The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

morry · 2011-12-06 Reply Admin

Jerry:
Here's one of my favorites:

Every hour must be billed to a project code.

There is a mandatory two-hour all-hands meeting.

The meeting has no project code.

And of course, when you bill the 2 hours to one of your projects:

Take that out of my project! I'm not paying you to attend some stupid meeting!

EDS, amiright?

2011-12-06 Reply Admin

I worked with a guy whose idea of "version control" was to tar up his entire directory structure (about 13MB of code) every now and then into a datestamped filename. If there was ever a need to see what had changed, or recover an old version, he'd untar into a directory with the same datestamp. So his workspace had a dozen or so big complex directory structures containing almost the same thing except for the date near the top of the path.

When I was added to the project he emailed (!) me a recent tar. Of course when my changes were done and tested (a couple weeks later) he asked me to tar it all up and email back to him. Then -- only then -- did he discover to his astonishment that he had made some changes to the same files in the mean time!

At this point he was more or less flummoxed on how to proceed. A couple months later he quit, and the project died for lack of interest. Good thing, too. Its sponsors never could cough up a single sentence that wasn't mired in metaphors and buried in buzzword bingo.

Oh, yes, and his title was "Senior Architect". He could always be counted on in "Architecture Review" meetings to spout off about the Right Way (TM) to build software. It just never occurred to him to apply those principles to himself.

PedanticCurmudgeon · 2011-12-06 Reply Admin

ObiWayneKenobi:
No, I'm not trolling. I'm sick and tired of the "bad guys" winning and getting to stay in business, make life miserable for people working for them, because nobody has the balls to realize that idiots are idiots and need to realize that you should NOT get ahead in life by being a total douchebag and not knowing anything about anything.

Assuming you're telling the truth about not trolling, how exactly do you propose to teach an idiot not to get ahead by being a total douchebag, etc.?

[Maybe you should have registered as "Don Quixote" instead.]

C-Octothorpe · 2011-12-06 Reply Admin

PedanticCurmudgeon:
ObiWayneKenobi:
No, I'm not trolling. I'm sick and tired of the "bad guys" winning and getting to stay in business, make life miserable for people working for them, because nobody has the balls to realize that idiots are idiots and need to realize that you should NOT get ahead in life by being a total douchebag and not knowing anything about anything.
Assuming you're telling the truth about not trolling, how exactly do you propose to teach an idiot not to get ahead by being a total douchebag, etc.?
[Maybe you should have registered as "Don Quixote" instead.]

Fight fire with fire.

He's a douchebag to you, you be a douchebag right back. And after he fires you and has your ass removed from the premises, you would have shown him the error of his ways.

Wait, what?

Nagesh · 2011-12-06 Reply Admin

Overtime is very much paid in all billing projects.

2011-12-06 Reply Admin

I once worked for a defense contractor which had some offices in a general office building (no room at the main location). One of the time clock patrol decided we were all leaving a few minutes early so he set up a desk in the lobby and demanded badges from everyone as they left the building. Of course we were about 20% of the office inhabitants so most of the people he accosted did not work for us. It took about 30 minutes of this before he and desk were never seen from again.

Same place where we all got a memo about saving the company money by reusing paperclips. At a defense contractor no less...

2011-12-06 Reply Admin

Chelloveck:
The exactly 40 hour week is surprisingly common. I worked at a place that wanted to track hours worked on various projects. We were all salaried, so it's not like it mattered to our pay. We just filled in what we worked. Then management said that our hours must add up to 40, every week. If we worked more we had to fudge all the times proportionately to total 40. They could have changed the web app collecting the data to scale everything to 40 hours if they wanted, but that didn't seem to occur to anyone in power.
And speaking of the web app, it was an IE-only beast. A huge matrix of input boxes mapping out hours worked per project per day. It took 30 seconds to move from one box to another; I think it was submitting data to the server onblur() for each box. It was so bad that everyone in engineering just stopped using it after a while. And you know, no one ever said anything about it.

Then there was this other place who wanted our time broken down into 10-minute intervals. Each interval had to be accounted for in the proper category -- Requirements, high-level design, low-level design, code, write testplan execute testplan, debug, review HLD, review LLD, review code... Each feature request and bug report had a full set of categories, and there were a lot of categories for overhead tasks as well. Yes, there was a category for filling out timesheets.

Best solution: Make close guesses for everything, then put all the remaining time in the 'timesheets' category. If anyone complains about the time spent on timesheets, ask them if there is a simpler way.

Anketam · 2011-12-06 Reply Admin

Being nice or being a douche to a douche is equally a waste of energy. They are not going to change and will behave in the same self centered way regardless of what you do. The best thing you can do is get out of there as fast as you reasonably can (reasonably meaning you have a new job lined up before you quit).

2011-12-06 Reply Admin

ObiWayneKenobi:
No, I'm not trolling. I'm sick and tired of the "bad guys" winning and getting to stay in business, make life miserable for people working for them, because nobody has the balls to realize that idiots are idiots and need to realize that you should NOT get ahead in life by being a total douchebag and not knowing anything about anything.

Welcome to Occupy Wall Street. Oh wait, that got disbanded because it made all the bad guys uncomfortable.

Matt Westwood · 2011-12-06 Reply Admin

Nagesh:
Tangoman:
What's he complaining about? 40h weeks??
So the management system in place was inefficient - welcome to the real world!

I once worked at a place where you had to decide what changes were needed, email those to the company owner who made the changes who would make the changes in the obscure language he used and then run the program through a custom-built translator which produced the most evil VB you've ever seen. We then had to compare the output VB with the original to see if the changes we'd planned had come out right.

Quite often the company owner would decide that the changes you'd requested weren't quite correct and put in place something different....

Now that set-up was a bitch - simply having a crap source-control.... nothing to see here, move along please...

How is one collecting overtime pay to feeding family when work only 40 hours?

Got news for you, sunshine:

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/12/bill-would-end-overtime-pay-requirement-for-many-more-it-workers.ars

NOBODY gets paid overtime any more.

Matt Westwood · 2011-12-06 Reply Admin

ObiWayneKenobi:
Justice:
FTFY
There's no harm in extending a little professional courtesy, even when dealing with someone who is being completely unprofessional. Yeah, it probably won't impress them in the slightest, but it may well impress your co-workers.

If you need a reference down the line, would you rather be remembered as the guy who ragequit with zero notice, or the guy who kept his cool in the face of such madness?

Funnily enough my original version included a line that said "Signing it Bert Glanstron optional".

Anyways, given that most places I've seen would blackball someone based only on the fact they dared to leave, I'm of the opinion that someone who gives no courtesy or respect deserves neither courtesy nor respect.

To put it in layman's terms: A douchebag deserves a douchy response. There's no logical reason to eat shit and pretend to be all smiles when someone is obviously a sociopathic lunatic that has no business being part of the human race, let alone in the workforce. Being nice to "be the better man" in the fact of a scumbag like this does nothing except empower them. If more people were reluctant to take shit and were more apt to just say "Screw this" and leave, scum like this wouldn't be able to exist.

These people are hostis humani generis, enemies of the human race, and should not be allowed to exist.

Yeah yeah yada yada yawn tl;dr, but if you want to make sure you have the ackers to carry on eating you shut your trap.

gramie · 2011-12-06 Reply Admin

Tim:
Or, in other words, "We want you to put a lie in an official record, but we won't say so, because we don't want to put the truth in an official record."
Well F that! (WFT?)

Or, in other words, business as usual at ever Japanese company I know.

Matt Westwood · 2011-12-06 Reply Admin

ObiWayneKenobi:
Also weren't the Fates the Gracae or something like that? The three hags with one eye that they shared? My Greek mythology is rusty.

I presume one of these harpies was called Moira. At least in England that name has connotations of elderly, Scots and humourless.

Matt Westwood · 2011-12-06 Reply Admin

ObiWayneKenobi:
Seriously forget StarWars HR:
Justice:
ObiWayneKenobi:
In situations like this, the correct answer is always to quit immediately - no notice, no two weeks, just immediate I quit. If you're feeling particularly vengeful send a scathing email

There's no harm in extending a little professional courtesy,

I think ObiWayneKenobi is trolling.

In case anyone actually feels that way, consider someone called in to HR after two days on the job. HR says "We received a copy of the e-mail you sent to all the employees at your last job on your last day. We found it extremely unprofessional. We cannot trust someone capable of doing that. Security is outside and will escort you off the premises." That person had moved several hundred miles for the new job.

It's not so much about not burning a bridge that should not have been built, it's about the burning bridge falling into the replacement bridge and the resulting wreckage stopping you from building a new bridge anywhere else in the whole state . . .

No, I'm not trolling. I'm sick and tired of the "bad guys" winning and getting to stay in business, make life miserable for people working for them, because nobody has the balls to realize that idiots are idiots and need to realize that you should NOT get ahead in life by being a total douchebag and not knowing anything about anything.

I've deal with WTF places like this hellhole for my entire IT career, and the places have always prospered and flourished despite doing everything flat out WRONG, because people go with the flow or pretend that everything is fine, or when they leave they say there is no problems when there are enough problems to fill this site for an entire year.

You should not be forced to put on a show of courtesy for somebody who deserves to have the shit kicked out of them and run out of business for being an absolute clueless moron.

To whit: What any smart person should think if they got wind of that would be "What an absolute hellhole that company must have been for an employee to be forced to resort to that. Let's make sure that we never do anything like that to OUR employees". In fact I would go as far as to say that any company that felt the way your example did is another hellhole filled with clueless morons who pull the status quo.

Maybe we're just naturally polite in Britain, but the slightest sniff of political, social or moral dissatisfaction with your last place of employment at the job interview is likely to lose you the job. Also, think of it like this: HR personnel talk to each other. Wait till you've actually landed the next job till you start telling campfire tales round the proverbial water cooler.

2011-12-06 Reply Admin

use git.

Matt Westwood · 2011-12-06 Reply Admin

My Name Is Missing:
I once worked for a defense contractor which had some offices in a general office building (no room at the main location). One of the time clock patrol decided we were all leaving a few minutes early so he set up a desk in the lobby and demanded badges from everyone as they left the building. Of course we were about 20% of the office inhabitants so most of the people he accosted did not work for us. It took about 30 minutes of this before he and desk were never seen from again.
Same place where we all got a memo about saving the company money by reusing paperclips. At a defense contractor no less...

Fuck me, a paperclip! Haven't seen one of those for over a fucking decade!

Staples, now they're the devil's arse themselves, if I get given pieces of paper fastened together with staples in it I immediately rip them apart (unless it's, like, a book or something). Have you noticed how staple in magazines are never down the middle but offset so it's impossible to fold the thing back on itself without ruining the reading experience?

ObiWayneKenobi · 2011-12-06 Reply Admin

And again, smart HR people would think "How bad must that place have been to get a response like that?" and not "What an ungrateful employee, daring to speak against such a wonderful company!" I know I would if I was in HR and someone at another company told me how such-and-such employee stormed out. My first thought would be "Wow your company must be a complete shithole" and not "The nerve of that peasant! I'll be sure to blacklist him."

I really wonder how HR people can live with themselves, since most of them seem totally drunk on the corporate kool-aid and think the company is divine and can do no wrong.

It really seems to me that most people have no idea how things SHOULD be done and just follow the status quo because that's how things have always been. It's deplorable, really.

2011-12-06 Reply Admin

boog:
So in Miguel's situation, I'd just maintain my changes in my local SVN. When I'm ready to "commit" my changes to StephanSVN, I'd just request the latest copy of the file, merge my changes into it, and immediately send it back. Stephan is less likely to get conflicts that way.
As for defending my changes, I'd probably handle it like Miguel - argue my case, but let Stephan decide. Besides, when his solution doesn't work, I've still got my solution in my local SVN, so I can just merge it back in.

Yeah, right... how long would you keep up with that before you give him hell? You've never really did much merging, I see.

neminem · 2011-12-06 Reply Admin

Tim:
I worked one place that did this.

You must report your time every week using this new system.

(later) 2. You must not report more than 40 hours because we don't pay overtime.

(later) 3. You must not go home at 2:30 on Friday afternoon just because you hit 40 hours for the week.

I work at a place with a system quite like this, except minus the last part. And I quite like it. If I were to hit 40 hours for the week at 2:30 on Friday afternoon, I could (and would be expected to) go home. Some people do that routinely. Some people go home at -noon-. I like to think, if you're frantically trying to meet deadlines and have to work overtime, probably either people aren't doing their job, or (more likely) the deadlines were unreasonable.

Though I did have a job in college that told me, basically, "work whenever you like, make sure you feel like you did enough work for the week, then fill out this timesheet by hand saying you worked 40 hours. It's alright if you just write 9-6 (with an hour lunch) every day." That was kind of amusing.

boog · 2011-12-06 Reply Admin

YF:
boog:
So in Miguel's situation, I'd just maintain my changes in my local SVN. When I'm ready to "commit" my changes to StephanSVN, I'd just request the latest copy of the file, merge my changes into it, and immediately send it back.
You've never really did much merging, I see.

I'm sure you have some kind of basis for that assumption, other than "merging is hard," that is.

2011-12-06 Reply Admin

Matt Westwood:
Nagesh:
Tangoman:
What's he complaining about? 40h weeks??
So the management system in place was inefficient - welcome to the real world!

I once worked at a place where you had to decide what changes were needed, email those to the company owner who made the changes who would make the changes in the obscure language he used and then run the program through a custom-built translator which produced the most evil VB you've ever seen. We then had to compare the output VB with the original to see if the changes we'd planned had come out right.

Quite often the company owner would decide that the changes you'd requested weren't quite correct and put in place something different....

Now that set-up was a bitch - simply having a crap source-control.... nothing to see here, move along please...

How is one collecting overtime pay to feeding family when work only 40 hours?

Got news for you, sunshine:

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/12/bill-would-end-overtime-pay-requirement-for-many-more-it-workers.ars

NOBODY gets paid overtime any more.

US law is not being applied in Hyderabad.

2011-12-06 Reply Admin

QJo:
I wonder whether the problem was one of racism? Surely a "Miguel" has no status in relation to a "Stephen" as he's Hispanic while Stephen's a WASP.

What does "We All Suck Pussy" have to do with race?

2011-12-06 Reply Admin

ObiWayneKenobi:
Justice:
If you need a reference down the line, would you rather be remembered as the guy who ragequit with zero notice, or the guy who kept his cool in the face of such madness?
To put it in layman's terms: A douchebag deserves a douchy response. There's no logical reason to eat shit and pretend to be all smiles when someone is obviously a sociopathic lunatic that has no business being part of the human race, let alone in the workforce. Being nice to "be the better man" in the fact of a scumbag like this does nothing except empower them. If more people were reluctant to take shit and were more apt to just say "Screw this" and leave, scum like this wouldn't be able to exist.
These people are hostis humani generis, enemies of the human race, and should not be allowed to exist.

And after you rage quit, the boss gives the sociopath a raise for establishing the system that keeps the "lunatics" out. You failed to see the sociopath's trap due to your low emotional intelligence. And you were beaten at the emotional game by someone who has no emotions at all.

Neurotypicals win against sociopaths like rabbits win against tigers; by running away faster than the rabbit next to them.

2011-12-06 Reply Admin

Justice:
ObiWayneKenobi:
In situations like this, the correct answer is always to quit immediately - no notice, no two weeks, just immediate I quit. If you're feeling particularly vengeful send a scathing email that basically says words to the effect of "In case you can't tell, this is a software department. Your ridiculous standards and lack of trust for your developers clearly show that you have no clue how to run a modern software department, or any kind of software department. In fact, I wouldn't trust you to run a bath. Go away and grow up. Sincerely, Bert Glanstron."
There is nothing wrong with burning a bridge that should never have been erected in the first place.

FTFY

There's no harm in extending a little professional courtesy, even when dealing with someone who is being completely unprofessional. Yeah, it probably won't impress them in the slightest, but it may well impress your co-workers.

If you need a reference down the line, would you rather be remembered as the guy who ragequit with zero notice, or the guy who kept his cool in the face of such madness?

Always the RageQuit. Co-workers seem to have a profound respect for socking it to dah man....

2011-12-06 Reply Admin

Johnahon:
QJo:
I wonder whether the problem was one of racism? Surely a "Miguel" has no status in relation to a "Stephen" as he's Hispanic while Stephen's a WASP.
What does "We All Suck Pussy" have to do with race?

Ahem. "We Are Sexual Perverts"

2011-12-06 Reply Admin

Charlie:
the addition of a trio of new project managers. That was their title, in any case. The three women hired to fill the role had no PM experience, no software experience, and knew nothing about the company or the projects they were going to work on
Sounds like 9 out of 10 PMs I've ever worked with! Who needs experience? Knowledge? Understanding? All you have to do is ask "what percent complete is it?" and "when will it be done?" and punch the answers into that Microsoft thingie.

Lucky you!! I've never worked with a PM who can do anything but ask for percentages, and then complain when you explain that "percent complete?" is on par with "how long is a piece of string?" I know, smart arses, "twice the length from the middle to one end")

2011-12-06 Reply Admin

Blackie Lawless:
Johnahon:
QJo:
I wonder whether the problem was one of racism? Surely a "Miguel" has no status in relation to a "Stephen" as he's Hispanic while Stephen's a WASP.
What does "We All Suck Pussy" have to do with race?
Ahem. "We Are Sexual Perverts"

See?! I knew it!

2011-12-06 Reply Admin

Tim:
I worked one place that did this.

You must report your time every week using this new system.

(later) 2. You must not report more than 40 hours because we don't pay overtime.

(later) 3. You must not go home at 2:30 on Friday afternoon just because you hit 40 hours for the week.

That was long long before TDWTF. Now, I can just stop by here and blow a half hour now and then whenever I start getting too far ahead of the target.

So go home Friday 2:35....I'm sure you can come in late one day to make up the 5 minutes if you really wanted to

Matt Westwood · 2011-12-06 Reply Admin

ObiWayneKenobi:
And again, *smart* HR people would think "How bad must that place have been to get a response like that?" and not "What an ungrateful employee, daring to speak against such a wonderful company!" I know I would if I was in HR and someone at another company told me how such-and-such employee stormed out. My first thought would be "Wow your company must be a complete shithole" and not "The nerve of that peasant! I'll be sure to blacklist him."
I really wonder how HR people can live with themselves, since most of them seem totally drunk on the corporate kool-aid and think the company is divine and can do no wrong.

It really seems to me that most people have no idea how things SHOULD be done and just follow the status quo because that's how things have always been. It's deplorable, really.

Then again if you're a manager you'd probably like to know that ObiWankerNobody is a hothead who flies off the handle and can't be trusted to act professionally. You're the last person I'd let within a mile of my customers, either actual or potential.

Matt Westwood · 2011-12-06 Reply Admin

neminem:
Tim:
I worked one place that did this.

You must report your time every week using this new system.

(later) 2. You must not report more than 40 hours because we don't pay overtime.

(later) 3. You must not go home at 2:30 on Friday afternoon just because you hit 40 hours for the week.

I work at a place with a system quite like this, except minus the last part. And I quite like it. If I were to hit 40 hours for the week at 2:30 on Friday afternoon, I could (and would be expected to) go home. Some people do that routinely. Some people go home at -noon-. I like to think, if you're frantically trying to meet deadlines and have to work overtime, probably either people aren't doing their job, or (more likely) the deadlines were unreasonable.

Though I did have a job in college that told me, basically, "work whenever you like, make sure you feel like you did enough work for the week, then fill out this timesheet by hand saying you worked 40 hours. It's alright if you just write 9-6 (with an hour lunch) every day." That was kind of amusing.

The real WTF is working in a country where 40 hours is de rigueur. Emigrate to a green and pleasant land where 37.5 or even (sweet, sweet, feel the love) 35 is the norm.

2011-12-06 Reply Admin

Chelloveck:
The exactly 40 hour week is surprisingly common. I worked at a place that wanted to track hours worked on various projects. We were all salaried, so it's not like it mattered to our pay. We just filled in what we worked. Then management said that our hours must add up to 40, every week. If we worked more we had to fudge all the times proportionately to total 40. They could have changed the web app collecting the data to scale everything to 40 hours if they wanted, but that didn't seem to occur to anyone in power.
And speaking of the web app, it was an IE-only beast. A huge matrix of input boxes mapping out hours worked per project per day. It took 30 seconds to move from one box to another; I think it was submitting data to the server onblur() for each box. It was so bad that everyone in engineering just stopped using it after a while. And you know, no one ever said anything about it.

Then there was this other place who wanted our time broken down into 10-minute intervals. Each interval had to be accounted for in the proper category -- Requirements, high-level design, low-level design, code, write testplan execute testplan, debug, review HLD, review LLD, review code... Each feature request and bug report had a full set of categories, and there were a lot of categories for overhead tasks as well. Yes, there was a category for filling out timesheets.

I always find it peculiar - surely they would be happy when salaried workers work longer - it means they can charge 46h (an arbitrary example) to various projects while still paying for 40h work. I think perhaps they worry that somewhere sown the track people will start to make up excess time as (unofficial) flex....

Timesheets are TRWTF. If you expect someone to be at work for 8 hours you can only realistically expect about 6.5 hours work - the rest of the time is spent catching up with colleagues (networking, teambuilding, morale boostig, whinging about the PM), toilet breaks, picking your nose etc... I've had the argument many times (and lost each time) that insiting every minute to be accounted for (in 15 minute increments) is encouraging some of the greatest works of fiction to be presented to the bean counters...

Matt Westwood · 2011-12-06 Reply Admin

Square Pants:
Charlie:
the addition of a trio of new project managers. That was their title, in any case. The three women hired to fill the role had no PM experience, no software experience, and knew nothing about the company or the projects they were going to work on
Sounds like 9 out of 10 PMs I've ever worked with! Who needs experience? Knowledge? Understanding? All you have to do is ask "what percent complete is it?" and "when will it be done?" and punch the answers into that Microsoft thingie.

Lucky you!! I've never worked with a PM who can do anything but ask for percentages, and then complain when you explain that "percent complete?" is on par with "how long is a piece of string?" I know, smart arses, "twice the length from the middle to one end")

When first asked, say "50% complete." When asked next, say "75% complete. When asked next, say "87.5% complete." And so on. To save confusing his / her little head, round to a whole number. When it looks embarrassingly as though 99% is going to be a sticking point, work out a convincing tale about how it's someone else's fault and ask for the job to be rescheduled. Use the right language and buzzwords and you'll be praised.

2011-12-06 Reply Admin

morry:
Jerry:
Here's one of my favorites:

Every hour must be billed to a project code.

There is a mandatory two-hour all-hands meeting.

The meeting has no project code.

And of course, when you bill the 2 hours to one of your projects:

Take that out of my project! I'm not paying you to attend some stupid meeting!

EDS, amiright?

HAhaha....that reminds me when I worked for a company (which may well have been EDS) and my manager always found errors on any timesheet because, well basically, because he was a pedantic fuck and something displeased him. I started to claim 30minutes a week "timesheeting", which made him even less happy, as we couldn't bill the client for administration. An argument ensued over whether projects should absorb the cost of timesheeting or whether it was an admin task, I asked him to escalate the issue if he thought there was any issue with my timesheet. He hassled me less after that...

2011-12-06 Reply Admin

Nagesh:
Overtime is very much paid in all billing projects.

Indded - the increase from 15c to 17c per hour is very much worth the long hours...

2011-12-06 Reply Admin

boog:
YF:
boog:
So in Miguel's situation, I'd just maintain my changes in my local SVN. When I'm ready to "commit" my changes to StephanSVN, I'd just request the latest copy of the file, merge my changes into it, and immediately send it back.
You've never really did much merging, I see.
I'm sure you have some kind of basis for that assumption, other than "merging is hard," that is.

Dear boog, Making assumptions about other posters is the nature of the Internet.

Love, Nag-Geoff

2011-12-06 Reply Admin

ObiWayneKenobi:
And again, *smart* HR people would think "How bad must that place have been to get a response like that?" and not "What an ungrateful employee, daring to speak against such a wonderful company!" I know I would if I was in HR and someone at another company told me how such-and-such employee stormed out. My first thought would be "Wow your company must be a complete shithole" and not "The nerve of that peasant! I'll be sure to blacklist him."
I really wonder how HR people can live with themselves, since most of them seem totally drunk on the corporate kool-aid and think the company is divine and can do no wrong.

It really seems to me that most people have no idea how things SHOULD be done and just follow the status quo because that's how things have always been. It's deplorable, really.

Have you ever noticed how life is not fair? Shitheads will remain shitheads, and usually are so slimey they can slip out of any situation you can tangle them. Invariably, they manage to pile a lot of poo on innocent bystanders as they do.

Save yourself the trouble and get out of their - otherwise you risk being tied up as they try to avoid their karma...

2011-12-06 Reply Admin

According to the story, it sounds like they were only allowed to claim 40 hours on their timesheet, yet still were expected to meet unrealistic deadlines. Meaning they had to work a lot of unpaid overtime.

boog · 2011-12-06 Reply Admin

nag-geoff:
Dear boog, Making assumptions about other posters is the nature of the Internet.

And how!

2011-12-06 Reply Admin

Boring, unrealistic, and not amusing.

2011-12-06 Reply Admin

I really, really, really don't understand this. Ok, they want to track hours, not for pay purposes, as you're all salaried, to have a better idea of how long things are taking. But if that's the case, then why would you want to fudge the numbers like that?

2011-12-06 Reply Admin

TheJonB:
OneOfTheFew:
Why didn't Miguel just quit? That's what I would have done.
You may have missed the broader macroeconomic situation.
Perhaps try watch the news instead of the cartoons?

You know, you say that, but completely ignore the fact that the unemployment rate for developers is far below the national average, and many places are having troubles finding good developers. Further, if you're always going to live in fear of recession, then you'd better be ready to just bend over and take whatever management wants to give out.

2011-12-06 Reply Admin

C-Octothorpe:
PedanticCurmudgeon:
ObiWayneKenobi:
No, I'm not trolling. I'm sick and tired of the "bad guys" winning and getting to stay in business, make life miserable for people working for them, because nobody has the balls to realize that idiots are idiots and need to realize that you should NOT get ahead in life by being a total douchebag and not knowing anything about anything.
Assuming you're telling the truth about not trolling, how exactly do you propose to teach an idiot not to get ahead by being a total douchebag, etc.?
[Maybe you should have registered as "Don Quixote" instead.]
Fight fire with fire.

He's a douchebag to you, you be a douchebag right back. And after he fires you and has your ass removed from the premises, you would have shown him the error of his ways.

Wait, what?

Well, there is the immediate loss of a developer on a project. That surely can't be pain free.

D-Coder · 2011-12-06 Reply Admin

Bryan the K:
The real WTF is that I didn't read the source first.

Read the source, Bryan the K. Read the source!

2011-12-06 Reply Admin

nag-geoff:
boog:
YF:
boog:
So in Miguel's situation, I'd just maintain my changes in my local SVN. When I'm ready to "commit" my changes to StephanSVN, I'd just request the latest copy of the file, merge my changes into it, and immediately send it back.
You've never really did much merging, I see.
I'm sure you have some kind of basis for that assumption, other than "merging is hard," that is.

Dear boog, Making assumptions about other posters is the nature of the Internet.

Love, Nag-Geoff

Who hcarsens't done something like this?

2011-12-06 Reply Admin

neminem:
work whenever you like, make sure you feel like you did enough work for the week, then fill out this timesheet by hand saying you worked 40 hours.

Let me guess... a government job. And even when you did bother to "work" it consisted mostly of standing around discussing sports and the lottery with other lazy bastards like yourself. Except when you were complaining about politics, of course -- the very same political system that lets you slack off all day.

Goddamn communists, or socialists, or whatever we're calling you these days.

2011-12-06 Reply Admin

s73v3r:
I really, really, really don't understand this. Ok, they want to track hours, not for pay purposes, as you're all salaried, to have a better idea of how long things are taking. But if that's the case, then why would you want to fudge the numbers like that?

I think it is guilt. If their system told them they were slavedriving their people 75 hours a week, they'd know there was a mutiny in the works. But if they can keep themselves unaware of reality, they can plow ahead until everything blows up, secure in the knowledge that ignorance is bliss.

neminem · 2011-12-06 Reply Admin

Ron:
neminem:
work whenever you like, make sure you feel like you did enough work for the week, then fill out this timesheet by hand saying you worked 40 hours.
Let me guess... a government job. And even when you did bother to "work" it consisted mostly of standing around discussing sports and the lottery with other lazy bastards like yourself. Except when you were complaining about politics, of course -- the very same political system that lets you slack off all day.

Nope. Not at all. More like a haphazard sort of internal college IT job (not even a public college, so you can't blame the government for it at all), where they only hired a few people, and you could tell their goal was as much to say "yep! We have jobs available for students!" as much as to actually have them get any work done. Though I did get some actual work done for them, when they had it for me to do, which wasn't always.

Definitely no discussing of sports or the lottery, nor any discussion of anything while standing around talking with other coworkers, of which there weren't any (or there were, they were in their own dorm rooms, working on things unrelated to what I was given to work on). Discussing of, say, video games, on internet forums, though, yes. Lots of that. That "job" gave me all kinds of habits that were somewhat hard to break when I got my first real job.

It still amused me that they were required to pretend to keep track of our hours, though. (Or, rather, they made us pretend to keep track for them.)

2011-12-06 Reply Admin

After reading TDWTF for two years, I have concluded that the biggest problem in the IT industry is a lack of workplace violence. Maybe it's my own blue-collar work history, but many problems would be solved by putting on masks and kicking the shit out of someone --- in this case, Stephen --- in a dark area of the parking lot after hours. What the hell, boot-stomp both hands too... It'll keep him out of trouble for about six weeks.

Sutherlands · 2011-12-06 Reply Admin

Matt Westwood:
The real WTF is working in a country where 40 hours is de rigueur. Emigrate to a green and pleasant land where 37.5 or even (sweet, sweet, feel the love) 35 is the norm.

Indeed. How do we live without that extra 30 minutes a day in our lives? Oh wait, we don't live in Europe, that's how.

2011-12-06 Reply Admin

My Name Is Missing:

Same place where we all got a memo about saving the company money by reusing paperclips. At a defense contractor no less...

Not smart - law of contagion comes into play on that one.

The Source of Control

Leave a comment on “The Source of Control”