Office Space - Fractions of a Penny
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters drop it as a joke or reference whenever a thread touches on rounding errors, fractional-cent accumulation, or small per-unit revenue that adds up at scale.
Recommended by 0 people across 0 different months, 2019 to 2026.
What it is
A 72-second clip from the film Office Space in which Peter Gibbons explains to his girlfriend the scheme he and his coworkers plan to run: skimming fractions of a penny from each of the company's transactions. The uploader posted it to illustrate auditing materiality and misappropriation of assets.
What people said
Cites shostack · 2019-10 · Hacker News · on “The privacy trade-offs of cheap Android smartphones”
Without touching on legality of such things, it's interesting also in that these things probably have have a very clear record dollar amounts involved for such an act in terms of revenue generated, CPMs for ads, etc. This scene from Office Space comes to mind.[1] [1] [this video]
Cites deckard1 · 2021-04 · Hacker News · on “Things I learned while developing a billing system”
yeah but this is where you really have to be careful where you do your rounding. 3.089 * 10,000 = 30890 3.09 * 10,000 = 30900 A one cent rounding added up to $10 difference. It's easy to screw this up in code, sending values to databases or across APIs, etc. Also reminds me of the plot of Office Space. Which is a bit humorous since they screwed up their own scamming scheme in similar fashion. [this video]