My uncle was in that story. Decades ago, he told his boss a program would stop working in eight years (8-bit limitation, yeah, that long ago). His boss told him to ship it because they weren’t going to be there in eight years. Sure enough, they weren’t. Eight years later, their IT guy contacted my uncle because he couldn’t figure out why it stopped working, and my uncle showed him the math.

[–] Ferrous@lemmy.ml 28 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Sounds like your uncle did end up working for the company again, if only for an hour or day.

[–] xmunk@sh.itjust.works 17 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Hopefully at a really high hourly rate!

[–] ByteJunk@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I'd do it just to style on the new guy, start with something like "ah, so humanity has lost the skills that we possessed in the days of yore..."

(TL note: this is in reference to companies refusing to up the pay for their skilled workforce, and ending up paying more to new guys that'll have to learn it all from scratch)

[–] Sumocat@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

Nah. Everyone knew everyone back then, and my uncle loves sharing his stories. Basically all he did was tell that then-eight year old story, which still holds up.