Circle Eight

They carved their truths from wax and air, And clothed in trust what was not there. With flashing lights and fervent tone, They built upon what’s never shown. The hands that trick, the lips that sell - Now buried deep within the shell.

First Scene: The Ditches #

We reached a great cliff, and below us lay the Eighth Circle: a massive, funnel-shaped pit divided nto ten concentric trenches. This was the place for Fraud in all its forms - where knowledge was abused, and trust betrayed.

The Sage called it The Refactor Trenches, for these souls had warped the very essence of what it meant to be a builder of systems.

Ditch 1 #

(The Misrepresenters)

In the first ditch, souls wandered through a forest of mirrors, each one showing a different version of the same project. As they reached toward one image - a polished demo or a visionary roadmap - it shattered into dust. They wept not from physical torment, but from the constant realization that none of their illusions could endure.

"These", said the Sage, "are those who sold the fiction of progress. They authored feature lists for software that did not exist, staged demos that were smoke and mirrors, and promised delivery dates they had no intention of keeping. Their punishment is to chase reflections of their own deceit, forever just out of reach."

Ditch 2 #

(The Flatterers)

Souls here were steeped in a river of semantic sludge, the stench overwhelming.

These were the authors of Useless, Obsequious Comments. They wrote // increments i by 1 above i++, filled pull requests with "LGTM" without reading, and clogged code with noise that praised without informing.

As they produced nothing but waste in life, so now in waste are they submerged. Their mouths gape with praise, but no meaning escapes.

Ditch 3 #

(The Metrics Manipulators)

Here were souls dragging behind them glowing screens - dashboards filled with rising lines, pie charts at perfect balance.

But the screens were shackled to broken systems. The metrics they displayed were lies: code coverage at 100%, user satisfaction at 99%, yet all beneath was collapse.

These souls gamified their worth, inflated velocity, and buried bugs beneath layers of analytics.

Their punishment is to drag these dashboards forever, screaming as the numbers glow brighter, even as their legs give out under the real weight of failure.

Ditch 4 #

(The Contractors of Chaos)

In the fourth trench, the air was filled with the clatter of disassembled parts — wires, APIs, scripts, libraries, none of them connected. Souls stumbled through this scrapyard with bleeding hands, carrying the fragments of a thousand half-started integrations.

"These", said the Sage, "are the ones who brought in the Patchwork without pause. The Outsourcing Devotees, the Integration Zealots, the ones who accepted every plugin, tool, and module without consideration."

Their sin was not the act of seeking help, but their failure to unify. They bolted on solutions without care, leaving systems that no one could reason through, much less maintain. Now they assemble forever without blueprints, each piece incompatible with the last, each contract expired.

Their torment is futility: eternal assembly of a system that will never cohere.

Ditch 5 #

(The Micro-Managers)

In this trench, souls ran endlessly on an infinite backlog treadmill.

Their task boards stretched into the darkness, each card subdividing into more and more tasks.

These were the micro-managers, who broke all vision into fragments, who trusted no one and delivered nothing.

They are chased and whipped by shadows of their own team members, whom they never allowed to grow.

Ditch 6 #

(The Hypocrites)

Here marched souls in cloaks of gilded brilliance. They shimmered gold on the outside, but inside were crushing slabs of lead.

These were those who preached Clean Architecture, wrote glowing READMEs and pristine diagrams, yet delivered systems of pure chaos.

Their punishment is to carry the weight of their false appearances for all eternity. Their beauty hides rot, and the heaviness of their lie breaks their pace.

Ditch 7 #

(The Self-Promoters)

In the seventh ditch, we found a great glass maze, endlessly reflecting the distorted visages of those trapped inside. These were the Self-Promoters - engineers who had made careers out of noise.

"They cared more for followers than for function", the Sage said. "They curated profiles, not systems. Their code was broken, but their conference talks were pristine."

Within the mirrors, they chased their own reflections: looping recordings of keynotes, retweets, blog posts, awards - each flickering with applause but devoid of substance. The deeper they pursued validation, the further they became lost in their own distortion.

"Their punishment is infinite echo", the Sage concluded. "In life, they inflated their worth while the system crumbled beneath them. Now they speak, but no one listens - not even themselves."

Ditch 8 #

(The False Counselors)

Each soul here was wrapped in a flickering tongue of flame, consumed from within by the very light they once claimed to shed.

These were the senior architects and advisors who knowingly gave bad advice.

They pushed technologies they didn’t believe in, sold flawed designs to meet deadlines, or led others astray to advance their own name.

"As they misused their wisdom in life", the Sage said, "so now they are consumed by that same fire - not of passion, but of deceit."

Ditch 9 #

(The Pattern Evangelists)

These souls were bound tightly with wires of abstraction, their limbs frozen in rigid poses.

They were those who, in life, worshipped the Pattern over the Problem.

Every feature began with a factory, every class extended a strategy, every action required a visitor.

"They mistook the means for the end", said the Sage. "Now the means are their shackles."

They cry out for the freedom of simplicity, but their code is forever buried in unnecessary layers they themselves wrapped it in.

Ditch 10 #

(The DevRel Impostors)

At the deepest pit of the trench, we saw a stage of glowing light. Upon it, souls performed endlessly- keynotes, panels, and demos - their words broadcast to a cheering void.

These were the DevRel Impostors, who sold dreams of productivity while never building, who lived by brand but starved their craft.

Their punishment is to speak forever into broken microphones, to demo frameworks that never run, while offstage their own repositories decay, untouched.

Second Scene: The Contract of Disguise #

At the rim of the trench, we paused before a glowing glass corridor. Inside walked souls in tailored clothing, each carrying a polished résumé.

Their faces shimmered and shifted - sometimes honest, sometimes void. They spoke with confidence, reciting terms they half understood, and nodding solemnly at every buzzword.

"These are the Chameleons", the Sage said quietly, "those who sold themselves to every job but gave nothing in return. They claimed skills they never used, promised expertise they never shared."

They are condemned to walk eternally through interviews, never hired, never dismissed, forever performing, forever uncertain whether even they believe their own performance.