The Whiteboard

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PSU_Kardi

15:19

PING

Pierre 303

PONG

PSU_Kardi

morning pierre

C. Ross

morning all

Pierre 303

Hello PSU_Kardi & C. Ross

The ultimate iPhone accessory:

Brant

15:45

Sold.

3 hours later…

q303

18:23

seriously, where can I order one?

@Pierre303: I liked your answer to my question, btw

Pierre 303

q303: that's because we both have an amazing username

thumbsupuk.com/products/…

There: thumbsupuk.com/products/…

q303

I think most people are missing the point of my question though

I feel like some of the people I've worked with don't really know much or care about programming as a profession

Pierre 303

I used to be very angry about management in the past. Until I tried to understand their daily problems.

q303

well, I just got done with a small startup managing 5 devs

and from my point of view, I didn't want rewrites

also, every new programmer who came on board wanted them

Pierre 303

In one project I worked on, they wanted to stop any further unit testing. Just disable and forget them. It was depressing. I fighted against that stupid decision.

The the program manager called me and explained me the following:

C. Ross

18:34

@Pierre303 sign of a decent PM right there, "he called me and explained"

Pierre 303

"we don't care about your tests, and even less about quality. That's not our objective." then he continued... "we must be online the 1st of January, with the basic functionnalities"... ok I said to myself but what about the crap we will produce AFTER the 1st of January? ... then...

C. Ross

@Pierre303 and that's a sign of a disaster waiting to happen

Pierre 303

He told me "all the money we invested in the software you work on will be refunded from the first hour of usage."

"However" he told me, "we will loose that amount of money if we are not online that day, each hours".

Do you know what happened ?

Everything went fine the 1st of January, and today, they are still using the code base we produced.

However, the team that took over (contract stuff), it's an nightmare for them.

q303

so what's the point then of learning good practices and developing skill?

Pierre 303

But, they have so plenty money thanks to that app, they don't care to pay...

C. Ross

18:38

@q303 When you have to sleep in the bed you've made

q303

Never worked for a company more than a year and a half

C. Ross

...

q303

most of them have lost funding

worked for a startup for a year and a half that lost its grant

then I got a job at this god awful company for 4 months

Pierre 303

@q303: I learn two things from that experience. 1) You are the developer, you are in charge of producing code, you should choose the tools and methods to use. 2) When there are plenty of money like that (large enterprise projects), deadlines are more important than quality.

So I stopped to ask

Now I do unit test, I use the tool I want, I apply the good practices.

q303

they let me go because I had concerns about their logging into client's production databases with health care information to debug

Pierre 303

18:40

It's a part of the offer. My offer.

q303

and now I've been on a contract for a year

I believe the average job duration in the US in IT is 1.5 years

Pierre 303

First thing to do: try to understand.

If it doesn't help much, quit

or... be the professional you want to be.

q303

try to understand what is driving their business concerns?

Pierre 303

Yes

q303

and then if that doesn't help, quit or do it anyway?

Pierre 303

18:43

1 time on 2, you discover stuff very valuable for your own work

The other half, you find crap.

q303

hmm

I'll think about that

Pierre 303

It's always good for a developer to understand how the business work. I like to talk with people of other departments about how they work, and how they are impacted by my own work.

q303

hmm

well thank you for your advice

Pierre 303

Why 303 ?

q303

ah, I asked a question a long time ago that you were helpful with

and I liked your 303

so I thought, hmm

I should use 303, too

Pierre 303

18:55

seriously? Which question it was ?

q303

Q: What do you do if you've had a series of bad employers?

So I've had a series of really bad experiences and am wondering what I'm doing wrong. I started out as a part time programmer at a major university. I developed a problem with my wrist and asked (nicely) for some help with my ergonomic accomodations. My boss started screaming at me, then later...

Pierre 303

That's interesting, and did you ask your colleagues?

q303

I did

Pierre 303

Tell me how they see you

q303

one of them said I need to be better at setting professional boundaries

one, who shared a boss with me, was saying that he was careful to make it clear that overtime wasn't typical for him

and that I didn't set firm enough boundaries with the boss about that

the rest of them said it was a filtering problem

that I wasn't doing a good enough job of picking out the employers

Pierre 303

19:06

So more than one person said the same thing about you? That's a very valuable feedback! One good point you have is that you are asking yourself. It took me years to be able to do that...

q303

well, the response I commonly got was that I didn't really think about evaluating the employer

it was always about whether I was good enough, not whether they would be a good environment

so I needed to focus more on understanding how they evaluated people, what the working conditions were, how projects were managed, etc.

Pierre 303

It's great to see that our answers provide real outcome after we click Send.

q303

yes, well I've found them helpful

Pierre 303

I see you asked many. That's really great! I think you can't fail in life if you continue to ask questions like that ;)

q303

yea, I've been asking a lot because I've been thinking of making some career changes