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Re:How I Fired Myself by JohnBooty on Wednesday February 27, 2013 @01:03PM (#5293802)
This happened to me once on a much smaller scale. Forgot the "where" clause on a DELETE statement. My screwup, obviously.

We actually had a continuous internal backup plan, but when I requested a restore, the IT guy told me they were backing up everything but the databases, since "they were always in use."

(Let that sink in for a second. The IT team actually thought that was an acceptable state of affairs: "Uh, yeah! We're backing up! Yeah! Well, some things. Most things. The files that don't get like, used and stuff.")

That day was one of the lowest feelings I ever had, and that screwup "only" cost us a few thousand dollars as opposed to the millions of dollars the blog post author's mistake cost the company. I literally can't imagine how he felt.

Re:How I Fired Myself by anywherenotes on Wednesday February 27, 2013 @05:41PM (#5295507)
That is pretty hilarious. I guess you can save a lot of money on tapes, if you do incremental backups only on files that never change.

Personally I felt bad when I deleted some files, that were recovered within the hour, and learned from that experience. But when you create a monumental setback as the OP by simple mistake, that's an issue with people at higher ranks.

Re:How I Fired Myself by rhizome on Wednesday February 27, 2013 @05:48PM (#5295552)
To be sure, when someone is saying your fuckup is "costing them millions of dollars," they're usually lying and just being a dick.