
The Bastard Operator From Hell (1999) - iudqnolq
http://bofh.bjash.com/
======
j-pb
I know that it's parody, but I think the whole sysadmin culture is incredibly
toxic and glorifies toxicity.

I've never met more socially inept yet condescending people in computer
science. The whole "loser", "not my job", "automating your job away thing"
totally clashes with the real-world requirements that the profession entails.

Unless you work at google in a datacenter in the arctic you'll have to help
people, and you'll have to do it over and over and over again, because frankly
most sysadmins don't make the money, the people they support do. Yet, they
look down on the people they run the systems for. To them they are just cogs
in a machine doing non intellectual work. They see it as an insult that their
"losers" won't learn and stop to appreciate and marvel at their beautiful
systems, ignoring the fact that most ops positions at a non IT company are a
lot less stressful, yet much better paid than all other jobs.

/rant

~~~
paranoidrobot
Like much dark humour, it's inappropriate and often viewed in poor taste
outside of those communities.

I'm not sure how else to describe BOFH except as revenge-fantasy porn. It's a
vent/release for people who are often stuck between a rock and a hard place.

In most organisations, IT is seen a as a cost-centre, rather than a business
enabler. So on one hand, you have management often wanting to cut costs to the
bone - on the other, you have the very same people complaining that you're
implementing certain policies and being a hard-ass about
equipment/software/etc. Then when things go down and it's due to the business
cutting costs - well, it's still IT's fault.

Then there's the often poorly thought through and inane requests, where people
refuse to listen to reason.

And then you have a lot of people who have no awareness of anything outside of
themselves - Their issues are always the most important, they shouldn't be
required to learn basic IT skills, and anything that goes wrong it's IT's
fault, even if they've been provided ample training and education
opportunities.

I see similarly dark humour and in-jokes in other high-stress professions.

~~~
zerkten
>> In most organisations, IT is seen a as a cost-centre, rather than a
business enabler. So on one hand, you have management often wanting to cut
costs to the bone - on the other, you have the very same people complaining
that you're implementing certain policies and being a hard-ass about
equipment/software/etc. Then when things go down and it's due to the business
cutting costs - well, it's still IT's fault.

IT leadership tends to be passive and disempowered. I'm not completely sure
why this is, but the behaviours are often the opposite of what you'll often
see from leadership in other departments.

What I have observed, and it may stem from the sysadmin mythos, is that you
can work behind the scenes staying away from complicated interpersonal
relationships, but you won't be successful. This leads to IT never really
being embedded fully in projects and seeking out ownership of projects with
other parts of the organisation. This transactional relationship puts IT in a
bad spot and they fail to do things to improve the organisation.

This evolves into things like R&D in pharma companies having a parallel IT
department because the main IT department isn't trusted. The folks on the
ground in regular IT would be interested in helping the scientists and
delivering tools and services for them, but IT leadership didn't really take
much interest in the needs and differences from the mainstream user population
(sales, marketing, etc.) so trust broke down.

I once got to participate in a leadership program at a global org. They
selected up and coming peers from other departments. My observation was that
the folks from the IT would not be the ones I'd choose for key leadership
positions, but I was glad to see they were getting to see where other folks
were in their development.

So, the dark humour of BOFH is a release for individuals, but it's also an
indictment of a culture which IT won't easily escape from.

~~~
paranoidrobot
> I'm not completely sure why this is, but the behaviours are often the
> opposite of what you'll often see from leadership in other departments.

I think part of the problem is that the vast majority of people who are in
CTO/CIO type roles have zero IT knowledge. In the case where it's someone who
"came up from the trenches", they were often in a hands-on role for only a
relatively short period of time, a long time ago, and were never particularly
skilled.

In both cases, they tend to trust their own intuition/gut instinct over that
of the advice they get from their team.

Getting good managers who trust their team to give them good advice, and are
able to fight (and win) for those things to make things better are few and far
between.

Then again, having a good team to begin with can be a problem, too - there's a
lot of people in the industry who really simply shouldn't be, and make a lot
of poor decisions that just cause pain for others.

------
busterarm
There's a typical amount of seething involved in any field where someone has a
minor input or touch-point with your job and they can do something you
absolutely cannot or would not do.

Typically it's regular folks against the office IT people, but for the Hacker
News crowd the bogeymen have to be in either Sales or Infrastructure.

Nowadays it's not as fashionable to bash the sales people, because the famous
tech entrepreneurs and VCs have beaten into our heads how important sales
folks are and you don't piss off the income stream. So instead "we enlightened
few" take it out on the other one. They're a cost center anyway, right?

And as much as most of us think we can productionize some distributed data
service serving mega-high volume traffic, we either just can't, can't afford
to spend the time to, or would rather not. And we definitely don't want to be
paged about it at 3 in the morning on a Sunday either.thank.you.very.much.

I can say this confidently because I work on both sides of this fence.

So rather than shitting on one of the only "shared jokes" that the people
doing that thankless sysadmin job get to enjoy, maybe have a little empathy
towards them instead.

~~~
tomrod
> There's a typical amount of seething involved in any field where someone has
> a minor input or touch-point with your job and they can do something you
> absolutely cannot or would not do.

I'm not sure I buy into this theory. I think most people have no idea what
goes on behind the scenes, and so ascribe slowdowns, missed SLA, or other
failing metrics to amorphous "others" rather than individuals. Under such a
system they certainly don't work to identify frictions along touch-points.

~~~
paranoidrobot
> I think most people have no idea what goes on behind the scenes,

I agree with this.

> and so ascribe slowdowns, missed SLA, or other failing metrics to amorphous
> "others" rather than individuals.

The amorphous "other" is generally "IT" when it comes to anything computer
related.

IT are the 'big evil' and the cause of most people being unable to do work, if
you follow the common narrative.

For example, it's IT's fault that this machine is so slow...Not finance's for
restricting budgets and using the cheapest RAM/drive configuration they can
get away with.

It's IT's fault that I can't install this super important
Outlook/Chrome/whatever extension that I saw on a blog somewhere. It's also
IT's fault if Outlook/Chrome/whatever crashes or is slow because I've
installed all these extensions.

It's IT's fault that I can't just use wordpress and put custom themes and
unvetted PHP code on our main domain so I can do some promotion. It's also
IT's fault if that Wordpress install gets hijacked and is used to
phish/whatever customers/staff/etc.

It's IT's fault that I can't send 500MB attachments and cc 250 people at other
companies. It's also IT's fault that the network (and my computer) is so slow
when I'm trying to open an email.

It's IT's fault that the printers are locked down to only print in B&W, even
though they have that colour option - and not because finance is sick of
paying for me to print 500 full page colour birthday/soccer/wedding
invitations every other month.

It's IT's fault that I got phished, even though I ignored the IT security
warnings, and slept/skipped through the mandatory online training. It's also
IT's fault for letting phishing emails come through, even though it was
detected and put in my spam folder with a header clearly saying that it was a
suspicious email.

It's IT's fault that I can't use an unencrypted USB drive to move files
between computers, even thouh it's because we have had too many colleagues
leave USB drives full of customer data in taxis or lost in the mail.

Don't you understand? IT just makes everyone's life more difficult.

I'm playing this up a bit, but these things happen, and people do blame IT for
these things.

~~~
busterarm
Thank you for explaining it in better terms than I could. I was just trying to
point out that developers are also super susceptible to this kind of thinking.

------
IIAOPSW
Maybe I'm in the minority here but I don't think this is clever at all. BOFH
isn't some Dr. House character who's insufferable personality is the price you
pay for genius. BOFH isn't doing some sort of vigilantism, correcting
injustices in the world. He acts like all the people he screws deserve it for
being dumb, but the "dumb" decision being punished is not expecting to be
sabotaged for no reason. That's not dumb of them, that's a necessary
assumption to make civilization work. He phrases these stories as if he's some
clever trickster that hasn't found a worthy opponent, but where's the
cleverness in "HAHA deleted your thesis using my admin priv"? I can't even
respect that in the technically talented hacker sense. He didn't hack or do
anything intelligent as part of his cruelness. He just abused his normal work
credentials. Don't let the tone fool you, as far as sophistication goes this
stuff is on the level of a shirtless parking lot fist fight. This isn't even
funny in the harmless prank sense because it flat out isn't harmless. BOFH is
nothing more than an asshole who is actively counterproductive at his job. Why
does anyone here aspire or relate to BOFH? Why are so many finding this to be
a funny and agreeable part of "hacker culture".

~~~
skrebbel
This is a psychopath fantasy. It's the IT version of You (the novel / TV
show), Dexter etc.

Nobody wants to be a psychopath unless they are, but there's a certain feeling
of liberty that comes with imagining doing things without caring about the
consequences.

There's only one joke here, which is repeated over and over and over: it's the
callous carelessness by which the protagonist breaks every single social rule
imaginable. Nearly every single sentence contains this joke, and there are no
other jokes.

It's like Dave Chappelle's "so I kicked her in the pussy" skit, but without
the buildup. And ofc way less well done because this isn't Dave Chappelle.

~~~
MisterTea
This is what BOFH really is. It's that sick revenge fantasy you have where you
brutally beat that reckless driver asshole who almost hit you while playing
indy 500 on the highway, before your morning coffee, after running him off the
road. In reality you sure as hell aren't running people off the road and
beating them to within an inch of death with a tire iron. It's just a fantasy
to release anger or deal with it.

BOFH is the psycho fantasy you have after dealing with the same idiot who yet
again forgot their password and locked themselves out. Or that snippy idiot in
the office who keeps insisting there is something wrong with their computer
and its not as fast as the one they have at home or the "better" computer the
person in the adjacent cubicle who also coincidentally can't stand them. But
hey, it's still your problem to deal with. So screw em, why not delete their
shittly work or their account for that matter? That'll show em.

------
pmoriarty
Something along similar lines that I really enjoyed was the "Website is Down"
series of videos, starting with "Sales Guy vs Web Dude":

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRGljemfwUE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRGljemfwUE)

~~~
ceph_
Wow, what a flashback. I had forgotten about this classic.

~~~
perlpimp
just like alt.sysadmin.recovery

------
superflit
I think people are missing the whole context of BOFH.

In the '90s there was no prestige in working in IT maybe as a developer but
not as a Sysadmin.

Sysadmin and Support (the guy who fixes your e-mail or set up Netscape)
usually were the same guy.

The prestige positions were in Marketing, Law and executive/finance.

The assistant on HR?Finance? They usually earned more than the Sysadmin.

People used to tell me:

"People who work on computers will never grow in the company. They stay there
working and nobody notices them then. If you want to grow and climb de ladder
go to Finance or Marketing."

So then who were the people who worked on computers?

The ones that really liked it and the ones socially inept. Sometimes Both. It
was the "misfits" people dept. Data Centers? Basement or an ugly off-site.
Location of Dept? The worst possible.

(Check the IT CROWD series).

But it was very rare someone that Did not like computers and did not have a
hacker mentality to work on the field. Because of low pay and prestige.

Then BOFH represents the "Dr. Evil" that makes all right. Punishes the people
that earn 2-3x times more and still can't do anything in IT. It is dark humor
like "Nick burns, your computer guy" from SNL.

The big difference is the people who started at 00 and later got a Very
different market and with other people went after looking for prestige.

Take Bezos, Gates, Stallman, Linus and any other big tech guy before 00. They
were "NERDS". Nerds only became cool after bringing billions to the table.

What a young, socially inept, smart guy and nerd will do in his 20's?

1) Have a lot of girlfriends? Party like crazy?

2) Fail miserably in #1 and code?

I remember on dates saying that I work with "IT" and the face of frustration
in my dates.

One of my date father saying to her "He will not be able to support you... If
he was a Lawyer yes.."

There was no "diversity" need because the requiremnt was: be smart and crazy
to work in IT.

Last comment:

Once in a HR meeting they asked what traits they need to fill an position
without thinking too much I said:

1\. Low self-esteem;

2\. Smart;

3\. Desesperate.

My coworker was there agreeing. The HR said that we can't put it. So we change
the words a little.

~~~
aperrien
I agree with you about IT careers. Back in the late 80s when I was starting
college, it was exactly the way you describe. It is really interesting how
things changed in the late 90's regarding this. I remember it falling back for
a while after the dot com boom, only to pick back up in late 2000. A lot of
people really don't realize that the prestige that comes from IT is only a
recent thing, I think because having grown up around it, it's all that they
know.

------
peteforde
My friends and I still make jokes about suggesting people get to the bottom of
their problems with a "power test"; that is, flicking the main power switch on
and off as fast as possible for about 30 seconds.

------
ddingus
Great. Makes for an excellent bit of early Internet humor study.

I like BOFH. I and my co workers used to look forward to them.

~~~
iudqnolq
I just learned today that he's published some recent updates in the Register.
Latest is from four days ago!

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/data_centre/bofh/](https://www.theregister.co.uk/data_centre/bofh/)

Sadly, I don't think they're as good as the older ones.

~~~
bearbin
I have compiled an index of the new stories arranged by year of publication on
my website, which is a bit easier to navigate than scrolling through the
(incomplete) list on the Register website:
[https://bearbin.net/bofh](https://bearbin.net/bofh)

~~~
EamonnMR
Links to the official archive and author bio are dead.

~~~
bearbin
Thanks for letting me know, I've replaced them with archived versions.

------
fencepost
The BOFH is a response to the kinds of things that still happen, for a nice
little modern-day horror story take a look at
[https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/eaphr8/a_dropbox_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/eaphr8/a_dropbox_account_gave_me_stomach_ulcers/)

The meat buried in there: _[...] "it wasn't just the database it was the
entire app and website. The app was actually just a server instance in Heroku
that was spun up whenever there was an update and would make crazy api calls
to the drop box account read information from hardcoded database files. He
immediately called drop box support to figure out what in god's name was going
on and to his horror after several escalations gained access to the account
and found that the account had 497 TB of 500 TB space used up and the team was
on the verge of running out."_

also

 _" This single drop box account was also their version control."_

------
Accacin
Ahh, for the life of me I can't rememeber another site that was similar but
not a parody. It was tales from a Tech Support worker, which were pretty funny
but he wasn't being malicious.

I've search my pinboard for it and I can't find it anywhere! If anyone knows
of it I'd be grateful.

~~~
unpixer
Are you thinking of 'Chronicles of George'
([https://www.chroniclesofgeorge.com/](https://www.chroniclesofgeorge.com/))?

~~~
Accacin
That's exactly it! Thanks so much.

------
ChrisMarshallNY
I’ve been reading the BOFH since the BBS days. He’s still at it, for _The
Register_.

~~~
iso947
I gave up following the ref about 15 years ago - originally body was every
Friday if I recall, but it dropped to irregularly a few times a year. The
plots also went from short circuiting machines and deleting files to mass
murder for no reason.

------
oaiey
The first BOFH was there right at the time I learned Unix in an apprenticeship
school. It got me into the right vibe.

Damn programming and architecture stole me from system administration :)

~~~
Zenst
Yip, earliest I recall seeing it was mid 80's, unsure if it was in the
industry magazine "Computer Weekly -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Weekly"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Weekly")
(the one you got for free and was impossible to cancel) or UNIX World. But
certainly fun times.

EDIT - wrong magazine

~~~
oaiey
For me it was end 90s. It was "classic" at that time already. When I remember
right, I learned the concept of quotas at the same time and the practical
usage from BOFH.

------
moron4hire
The problem with these stories, and pretty much any that use shock as there
source of humor, is that they just aren't that funny. "It's just a joke" only
works if the content actually develops a punchline. But instead, it's the same
story, over and over again. The only change is that the BOFH goes from
fighting with incompetent vendors foisted on him by management to just being
the same, exact kind of dick to the people he's supposed to be supporting,
making him exactly the same, frustratingly useless "help" he complains about
with the vendors.

Even with a reading that these are projections of what he sees as how other
people see him (he doesn't actually want to watch cartoons all day and delete
peoples files intentionally, that's just what people think he does), the joke
runs tired after the 3rd iteration, and then continues ad nauseum.

------
hestefisk
This is a hacker culture classic.

~~~
marcus_holmes
for both good and bad

------
mikece
I never encountered a BOFH in my career but can certainly understand their
frustration with users. Maybe I haven’t worked for the “wrong” companies but
the first BOFH moment would be a sysadmins last where I’ve worked. If it
became a pattern then the IT manager and the sysadmin would have been fired.
Then again, I’ve worked in Microsoft shops and never had to deal with a
crusty, silver pony tailed Unix sysadmins so maybe the stack plays a part.

~~~
tuldia
Indeed!

    
    
      $ curl  http://bofh.bjash.com/ -I
      HTTP/1.1 200 OK
      Content-Length: 22100
      Content-Type: text/html
      Last-Modified: Mon, 09 Sep 2019 18:36:39 GMT
      Accept-Ranges: bytes
      ETag: "916293843d67d51:0"
      Server: Microsoft-IIS/10.0
      X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
      Date: Mon, 30 Dec 2019 18:53:47 GMT

------
erikpukinskis
Could add 1999 to the title.

~~~
dang
Ok, added. Is that the correct year?

~~~
erikpukinskis
I had a hard time figuring it out but my sense was these posts were happening
over time starting in 1999.

------
yalogin
I used to read it initially and some of it was funny because it was harmless
but overtime it became more and more illegal, mean, vindictive just to hurt. I
could not read it anymore.

------
dang
A small but good thread from 2018:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17160902](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17160902)

------
MichaelMoser123
that is in needs of an update: something like 'the cloud setup from beyond
hell'

~~~
dsr_
Here's the real world version:
[https://freethoughtblogs.com/stderr/2019/12/28/its-still-
abo...](https://freethoughtblogs.com/stderr/2019/12/28/its-still-about-the-
applications/)

------
newnewpdro
_clickety_ _clickety_

------
iudqnolq
From the site:

> Warning: This site contains adult themes, violence, profanities, and other
> such fun stuff. If it bothers you, just don't read it.

