Ridiculous Coding Practices by companies you have worked for
MrFoof: We were explicitly barred from using tools that were not published by Microsoft.  Even if Microsoft didn't make a tool to solve the problem.  Instead, we were encouraged to create our own, on our own time, outside of regular business hours.The same place barred the use of code generators, the use of snippet macros, and they barred admins from creating automated scripts/utilities to automate gruntwork.  They likened it to taking a math test without a calculator -- you should be able to do it by hand if you can supposedly do the job.The same place also required that comments were not to be made in source code files.  They should only be made in source control check-in comments.The same place felt refactoring was an unproductive activity unless it corrected a specific "bug".  Scalability and performance issues weren't considered valid bugs - it was fast before, so why would it ever be slow now?  Blame would be put on the hardware until network ops bit back.  Then you would be lambasted for your application not scaling 4 orders of magnitude on the same hardware when that wasn't part of the original requirements.One place I worked for did not allow developers to use the bug-tracking system.  Instead, someone from QA would place printout of open bugs in a bin.  You were required to take the bug from the bin, back to your desk, and when completed, fill in a form by hand detailing the explanation and attach the appropriate colored paper strips in the right order so it could be triaged appropriately.The same place migrated customer data to their product by hand.  Using Excel.  We jokingly referred to this process as "electronic handcrafting".  The reason was because it was faster and resulted in fewer reported defects after deployment.  Someone in that department got fed up, so she had me create ETL processes for the four most common competitor products.  Time-to-install went from 4 weeks to 4 days and the error rate dropped 98%.  It won over the COO and some staff, but made me enemies with plenty of others.At the same place a sales manager convinced the COO that RAID1 should be considered a viable backup and disaster recovery solution.  We were tasked with making it so RAID controllers would not back up certain types of files.Another place I worked for as a contractor insisted that their web app was written in ColdFusion.  Despite not having any other contractors past or present, and the market not having any ColdFusion developers.  The reason ended up being is it because it "sounded cool".  Needless to say, they have an app still running on ColdFusion 4.I've worked in too many places that are adamant that "backups" are all the database version control they need.I've worked at a place that would expect me to develop APIs for certain products and systems we had, yet refused to allow for a requirements gathering phase.  I was actually fired trying to explain that I can't build something when I don't know what I was building.  Reason was so the new CIO could bring on a contracting firm run by a friend of his.  Three other people have since quit in response.