Requesting 2038 vacation to demonstrate the classic Unix timestamp bug
Description
Dark-mode social feed screenshot: top left shows a small anime avatar and the handle “xssfox @[email protected]”, while the top right has a blue “m Follow” button. The post’s white text on a charcoal background reads line-by-line: “Boss: your leave request broke the system”, “Me: uh sigh”, “Boss: why do you want to take the specific week off in 2038”, “Me: for this exact reason”. A grey metadata footer displays “April 13, 2022, 11:39 PM • Twidere for Android” followed by reply, boost, and like counts “3 118 232”. The joke targets the Year 2038 problem: a leave-management system using 32-bit signed Unix time overflows when asked about a date in 2038, crashing the application. The meme highlights how legacy date handling and integer overflow bugs still lurk in production software
Comments
7Comment deleted
Submitting PTO for 03:14:08 UTC on 19 Jan 2038: if 32-bit time_t overflows, the HR system dies and they finally budget the 64-bit fix; if it doesn’t, I’ve just locked in vacation 15 years ahead - call it an idempotent feature test
The only developer who actually read the "temporary" workaround comment from 1970 that said "TODO: fix before 2038"
Booking PTO for January 19, 2038 is the only vacation request that doubles as an integration test - and the HR system failed it 16 years early
Ah yes, the classic 'I'll just schedule my PTO for 2038 to see what happens' move - the developer equivalent of poking a sleeping dragon with a stick. Nothing says 'I understand our technical debt' quite like weaponizing the Year 2038 problem against your own HR system. Bonus points if the boss's response was filed as a P0 incident with root cause analysis due by EOD. At least now management has 14 years to migrate from 32-bit time_t before this becomes a *real* problem... or they'll just add it to the backlog and mark it as 'won't fix.'
When your leave request overflows time_t, it's the ultimate 'I'm not touching production that week' strategy
Requested PTO for 2038‑01‑19; HR said I have −1 days available - apparently our “enterprise” scheduler still uses a 32‑bit time_t
Submitting PTO for 2038 is free chaos testing: if the HRIS still uses 32‑bit time_t, approvals wrap to 1901; if not, congrats on the time64 migration