Comment On Not in the Budget

Painful.... and, unfortunately, not surprising. I've personally had code I've written to fix an issue in enterprise level software we use show up in said enterprise level software as an official patch on three separate occasions now. Even my documentation, bad punctuation and all, end up in the notes for that fix. I certainly don't mind that they spread my solution to the masses, but my company could use a kickback for the work, if you know what I mean. We're not getting their software for free, yaknow!

Typical of those IT assholes.

Poor guy; helps for free and doesn't even get credit (I'm sure there's a pun in that somewhere.) This is a major WTF, but not the only one: no higher up in management ever figured out that the labour costs of rebooting something 16 times per shift far outweigh the cost of an upgrade ?

And this is what happens when you beg someone to accept your help...

TRWTF here is that if he'd just sat on his hands and left well enough alone, when the machine died they either would have asked him then, or there suddenly would have been budget for a cheap label maker app.

at least they didn't kill him Antitrust style!

That's true, but the big WTF here is that doing stuff like this is great as long as the code doesn't have bugs. What he should have done was give them a version with a subtle horrible bug and then charge to fix when everyone got used to the app and did not want to change. There's a lot to be said for complacency and a lot of money to be made off of giving the first taste for free. After all, if people can be diagnosed with addiction to certain programs and computer gadgets, then why shouldn't the programmers treat their software like drugs.

Procedural:

Poor guy; helps for free and doesn't even get credit (I'm sure there's a pun in that somewhere.) This is a major WTF, but not the only one: no higher up in management ever figured out that the labour costs of rebooting something 16 times per shift far outweigh the cost of an upgrade ?

Chances are, the labour comes out of one budget, and the upgrade another (that of the decision-maker). I'm currently assigned to a project to move a particular web service from a server onto each individual client that needs it - no, that's not a typo - simply because the client machine's support costs come out of someone else's budget. Don't get me started

RBoy:

Not first

Happened to me so must be pretty common. I sent some code over to our main dev-centre in another country. It was just a little test-app I'd written. They would never send me any of their code for the "main products" though.

A couple of years later I was having problems with an app of theirs - one of the 2 or 3 main products - and they couldn't reproduce it. In the end they agreed to send me the source so I could step through it.

When I opened it up I realised the core of the program was a copy-n-paste of the stuff I'd sent them a couple of years before.

Luckily the problem wasn't with my code.

Laslow:

TRWTF here is that if he'd just sat on his hands and left well enough alone, when the machine died they either would have asked him then, or there suddenly would have been budget for a cheap label maker app.

Or they would just dig out an old typewriter from storage.

I actually had something like this. It more idea then code. But the dolt who took the idea did it so badly, I was happy that my name had nothing to do with it.

Of course, I was a second class citizen anyways. You know, as I was the only 'white collar' worker on second shift. So I had to be able to do everything, regardless if it was in my 'job description' or not.

Well one small benefit, at least he doesn't have to support it.

This is why I make it a habit to always include a bug or two in my code. That way when it crashes, they have to come crawling back to me and acknowledge that yes, I am the guy who wrote the glorious piece of code. And then I laugh mightily and refuse to fix the bugs.

MS-DOS or PC-DOS will run on an older Pentium. Why not do that ?

That damned Jeff. Whine whine whine. I swear to god.

Umm... and you're being paid for? If you sign a contract or work agreement that hands over all your work to the corporate monster, then, well, that's what your get your weekly/fortnightly/monthly pay cheque for.

If you want acknowledgement for your solutions, then you need to not work for a business.

Silly Jeff, the "IT Worker's Survivor Guide" clearly states:

1) If it works, it was your supervisor's idea.
2) If it doesn't work, it's your fault.
3) No good deed goes unpunished.

People like you make me sick. You are a shame on our profession and are partly the reason why people like Jeff can't get their code trusted in the first place. Yes we are in a position of power, but with that power comes great responsibility. I'd like to see how mightily you laugh when your job is offshored to someone more trustworthy.

Sites like that are just begging for shit to happen. Maybe they didn't even run a network and was spared from most of the modern viruses.

And going for the local person won't work, it's top management that has to start worrying.

I was going to comment, but there's no budget for it.

proster:

...your job is offshored to someone more trustworthy.

good one.

I try to think of things in this way, whoever takes credit for code they didnt write, means he wont understand how it works, and when management wants something added or changed, he will need to strugle.


captcha=abico (abacus?)

So, they label the label maker system with masking tape and a sharpie?

Price stickers? It's much more likely that it printed warehouse location barcodes and sku barcodes.

proster:

People like you make me sick. You are a shame on our profession and are partly the reason why people like Jeff can't get their code trusted in the first place. Yes we are in a position of power, but with that power comes great responsibility. I'd like to see how mightily you laugh when your job is offshored to someone more trustworthy.

Easy there @proster, I'm just joking. In actuality, my code is always 100% bug free, I receive nor expect acknowledgment for my work, and I'm paid in leprechaun nickels and unicorn quarters.

Happy now?

Peter Parker:

People like you make me sick. You are a shame on our profession and are partly the reason why people like Jeff can't get their code trusted in the first place. Yes we are in a position of power, but with that power comes great responsibility. I'd like to see how mightily you laugh when your job is offshored to someone more trustworthy.

Go ahead Spidey, and defeat the evil green troll... erm, goblin.

holy smoke.. off shored? trustworthy? I've made a living the last few years rewriting the garbage coming from trustworthy offshore developers. I've seen literally hundreds of projects people have had me look at to see what I could do about it, written by the "best" that a southern Asian country in particular has to offer. and I've not seen 2 lines of consecutive code that has ever been anything more than complete trash.

TDS:

That's true, but the big WTF here is that doing stuff like this is great as long as the code doesn't have bugs. What he should have done was give them a version with a subtle horrible bug and then charge to fix when everyone got used to the app and did not want to change. There's a lot to be said for complacency and a lot of money to be made off of giving the first taste for free. After all, if people can be diagnosed with addiction to certain programs and computer gadgets, then why shouldn't the programmers treat their software like drugs.

You work for Microsoft don't you?

Captcha: Paratus... ite

proster:

...the reason why people like Jeff can't get their code trusted in the first place.

The problem wasn't with people trusting his code. They trusted it quite a bit, in fact, as evidenced by Jeff being able to recognize it as his own when they used it. The problem was that they kept it out of the system when Jeff submitted it (i.e. wouldn't admit Jeff had some skill) by using arbitrary in-company rules, and then tried to secretly implement it later as their own coding solution. That kind of behavior almost always squelches innovation and entrepreneurial thinking in a company, which leads to very big problems down the road (sounds like it already has at Jeff's company from reading the first few paragraphs). Your argument, while valid, ignores the above problem that usually creates this kind of behavior in developers.

It's stuff like this that made me implement my personal rule: if a problem exists that I want to try and solve myself, I create the solution first, then sit on it and wait for someone to ask for it. When they do, I then just hand them the solution I've already made.

It prevents code swiping like this from various areas (not supervisor, unfortunately, but IT, DBA, higher-level development areas, etc), and keeps me from being blamed too harshly in case my oh-so-brilliant solution mucks up software and code I wasn't aware of at the time (they can blame the app and me for the failure, of course, but they can't ALSO try to claim I was wasting time on this when I could have been doing my real work, which would require me to produce proof I did it in my off-hours: they DID assign me to try and fix it, after all).

Not to mention that if it's a complex problem (usually is), when they ask me to fix it, I can spend the time normally used for solving the problem to fine-tune and test my pre-made solution to make sure it works right the first time.

The real WTF here has nothing to do with code or technology. If a mission critical function is depending on an ailing system that is on the verge of breaking, and it's not in the budget to fix it.... the company needs to re-evaluate or something, it's in shakier economic status than GM.

Alin:

And this is what happens when you beg someone to accept your help...

No this is what happens when you help someone EVER. Its been my experience that when you help someone, the reward is being taken advantage of without so much as a 'thanks'.

Procedural:

no higher up in management ever figured out that the labour costs of rebooting something 16 times per shift far outweigh the cost of an upgrade ?

Not if all the work is getting done it doesn't.
Work isn't paid for second by second. Therefore, if their is 16-reboots worth of slack time a day, it's free.

Why couldn't they just use DosBox or some other emulator? >:-)

Capt. Obvious:

Procedural:

no higher up in management ever figured out that the labour costs of rebooting something 16 times per shift far outweigh the cost of an upgrade ?

Not if all the work is getting done it doesn't.
Work isn't paid for second by second. Therefore, if their is 16-reboots worth of slack time a day, it's free.

Nope, this isn't an isolated incident - this points to a cheapish attitude which will carry over to the more important work. In short, it isn't free, it increases risk, and that's something that business should understand.

So you are doing the coding for the problem in your bedroom in the night time, waiting until the company is on its final knees?! That is very unprofessional! How is the company to trust your code if you doing it in secret like Bruce Wayne? This is why my offshore team is promoted a company first attitude where everything is for the good of the company with more full and open trust.

The workers and foreman are going to be there the duration of the day. Do they care if they are going to be rebooting the machine or not? They get payed the same and they know what to do. If they suddenly doubled in productivity, their pay would not change and they would not get a thank you either.

DGM:

The real WTF here has nothing to do with code or technology. If a mission critical function is depending on an ailing system that is on the verge of breaking, and it's not in the budget to fix it.... the company needs to re-evaluate or something, it's in shakier economic status than GM.

"Not in the budget" probably means that the money it takes for a new system would come out of the money the department head gets as a bonus. A lot of places, the department head gets a yearly budget and anything he doesn't spend goes into his bonus pool.

coyo:

The workers and foreman are going to be there the duration of the day. Do they care if they are going to be rebooting the machine or not? They get payed the same and they know what to do. If they suddenly doubled in productivity, their pay would not change and they would not get a thank you either.

Which is such a major WTF I see in so many places its not even funny. Company I'm working at right now is a prime example of the above. There isn't so much as the tiniest hint of a thank you for anyone going above the bare minimum.

What's the result? Everyone just does the bare minimum to keep their job.

darkmage0707077:

The problem wasn't with people trusting his code. They trusted it quite a bit, in fact, as evidenced by Jeff being able to recognize it as his own when they used it. The problem was that they kept it out of the system when Jeff submitted it (i.e. wouldn't admit Jeff had some skill) by using arbitrary in-company rules, and then tried to secretly implement it later as their own coding solution. That kind of behavior almost always squelches innovation and entrepreneurial thinking in a company, which leads to very big problems down the road...

Amen! Mod +5 Insightful.

Alternatively, nobody expects something insightful like this at TDWTF; why are posting this? You must be new here!

They can do it on a newer computer that is cheaper to maintain and use a virtual machine and it still be faster.

If the software still crashed frequently, there's a good chance it did that since the day they purchased it and should never have wasted the money

30 minutes? Try a six month project. One you stayed late to do to the best of your abilities. One that a team of people couldn't solve over the prior year. One that the new hire (/manager's friend) is now not-so-secretly solving, because you never had the proper credentials for the task you were hired to do.

That's why you need some kind of obfuscated code within it that makes it display your name at the top of the screen. Not just in one place either where it could be easily deleted. Spread it across multiple seemingly innocent looking lines of code in different areas. Oh and the kicker would be to not have it show your name until say 6 months have passed since you wrote it.

Kermos:

Company I'm working at right now is a prime example of the above. There isn't so much as the tiniest hint of a thank you for anyone going above the bare minimum.

What's the result? Everyone just does the bare minimum to keep their job.

At a former job of mine, I overheard two managers talking. One said, "But even if they're doing a good job, you can't tell them so, or else they'll slack off."

I spoke up and said, "It doesn't work that way with me; it's the other way around. See, I already know that I'm doing a good job, without being told. So if I don't get any recognition, it makes me wonder if anyone notices or cares, and I feel inclined to slack off."

They both just stared at me with unfocused eyes.

44 Comments and still no one has mentioned it!!! This is going to be sweet, let me enjoy this moment...


wait...

waiiiiit...


TRWTF is using EXCEL for building SHIT!

ubersoldat:

44 Comments and still no one has mentioned it!!! This is going to be sweet, let me enjoy this moment...


wait...

waiiiiit...


TRWTF is using EXCEL for building SHIT!

Oh noes, they wrote a vba app that uses excel to print labels! Quelle horror!

If he developed it in his own time he should have pasted a personal copyright/GPL license header at the top. :D

Yes, the situation described sucks a little. But after all you are working for this company and you should be proud about everything you've contributed to make it better and more productive. I know credit should be given where credit is due, but I think it's weird how most of you would like to have seen the guy be praised and labelled employee of the century it seems.

UnitedStatesofWhatever:

Yes, the situation described sucks a little. But after all you are working for this company and you should be proud about everything you've contributed to make it better and more productive. I know credit should be given where credit is due, but I think it's weird how most of you would like to have seen the guy be praised and labelled employee of the century it seems.

I don't see that here. Just people that think giving recognition for initiative is warranted.

HorusKol:

Umm... and you're being paid for? If you sign a contract or work agreement that hands over all your work to the corporate monster, then, well, that's what your get your weekly/fortnightly/monthly pay cheque for.

If you want acknowledgement for your solutions, then you need to not work for a business.

"A consultant is someone who borrows your watch and tells you the time for a fee." This quote applies equally well to intra-department solutions. That IT department is a prime example.