• Truther (unregistered) in reply to Galelasa
    Galelasa:
    The conversation then went something along these lines:

    Him: "Don't you think its interesting that not one Jew was killed in 911?" Me: "Uh....What? You don't think any jewish people died on 911?" Him: "Not a one! It was all a US/Isreali plot to make Muslims look bad." Me: "Um...really?" (as I start looking for an exit) Him: "Of course! Don't you know the US does whatever the Jews tell them to!?

    At this point, I managed to excuse myself and fled forever.

    On a side note, I took a job with a BI firm and haven't touched Java since... ;-)

    While I agree it's dumb to talk about this during an interview, this is pretty much the truth to anyone who doesn't buy into the biases American media.

  • ChiefCrazyTalk (unregistered) in reply to ParkinT

    The real WTF (tm) is that they didnt give the Polish fellow a chance. Sure, his English was spotty but he could have been the greatest programmer ever!

  • Some Atheist (unregistered) in reply to Galelasa
    Galelasa:
    He opens a browser to show me something or other, the homepage defaults to MSN.com and the lead story is about Bush and the 911 attacks.

    The conversation then went something along these lines:

    Him: "Don't you think its interesting that not one Jew was killed in 911?" Me: "Uh....What? You don't think any jewish people died on 911?" Him: "Not a one! It was all a US/Isreali plot to make Muslims look bad." Me: "Um...really?" (as I start looking for an exit) Him: "Of course! Don't you know the US does whatever the Jews tell them to!?

    At this point, I managed to excuse myself and fled forever.

    Shortly after 9/11, USA Today published an editorial stating no Atheists had been killed in the attacks on 9/11. Religious bigotry is a very sad thing. :-(

  • Alex G. (unregistered) in reply to Galelasa
    Galelasa:
    On the other side of the interview process, interviewers can be crack pots, too. A few years ago I was interviewing for a internship to complete my diploma and the school sent me to some company in downtown Montreal.

    Was the school actually Herzing College, by any chance? I was actually scared of most of the companies where we were sent in Montreal.

    One of them was a company that developped a payment gateway system, a la paypal, but but not really. Their name contains parts of the previously mentionned words.

    Anyways, so the school sets up the interview, i'm given an address via e-mail in downtown Montreal, near the Eidos building. I get in, ride the elevator, and reach the floor written on my paper.

    The floor is empty. Turns out they moved their offices to a different floor, but no mention of which anywhere, as the directory doesn't mention this.

    So I wander aimlessly around, until I run into a guy climbing the stairs, who points me in the right direction.

    They have no reception, just a door that leads to some cubicles. I'm told to wait here while the guy who's supposed to interview me comes in. In the meantime, the lady at the closest cubicle offers me a pen with the company's logo.

    I take it, and politely thank her. Then she asks if I want more. I politely decline. She insists that I take another pen, I could give it to friends. I politely decline again.

    Finally the guy who's set to interview me comes in just as she's about to ask if I want the entire goddamn box of pens or something.

    Then, I sit down at a small desk. Standard interview questions, no small talk. I'm applying for a Junior Network Administrator position.

    The conversation is going on in French for a while, and then suddendly, he bursts into English mode and quickly asks me how's my command of the language. While he did, he had a weird look on his face that looked like HA! CAUGHT YOU THERE! HA!.

    I answered in english and he looked deceived. I'm not sure what he was trying to achieve there.

    Then he starts telling me how I won't have administrative access to servers during the first year... and probably not the second, if I'm hired. I might get to create inboxes on exchange 2003 once in a while though.

    Then he tells me i'll have to move desks around, and reinstall windows on computers.

    Then he asks me how I feel about doing unpaid overtime? He then stresses that nobody leaves until all the work is done here.

    He then proceeds to tell me why I shouldn't really take this job, and then thanks me for me time. And asks me to leave.

    Really not in a subtle way, like "Thank you, we'll call you" or something, just "I think we're done here. You may now leave."

    As I'm leaving the lady near the door gives me another pen.

    I thought maybe I was doing something wrong, or maybe I was a bit too young for them. Or perhaps I had offended the guy in a subtle way? Or maybe I didn't put my technical abilities on display enough. I mean, I had three years of Unix in a mixed environnement experience, I should have something to show for it.

    Turns out they just sucked. One of my friends who was in the same class worked there. He got in five minutes late on his first day because the metro broke down on the orange line. He was met with stern, concerned faces and told "We can't allow this to happen ever again. Understood?".

    The work he had to do consisted of reinstalling windows on a bunch of machines, moving them around only to find they'd be re-imaged the next day by the other techie. And his office was a metal beam with a table on an empty floor. With no computer.

    I'm really glad I didn't work there in the end.

  • (cs) in reply to Truther
    Truther:
    While I agree it's dumb to talk about this during an interview, this is pretty much the truth to anyone who doesn't buy into the biases American media.
    ...and instead buys into easily disproven Muslim propaganda.
  • (cs) in reply to Some Atheist
    Some Atheist:
    Shortly after 9/11, USA Today published an editorial stating no Atheists had been killed in the attacks on 9/11. Religious bigotry is a very sad thing. :-(

    No Grues were killed either, so it was obviously part of their plan to take over the world.

  • Ed (unregistered) in reply to shadowman
    shadowman:
    I'm digging Wikipedia's entry on MUMPS, which includes an example of "traditional" M coding style, from the Fileman system written for the US Government Veterans' Administration: 
    %DTC
%DTC ; SF/XAK - DATE/TIME OPERATIONS ;1/16/92  11:36 AM
     ;;19.0;VA FileMan;;Jul 14, 1992
     D    I 'X1!'X2 S X="" Q
     S X=X1 D H S X1=%H,X=X2,X2=%Y+1 D H S X=X1-%H,%Y=%Y+1&X2
     K %H,X1,X2 Q
     ;
C    S X=X1 Q:'X  D H S %H=%H+X2 D YMD S:$P(X1,".",2) X=X_"."_$P(X1,".",2) K X1,X2 Q
S    S %=%#60/100+(%#3600\60)/100+(%\3600)/100 Q
     ;
H    I X<1410000 S %H=0,%Y=-1 Q
     S %Y=$E(X,1,3),%M=$E(X,4,5),%D=$E(X,6,7)
     S %T=$E(X_0,9,10)*60+$E(X_"000",11,12)*60+$E(X_"00000",13,14)
TOH  S %H=%M>2&'(%Y#4)+$P("^31^59^90^120^151^181^212^243^273^304^334","^",%M)+%D
     S %='%M!'%D,%Y=%Y-141,%H=%H+(%Y*365)+(%Y\4)-(%Y>59)+%,%Y=$S(%:-1,1:%H+4#7)
     K %M,%D,% Q
     ;
DOW  D H S Y=%Y K %H,%Y Q
DW   D H S Y=%Y,X=$P("SUN^MON^TUES^WEDNES^THURS^FRI^SATUR","^",Y+1)_"DAY"
     S:Y<0 X="" Q
7    S %=%H>21608+%H-.1,%Y=%\365.25+141,%=%#365.25\1
     S %D=%+306#(%Y#4=0+365)#153#61#31+1,%M=%-%D\29+1
     S X=%Y_"00"+%M_"00"+%D Q
     ;

    And it goes on like that. Must be fun for maintenance.

    I do some Mumps programming, and while yes, there is code like this, most of the code I deal with is much more readable. I have had to work with a lot of spaghetti code though and didn't much like it.

  • Wiggam (unregistered) in reply to Epic Fail
    Epic Fail:
    I did the whole 4 hour test and whatnot; didn't get hired; something for which I'm extremely grateful. If they're such a good company, why do they need a constant supply of new grads?

    Actually, I think this is why people flame Epic so much... They actually look for very talented coders, but they are not Google or MS, so numerous people who are good apply there and get turned down. Many of these people hold a sort of resentment, and post how glad they are that they are not there because of how awful it must be. Really, it smells much like sour grapes.

    I know a few people who have been hired there and others that did not receive an offer. Even people who are good were turned down -- these are not B.S undergrads, but M.S and Ph.D students with coding backgrounds.

    The reason they hire so much, is because they have rapid growth. They actually have a very high retention rate, and from what I have heard the majority that leave are doing so because they want to pursue/finish a higher level degree. It isn't because of pay, treatment of employees or any such thing.

  • CynicalTyler (unregistered) in reply to Galelasa
    Galelasa:
    The conversation then went something along these lines:

    Him: "Don't you think its interesting that not one Jew was killed in 911?" Me: "Uh....What? You don't think any jewish people died on 911?" Him: "Not a one! It was all a US/Isreali plot to make Muslims look bad." Me: "Um...really?" (as I start looking for an exit) Him: "Of course! Don't you know the US does whatever the Jews tell them to!?

    At this point, I managed to excuse myself and fled forever.

    On a side note, I took a job with a BI firm and haven't touched Java since... ;-)

    I am shocked an appalled by the interviewer's behavior. Everyone knows that Java is an Israel/KGB/NEA plot to conquer the US of A's financial institutions! That's why our banks are still using COBOL!

  • (cs) in reply to Alex G.
    Alex G.:
    In the meantime, the lady at the closest cubicle offers me a pen with the company's logo.

    I take it, and politely thank her. Then she asks if I want more.

    At least, now you know where to get free pens.

  • Ed (unregistered) in reply to CynicalTyler
    CynicalTyler:
    Galelasa:
    The conversation then went something along these lines:

    Him: "Don't you think its interesting that not one Jew was killed in 911?" Me: "Uh....What? You don't think any jewish people died on 911?" Him: "Not a one! It was all a US/Isreali plot to make Muslims look bad." Me: "Um...really?" (as I start looking for an exit) Him: "Of course! Don't you know the US does whatever the Jews tell them to!?

    At this point, I managed to excuse myself and fled forever.

    On a side note, I took a job with a BI firm and haven't touched Java since... ;-)

    I am shocked an appalled by the interviewer's behavior. Everyone knows that Java is an Israel/KGB/NEA plot to conquer the US of A's financial institutions! That's why our banks are still using COBOL!

    Funny you say that, our banks also use MUMPS.

  • KG (unregistered)

    I thought Epic was the company that made the Unreal games?

  • SomeCoder (unregistered) in reply to Not Team Lead...
    Not Team Lead...:
    Why would anyone get upset about a team leader (read: management) not knowing about how their language works? Team leaders don't code; it isn't their job. If a developer didn't know, I could understand the problem. If the team leader didn't know what employee X's job was, I could understand the problem. But that seems like an odd thing to get upset about...

    For me personally, I don't want to work with a team lead that isn't technical. In my opinion, that job belongs to a project manager or whoever is one level up from the team lead. The team lead needs to be technical.

    At my last job, I had a team lead that was supposedly technical. He had previously worked for some big companies and was a genius.

    The day that he called PHP "PSP" (and still does to this day) was the day that I realized his true genius. It also doesn't hurt that he spends all day trying to write "SELECT * FROM table". The other team lead for the other group is technical and can write code, no problem.

    Bottom line: I want to work with team leads who are technical. If I'm more intelligent than the team lead, then I should be the team lead (and get his salary).

    On a side note, I remember when the last MUMPS article came through here. We had a lot of MUMPS programmers coming out of the woodwork to say how great it was. Just an observation.

  • Tp (unregistered) in reply to Galelasa
    Galelasa:
    On the other side of the interview process, interviewers can be crack pots, too. A few years ago I was interviewing for a internship to complete my diploma and the school sent me to some company in downtown Montreal.

    I met with the CTO/owner and they liked my (very) limited portfolio and set me up at a workstation to test out my newly acquired Java skills. So far, so good.

    He opens a browser to show me something or other, the homepage defaults to MSN.com and the lead story is about Bush and the 911 attacks.

    The conversation then went something along these lines:

    Him: "Don't you think its interesting that not one Jew was killed in 911?" Me: "Uh....What? You don't think any jewish people died on 911?" Him: "Not a one! It was all a US/Isreali plot to make Muslims look bad." Me: "Um...really?" (as I start looking for an exit) Him: "Of course! Don't you know the US does whatever the Jews tell them to!?

    At this point, I managed to excuse myself and fled forever.

    On a side note, I took a job with a BI firm and haven't touched Java since... ;-)

    Didn't the CTO know that Java was invented by the jews in order to control the Internet, the universe and everything?

  • MariusCC (unregistered) in reply to shadowman

    My bet is that is way easier to write some kind of high level language compiler to Mumps then to maintain such monstruosity.

    (Even perl obfuscated syntax is easier to understand than MUMPS).

  • pierre (unregistered)

    It's great that MUMPS programmers don't bother about their language -- that is a sign that everything just works. How much do you need to know and worry in order to develop you Java or .Net software?

  • (cs) in reply to shadowman
    shadowman:
    I'm digging Wikipedia's entry on MUMPS, which includes an example of "traditional" M coding style, from the Fileman system written for the US Government Veterans' Administration:

    Uh yeah and there is also MUMPS2k, actually called M21: http://www.m21.uk.com/ :-O

  • Patrick (unregistered) in reply to Not Team Lead...
    Not Team Lead...:
    Why would anyone get upset about a team leader (read: management) not knowing about how their language works? Team leaders don't code; it isn't their job. If a developer didn't know, I could understand the problem. If the team leader didn't know what employee X's job was, I could understand the problem. But that seems like an odd thing to get upset about...

    A team leader ought to know the answer to that, especially if s/he is conducting a technical interview.

  • sweavo (unregistered) in reply to alexgieg
    alexgieg:
    No, seriously. You English speakers have an absolutely horrible, completely unintuitive spelling system. 60% of the time I'm absolutely sure a certain word is pronounced in such a way, but alas, no, the actual pronounce has no resemblance whatsoever to the way it's written. It's maddening.

    It's that way to fool Hitler, you know

  • Lafcadio (unregistered) in reply to vman

    You must not actually be from Madison; that company has a very, very poor reputation in the development community here as a "hire 'em cheap and burn 'em out" sweatshop. I know a lot of people who used to work there, and every single one of them hated it.

  • Lafcadio (unregistered) in reply to vman
    vman:
    oooh, I know what company that is. Yeah, they used to be in Madison, WI and now they're in Verona, WI.

    Supposedly they are a good place to work for.

    Duh, I forgot to actually quote what I was responding to.

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    I live near Madison, WI. I have some friends that work at Epic. They do indeed agree that it is a great place to work, the only complaint is that they really work you hard. 10+ hour days, 6 days a week, are the norm.

    Regarding the Polish guy. Better off to avoid hiring someone if your gut feeling is that they won't work out. I made a couple of hires years ago that I regretted. Our paranoid HR dep't wouldn't let me do anything about these people because they were in a "protected class". (One was a post-op transsexual, the other was over 45. For what it's worth, the transsexual was actually a really good programmer, until she got tired of the job [which happened rather quickly].)

  • Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to Jiima
    Jiima:
    Cool, but what importance have the fact that Arcadius was Polish? I can imagine such a "great PHP" idiot in any other nationality. For example, we have some Israelian "Arcadiuses" in our project as subcontractors, problem is that a guy who dodn't know what a wait / notify is (and thus synchronized threads with spin-lock) has job title "Senior Java Engineer", curiously, the same as me...

    It adds flavor. Just saying that the guy couldn't speak english or really communicate is boring; saying that he's a polish dude that dresses like a refugee and talks half in Polish is entertaining.

  • kavyboy (unregistered)

    Wow, you other MUMPS guys are lucky. Or I guess I'm just unlucky. The stuff I deal with makes the wiki example look tame. Virtually everything I see is 1-character routine names and variables, all global. Each functional area is spread across dozen of files. Each line has half dozen instructions. Comments do not exist. Indirection is used everywhere, and the variables being dereferenced are never set in the same file.

    If anybody can post some "good" MUMPS code, I would love to see it. I have yet to see anything more maintainable than bad perl.

  • (cs) in reply to Not Team Lead...
    Not Team Lead...:
    Why would anyone get upset about a team leader (read: management) not knowing about how their language works? Team leaders don't code; it isn't their job. If a developer didn't know, I could understand the problem. If the team leader didn't know what employee X's job was, I could understand the problem. But that seems like an odd thing to get upset about...
    I'd jump straight past Team Lead and into Willy Waggler at the board level, if I were you.

    Team leads typically have to understand exactly what the team is supposed to do at a technical level. Now, whether or not the team is actually doing that is a different matter. That would be more a matter for rubber-clad dominatrices with whips and too much make-up ... well, I can always dream.

    Let's take a step back from your proposition, shall we?

    Candidate: Is Mumps interpreted, or compiled? Team Goat: Gawrsh, I just dunno... It's something to do with development, I think. We don't do that much, round here. Candidate: Well, OK. Is Mumps a language, or a disease? Team Goat: It's quite common in hospitals. Might be either - I get confused sometimes. Can I check with our suppliers and get back to you?

  • Ben4jammin (unregistered) in reply to Truther
    Truther:
    Galelasa:
    The conversation then went something along these lines:

    Him: "Don't you think its interesting that not one Jew was killed in 911?" Me: "Uh....What? You don't think any jewish people died on 911?" Him: "Not a one! It was all a US/Isreali plot to make Muslims look bad." Me: "Um...really?" (as I start looking for an exit) Him: "Of course! Don't you know the US does whatever the Jews tell them to!?

    At this point, I managed to excuse myself and fled forever.

    On a side note, I took a job with a BI firm and haven't touched Java since... ;-)

    While I agree it's dumb to talk about this during an interview, this is pretty much the truth to anyone who doesn't buy into the biases American media.

    I like to talk about different conspiracy theories, too. As long as it is with people that understand the theory part. Between the people in the planes, the people in the buildings, people on the street, people that were exposed to fumes, smoke, etc. I find it truly frightening that anyone would believe that it is even POSSIBLE to know how many Jews (or any other group) died on 9/11. And as for biases go, I hope you don't think there is such a thing as an unbiased news source...anywhere. You can easily trade one set of biases for another if it suits you, but if the news is compiled by humans you can be sure there are biases.

  • Shteve (unregistered) in reply to Patrick
    Patrick:
    Not Team Lead...:
    Why would anyone get upset about a team leader (read: management) not knowing about how their language works? Team leaders don't code; it isn't their job. If a developer didn't know, I could understand the problem. If the team leader didn't know what employee X's job was, I could understand the problem. But that seems like an odd thing to get upset about...

    A team leader ought to know the answer to that, especially if s/he is conducting a technical interview.

    A few years ago I interviewed with the newly-formed mobile division of a Huge Game Company (rhymes with RubySoft) in New York City. Not only was their office a huge, wide-open space with computers sitting on desks made out of planks of wood and sawhorses, but the interview proper was conducted by Ted, from Accounting. I only found this out after a half-dozen technical questions I asked were responded to with "umm, you should really talk to one of our lead programmers about that". When asked if I could, in fact, talk to the lead programmer, I was told he was busy.

    And yet, somehow they're now in the top three.

  • vman (unregistered) in reply to Lafcadio
    Lafcadio:
    You must not actually be from Madison; that company has a very, very poor reputation in the development community here as a "hire 'em cheap and burn 'em out" sweatshop. I know a lot of people who used to work there, and every single one of them hated it.

    Oh, I live (and work) in Madison. Have a friend that last I heard still worked there (last time I heard was a while ago, but he'd been there for 8 years at that point. He did say that a lot of the people that worked there stayed long hours, but that he just chose not to. Didn't seem to affect his bonuses or anything.

    He liked it just fine. I have some other friends that work there, and seem to think it's ok. I dunno. Maybe different word of mouth?

  • Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to Ben4jammin
    Ben4jammin:
    I like to talk about different conspiracy theories, too. As long as it is with people that understand the theory part. Between the people in the planes, the people in the buildings, people on the street, people that were exposed to fumes, smoke, etc. I find it truly frightening that anyone would believe that it is even POSSIBLE to know how many Jews (or any other group) died on 9/11.

    Doesn't matter. You just have to say it with authority and people will accept it uncritically. Helps if it aligns with their prejudices.

  • VAemployee (unregistered)

    Wacovia uses MUMPS as well. VistA is the system based on MUMPS at the VA. I took my first job out of college doing IT work for the VA. I was really confused when they told me they have a VistA systems manager...because windows vista had just come out. I was surprised when i found it was developed in 1970 or so. It is a monster.

  • Izzy (unregistered) in reply to shadowman
    shadowman:
    Not Team Lead...:
    Why would anyone get upset about a team leader (read: management) not knowing about how their language works? Team leaders don't code; it isn't their job. If a developer didn't know, I could understand the problem. If the team leader didn't know what employee X's job was, I could understand the problem. But that seems like an odd thing to get upset about...
    He was most likely more put off by, "...we just don't do as much development here as you think we do."
    Team leaders ideally should know more about the programming language than their subordinates. Otherwise how can they give good advice, suggestions and direction to their team? Maybe they don't code, but they manage coders.

    I know that doesn't always happen, but it's a WTF waiting to happen if there's no hierarchical review.

  • Myrmidon (unregistered) in reply to alexgieg
    alexgieg:
    absurddoctor:
    It is not that uncommon for someone to be able to write in a second language very well, but not be able to speak it well, and vice versa.
    My case exactly. I read and write English fluently, but I have a hard time with speaking and listening to it. Not because I cannot "construct" or "decode" the sentences in my head in real time, in fact I don't think in my native language (Portuguese) anymore when either writing or reading English anymore. But simply because spoken English is an ENTIRELY different language.

    No, seriously. You English speakers have an absolutely horrible, completely unintuitive spelling system. 60% of the time I'm absolutely sure a certain word is pronounced in such a way, but alas, no, the actual pronounce has no resemblance whatsoever to the way it's written. It's maddening.

    Well, stop and realize where 'Merkin' English comes from. We 'borrowed' - in other words we stole (usually at gun point) - from half a dozen or more base languages (that we couldn't speak correctly to begin with). As if that wasn't enough, we've then gone on to torture it in various fashions (waterboarding works well) over the decades to ensure that it's neigh impossible for non-native speakers to actually comprehend the pronunciation rules.

    In the words of our leader "Mission Accomplished".

    CAPTCHA 'PLAGA' Plump Ladies Amature Golf Association?

  • Ozymandias (unregistered) in reply to Benanov

    The O'Kane version of mumps is compiled, and this is the major (possibly the only) version of MUMPS undergoing current development. O'Kane is using MUMPS to do DNA searching and analysis, and has written a quasi-compiler for MUMPS. It translates MUMPS into C++ and then compiles the C++ with optimization flags.

    MUMPS is a fun language to do classwork in and play with, but I would hate to use it in a career.

  • Izzy (unregistered) in reply to Galelasa

    So the guy is a bigot, and one not afraid to be known as such. Can you ignore that to do the job? Will it interfere with your work? You're not going to change anything, and you don't need to change your beliefs. The only real question here is:

    HOW BAD DO YOU WANT THE PAYCHECK?

    Yeah, we're all whores. Some of us write code.

  • Ozymandias (unregistered) in reply to dpm

    Given that some versions of MUMPS (typically the older strains) are interpreted, and this history is a massive determinant in the design of the language, but that newer MUMPS is compiled, it's not a real simple question to answer.

  • (cs) in reply to shadowman

    There must be some money in creating a compiler that translates MUMPS to Java or something. Writing parsers just isn't that hard. Maybe a business opportunity...

  • Ozymandias (unregistered) in reply to dpm

    That example code is out-dated, interpreted MUMPS and nothing like the modern versions of MUMPS where line length and variable length has less of an impact on runtime speed.

    I wrote some very readable MUMPS code that I can still look at 3 years later and understand exactly what it does and how to modify it.

  • (cs) in reply to Izzy
    Izzy:
    Team leaders ideally should know more about the programming language than their subordinates. Otherwise how can they give good advice, suggestions and direction to their team? Maybe they don't code, but they manage coders.

    Technical expertise and management expertise are two very different skills, and very seldom found in the same person. Let the good people leaders do people leadership, and let the good technologists do tech leadership. Insisting on one person doing both is a recipe for organizational WTFery.

  • RR (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    I live near Madison, WI. I have some friends that work at Epic. They do indeed agree that it is a great place to work, the only complaint is that they really work you hard. 10+ hour days, 6 days a week, are the norm.

    Heh, those two statements are pretty much contradict themselves... 60 hour weeks, great place to work.

    Hope those morons aren't working on a salary. Amazing how dumb "smart" people can be.

  • ex epic (unregistered) in reply to Wiggam

    I guess I was one of the bright ones that got hired there, and kinda regret that I did.

    I truly believe it is an awful place to work, but it does employ some incredibly bright people. When I worked there one thing was fairly clear, those that had never worked anywhere else loved it and those who had worked elsewhere hated it.

    I was in a similar position as the person in the story, I thought I was being hired for a technical\development position, but it turned out I would spend about 90% of my time doing account management, which I didn't enjoy and was not very good at.

    One of the things I hated most about the place was what was demanded of my time. I remember having to go to a client site in Denver, United flies from Madison to Denver and it's about a 2.5 hour flight. But Epic flies all employees via another airline, they gave employees travel laptops when they were available, but none were available for me that trip. So I had to fly from Madison to Minneapolis, sit around in Minneapolis for 3 hours, then fly from Minneapolis to Denver for a total time of about 9 hours, when I should have been able to do it in 4 or so. Same on the return flight.

    Now when it came to logging my time I had only about 40 hours that week because my 18 hours (10 of which I considered waste) of travel time isn't loggable. In my weekly team meeting to discuss this it was brought up that I hadn't worked enough hours that week (mandatory), when I pointed out that I spent 18 hours travelling I was told that I was supposed to make that time up.

    Rumor has it that Epic was about as sad that I left as I was.

  • Mr Polish Guy There Yonder (unregistered) in reply to Franz Kafka
    Franz Kafka:
    Jiima:
    Cool, but what importance have the fact that Arcadius was Polish? I can imagine such a "great PHP" idiot in any other nationality. For example, we have some Israelian "Arcadiuses" in our project as subcontractors, problem is that a guy who dodn't know what a wait / notify is (and thus synchronized threads with spin-lock) has job title "Senior Java Engineer", curiously, the same as me...

    It adds flavor. Just saying that the guy couldn't speak english or really communicate is boring; saying that he's a polish dude that dresses like a refugee and talks half in Polish is entertaining.

    It's also funny how lately two thirds of nationalities called out are Polish. It's only fair, though, since - truth to be told - there's a lot of Poles that, oddly enough, decide to try and find a job across the border without any knowledge of the language of the land. And the "hey, everybody does that in Poland" excuse is as untrue for the vacuum-assisted, er, personal cleaning as it is for wearing jeans and trying to look bum-esque.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to RR

    Depends. Some people don't mind putting in lots of extra hours if they like the job enough. My friends must like their jobs enough.

  • Alonzo Meatman (unregistered)

    I can't believe this one wasn't titled "Avoiding MUMPS like the plague"

    Such an opportunity squandered.

  • Yazeran (unregistered) in reply to kavyboy
    kavyboy:
    If anybody can post some "good" MUMPS code, I would love to see it. I have yet to see anything more maintainable than bad perl.

    At least it isn't Black Perl

    Yazeran

    Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.

  • KG (unregistered)

    Why do people work more than 40 hours / week? Are there no other jobs available? Or do some people really have a psychotic passion for spending every waking minute of their lives absorbed in their work? I hate work - always have and always will.

  • geek (unregistered) in reply to Wiggam

    I've been told they hire so often because their solutions don't scale well. There solutions may be great, but the lack of scalability will limit their growth.

  • RR (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Depends. Some people don't mind putting in lots of extra hours if they like the job enough. My friends must like their jobs enough.

    Your friends are young and stupid and naive... They WILL look back at this time and think "Man I was stupid to work all those hours"

    Guarenteed.

    "10 hours every Saturday.... and they weren't even PAYING me for those hours... Holy crap I wish someone had slapped some sense into me back then"

  • anon (unregistered) in reply to RR
    RR:
    10 hours every Saturday.... and they weren't even PAYING me for those hours... Holy crap I wish someone had slapped some sense into me back then"

    Exactly. No one looks back at their lives and says "Man, I wish I could have worked more Saturdays without pay"

  • anon (unregistered) in reply to KG
    KG:
    Why do people work more than 40 hours / week? Are there no other jobs available? Or do some people really have a psychotic passion for spending every waking minute of their lives absorbed in their work? I hate work - always have and always will.

    I actually enjoy my work and I wouldn't take a job that I didn't enjoy unless it was truly necessary. I do interesting work, get paid to learn new subjects, have influence on the project, have freedom in what parts of the project I work on and so on.

  • Henry Miller (unregistered) in reply to KG
    KG:
    Why do people work more than 40 hours / week? Are there no other jobs available? Or do some people really have a psychotic passion for spending every waking minute of their lives absorbed in their work? I hate work - always have and always will.

    I will do it once in a while, when something needs to be done. It looks good, and so long as it doesn't happen often it isn't a big deal.

    I'm more willing to work extra hours now that I'm paid by the hour, but strangely they don't want that as much anymore.

    When the downturn hit a few years back I took a construction job to make ends meet - I had to work saturdays just to make my house payment. I didn't like it though.

Leave a comment on “Avoiding MUMPS & Arcadius”

Log In or post as a guest

Replying to comment #:

Log Out

« Return to Article