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Admin
I will always remember jan 5 2017 as my frist day.
Admin
It is a day which will go down in fristory.
Admin
".... George was wasting time, there can’t possibly be that many bugs, and if anything like this happens again the time would be deducted from his paycheck."
Is that legal?
Admin
"Is that legal?" Yes. And No. And Maybe. Depends where you live, amongst other factors.
Admin
Ah let's see... I've seen some of these before:
Some key points is where is his supervisor in all this? He should be discussing it with that person, not "a coworker". And also I love the childish tirade from the President of all people; I've noticed a lot of company executives that are essentially mature babies who will throw tantrums and act like a spoiled child if they don't get their way or if someone points something they don't like out. I'm not sure if it's some weird form of Asperger's or what but I've seen it way too many times to dismiss it as just a random idiot.
The right choice is to leave, and promptly cite the abusive email from the president as the reason. Nobody will do anything of course because THE BOSS is beyond reproach, but they should know. This also reminds me an old WTF, The Motivator I think, which featured an insane childish rant by a supposed executive.
Admin
Please try not to confuse ego (or a personality disorder) and the autism spectrum. Ego is normal and people can control it, personality disorders can be treated, and the autism spectrum is inborn neurologically.
Admin
The president was his supervisor :-)
Admin
Deja vu. I worked at an insurance company once where I sent a similar memo. They were moving from some VBscript dialect to C# with VB.NET in the middle. As you can imagine, it was a clusterfuck, full of what I called "VBisms." With 9 years of C# in my background at the time, more than the rest of the team put together, I had to say something. VB is an OK language...but when your stated goal is a C-based environment, you can't carry over some of the dumb design patterns that VB lets you get away with or presents as workarounds to missing features (let alone the dumb design patterns employed by duhvelopers who don't think anything out). I didn't get a pompous e-mail from the president but my scumbag supervisor* had it in for me from that day on.
*This clown hated that I was smarter than him. I once had an assignment to pause some reporting process overnight while the mainframe was busy or restarting. He refactored my code stupidly and created a logic hole where it fucked up a pile of reports instead. The next morning I had an e-mail demanding to know what I did that fucked up all of these reports. I took one look at it and said "you moved this check here and removed that check there" to which the reply was along the lines of "you're so arrogant, always an answer for everything." Well duh, don't ask me a question if you don't want an answer.
Admin
No, the supervisor was the president's daughter.
Admin
I worked at a company that actually was the industry leader in the relevant industry. We had a very strong culture of acknowledging errors and fixing them as quickly as possible.
Perhaps the two are related?
Admin
Not Aspergers but rather narcissism mixed with arrested development.
I have worked for a few people like this, and they believe their own BS.
The real WTF is that George did not quit sooner - I would have (but then I am near retirement, not just starting out and I have a lot less patience and a lot less riding on keeping my job).
Admin
I was once fired for "asking wrong questions" after a month of working for a company. The "wrong questions" were my attempt to learn the system and asking why something was done the way it was done (no arguing or criticising, mind you, just asking).
Admin
You sure it wasn't the President's daughter?
Admin
Maybe The President was The Donald. It kind of sounds like the way he'd respond.
Admin
"(EVERYONE is an industry leader. Seriously, I've seen like a tiny 6-person company claim to be "one of the top companies" in a certain area. Yeah sure you are buddy, maybe in your dreams)"
How can someone be "a leader" anyway? I thought it was THE leader. And if a company is the leader in something, not necessarily in the industry or in some metric, they will boast the numbers that back it up. All the other also-runs will call themselves "a leader".
Addendum 2017-01-05 12:17: EDIT: or in some metric = but just in some metric
Admin
VB is an OK language...but when your stated goal is a C-based environment, you can't carry over some of the dumb design patterns that VB lets you get away with or presents as workarounds to missing features
That happened to me too in my last job, which left over two months ago. I was hired to be the lone developer/architect on a project to rewrite a massive (5 million LOC) VB6 application that had grown organically over 18 years into C# Winforms. It had been my understanding at the beginning that I was to use modern programming techniques to eliminate redundant code and improve code reuse (the same procedures and queries were copy-pasted in multiple places in the application, and each of the three dozen modules had its own copy of the common library file) and increase performance (can you say "asynchronous multithreading?" I knew you could).
The problem is, of course, that C# is nowhere near as forgiving as VB6, which lets you get away with a lot of things (On Error Resume Next, anyone? And let's not even get to how COM ADO swallows null values.). Not to mention that whatever tricks the original designers of COM used to get around Windows quirks and odd behavior are not in available in C# without mucking about in the Windows API or buying yet other third-party controls.
The long and short of it is that my boss (who was the original developer on the VB6 application and still maintains it with bug fixes and feature requests) decided that asynchronous methods were "too complex" and that separating the business logic from the presentation layer wasn't any good either. He thought running it all in the UI thread with Application.DoEvents() was enough. Bugs multiplied after I rewrote it his way.
Admin
BTW, I thought the OP was an idiot for quitting. He should have gone the smart way of being maliciously compliant and play along like the other employees of the company were doing (hence their blasé responses). "Want me to compile a huge project on an old dual-core whatever? Sure no prob, time for some reddit minutes for me". "Want me to search hours searching for a bug that a proper testing-acceptance procedure and continuous integration process would have made easy to find? I 'll get right on it!". "Use a weird language for which no debug toolkits or SDKs exist and comfortably waste hours doing printf debugging or manually editing build scripts? You got it!"
The company probably charges the customers in billable hours, with the executives/PHBs getting a bonus for the income generated (by the billable hours), and OP was spoiling the soup with his recommendations for process improvement.
A good programmer understands that not every company out there is a hippy caffeinated web upstart building the next Google and working unrealistic deadlines and treating every time-wasting step in the way as pure evil. Some companies are in the business of just maintaining existing software systems for customers who need few new features and pay by the billable hour.
Admin
I would hope most employees are looking for more than a box to sit in and earn money. You know, like experience.
Admin
Well, since anti-patterns are in fact the most common pattern in the industry, this is the most industry-relevant experience you could get, lol.
Admin
On a more serious note, if you can get a job in such a company (aka company maintaining software for some large customer and using arcane methods, obscure languages, home-made toolkits and home-made plugins which take an entire month to learn), keep it. In the average caffeinated web upstart using off-the-shelf everything, you are a disposable cog because there are hundreds of kids willing to do the job for less and already have all the knowledge it takes to start doing your job from next Monday. Savvy?
Admin
Poor guy, everywhere he goes he seems to be in WTF land.
Maybe if he wasn't quite so entitled and didn't do quite so many stupid sackable things he might get on better with an employer:
If you are lacking direction in what to work on, ask your manager. Yes, you now work for a company. Your computer will likely be a bit shitter than you would prefer to use. Don't go off and install random bits of software to audit your new companies code without someone asking you to. If you do, don't then write up your findings in some PassAgg memo that you pass on to random colleagues.
This jackass is honestly surprised that the president got involved after sending that memo..
Honestly, sometimes these smart super judgemental perfectionists* can make good corporate developers, but most of the time they just cause constant arguments and irrelevant discussion that distracts from the business of doing business. It's important developing software correctly and well, but its more important to get revenue.
Admin
You're no less disposable at an obscure WTF factory than a caffeinated startup because here's what happens:
When it comes down to it, the president in the article is doing what every other fool with no practical experience does. He's throwing bodies at the problem as if software development was no different from digging ditches. It's not unimaginable that he may choose to outsource the entire department as that way he can throw four times as many Indian bodies at his problems.
"George" absolutely made the right call.
Admin
The Donald would have tweeted, not emailed.
Admin
Am I the only one who wonders about these 'font test programs' that take an app and magically count font rendering errors?
Admin
The best thing is when there is no actual criteria for the "best" in an industry... so you make up yourself as goals. And then I'd make a bet that you'll achieve those goals, because you're making up the metrics.
Addendum 2017-01-05 17:36: By which I mean something like.. saying an "industry leader" has 50% of the marketshare of your industry, when there's no way to determine who has what percentage of the market share. So naturally, when the time comes you'll "magically" have 51% of the market share (because nobody can prove you don't have it), see you achieved your goal! You're the top <company type> in the industry! Good work everyone! We're #1! We're #1!
Admin
That's idiot advice right there, only suitable for someone who has no skills and wants to stagnate somewhere with a paycheck. For anyone who wishes to actually create useful stuff, time spent learning/using homemade toolkits and plugs is wasted time that will be of zero use to any other job.
Admin
Welcome to the real world George...is this for real? It sounds like EVERY place ive been from gov jobs to ecom...no documentation?? ohhh my thats not how it was in my text books...well the code is the documentation and you better learn how to sift through it and glean truth or you better become a six sigma black belt and karate chop your way into a job you can handle George.
Admin
Welcome to the real world George...is this for real? It sounds like EVERY place ive been from gov jobs to ecom...no documentation?? ohhh my thats not how it was in my text books...well the code is the documentation and you better learn how to sift through it and glean truth or you better become a six sigma black belt and karate chop your way into a job you can handle George.
Admin
Seems like all these posters with the same advice are sockpuppets.
Hmm - does Blakey have a new strategy to get rid of this website he hates so much (how can a three-year-old have so much hate?)?
Amazed George didn't quit earlier.
Admin
Sounds to me like you're trying very hard to tell yourself that the crappy job you're trapped in is the best you'll ever have.
Denial is not just a river in Egypt...
Admin
"In the average caffeinated web upstart using off-the-shelf everything, you are a disposable cog because there are hundreds of kids willing to do the job for less and already have all the knowledge it takes to start doing your job from next Monday. "
...at least, there are hundreds of kids who think they have all the knowledge...
// old guy // ...who knows what he doesn't know
Admin
If that is what you want to do with your career, then go for it.
Myself, I actually enjoy doing things the right way and not wasting time working with crap code.
To each their own.
Admin
If your company, which pretends to do software development, can't supply you with a decent developer machine, then you should leave. Your company is either already in the shit (and hence has no money - get out while you're still receiving a paycheck!) or your company somehow thinks that there are more important things to do than supply the people they rely on with good tools ... and you are, to them, a replaceable and unimportant cog that they will screw over the moment that it suits them. There are better places to work.
God forbid that you're driven enough to go above and beyond the 9-5 paycheck! As long as it's constructive and not just whining, anyway. If your company doesn't appreciate this, then there are plenty of employers who are looking for you. Why settle?
I'm surprised that El Presidente doesn't have enough to keep himself busy, and feels the need to send diatribes to every newly-hired worker who doesn't immediately Toe The Company Line.
If that's what it takes to be a "good corporate developer", you can keep it. Why you'd want to work at Shitheap Incorporated is beyond me. Slash'n'burn coding at its finest!
Admin
If it takes 10 men 1 hour to dig a 5-foot long, 1 foot wide ditch, how long does it take 1000 men?
Admin
Troll alert !
Admin
The Donald doesn't understand computers anyway, so we may credit Him higher than available.
Admin
How many dependencies are there between the ditch diggers?
Admin
It's not slash and burn coding. There is a balance between doing things perfectly and doing things quickly. The mark of a good developer is not that he can do something perfectly given infinite time, but that he can do something manageable, maintainable and performant in constrained time. If you want to write perfectionist code, do it in your own time.
If you start in a junior position in any job, not just software development, and immediately start criticising how the company works and sending company wide memos with this disparaging information, you are being a little shitbag. No-one wants to work with a shitbag.
Admin
Not trolling at all, so many people who can program a computer have no clue about being professional developers.
Admin
ah yes, the Dell Optiplex 7(55|60|80)