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Ask HN: Whats the worst job you've ever had?

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Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst job you've ever had?

#21

Post by ElevenLathe »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #20
ElevenLathe wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My employer was a third-party company, not the schools themselves, but they didn't really "manage placement" beyond providing the software platform. If I didn't log in to accept a job, I would not be working. I should add that the "system" that this replaced was much more humane: you would contact the district to be placed on their substitute list, which school secretaries would consult when they needed a sub. They w…

I see, that makes sense to me. Interesting problem. Seems like there are lots of better ways to handle it that could be implemented by a different middle man. For example, the middle man could have a que of subs and allocate the gigs by position in the cue. Tons of sorting algorithms available. The interesting part is that this all benefits the substitutes, not the school, so why would the school pick the more humane…

I agree. Even just doing exactly what the school secretaries used to do (call out instead of requiring us to poll, and only during certain hours) would be better. But you're right that the incentives are awful. This software worked and changing it would presumably cost money (developer time, potential for introducing new revenue-impacting bugs, etc.). Also, the people making the decisions are of course not using their own money: if something is more expensive but saves some district employee 40 hours a year doing background checks, managing the sub list, etc., then they will choose to pay the service. Presumably my employer also had slick salespeople wooing these decision makers with dinners out, football tickets and the like.

Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst job you've ever had?

#22

Post by nisegami »

Ancalagon wrote: post #11

I was a bag boy for six months or so in high school for . I wanted some extra side money and a friend of mine worked there and offered to put in a good word for me. Simultaneously, I had been a high performing student, taking all advanced classes, doing after school sports, etc. The job itself was not intense or anything. But it was miserable. You could tell that nobody working in that store wanted to be there. Some…

I wouldn't call the experience bad but I had a brief stint with some sort of weird receptionist role right out of high school (had to take a gap year due to logistics) and I had a similar reaction to seeing how everyone around me at work lived. I think it fundamentally broke something inside of me and was a critical experience in my conclusion that human lives are not really inherently valuable.

Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst job you've ever had?

#23

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

Worked for a great boss on a great team building some really cool stuff. We had some organizational problems and the boss wouldn't stop people from doing stuff that was actively harmful, but I dealt with it best I could. Then a new boss came in and made all new work be about "getting wins", and trying hail-mary stuff that, if it worked, would make him look like a genius so he could get a promotion, but would leave us holding the bag trying to deal with the tech debt and not actually improving the project. If we disagreed, new boss would yell at team to get his way, force us to do whatever he wanted rather than letting us have a discussion, weigh pros/cons, generally have agency and some input. I created a presentation detailing all of the problems and solutions for all of them, and presented them to the new boss and boss's boss. Both of them chewed me out for not doing more myself to solve the problems and only complaining. Soon after my contract was not renewed. That's when I found out that if you make your boss(es) look bad, it's in their interest to get rid of you.

Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst job you've ever had?

#24

Post by RikiB »

working shutdowns in the south-east texas petroleum processing chemical plants. Time and a half after 40 hours and double time pay after 60. They paid per diem based on how many miles we came to work and gave us a hotel then we would work 16 hour days for a couple months or until the project was done. This was my dads life for a long time and I tried it a couple times at 18yo, realized this isn't for me, then went to art college.

Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst job you've ever had?

#26

Post by giantg2 »

My current one.

It's my highest paying, but also filled with the most lies or double standards, frustrating, and stressful.

I've also worked in retail, in a warehouse, and as a janitor. The pay sucked, but at least the impact was tangible and the expectations were straightforward.

Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst job you've ever had?

#27

Post by 908B64B197 »

stcroixx wrote: post #17

Corporate software dev gig in the Bay Area. Was like a 10 minute commute by bike from my house. All but 2-3 of us on a team of 30 or so were H1B, all from the same village in India. Many of them appeared to have little more than some passing familiarity with software. Instead of working at their desks, they would all crowd into a conference room for a day long quasi-meeting all day, every day. A spot at the actual ta…

> I think I stumbled into some kind of fraud where they were just giving jobs to people they knew without any qualifications without any intention of building software. It was truly bizarre.

It most likely was. H1B fraud is rampant [0].

Thankfully, the previous administration started issuing more RFEs and catching fraudulent applicants [1].

[0] https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/silicon-valleys-body-s...

[1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-h-1b_b_5890d86ce4b0522c...

Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst job you've ever had?

#28

Post by roflyear »

stcroixx wrote: post #17

Corporate software dev gig in the Bay Area. Was like a 10 minute commute by bike from my house. All but 2-3 of us on a team of 30 or so were H1B, all from the same village in India. Many of them appeared to have little more than some passing familiarity with software. Instead of working at their desks, they would all crowd into a conference room for a day long quasi-meeting all day, every day. A spot at the actual ta…

I feel like leadership should be responsible for deaths like that. They are either negligent or they knew what was going on.

Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst job you've ever had?

#29

Post by roflyear »

giantg2 wrote: post #26

My current one. It's my highest paying, but also filled with the most lies or double standards, frustrating, and stressful. I've also worked in retail, in a warehouse, and as a janitor. The pay sucked, but at least the impact was tangible and the expectations were straightforward.

I wouldn't say my current job is my worst job, but man, I have had some bad luck with jobs. Maybe it is me.

Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst job you've ever had?

#30

Post by Jeremy1026 »

My first software job was by far the worst. I worked directly under the CTO, who was a huge micromanager. The code I was working on was akin to what we'd call now micro services. Except each "service" was a single, 5,000+ line functional PHP script. There were no common libraries, but plenty of duplicated code. It was myself, another person who wasn't a developer but was working as one, and the CTO who knew just enough to be dangerous.

I would be called into the CTOs office (next door to the shared office 3 of us were in) multiple times a day by him just yelling our names. We were expected to drop whatever we were working on and go in to answer whatever question happened to pop into his head at that second.

Often applications would break and the CTO would want to know why, only to find that the local copies of the code on my and my co-workers machines didn't match what was on the server. Which means the CTO changed it, but refused to admit they changed anything, claiming it must have changed itself. When me and my co-worker suggested adding version control to the code, the CTO immediately shut it down.

These things would happen routinely for the 2 years I worked there. And for an extra kick in the pants, the dress code was shirt and tie and we would be pulled aside and talked at if a shirt came untucked.

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