• Bim Job (unregistered) in reply to jasmine2501
    jasmine2501:
    Anonymous:
    I avoid the contracting life for the very reason that I want to be the driving force behind the projects that I work on, not some outsider who does what they're told and doesn't get involved in any important decisions.

    Then instead of a contractor, what you want to be is a Consultant. Then you get to be the driving force behind things, and you're an outsider who gets to make all the important decisions. And when the whole thing goes nuclear, you won't be around to get blown to bits :)

    Wow. It's not often that you see both the poster and the respondent talking utter bollocks.
  • Buffled (unregistered)

    Top all you "contractors":

    If you want to be considered a warm, skill-less body capable of doing NOTHING save churning out code to spec, continue to call yourself "contractors".

    When I want to temporarily hire someone with a specialized skill set to work on or lead a project, I look for a consultant.

    Contractors are - one and all - expected to be brainless. Consultants are expected to know what they're doing, even when they don't.

  • Massive Debt (unregistered) in reply to campkev
    campkev:
    Anonymous contractor :
    Also, you can never overcharge, such a thing doesn't exist. What I mean is that you ask for a set amount of money and they either agree or disagree and it's their choice. That you make triple the salary of the guy next to you or a tenth, in the end it all boils down that you and the client agreed on a price that satisfies both of you.

    This. I think I'll have this printed on cards and hand them to people whenever I hear them complaining about people being overpaid.

    People should read this when they complain about their credit card debt. Why is the bank lending unsecured money at 30% interest? You agree to it.

  • Blick (unregistered) in reply to AndrewB
    AndrewB:
    I could tell exactly what was going to happen when Aaron told him to do a join on a table. Still, a decent story.

    I could tell the story wasn't going to end well as soon as I saw it on this site...still...

  • Ouch! (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Ozz:
    [Removed due to Akismet]
    Twice?

    [link removed]

    Well obviously Akismet isn't going to let me post this. After all, it has one whole link! Screw you Akismet.

    Oh come on, this is stupid.

    Now?

    WTF Akismet, one lousy link?

    This is bullshit, I honestly prefered the Chinese spammers to this crap (some people are never happy, right?).

    I've removed the link so my post is now completely meaningless, since I was just fixing a link from the previous post. Thanks Aksimet, you buggy piece of shit.

    Mother fucker, removed ALL LINKS and Akismet still says its spam. This spam blocker is offically broken.

    I've now removed the previous poster's quotes, so this post has aboslutely no context at all. Anyone who is actually reading this will have no idea what the hell I'm saying or why. Thank Aksimet for that.

    I think most of us know quite well what you're saying and why ;)

  • (cs) in reply to Blick
    Blick:
    AndrewB:
    I could tell exactly what was going to happen when Aaron told him to do a join on a table. Still, a decent story.

    I could tell the story wasn't going to end well as soon as I saw it on this site...still...

    Yeah, weird thing about reading a story that appears on The Daily WTF. It's should have something in it to make you go, "What the FAQ"

    EDIT: just a typo

  • PRMan (unregistered) in reply to frits

    Me. The Batman T-Shirt I'm wearing right now looks awesome!

  • ClaudeSuck.de (unregistered)

    The best laugh since long time

  • PRMan (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Dazed:
    Anonymous:
    I have to agree that Crystal Reports is not a reporting tool, it is a cruel and unusual form of punishment. The stupid thing is, there are so many better alternatives and most of them are cheaper.
    Out of interest - which ones do you like? (I know a serious question is a bit out of place here, but I'll risk it.)
    For .NET development (either WinForms or ASP.NET) I'm very fond of DevExpress XtraReports. Easy to use, good price, can be bought with full source code and the reports look very slick. Have a look here if you're interested.

    Just got started with these myself and they seem to be working out pretty well.

    Just make SURE you install using Run as Administrator.

  • F (unregistered) in reply to myname
    myname:
    using Occum's razor to pick her brain.

    Doesn't that hurt?

    Of course not - she's in HR

  • ludus (unregistered) in reply to Airhead
    Airhead:
    I have an image of Mr. Burns in my head saying "Excellent..." while doing his finger-thingie.
    The real WTF is how many references to The Simpsons are made in the comments
  • sdfasdf (unregistered)

    Change control says "Hi"

  • (cs) in reply to F
    F:
    myname:
    using Occum's razor to pick her brain.

    Doesn't that hurt?

    Of course not - she's in HR

    I think I might just need to sig that on one of the forums I frequent. NICE.

  • Here's a nickel, kid... (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    I felt a little sorry for Stan. Granted he had no business working with SQL. The "I'm sorry I let you down" line at the end followed by Aaron's comment makes Aaron look like a jerk.
    I think you're trolling, but wtf...

    As a consultant/contractor/whatever awhile back, I'd say maybe 20-25% of them were foobar.

    One new consultant had these terrific ideas. Too bad we would need to completely rewrite the system. That's ok, we'll work together, he says...he'll stand behind me & I'll do the coding (this is when Xtreme coding was faddy). Right...

    In the meantime there are the dozen or so production issues. I give him a few & I take care of the rest.

    Well, he dinks around and is generally useless and it becomes obvious that the great ideas he kept bringing up were from stuff he had seen (and copied) from other companies...he really didn't know anything...a Jr. admin trying to justify his "big bucks". Eventually he quit showing up.

    I vaguely remember another guy. I started ignoring him by day two (by this time I was much quicker at reading someone, so I think I ignored him by day three). Or would have, if he hadn't just quit showing up. Heard something later about the cops looking for him.

    Then there was the guy who actually knew something. Too bad he never put it to use. Loved to talk. The boss said "Hey, I don't pay you to stand around all day holding up the walls" (Well, actually, he did, for awhile :) Probably became a management consultant.

    .05

  • Here's a nickel, kid... (unregistered) in reply to ShatteredArm
    ShatteredArm:
    Getting kind of sick of all the blanket derision towards contractors on this site. Did Alex get beat up by a contractor or something?

    Or maybe I just work in some sort of backwards company. Here, we contractors actually are competent, we have to do hand holding for some of the FTEs (though some of them certainly do know their stuff), and they're more expensive to boot (when you factor in their job benefits). That, and it has become a bit of a joke how little work some of the FTEs actually have to do. That's not to say the FTEs are worthless--many of them are great--but I've been told that we are the only thing keeping our project from being a total disaster.

    Yes, there are bad contractors. But there are good contractors, and bad FTEs, too. The constant "contractors are a joke" drivel that has recently been so ubiquitous here is getting a little tired.

    You'll love this one, then...

    Scene: PHB at the dumpster. Dilbert: Why are you throwing the temp employees in the dumpster? PHB: Because they are way too big to flush.

  • Schlumpi (unregistered) in reply to Spork
    Spork:
    "Unbridled hatred is the only reason to inflict Crystal Reports on someone."

    This is the best sentence I have ever read on this site.

    Exactly the same I was thinking. :)

    But anyways, this story is full of WTFs from both sides, beginning from having given out no read-only user to the 'guru' , having no test or integration environment, letting a person deploy an untested report to the crystal server, granting him direct write access to all that...

    Actually the guru wins the WTF contest compared to the "Fortune 100"-company... ;)

  • Abe (unregistered)

    "The HR lady talks weirdly" the reader told himself. "Not sure which character is speaking". "Why did she point out those fixed errors ?" "I dont' know" the reader replied, "the whole thing about who hates who and why doesn't make any sense too". "Consider the weird style" the reader continued. "Yeah, odd wording - to sound cool probably". "Dont you think this story sounds like fiction ?" "What do I mean ?" asked the reader. "I mean it sucks."

  • Nazca (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    I like the way the contractor utterly screwed up, failed to do his job (actually made things worse), but Aaron's company still had to pay a big early-termination fee to get rid of him. Some sub-human lawyer has earned his weeks' supply of blood for that one.

    Yes, this is the biggest wtf.

    Personally I'd tell them the only way they'd get that early termination fee is through the court, where they can explain how they justify gross incompetence and deceptive practise (cause placing an idiot in a "guru" posting is pretty deceptive).

    Betcha they'll let the fee slide this time :p

  • Nazca (unregistered) in reply to FriedDan
    FriedDan:
    re:me:
    The Real WTF is that a contractor had write access on his first day to production data.

    No, the real WTF is that this complaint gets repeated over and over again in the comments.

    To quote the original (emphasis added)

    All of QA's automated data-collection and synchronization processes had failed overnight. They were all throwing variations of the same error; invalid type.

    He had read/write to a QA system, not production.

    And a QA system with regular backups and alerts too. A good thing.

    Could we have a story about how much of a WTF it is that so many readers don't read the story properly ... or the comments ... and still manage to post the same stupid comment over and over?

  • Paul (unregistered) in reply to ShatteredArm
    ShatteredArm:
    Yes, there are bad contractors. But there are good contractors, and bad FTEs, too. The constant "contractors are a joke" drivel that has recently been so ubiquitous here is getting a little tired.

    Actually in this case, the feeling I got was that the joke was the crappy HR who would hire a bad contractor even though they'd been told not to. Aaron basically said that if they had to get a contractor, get a 'specialist', but I presume that was too expensive for HR to justify, so they got a 'guru' instead.

    So, while there are good contractors, if you pay peanuts you won't get them.

  • oheso (unregistered) in reply to mfah
    mfah:
    Does it not strike anybody that this isn't beating up on contractors in general, but instead it's beating up on HR's inability to source a competent contractor? TRWTF is that HR were let assign this guy without him being vetted by Aaron first.

    ^ This ^

    In my last job, knowledgeable colleagues were jerked out of their seats to be replaced by contractors who had lied on their CVs. We (full time managers in the department) were not consulted on the changes, nor did we get to interview the candidates.

    I had an excellent worker replaced by an incompetent one, pointed out the lies on the CV within the first week to my manager, and ended up with a contractor who did nothing for six months while I did the work previously done by the replaced worker.

    Savings to the company: about 10% off the replaced worker's salary.

  • Jan (unregistered)

    As a contractor/consultant I started out as an idealist (after all I was a regular employee for 11 years before that) but there is just so much effort you can put into preventing your customers from shooting themselves in the foot when you will get paid to patch it up. Sorry

    BTW: It's still a mystery to me why anyone would hire a consultant instead of a salaried employee. But I'll take the money when it's offered so freely.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Bim Job
    Bim Job:
    Wow. It's not often that you see both the poster and the respondent talking utter bollocks.
    That's not true Bim Job, we often see you both posting and responding. Way too often, in fact.
  • illtiz (unregistered) in reply to Ozz
    Ozz:
    Ozz:
    Shoruke:
    I think Finagle's law (which, due to itself, is usually attributed to Murphy) would dictate that you were going to misspell Murphy and cause me to publicly point out this misspelling for you.
    No, you mis-spelled Muphry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry's_Law
    And TRWTF is me, for fscking up the URL... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry's_law
    No no, it's just Muphry's Law striking again and again. It's starting to get old, Muphry! You hear?
  • A. Coward (unregistered)

    The comments make me want to submit my own WTFs of being a salaried consultant...

  • Ex-econsultant (unregistered) in reply to GalacticCowboy

    While I appreciate you commenting on your experience, this section of your post:

    I love signing in and out at the front desk every morning, noon and evening. But since I'm sitting on a folding chair at a folding table in a tiny room with 7 other contractors, 3 of whom are currently speaking loudly in Hindi on their cell phones and the other 4 of whom apparently had garlic for breakfast, I'll be sure to get right on that undocumented change request for you, just to take my mind off of things.

    Made me think "Cry more noob!". I am an ex-consultant and that's part of the job. I worked with a large ERP package back in the days when remote desktop type tools wouldn't work on the main server. I would sit in server rooms with my jacket on, working away in the cold with all the noise around me. Suck it up, man!

  • (cs) in reply to Ex-econsultant
    Ex-econsultant:
    While I appreciate you commenting on your experience, this section of your post:

    I love signing in and out at the front desk every morning, noon and evening. But since I'm sitting on a folding chair at a folding table in a tiny room with 7 other contractors, 3 of whom are currently speaking loudly in Hindi on their cell phones and the other 4 of whom apparently had garlic for breakfast, I'll be sure to get right on that undocumented change request for you, just to take my mind off of things.

    Made me think "Cry more noob!". I am an ex-consultant and that's part of the job. I worked with a large ERP package back in the days when remote desktop type tools wouldn't work on the main server. I would sit in server rooms with my jacket on, working away in the cold with all the noise around me. Suck it up, man!

    Truly, the workers' rights movement doesn't need enemies.

  • Bim Job (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Bim Job:
    Wow. It's not often that you see both the poster and the respondent talking utter bollocks.
    That's not true Bim Job, we often see you both posting and responding. Way too often, in fact.
    You're probably right.

    BJ -> Resp -> BJ.

    Bollocks, wisdom, bollocks.

    In this case, however, I was referring to a slightly unusual pattern:

    x,y ∈ A

    where x and y both belong to the set "bollocks."

    However, in this case, I'm suggesting that, typically, x ∉ A and/or y ∉ A.

    Both the poster and the respondent are talking utter bollocks. I merely observe that this is unusual.

    I'd hate to damage your self-esteem, or whatever it is. I'll post less often.

  • cod3rgirl (unregistered) in reply to AndrewB

    ...a join on a wooden table?

  • Fedaykin (unregistered) in reply to Bim Job

    "Unbridled hatred is the only reason to inflict Crystal Reports on someone."

    Apparently the author has never been exposed to the free knockoffs of Crystal Reports, e.g. JasperReports.

    Crystal probably has its issues, but if you want true hell, try Jasper.

  • (cs)

    The Real WTF is that Aaron works for a company whose HR staff is competent enough to learn from their mistakes and not keep incompetent workers on the payroll because they are cheaper, and yet he still thinks he has a viable Daily WTF entry...

    Seriously, how many of you work for a company like mine which would reprimand Aaron for not being a "team player" and force him to continue working with this guy?

  • ipsi (unregistered) in reply to Fedaykin

    Yeah, I'm not too fond of Jasper, but I haven't see a better, free alternative for Java. If you know of one, then I'd love to hear about it.

  • Sven (unregistered) in reply to steenbergh
    steenbergh:
    Hi Lorne,

    Welcome to TheDailyWTF.

    I noticed something about your article.

    Every sentence has its own line.

    This does not enhance readability.

    Just sayin'.

    I'd like to point out that grammar requires you to start a new paragraph when you use quotations for people talking in a story. It may be a little difficult to read on the Internet, but it's incorrect any other way.

  • JimTheJam (unregistered) in reply to Steve the Cynic
    Steve the Cynic:
    Duh, he had no fashion sense (plaid!), and no intelligence (small pieces of cotton wool aren't known for brains).

    So, what's wrong with Plaid?

  • Steve H (unregistered)

    Wait, I don't get it. Why was this guy given write access to production data on his first day? That's the Real WTF, I felt somebody should raise that point.

  • wulf0r (unregistered)

    So, no one checked that this guy actually knows some (any!) SQL, sat him down alone, gave him write permissions and then complaint about him failing? Wow, that sounds fair. While his solution was stupid he did appearently learn all that SQL in a day. Give him some guidance and he could probably become quite good. I know (now) competent people that barely could figured out how to logon and set the web proxy on their first day.

  • PITA (unregistered) in reply to myname
    myname:
    using Occum's razor to pick her brain.

    Doesn't that hurt?

    Occam's pick wasn't available.

  • AverageProgrammer (unregistered)

    I have interviewed multiple candidates for senior J2EE positions and more often than not, they can explain Java's garbage collector but cannot explain how to do a two-way table join.

    We are on the road back to 1970:

    CICS -> HTTP/HTML/JSP/JSF COBOL Presentation Layer -> Java Beans COBOL Business Logic -> SOA Service Layer (in Java, of course!) VSAM/IMS -> RDBMS tables in 1NF, XML/Object databases

    Codd is rolling over in his grave.

  • Hiring Manager (unregistered)
    and now Aaron had an excellent technical competency question for those applying to the newly approved full-time position

    Oh, that's right - now he has an excellent question! And before that the technical interviewing was dark secret art, only practiced by the chosen ones. Aaron's pain looks 100% self-inflicted. So much, it actually looks made up.

  • eric bloedow (unregistered)

    every time i see the word "Guru" in one of these stories i think of a chapter in one of Scott Adams' books: "how to become a technology prima-donna". in short, they CLAIM to be experts but actually know NOTHING...

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