I was one of 7 people coding one of the 7 different real-time sensors for a large networked product. Another team was programming the central network manager an

I was one of 7 people coding one of the 7 different real-time sensors for a large networked product. Another team was programming the central network manager and data processor. The project was late and there was a daily-charge penalty clause in the contract with the customer, a very large company. A long enough delay could wipe out all the profit from the project. So engineering management told the programmers to suppress all signs of runtime bugs, no error messages, no halts, just slog on, bugs and all. I objected, nobody paid attention. For my sensor, I had it scream bloody murder (on the diagnostic console) for every runtime problem it found. So I could fix it. The rest of the team followed instructions. My unit was debugged, up and running, a year before everybody else. If the whole project would have been ready, the profit would have been reasonable. In a whole-team meeting,near the end, I asked the testing team if they had found any bugs in my unit. They asked "What's that?". They didn't even know its name. Suddenly, I was a hero.