The Water Cooler

angarg12

06:29

@SoylentGray sorry but I don't follow anymore

looks like 'that' question refuses to leave

I saw it in the hot network questions still yesterday

2

Q: Asked to be lead of my slightly disgruntled team

I recently came on to a team as a senior engineer at the same level as my peers. Many permanent members of this team have long standing issues with the management. There isn't a lead person on the team, we're all pretty much equal. Senior management (that my peers have issues with) has asked me ...

thoughts about that one? It feels more like "mainly opinion based" rather than a real question

motosubatsu

07:32

@SoylentGray agreed.. I believe that list is intended for a US audience rather than trying to act as a global one (which is impossible)

@RichardU can't believe how that one is still rumbling it's way around the internet, is anyone else a little bit annoyed that they refer to it being a Stack Overflow discussion? TWP != SO!

motosubatsu

07:52

@angarg12 It's fairly opinion-based but I actually think it's a useful question related to navigating the world of work and relates to a situation many people will find themselves in

angarg12

10:49

@motosubatsu I can relate because I am in the same position! I answered with my best advice for what it's worth

SoylentGray

12:11

@Kaz I completely disagree. The whole premise of the topic is that the ops work is being affected and that because they are disabled they are unable to notice that. It is very much bigottry

motosubatsu

woah.. there's no less than 3 TWP questions in the HNQ sidebar at the minute

Richard U

12:26

@motosubatsu I'm irritated that they didn't approach anyone for permission to quote.

motosubatsu

@RichardU Yeah, strictly speaking they didn't have to (since it's all under CC Attribution-ShareAlike license per SE's T's & C's) but it would be the ethical thing to do. Sadly just copying and pasting things other people have said on the internet is what seems to pass for journalism these days

Thinking about it an IANAL but doses CCASA stipulate that any thing that builds up on something that is CCASA licensed has to itself be released under the same license? Wouldn't that be an interesting conversation between SE's lawyers and those at BI? :D

Richard U

@motosubatsu, oh I know they don't have to, but it's just rude.

motosubatsu

@RichardU totally agree :)

Kaz

@motosubatsu "News" has broad and extensive 2nd amendmet exemptions, so generally no.

SoylentGray

to hell goes TWP today

@RichardU yeah its in the user agreement... you dont actually have to have permission to quote someone that says something in public anyway. shouldnt really expect it

Feeds

12:41

1

Q: Let's talk academic questions

We have had multiple meta discussions recently (this by Monica, a reopen request) which are effectively asking: Should questions exclusively about the academic workplace be on topic here? This has also been ongoing for a while now as I understand - confusion and lack of clarity regarding what...

discussion featured scope

SoylentGray

First how would they contact anyone. There are no direct message abilities in SE and your email and contact info that SE has is kept internal

angarg12

hmmmm

I worked in academia for 7 years, so I can understand the point

there is the academia stack, how do they handle those kind of questions?

Richard U

@angarg12 I answered that one in Meta. I think your input would be valuable.

@SoylentGray ah, don't mind me, I'm just in a cranky mood.

angarg12

I upvoted your answer

there is the academia stack for academia-specific questions

although university is a bubble of its own, there are general, legitimate workplace questions to answer

if only because I want to help people to avoid what I had to go through!!

PlasmaHH

13:09

I wonder if it is appropriate to throw the water cooler on the ground and stomp on it screaming to vent a bit anger...

motosubatsu

@PlasmaHH depends.. what's happened?

PlasmaHH

@motosubatsu just the usual; management making decisions about stuff they do not understand. This episode: use git/bitbucket instead of svn by the end of next week. Why? Because we want so.

motosubatsu

ahh yes... it's up there with things like "make it use The Cloud"

PlasmaHH

exactly, everything is going into the cloud now, just because.

Not that it creates huge amounts of work for which there is no resources, it doesn't make anything better and creates problems for which no one has a solution yet

Richard U

There should be a general rule: If management can't describe what the cloud is, they don't get to use it.

2

angarg12

13:15

I work with the cloud so I'm devilishly happy about that :|

motosubatsu

and there is no cloud.. it's all just someone else's computer

PlasmaHH

@RichardU At the company entrance we have a tiny jar labelled "deposit management common sense here"

Richard U

@PlasmaHH This is an ancient IT problem. Management gets wind of something they think is great, then pushes for it without knowing what it is.

@motosubatsu I can't tell you how many times I've tried to explain that to people.

The origin of "the cloud" was flowcharting systems and the symbol of a cloud was used when it was a network or computer we had no control over.

motosubatsu

@RichardU same here.. that and the fact that some people seem to think that the cloud makes everything free

Richard U

Then marketing got this idea... and we have all suffered greatly ever since.

motosubatsu

13:18

amen to that!

PlasmaHH

But thats the same for every decision they made. Just like the slowly progressing creation of a new internal network protocol (guess what? yeah, because we get no resources) got cancelled because "you need to use some middleware" now they are slowly progressing in evaluating stuff, not finding anything suitable yet and by now we would have the first features of the new protocol ready, if we had continued.

(and yeah, nobody told us where we would get the resources to integrate that new middleware since it would need more resources than writing our own protocol)

Richard U

Don't forget how great "outsourcing" is. A few major companies are learning the hard way now, after that latest encryption attack.

The outsourced companies don't own the systems that were locked down, so no real incentive to fix it, and money in it for them the longer it takes

PlasmaHH

Yeah, thats another point. I get shivers from the idea to have the primary storage of the companies whole source code, the heart of what they do, be some "cloud service".

And outsourcing seems to go in cycles... they failed to do that, got me on board many years ago, we started quite well, then got resources cut, now everything is rearranged in preparation for better outsourcing...

Richard U

@PlasmaHH it generally runs like this: Five in, five out, five boom, five bust

PlasmaHH

Me: "We have at least 150% workload" CEO: "That is great, I always have the best ideas when under pressure" Me: "...:"

Richard U

13:21

First everyone wants their own in-house IT, then they outsource, then they do both, then they cut back on everything.

Kaz

The most sensible thing I ever read about outsourcing was: Whatever your company's core competencies are, the things you do that define your company's business and how you make money, those things should never, ever be outsourced.

angarg12

What if your core competency is outsourcing?

PlasmaHH

@Kaz Tell that to our management. They think the core competence is having the ideas, and that writing the software that implements it is just mundane work, and you just write down incomprehensible specifications and people will create something useful out of it.

Richard U

@Kaz IMO, outsourcing should be reserved for unexpected workload increases. You bring people in for the project, and if a few are worth keeping, keep them. but NEVER lose your core competencies.

PlasmaHH

One of the many things necessary for outsourcing is being able to define clear boundaries, "work packages" and specifications. I have never seen a case where this worked.

Richard U

13:24

@PlasmaHH TRUE STORY: Outsourced program took 10 hours to run. I reverse engineered it, re-wrote it..... Run time: 6 minutes

@PlasmaHH it only works if it's a mixed team. IE, project needs lots of heavy lifting. Teams of five are assigned, 3 in, two out in each team. When workload ebbs, drop the out team and the remaining still work there. keep a few if you find really good people.

PlasmaHH

@RichardU First "big" thing I did here after I came on board was to rewrite (or more specifically create a software framework to implement the program with) a program that processes a datastream and was clogged using 700% cpu and when I was finished, the first version, without any specific optimizations used 30-40% cpu for the same workload... guess who wrote the intial program

Richard U

@PlasmaHH and I know for a fact that this is by design because I wound up getting my resume torn up and thrown at me when I refused to lie on it or agree to stretch out work if they hired me.

PlasmaHH

its really annoying... the dream job of years ago is now an agonizing shithole and new work is hard to find, if one wants to have at least a bit of fun there

On a slightly unrelated rant: why is it useful to have the phone receiver on your ear, phone loudspeaker on and yell in broken english into the phone? Yes, it annoys at least three dozen people around you more, but what does it really help?

Magisch

13:44

@PlasmaHH "No that means the additional 50% aren't getting done and never will unless you solve your understaffing problem"

PlasmaHH

@Magisch That reply is only valid when you talk to a person with the slightest bit of common sense.

Magisch

We've had some temps here

one of them had the unfortunate favor of writing a key piece of software

nobody touches it because his coding style is to use 1-2 character variables with no comments and lots of recursion

in VBA mind you

PlasmaHH

(also when the CEO outboasts about how he could write a script in 30 minutes that does the work of what we estimated to be at least two days of investigation, then its clear that he doesn't think we are "understaffed")

@Magisch thats how I code in VBA too. Whoever comes and reads it shall feel the same pain I had when writing it.

Magisch

@PlasmaHH as a maintenance coder, I hate you

PlasmaHH

@Magisch I hate this whole planet, so we are even I guess.

Richard U

13:53

@Magisch I see red when I come across two letter variables, unless they are WS, WB or something like that, and even then.

I see us maintenance coders rising up one day.... there will be much suffering.

PlasmaHH

i

j

k

motosubatsu

I've been known to use two letter variables on occasion but only when it's utterly, glaringly obvious what it means

PlasmaHH

I think the most common two letter variables I use are "in" and "to"

LangeHaare

why in

PlasmaHH

we do a lot of data conversions and have streams, and the most appropriate distinction at the module level is "in" and "out"

LangeHaare

13:59

ahh

Magisch

@RichardU Bonus points if they use variants everywhere and at some point you read comments like 'no idea what this does but after changing everything for a day and a half it seems to be working, do not touch

PlasmaHH

other quite common and well justified ones are "t0" and "sz" and maybe "fd" too

Magisch

@PlasmaHH I on the other hand use stuff like streaminput_input_field_outgoing_formatted_final when I feel like being a pain to future devs

PlasmaHH

@Magisch funny enough that is (currently, soon going to end) not that much a of a problem to me as I would just do sifoff<TAB> and be done

otoh if you used camel case, you'd be dead by now

Magisch

@PlasmaHH I use camel case for function names and underscore case for variable names

it helps me keep the two seperate easily

PlasmaHH

14:04

@Magisch you may chose the hand you want to keep ^^

what language this is in? I can't imagine much where you need extra means to distinguish function and variables other than context

Magisch

@PlasmaHH if I ever work near you I'll be sure to switch to all camel case and even longer variable names

@PlasmaHH vba/js/c

some assembler, although in assembler this becomes irrelevant

@JonathanReez sounds like they want you but aren't sure which team they'll put you in

although I'm by no means an expert, I'm a software dev apprentice in germany, about as far removed from sillicon valley as you can be as a dev

PlasmaHH

@Magisch in js I somewhat see the point. even the building blocks of objects are objects...

Kaz

@Magisch On an actually serious note, persuade your company to hire me as a contractor to fix that mess up for them. Tearing apart VBA and transforming it into actual, good, tested, code is what I love doing.

PlasmaHH

@JonathanReez sometimes happens when they either have multiple positions open and figure where they could best fit you, or don't have any position open at all and just think you are so good that they need to get you into somewhere

@Kaz So you translate VBA to C++ then?

Kaz

@PlasmaHH I prefer to leave it in VBA where it makes sense to do so. If not, I don't kow C++ but I do know Python.

Magisch

14:10

@Kaz You don't want to work here

They'll pay you minimum wage for 3 years before anything else happens for starters

Kaz

@Magisch You remember I said contractor? ^^

Magisch

@Kaz Everyone that isn't a full time salaried employee here gets minimum wage or unpaid intern

so yeah ... you don't even want to contractor here

Kaz

@Magisch Ah well. If it ever blows up, give me a call ^^

Richard U

@Magisch even more bonus points for not using "option explicit", and never actually declaring a variable anywhere

@Kaz I fix broken code for a living too.

The money is good, but you are perpetually in the eighth circle of hell

Magisch

@RichardU tell me more about fairytale land

I make a third of minimum wage

Richard U

14:17

@Magisch you need to find another company, or come to America where you can start at 50K usd minimum.

You're worth far more than that.

Magisch

@RichardU And then go bankrupt because I have a chronic digestive disorder and need expensive eye medication

PlasmaHH

I throw away totally broken code and replace it by only slightly broken code for a living

@Magisch no laws against that?

@RichardU I think you can do that everywhere, I got more than that for my first full time job after university, it always depends on how good you are, it may just be a really small probability

Richard U

@PlasmaHH Only twice in my life have I earned minimum wage, Once in High school, and once for a month in college until the longevity bump kicked in.

@Magisch quit believing what you hear in the news, it's not true.

@Magisch with your skills you should be making far above minimum wage somewhere.

motosubatsu

@Magisch I'd second what Richard said.. you seem to have some decent skills and deserve to be getting paid appropriately

PlasmaHH

* sigh * the first hurdle in finding C++ jobs is that more than half of the search engines can't cope with C++ as a search term

SoylentGray

14:31

@angarg12 I have had to explain 4 times to management here we are already using the cloud... thats what 365 is...

they stil keep calling meetings to talk about moving to the cloud

@RichardU which part the one where the world is on fire? or that we eat babies and old people for fun? Cause im pretty sure both of those are true

motosubatsu

14:59

2

Q: Two coworkers comment when I leave work, does this hurt my manager's view of me?

I have two coworkers that bring attention to me nearly every time I leave work. We are all relatively junior employees on a single team in a workplace that allows flexible schedules. Employees must be present for core hours (9am-3am) and must reach 40 hours per week. I am typically one of the fir...

manager overtime coworker fulltime

ugh... poisonous busybodies! hate that sort of childish crap!

PlasmaHH

@RichardU We don't have minimum wage concept for long here, so when I was young there wasnt such a thing...

Magisch

@RichardU Somewhere, key word is not here

I can't leave from here. My dad will require extensive care as he gets older and I won't leave him in an old folk's home

@PlasmaHH If you're an apprentice, you're not within the minimum wage statute

PlasmaHH

@Magisch not something many employers will understand, or in certain countries, not many employees either

@Magisch good thing I never was one then ;)

Richard U

15:14

@Magisch I was just in that situation, It's rough, I know.

PlasmaHH

probably a plot to make the money they give you when you are finished seem huge

Magisch

@PlasmaHH or to just wring out 3 years of drasticly underpaid work out of people

PlasmaHH

@Magisch it certainly depends on culture, location and the actual job, but from what I get from most apprenticeships I see around here (that work with tools etc.) it isn't too unfair if you consider that a lot of the time they don't really work but go to school, get trained (i.e. using up resources) etc. my late father in law stopped taking apprentices more than a decade ago because it costs them more money than the work he could get out of them

(plus it got harder and harder to find people that could read, write and do basic math)

Magisch

@PlasmaHH Well, for me it was basicly "Here, code this" and that was it

PlasmaHH

@Magisch certainly not the way things are intended

Magisch

15:25

None of the senior devs have any time for training and it's kind of a "You're here now, start producing stuff and it better not be bad" kind of thing

In my vocational school class this is literally all anyone does

Nobody is getting 1 on 1 training from anyone. We're all just software developers that are paid like crap because no degree

Have to say though it's my own fault for failing uni

PlasmaHH

I almost ran out of money at university times because tax shit

Magisch

fun fact: I pay about 35% tax on my 700 eur a month

less fun and more "well meh"

PlasmaHH

less fun, more panic

Magisch

tax in this context meaning tax, social security, health insurance and disability insurance and retirement insurance (all of these are mandatory and collected like taxes)

meh, together with some support from a side stint I can make do on only 42 hours a week

so it's not that bad

PlasmaHH

I still remember the times where at the end of the money there was quite some month left, and I ate toast bread with tabasco ^^

David K

15:55

Get ready folks

0

Q: I was not offered a job, for what I think are unfair reasons

I recently applied for a job posting online (via LinkedIn). It was a good job at a mid sized firm. I knew most of the interviewees (Linkedin circle, college friends, friends of friends etc), and in any case met all of them because of the initial GD Round. It was a group of 6 people during the GD ...

software-industry hiring-process united-states human-resources

Kaz

@DavidK You never know, with a title like that, we just might keep it off HNQ

David K

@Kaz Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised at the benign title

Also, both questions are off-topic for now, so we can close it quickly

Masked Man - 仮面の男

16:59

@RichardU Speaking of describing cloud, your DP is a perfect response to this video.

Vishwa Bandhu Gupta: Cloud computing is great...but what if it rains? (Accurate English Subtitles)

►

We had this clown explain cloud a few years ago, and it was a riot!

Richard U

17:19

@masked man..... indeed.

Richard U

18:13

Please, Kill this before, it totally, gets any attention.

-1

Q: Terminated from job

I have worked part time for 9 months and was terminated for misconduct, which is totally hard to swallow. How should I go about applying for jobs?

job-search

David K

18:35

@MaskedMan-仮面の男 Are those subtitles actually accurate? Because if so, I second @RichardU

Masked Man - 仮面の男

@DavidK Yes, they are. Apparently this guy was a government officer. The entire video is hilarious.

He was trolled heavily on social media here after that video came out.

David K

@MaskedMan-仮面の男 Hmm, I can't imagine why...

Magisch

The problem with the cloud is that 9/10 managers touting it have no idea a) what that is b) what it does c) why it might or might not be useful

Richard U

18:58

@Magisch Yep, it's just the old "everybody else is doing it, we should too!" attitude

@Magisch this is why traffic control signs are getting hacked, even traffic lights.

These damn things don't need to be on public networks, but "CLOUD!!!"

Magisch

Why does a traffic light need to be on a cloud

wtf

the flow control software is local and hardwired anyways

Richard U

@Magisch because "CLOUD!". I keep up with things like this because I started out in traffic safety.

remind me to tell you how I managed to accidentally hack the time and attendance software of a past employer sometime.

On a related note to the spate of questions we've been getting lately, every time I see the word "fair" in a question, I want to.... well, my display pic sums it up.

Masked Man - 仮面の男

19:35

@Magisch Because Internet of Things is another buzzword that goes hand-in-hand with cloud.

It is an increasingly common anti-pattern called buzzword-driven development. Everyone is talking about X, so we must shoehorn X into our product, when we clearly don't need it, or even if it actively harms our product.

Buzzword-driven development (BDD) usually goes hand-in-glove with ADD ...

Asshole-driven development

Richard U

@MaskedMan-仮面の男 Hate driven development is what I'm running on now.

Masked Man - 仮面の男

19:52

@RichardU I make do with moron driven development for now.

Richard U

@MaskedMan-仮面の男 Morons keep me in business, but it's a Faustian deal

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