Two years after leaving the job, the programmer was claimed by the former owner: the bug was written by you

Organize | Zheng Liyuan

Produced | CSDN (ID: CSDNnews)

Q: As a programmer, can you ensure that there is not a single bug in the code you have written so far?

Programmer: Of course not.

Question: Are you not afraid that these bugs will cause heavy losses, and then the company will sue you?

Programmer: Ha, is there such a thing?

Well, there are indeed, and it even happened after the employee left. Recently, a programmer in Hangzhou broke the news on a social platform: ” I have a program, and I was asked for financial compensation by the previous company after two years of resignation. The reason: you wrote the code. of. “

Was sued by the former owner for the code problem?

According to the timeline and related details provided by this programmer (hereinafter referred to as “little C”), let’s first take a look at this seemingly “outrageous” thing.

In 2019, Little C, who first arrived in Hangzhou, entered a company in Hangzhou (located in Binjiang, Hangzhou, because the matter is not over yet, Little C did not clearly state the name of the company). At that time, she had a year of system development experience, and she was responsible for the development of a certain function alone, and the function was successfully launched before she left in 2020.

However, at the beginning of this year, Xiao C, who had left the company for more than two years, was suddenly approached by the former team leader, saying that there was a problem with the function code she was in charge of before. Considering that the colleagues and team leaders in the company took good care of her during her tenure, even though she has resigned, Xiao C also helped her many times and found out the cause of the problem .

Unexpectedly, the company soon began to pursue the responsibility of Xiao C, thinking that her code problem caused serious losses to the company- the code had logical problems, which violated industry experience and common sense . In addition, the company also issued a circular requesting Xiao C to go to the scene to explain, but at that time Xiao C thought that the problem had been solved, and because of the different location + busy work at hand, he refused the request after explaining.

As a result, Xiao C received a text message from the court—she was sued by the company, demanding hundreds of thousands of damages, and there were two defendants. Among them, the company sued Little C for the following reasons:

The defendant, as a code writer, has a validity period, but did not do logical processing to avoid risks in the final code processing. The plaintiff believes that, based on industry experience and common sense, the time limit for system operation is one of the most important and basic contents of code writing work. The defendant’s laissez-faire and irresponsible handling directly caused the plaintiff’s losses, and his behavior has obvious subjective intent or gross negligence.

At this point, the matter is clear: a programmer has left the company for two years, but the code she wrote before leaving the company has problems, which has caused serious losses now, so the company demands accountability and compensation.

Is writing code a lifetime responsibility?

Not long after this program girl exposed the matter, it attracted a lot of attention and debate. The main focus of the discussion was: ” Does the code writer have a validity period? How long is the validity period? Is it a lifelong responsibility system? “

In fact, similar to Xiao C, many programmers have also received “rework” requests from their former employers after leaving the company. Some want to explain the code, some want to fix bugs, and some hope to help guide the next person in charge to hand over ——Quite a bit of “once delivery, lifetime maintenance”.

Regarding this topic, Zhihu also launched a similar discussion a while ago: “Why can’t programmers be responsible for their code for life?” For the majority of programmers, the answer to this question is simple: ” If a programmer needs to be responsible for the code for life , then you need to pay this programmer for life. ”

As one netizen said: Once the code implements the responsibility system, it means that the code belongs to the programmer. If so, the company has no right to use the code of the resigned programmer; Why is it about programmers?

And so on, so most netizens disagree with the practice of Xiao C’s former boss:

• “I’m laughing to death, then you will also give you the benefits generated by his code.”

• “So when will the income from the code running intact after the programmer leave the company be settled? At this time, you don’t mention that the code is owned by the company, right?”

• “The code written by programmers in the company is owned by the company. Without a good code review, the loss caused by the test being launched has nothing to do with the programmer himself. At most, the performance is at the bottom, and the salary must not be in arrears, let alone resigned.”

In addition, combined with the company’s reasons for suing Little C, many people think that this is just a way of intimidation, and they want to push Little C to “take the blame”. Even if this lawsuit is to be fought, Little C can’t lose:

• “I don’t really want you to pay, it’s just that the internal staff want to push a sheep out to deal with the leader who investigated this matter. Of course no one can explain what happened two years ago, neither can the parties involved, and no one dares to say who is right and who is wrong , so you were pushed out.”

• “First of all, it violates industry experience and common sense? What is the industry experience here, and what is common sense? It is recommended that the company must explain in detail. Secondly, the code has to be written by many people, and iterated by different people continuously, and the function is launched. It’s been two years, and in the end, it’s still impossible to determine who’s code is wrong, right?”

Finally, CSDN also consulted ChatGPT about this incident:

So, what do you want to say about this matter?

The text and pictures in this article are from CSDN