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Admin
O wow! Someone out there appreciates excellent verse!
Admin
Also, I love all the business majors and managers replying and trying to save face. Barring that your subordinate is a know-it-all type, you should listen to your subordinates. Not necessarily approve of everything they say, but listen... carefully. For every complaint, issue, and concern that they raise with you, that provides another piece to the efficiency puzzle. They have probably already given it considerable thought before coming to you. Too often I've seen managers get in pissing contests with their employees over who's right, and that hurts the company. Often times there's a grain of truth to be seen, even if the subordinate is missing the big picture. Even if you deny a request, an explanation of why will often appease your employee. In this case, Victor's boss could have at least acknowledged a flaw, even though he didn't like the fact that more items were being added to the proverbial plate. To dismiss the issue entirely is to be an ostrich, hiding your head in the sand while the predator creeps up on you. In all fairness though, this article did seem to take some artistic liberty with the boss character.
Admin
I've had similar issues with an alarming number of people and here I'll attempt to extrapolate the core process from prior experiences:
I prefer to always fight such stupid people, correct their odd statements, unrealistic expectations, and disprove all incompetent assumptions.
Example: my landlady habitually breached the agreement, proceeded without abiding by deposit scheme rules, and violated some particular laws. On every occasion, she made some wrong assumption and did something she isn't entitled to. She thought a tenant doesn't know anything and is her slave, but although I've always proven her wrong, etc., she has never changed. Now I know all the laws, directions, and conventions related to landlord vs. tenant much better than her, and unfortunately also better than my previous landlord and current landlord.
All I'm saying is that authority is not about your position at all. It is about your intelligence, attitude, perseverance, and education.
Admin
You will find that my education in matters of poetry is no verse than that of any other Indian.
Admin
and that's why I don't care who you are, but what you know. I've dealt with some bad and disrespectful bosses in a way as if they were less than a lost dog who made it to the office. It's important not to let them do it to you, i.e. as soon as the fool starts explaining they have something very best and they doubt you are able to keep up to that level, tell them something that doubts their skills i.e. "and do you have a security certification for that?", "and do you have an accreditation to say that...", "is that complying to a formal security standard? Really? Which one? No, your company is not competent to set formal security standards, you are not accredited", etc. Just show them they are stupid right away.
Admin
oh my. Someone thought that security throught complexity is a good thing. Every day is a new day to discover bizarre thinds.
Admin
Admin
It's not better to stay low because it will stress you, frustrate you, and destroy you. It's the best to beat them both mentally and physically (i.e. bodybuilding, karate - we need this after work to stay fit anyway). Since I've been doing these activities, bosses never disrespected me without getting disrespected back immediately. And since they aren't as fit as I am, I always win. They no longer try to screw me, but still I didn't like the money when being an employee, and the flat 9am-5pm hours, and the need to stay stuck in some cheap office... So I became an independent contractor, a freelancer, and I'm working from home with dynamic, completely flexible hours, only on projects that I choose, and if I weren't happy with a particular client (it happened once), I'd simply tell him and immediately quit. I don't even need to let it bug me, it's just cut off before the hell starts. :) That's the logical evolution which you can get if you work your brain & body in the free time.
Anyone can become a dominant, wise, strong, person. Now stand up and go to gym, enroll in karate classes, and join some brain-training course.
Admin
Admin
to: "..." is not "…" Can you please stop it and think out of the box for a minute? You seem to be making such wrong conclusions more than once. I suggest to look for supporting evidence of what you are claiming, i.e. you must send a definition of trolling and demonstrate how you think my message compares to it. Try that as a small academic exercise to stimulate your critical thinking.
Admin
(I'll be back to see the results, if any)
Admin
Raj: Oh, Sheldon, you are so arrogant. If you were a superhero your name would be Dr. Arrogant. And you know what his superpower would be? Arrogance!
Sheldon: You are wrong again. If my superpower were Arrogance, my name would be Dr. Arroganto.
:)
Admin
Admin
BTW- I would destroy your weight-lifting-karate-chopping behind IRL, Mr. ITG.
Admin
Admin
I see, in such circumstances when the boss just does not let go and keeps mobbing by default, keeping low profile may work the best as you explained, or also coming with a mutual agreement that you quit immediately the day xx.yy.zzzz. They've always signed it for me, and I've usually negotiated some money on top, i.e. 1 weekly salary.
The afore mentioned situation for which I suggested fighting back was different, i.e. the boss was normal by default, and only when he got bored, he started testing my patience, seeing how much he can get away with. When that happens and you stay quiet, it starts getting worse until you are bullied on a daily basis. Fighting back immediately when you hear something you don't like has proven to discourage him from further attempts, so that he treats you with respect and you treat him with respect. Essentially, you become good friends and are happy to work together. Still, you will find this boss bullying some other people, who don't tell him anyway back.
Admin
In case you can't tell I'm a bit of a dumb, non-tech saavy guy. Therefore, I don't know from "internet rules". Also, aren't you breaking those rules?
Admin
lol, im not sure if anyone gets it or not but there is a reference in the password 'hunter2'
Admin
Cassandra Syndrome: The naive belief that the fact that you are telling the truth inevitably means that everyone will (a) believe you, and (b) take appropriate action.
Excuse me, but I have to go back to Planet Earth now.
Admin
Admin
Admin
Secondly, if you fire the people who can tell you that Approach A won't work before you start, then you will waste a lot of time and resources on Approach A before eventually giving up and looking for Approach B, and be beaten to the market by the companies who initially looked for B.
Of course, if they are wrong then you've wasted time looking for Approach B, and that is the irrational fear the third is based on.
The bad managers forget that knowledge workers with a lot of experience will often know whether something will or can't work without knowing exactly why.
As with most management advice, it's >90% bollocks.
Trouble is, it's bollocks that a lot of people in power believe - probably because very few managers understand knowledge workers.
Admin
A bug is some sort of unanticipated behavior, what was actually pointed out was lack of experience and stupidity, neither of which are actually bugs, even though they may be the cause of them.
Admin
Spot on with #2.
A seasoned coworker of mine once gave me the sage advice that he followed: the first six months on the job, he STFU and listened. After the six month period, he would then share his input on how things are.
No one wants to hear from the new guy what a bunch of morons the team must be to have coded this crap.
Everyone makes a good armchair quarterback.
Admin
6 months? That's usually in 90% of cases when I quit because of "what a bunch of morons the team must be to have coded, and still continue coding, this crap". According to statistics, in 2-3 months I'll need another project. Now I don't know yet why, but statistics do not lie. And when I was finally lucky and could start coding something according to high standards and with the use of a recognized enterprise framework, the company hired some dull also-programmer who lacked qualities in topics such as software architecture, so that essentially he dragged down the whole project on the ground where it started getting so rotten that I had to quit (that was what happened in the 6th month before).
Admin
Please post the name of this former employer.
And the URL of the offending system.
Admin
The problem with the hunter2 reference is either people got it and laughed or didn't get it and didn't laugh. Other than saying we saw it on another site (bash.org is where I first saw it) there's not any real reason to bring it up. Its cute funny, but not really worth 2 posts in a thread funny. At least I don't see how to make it any funnier... at least not that was attempted within the first 5 posts. So I didn't bring it up. I liked the bobby tables references better :)
Admin
Oh dearie me, I really didn't think people needed to be told about such obvious trivia, but here it is:
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/hunter2
... now maybe we can all learn from this incident and move on.
Admin
There lies yet another difference between real Engineers and pretend ones. You can stick to a code of ethics, actually be respected for it and have a professional organisation back you up.
Of course if nobody can possibly get injured no matter what happens with the project it would look very petty and trivial to take things very far.
Admin
Maybe offtopic, but sometimes that is done inadvertently when you don't have a clue what a person can or cannot do or after they do something so spectacularly stupid that you cannot be sure they know the basics of their field.
Admin
If Victor were so smart, he could have fixed the bug he was assigned and then done his due diligence in the code.
Everyone loves to point out what's wrong in others' work. It makes some people feel better about themselves in a strange way. However, it stinks of hypocrisy when you don't have your own things in order and start spouting off on the work of others.
Admin
Admin
You can do that, or become self-employed and be your own boss, in which case you are finding your projects yourself (i.e. online bidding, or online agencies, such as elance) and then you get paid both for "your boss" and your "yourself."The qualitative requirements are up to you to define, and so is everything else. I prefer this model for now, but I've seen companies where the boss had a Master's degree at Project Management and it seemed quite good, except people in the team didn't have enough perseverance to properly research complex problems and find the best solution. So they were developing right, but the thing they worked on could have been solved with exponentially lower effort. How did they make it so complicated? They decided to use Doctrene2 with ZF just because they have never seen a DB model in ZF (ZF doesn't need Doctrene - it's actually easier without it). Then, they used some obscure templating language (again, ZF has a facility for that - phtml, which would be much faster). And then, they used a number of other 3rd party libraries that were mostly solving problems that are already solved by something very basic in the core of the framework.
Essentially, that team enjoyed experimenting with bleeding edge libraries. Nobody worked hard to find a good solution, they just had fun, played with everything new, and looked for a "coolest" solution. I've just realized I wouldn't enjoy being an employee anymore. An independent contractor is the only way it works to my satisfaction. There is no dummy who you have to report, explain, and teach him every day. You just think, do, and get paid.
Admin
sorry, I meant Doctrine2 and ZF was actually ZF2. It was a bunch of jerks running on unstable, trying to put unstable into production, and exceeding deadlines by 300%+ due to bugs and issues that didn't have to be there if they used stable, etc.
Admin
Admin
Admin
The problem is that often a team becomes complacent with "how things are done" and don't look for improvements (or, worse, are prohibited from making improvements) because they've been indoctrinated in the company culture and just go through the motions cranking out the same stuff day in, day out because that's what they've always done.
A new team member doesn't have that complacency and bias, and can often see things nobody else is capable of seeing (because they kind of just assume it and move along - the elephant in the room syndrome). Even a junior team member can provide insight, albeit they might not have the whole picture (but it's still good to ask), while a more experienced professional who is just new to that company often has insights that the other developers are completely oblivious to. It's usually not a good indicator of company quality when anything you point out is dismissed and people just go about coding poorly because they don't know any better or just don't care.
Starting a new job and discovering critical errors in an application should be lauded and rewarded, not dismissed and punished like in this story. It's clear that Victor was able to see through the haze this company built up and pierce the complacency the boss had with the code, but it's very rare to get a company smart enough to realize that all team members, even someone brand new, can provide valuable insight to how things are done and, I would argue, someone new to the team can often provide MORE insight because the longer someone is with a company, the more apathetic and complacent they get with doing things the same old way.
There's a difference between worrying about minutiae (unless said minutiae is clearly wrong and/or stupid) and pointing out critical flaws that indicate outright ignorance and cluelessness on the part of whoever developed it. Sometimes the right answer is to point out "You are all a bunch of idiots who understand nothing" and move on to someplace with intelligent people.
Admin
You need 15 minutes?
Admin
Aaaaand... good for Victor. Better not to work with such a company and supervisor.
Admin
You sure that the "security is job number one" didn't mean, "that's what we execute - as in China, first"? And what the hero of the story didn't understand was that this security model was specced like this? :)
Admin
You can't even remotely imagine how much I do understand you. Truly. I've been in more than one company like that. Good for me, my actual employer does care about code quality and architecture. But the pain I had to endure in the past...