The Art of Auto-Injecting Bugs (and Plausible Deniability)
There is a magical moment in every software developer's life. That precise instant, barely a few milliseconds long, between pressing "Enter" on the deploy command and realizing you forgot to delete that giant console.log or, worse, that if (true) condition you used for quick testing.
In that moment, the universe stands still. And then, the phone rings (or Teams pings).
It's "The Boss".
The Conspiracy Theory
My boss has a theory. She is firmly convinced that I possess a secret tool, a hidden script in my terminal called auto-inject-bugs.sh, which I execute randomly with every push to production.
"Sadot," she says with that tone of infinite patience that precedes the storm, "why does the 'Pay' button now open a window with a gif of a confused raccoon?"
"It's not a bug, it's an undocumented feature to improve user engagement," I reply automatically. Denial is the first stage of grief, and also my first line of defense.
She sighs. "Sometimes I think you auto-inject errors and incidents just to see if I'm paying attention."
The Defense (and the Reality)
This is where I, indignant, raise my voice (metaphorically, because I value my job) and proclaim my innocence.
"Impossible! My code is pure, clean, and tested. It must be a browser cache issue. Or the DNS. It's always the DNS."
But just between us, reader... sometimes she's right. Not that I do it on purpose (who wants to fix bugs on a Friday at 6 PM?), but there's a sort of Gremlin in my keyboard that decides user.id should be undefined just when it matters most.
Those "mini rages" I put her through aren't malice, they are... happy accidents, as Bob Ross would say. Only instead of little trees, we paint NullReferenceExceptions.
The Endless Cycle
The truth is, even though I always deny it, this dynamic is the touch of humor that brightens our days. She finds the error (because she has a bionic eye for defects that I swear didn't exist in local), she scolds me (with affection, I hope), I deny it, then I quietly fix it and say:
"Weird, it fixed itself. I told you it was the cache."
She knows I'm lying. I know she knows. But it's our little ritual of camaraderie. And at the end of the day, when the software works (eventually), I know those moments of frustration are just the price of having a system that is alive, growing, and yes, sometimes tripping over its own digital feet.
So, if you're reading this, Boss: It wasn't me, it was the compiler. I swear.