Created by
Techie ran up $40,000 bill trying to download a driver
Who, Me? In the dialup age, small mistakes could cost big money
OSes10 Nov 2025 | 134
Who, Me?
What is Who, Me?
Who, Me? is a weekly column in which our readers confess to catastrophes they created in the pursuit of IT excellence - and usually managed to get away with.
The column is a light-hearted look at the world of work and tech.
We're always open to new stories we can feature in Who, Me? If you have one to tell, drop an email to whome@theregister.com to anonymously own up to tech mess you caused.
‘ERP down for emergency maintenance’ was code for ‘You deleted what?’
Who, Me? One SQL slip-up is survivable. Not learning from the first mess meant change
Databases03 Nov 2025 | 76
Frustrated consultant 'went full Hulk' and started smashing hardware
Who, Me? Four back-to-back weekends of work – and disastrously bad documentation – will do that do a techie
On-Prem27 Oct 2025 | 129
Company that made power systems for servers didn’t know why its own machines ran out of juice
Who, Me? Oh … you mean we shouldn’t press that button?
Columnists20 Oct 2025 | 100
Techies tossed appliance that had no power cord, but turned out to power their company
Who, Me? Illicit colo cleanup seemed like a good way to get out of the house during Covid
Networks13 Oct 2025 | 177
Techie found an error message so rude the CEO of IBM apologized for it
Who, Me? Big Blue turned the air blue
Software06 Oct 2025 | 156
BROADER TOPICS
Intern had no idea what not to do, so nearly mangled a mainframe
Who, Me? An early career lesson in the power of documentation, and the importance of exploration
Software29 Sep 2025 | 60
Bored developers accidentally turned their watercooler into a bootleg brewery
Who, Me? Revenge on managers who slow things down is a drink best served with floating fungus
Software22 Sep 2025 | 75
After deleting a web server, I started checking what I typed before hitting 'Enter'
Who, Me? Student thought she had the hang of this 'Linux' thing and its kooky CLI
Software15 Sep 2025 | 142
Playing ball games in the datacenter was obviously stupid, but we had to win the league
Who, Me? You're out, forever!
On-Prem08 Sep 2025 | 100
I was a part-time DBA. After this failover foul-up, they hired a full-time DBA
Who, Me? At last, enough hours in the day to RTFM
Columnists01 Sep 2025 | 76
CIO made a dangerous mistake and ordered his security team to implement it
Who, Me? Firewall pro enjoyed European travel to fix the fallout
Columnists25 Aug 2025 | 75
Teen interns brute-forced a disk install, with predictable results
Who, Me? The real lesson here is how little some companies care about training
Storage18 Aug 2025 | 132
Pay attention, class: Today you’ll learn the wrong way to turn things off
Who, Me? Instructor ended up teaching a lesson in how to get away with mistakes
On-Prem11 Aug 2025 | 87
Tech bro denied dev's hard-earned bonus for bug that overcharged a little old lady
Who, Me? Startups aren't good at testing software, or respecting contracts
Software04 Aug 2025 | 109
Intern did exactly what he was told and turned off the wrong server
Who, Me? And was then blamed for not knowing about inaccurate labels
On-Prem28 Jul 2025 | 149
Under-qualified sysadmin crashed Amazon.com for 3 hours with a typo
Who, Me? 'This, many considered, was bad'
Columnists21 Jul 2025 | 80
Junior developer's code worked in tests, destroyed data in production
Who, Me? For the lack of a little documentation, two techies did a lot of accidental damage
Columnists14 Jul 2025 | 73
Yes, I wrote a very expensive bug. In my defense I was only seven years old at the time
Who, Me? Years later, deep into a great tech career, your fellow reader remains inspired by the forgiveness received after the error
Software07 Jul 2025 | 166
Junior sysadmin’s first lines of code set off alarms. His next lot crashed the company
Who, Me? Sensible CEO wouldn’t let our hero take the blame - a shoddy supervisor got the slap
Software30 Jun 2025 | 47
Techie went home rather than fix mistake that caused a massive meltdown
Who, Me? And was saved by an even worse meltdown caused by someone else
On-Prem23 Jun 2025 | 162
Techie exposed giant tax grab, maybe made government change the rules
Who, Me? Custom text fields can be a powerful form of protest
Offbeat16 Jun 2025 | 56
Field support chap got married – which took down a mainframe
Who, Me? If you like it to keep working, don’t put a ring on it
On-Prem09 Jun 2025 | 96
Admin brought his drill to work, destroyed disks and crashed a datacenter
Who, Me? Some people will do anything to avoid an all-nighter
On-Prem02 Jun 2025 | 105
Techies thought outside the box. Then the boss decided to take the box away
Who, Me? Life in a corporate aquarium didn’t go swimmingly
Offbeat26 May 2025 | 108
Automatic UK-to-US English converter produced amazing mistakes by the vanload
Who, Me? Yard of Eden just doesn't have the right ring to it
Software19 May 2025 | 320
So your [expletive] test failed. So [obscene participle] what?
Who, Me? It was acceptable in the '80s
Software12 May 2025 | 93
Teens maintained a mainframe and it went about as well as you'd imagine
Who, Me? Fake it till you make it doesn't cut it for mission-critical workloads
Columnists05 May 2025 | 96
What the **** did you put in that code? The client thinks it's a cyberattack
Who, Me? When your customers work in super-sensitive situations, bad jokes make for bad business
Software28 Apr 2025 | 135
Developer scored huge own goal by deleting almost every football fan in Europe
Who, Me? Fiddling with the production database – what could possibly go wrong?
Databases21 Apr 2025 | 71
Static electricity can be shockingly funny, but the joke's over when a rack goes dark
Who, Me? If this techie had been older and slower, this never would have happened
On-Prem14 Apr 2025 | 117
Dev loudly complained about older colleague, who retired not long after
Who, Me? The graybeard wasn't doing a great job and morale improved once he left. How would you handle this?
Columnists07 Apr 2025 | 133
Tech trainer taught a course on software he'd never used and didn't own
Who, Me? 'I'm glad you asked that question. We'll get to that tomorrow' (After I research the answer)
Networks31 Mar 2025 | 177
After three weeks of night shifts, very tired techie broke the UK’s phone network
Who, Me? And got away with it when someone else broke it even more comprehensively
On-Prem24 Mar 2025 | 81
Developer wrote a critical app and forgot where it ran – until it stopped running
Who, Me? What comes after testing in the software development lifecycle? Aaah, never mind ... let's skip to maintenance
Applications17 Mar 2025 | 55
Junior techie rushed off for fun weekend after making a terminal mistake that crashed a client
Who, Me? Using one green screen to manage multiple machines needs more than a Friday afternoon brain
On-Prem10 Mar 2025 | 40
Techie pulled an all-nighter that one mistake turned into an all-weekender
Who, Me? Don’t trust your tired self to do rm -rf right
Software03 Mar 2025 | 65
Untrained techie botched a big hardware sale by breaking client's ERP
Who, Me? 'If I wasn't already taking blood pressure meds, I'm sure I would not have survived'
Columnists24 Feb 2025 | 51
Techie pointed out meetings are pointless, and was punished for it
Who, Me? When asked to offer honest feedback, maybe pause to ponder how well you play office politics
On-Prem17 Feb 2025 | 133
Does this thing run on a 220 V power supply? Oh. That puff of smoke suggests not
Who, Me? That's not even the worst part of this story, which features a flood, broken promises, and plenty of panic
Personal Tech10 Feb 2025 | 148
CompSci teacher sets lab task: Accidentally breaking the university
Who, Me? Hey! Teacher! Leave our network alone!
Networks03 Feb 2025 | 53
Tired techie botched preventative maintenance he soon learned wasn't needed
Who, Me? Epic late-night road trip would have been awesome if not for a secret change of plans
Personal Tech27 Jan 2025 | 70
Developers feared large chaps carrying baseball bats could come to kneecap their ... test account?
Who, Me? A whole different kind of 'technical debt' turned into real-world trouble
Columnists20 Jan 2025 | 91
Life lesson: Don't delete millions of accounts on the same day you go to the dentist
Who, Me? Or ignore documentation that warns you are about to do something dangerous
Databases13 Jan 2025 | 65
Brackets go there? Oops. That’s not where I used them and now things are broken
Who, Me? Weird syntax AND/OR a junior techie can be very bad for business
Devops06 Jan 2025 | 82
Coder wrote a bug so bad security guards wanted a word when he arrived at work
Who, Me? Working for a startup is supposed to end with getting rich overnight, but not like this
Software16 Dec 2024 | 164
Panic at the Cisco tech, thanks to ancient IOS syntax helper that outsmarted itself
Who, Me? Misplaced shortcut led to communication breakdown
Networks09 Dec 2024 | 72
NetAdmin learns that wooden chocks, unlike swipe cards, open doors when networks can't
Who, Me? Burglary skills are surprisingly important when building networks
Networks02 Dec 2024 | 95
Network engineer chose humiliation over a night on the datacenter floor
Who, Me? To avoid lock-in, it helps if you remember your keys
On-Prem25 Nov 2024 | 55
The sad tale of the Alpha massacre
who, me? Those old operating systems had awesome power – you had to be careful wielding it
Systems11 Nov 2024 | 81
Relocation is a complete success – right up until the last minute
Who, Me? It may be a cliché to say 'Don't rest on your laurels' but you really shouldn't
On-Prem04 Nov 2024 | 117
I made this network so resilient nothing could possibly go wro...
Who, Me? All the redundancy in the world can't help a 'brown trouser' mistake
Networks28 Oct 2024 | 103
Linux admin asked savvy scientist for IT help and the boffin blew it
Who, Me? In science, every day is about testing hypotheses. Such as: 'plugging this thing in here is OK, right?'
Networks21 Oct 2024 | 93
Compression? What's that? And why is the network congested and the PCs frozen?
Who, Me? The only thing worse than a Reply All storm is a Send All storm
Software14 Oct 2024 | 101
After we fix that, how about we also accidentally break something important?
Who, Me? You had one job – doing extra is nice, but dangerous
Networks07 Oct 2024 | 102
Personalized pop-up was funny for about a second, until it felt like stalking
Who, Me? The call was coming from inside the house
Software30 Sep 2024 | 77
Did you hear the one about the help desk chap who abused privileges to prank his mate?
Who, Me? The result was no joke, thanks to a Microsoft glitch
On-Prem23 Sep 2024 | 92
I don't know what pressing Delete will do, but it seems safe enough!
Who, Me? You've got mail … actually no, you've got nothing
Software16 Sep 2024 | 103
Python script saw students booted off the mainframe for sending one insult too many
Who, Me? Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
Software09 Sep 2024 | 96
Techie made a biblical boo-boo when trying to spread the word
Who, Me? The technology was willing, but the cache was weak
Software02 Sep 2024 | 61
Bargain-hunting boss saw his bonus go up in a puff of self-inflicted smoke
Who, Me? Buying PCs off the gray market can (literally) blow up in your face
Personal Tech26 Aug 2024 | 154
Developer tried to dress for success, but ended up attired for an expensive outage
Who, Me? Debugging software on the waterfront is a strangely dangerous task
Columnists19 Aug 2024 | 160
Biting the hand that feeds IT
