up at our offices one day complaining about how unjust the world was, that, for example, a plumber could go out and get a job that would pay more than he might make, he, that is, an extremely intelligent person with a PhD from M.I.T. How could it possibly be a mere plumber might be worth more than him?
You might guess where he thought a programmer should fit on the hierarchy of worth, compared to a PhD. It showed.
Well Terry gave me the equations to program up and we had some test data (from the X15, the space rocket that preceded satellites).
So I did, but when I ran the program the results all came up zero. I showed it to Terry. Controlling his irritation he patiently explained I’d clearly programmed it wrong and I should check my code.
I did. The next day (those were the days it took a full day to get the results of running a program punched into a deck of cards) the results were still zero.
I heard him go into my boss’s office and vent for all around to hear about how incompetent I was, how could it be we didn’t have a programmer who could code up a simple set of equations, and how I should be fired and replaced by someone who could handle the job.
That was Friday.
As a scrawny, quiet, geeky sort of kid, I’d run into bullies in school. I’d learned (different stories) that bullies don’t like it when you fight back.
So that weekend I went home with his equations and looked at them from a pure mathematical perspective. And on Monday morning asked if my boss would call Terry over.
The three of us sat in his office and I went to the white board. Oh yes, I was all wired up. I then proceeded to prove, mathematically, that the equations Terry gave us would always generate a zero result.
You should have seen Terry. He didn’t say a word, stood up, shoved his chair out of the way, and stormed out slamming the door as he left the room. (We never saw him again.)
My boss and I sat in the quiet left behind for a moment. He then looked at me and said, well I guess you’re now lead scientist on Star Occultation.
