I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

by skeptruneon 8/1/2025, 4:59 PMwith 216 comments

by b8on 8/1/2025, 9:30 PM

Reminds me when I got banned from Amazon for suspected fraud (had an old account, but deleted my email and number since it was in a lot of DB dumps). After I got hired, I reached out to the guy in charge of the anti-fraud team at Amazon, and got unbanned. Emails to support etc. did nothing before I reached out internally (unbanned by 1am the next day).

by stevesimmonson 8/1/2025, 9:19 PM

If Google Maps would like to hire me so the km/miles switch can remember I only ever want to see distances in km, my contact details are in my HN profile.

I must have changed that back from miles once a fortnight since Google Maps launched 20 years ago. That's 500 times. Totally ridiculous for a company who core goal is profiling their users...

by 11Spadeson 8/1/2025, 7:16 PM

It's hilarious to see the old joke actually playing out in real life. Kudos!

On a meta note; would you consider adding a left margin to your site? Reading from the very edge of my screen feels somewhat strange.

by SoftTalkeron 8/1/2025, 7:40 PM

> I added an AbortController to the debounced search function, so that it aborts any previous queries when a new one is made. This means that the search results are always relevant to what the user is currently typing.

To me one of the most annoying things an application can do is go off and do something before I'm done telling it what to do. Filters that apply themselves without an explicit indication that I'm done setting them up, or searches that are constantly re-executing as I'm typing. Wait for me to stop.

by zac23oron 8/1/2025, 10:19 PM

The software quality is so low that if a bug bothers you, it's easier to get hired to fix it than for the company to fix it! Wow.

It reminds me of the programmer who mitigated the GTA 5 loading time problem. If even with a lot of money of GTA 5 the quality doesn't improve...

by stavroson 8/1/2025, 7:49 PM

The article says nothing about the hiring, which is kind of the most important part of the whole escapade. Right now, it's a bit "something was bugging me, and when the company hired me, I fixed it", which, great?

by cosmic_quantaon 8/1/2025, 6:26 PM

> It reminds me of George Hotz’s legendary single week at Twitter in 2022, where he joined just to fix a login popup that was bothering users, then bounced.

The author remembers this, uh, event differently than I remember it... George Hotz boldly claimed that he could "fix Twitter search" faster than those lazy Twitter devs, only to bail almost immediately. Hubris!

On the way out, he removed that login popup as a sort of consolation prize.

by hinkleyon 8/2/2025, 1:14 AM

In the reverse situation, I've worked at places where the IP lawyers basically made it impossible to submit PRs to open source code.

But sometimes explaining the exact inputs and the line number where you know the problem is can grease the wheels enough that you can convince someone else to write the fix for you. I didn't technically give you any code. But I did give you free QA.

by buggy6257on 8/1/2025, 11:25 PM

I specifically attempted to get a job at Discord so I could submit a PR to make giant emojis be a toggle setting rather than automatic. I know the feeling.

(If anyone works at Discord, please me and the rest of my server are begging you)

by deadbabeon 8/1/2025, 7:16 PM

I wonder if it's legal for corporations to have employees that they send off to get hired at other companies, do some stuff in those companies that are beneficial to their actual employer, and then leave before the probationary period ends.

by echelon_muskon 8/1/2025, 6:07 PM

This PR is quite the PR move.

by khazhouxon 8/2/2025, 2:38 AM

I often have the thought that it would be pretty awesome to take jobs for 6 months here and there just to implement specific features I want in my favorite SW, apps, sites, etc.

* Join Logic Pro team for 8 months and add better score notation tools

* Join Apple's iOS Music app and fix the weird blip that happens at ~17 seconds on any track

* Google Maps to stop the navigation/directions from spelling out how to get from my house to El Camino Real, which I've only done about 10,000 times.

* ...

by PantaloonFlameson 8/1/2025, 10:46 PM

The cancellation in the denouncing seems … sort of obvious.

by Syttenon 8/2/2025, 1:14 AM

Good PR, but AbortController doesn't really help with stopping the server from processing the request. I have seen so much of this type of search that just continues processing in the backend even if the client has long gone caring.

by syntaxingon 8/1/2025, 10:22 PM

There was an old legend for an Apple bug (but I can’t exactly remember what). He complained about this macOS bugs for years. Worked for Apple for a couple months, fixed the issue, then quit.

by Kwpolskaon 8/2/2025, 9:44 AM

Who hosted the backend? If you did, you could demand a fix, as the bad frontend code caused increased server load and wasted resources.

by pengaruon 8/1/2025, 7:10 PM

Problem solved, so... time to move on?

by TuxPoweredon 8/2/2025, 10:17 AM

So that’s the only hope to get MRU tab switching in Chrime - get hired at Google?

by willmaddenon 8/1/2025, 9:00 PM

That's one way to do it.

by tmshaplandon 8/2/2025, 1:15 PM

Congrats on joining Mintlify, friend. Trieve is dead, Long live Trieve!

by clippyplzon 8/1/2025, 6:39 PM

This link is a 404 for me

by sitzkriegon 8/2/2025, 2:20 AM

very funny watching serial apple ass kissers getting tricked into listing all the shitty things in this thread

by test1072on 8/3/2025, 12:10 AM

So you are the guy from that meme

by thehourson 8/1/2025, 9:28 PM

FYI this autoplays full screen video when I visit on iOS + Firefox.

Edit: then switches into dark mode after a lag of a few seconds

by bravesoul2on 8/2/2025, 6:18 AM

A debounce fix. They were really asleep at the wheel.

by nullsmackon 8/2/2025, 5:43 PM

wasn't there an xkcd like this once?

by arguflowon 8/1/2025, 6:09 PM

Code is always the best documentation and the best thing about opensource.'