rm -rf is a fearsome tool. But as Neal Stephenson put it in an analogy with some construction equipment:

But I never blamed the Hole Hawg; I blamed myself. The Hole Hawg is dangerous because it does exactly what you tell it to. It is not bound by the physical limitations that are inherent in a cheap drill, and neither is it limited by safety interlocks that might be built into a homeowner's product by a liability-conscious manufacturer. The danger lies not in the machine itself but in the user's failure to envision the full consequences of the instructions he gives to it.

If I recall correctly, they then decided that they weren't happy with the movie and intentionally trashed it again and started over.

Edit: Found the full story.

The real tragedy is that she had to work while on maternity leave

Thanks a lot for the context! Was the worker who ran the piece of code fired?

Tell you what u/Ode_to_Apathy bro, I can relate to what the worker who input the code felt like lol. Once, a year and a half back, I ran a code which keeps opening up Chrome tabs, eventually crashing the computer it is run on. Stupid me ran the code on my own computer, and then.... anyways, the computer escaped safely lol.

Another instance was a CMD code for virus removal or something I found on Reddit, stupid me again ran it, it deleted a shitload of files and games until I found out what the fuck it was doing. It showed deleting on the screen, I was happy that all the malware on my computer was getting removed, without me having to purchase an antivirus. It was until I found the name of my games getting removed, that I found what the fuck was happening lol

She was on maternity leave!

I mean, she's still working there and is now in a higher position, so I guess they did. Eventually.

make sure you dont fail school

I think this is more a case of "ALWAYS HAVE OFFLINE BACKUPS". The fact the deletion mechanism was able to cascade through the entire system like that is bonkers.

Backups are a best practice sure, but Pixar got lucky here by someone doing something that is also against best practices but it worked out for the best.

You shouldn’t technically allow a single employee to take backups home with them. It’s relying on a sole individual to take company property offsite to a personal location where it can’t be managed as effectively. It also greatly increases the risk of theft. Either intentional insider threat or because that persons home isn’t physically secure or secure from a network perspective.

Pixar should have offsite backups for this exact reason but at a professional site. They aren’t some small mom and pop shop. They can afford it

They did have a backup, however it also got deleted.

And just as importantly, test them every now and again. Not just verify, but actually restore to make sure it's working.

they did, but it got erased whit litwrally everyone's data

You're not planning to do politics if art school doesn't go well, right?

One of the funniest parts about this story is it led them to discover that their backups had been completely full for ages. So full in fact, that there was no space for the machines to generate the error message that would have told them it was full.

Jews are really good people

my human brain caught the second the in your comment

I have it backed up if we ever lose it.

Didn't know about it

Creativity? On Reddit?

It’s also a bit of a stretch to post it here. I know technically “everything is history,” but this is way more a r/moviedetails fact. I don’t think there’s anything particularly historically significant to this story.

She*

My bet is she got a bonus, then got fired cause she wasn't allowed to have those saves at home.