Guru Adds Bugs Anti Pattern

Another form of JobSecurity is the GuruInventsInsectsAntiPattern. Edison can invent on a public stage because several lifelong assistants whose names you don't know actually ran the lab for him. Or consider DrHouse?, misleading his team while someone lays dying.

In this system, the Anointed One, maybe the founder architect owner of the company, not only requests and enforces reckless and unvettable design decisions (such as "nobody will ever need a Delete key!"), but can change code freely, out-of-process, and without oversight.

"Hey, who gave the go ahead to refresh all three sites at 8:30 on a Friday night? ... Oh ... okay got it on my way."

Management sees all the minions fixing bugs all night, and the ChiefProgrammerTeam's chief's merrily writing fresh code that says it's up to spec all day. So one group gets mildly punished, while the other gets endlessly rewarded.

As DearLeader's bugs trickle down through the system, they force systemic fixes, hardenings, teams of log readers, etc. (A zillion odd ways to delete characters pop up, competing for the user's harried attention, for example.)

In the end, whether pure genius leads to greatness or madness, cleaning up after it sure gets lucrative!

-- CategoryAntiPattern

[OP here. The House reference was too thin. --DeleteWhenCooked]