UK — The Register
Manager threatened to fire a colleague, then gave them a critical task – which they flubbed
Chips1 min read
A reader named Gordon tells a story from his time as a manager at a big chip company. A worker he gave a key backup job to did it badly, and Gordon later had to fix the mess quietly.
What happened
Gordon managed an engineering team that worked on a popular PC chipset. He told a weak engineer to improve or leave. Later, he gave that same worker an important job: make a full backup of the chip design. The worker decided the backup was not needed yet and did not tell anyone. He was then fired before he finished the work.
Key facts
- The story jumps forward six years.
- A customer wanted the old chip design to make a radiation-hardened version for satellites.
- Gordon had to search through old nightly backup tapes to find pieces of the design.
- He copied parts of different versions into one place and gave them to the customer.
Why the backup mattered
A backup is a saved copy of data, so you can go back to it if something goes wrong. Here, the backup was a special snapshot of a chip design at a set point. Chip makers use these snapshots to make new versions quickly. Radiation-hardened chips are built to survive harsh conditions in space.
Why it matters
The story shows how one bad choice can cause trouble for years. Gordon gave an important task to someone he did not trust, and he did not check the work. The fix was messy, and no one knows if the customer got a usable chip. Gordon changed his habits afterward. He chose backup owners more carefully and kept records of requests and confirmations.
Open questions
- Did the customer notice that they got parts of two different design databases?
- Did the customer make a working chip from the pieces?
- Was the project canceled before anyone found the problem?
Glossary
- chipset
- A group of chips that work together to run the main parts of a computer.
- backup
- A saved copy of data that can be used to restore it if needed.
- radiation-hardened
- Built to keep working in places with harmful radiation, such as space.