The current CTO of a publicly traded company had my entire engineering team rewrite an . Mind you, the current generation of the is completely fine, and in fact a massive improvement from our 1st and 2nd gen version. About a year into that completely useless project, the CTO lays off 2/3 of the team (including the original authors), reorgs another team into our team, and the latest gen is a complete pile of trash. I left the team a few months ago when I realized it wasn't worth the head ache of dealing with the terrible CTO, the literal human centipede which is the leadership chain, and the sales bro turned product manager.
Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?
351–360 of 794 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just brainstorming, but would it be possible to pull out the MTG-specific portions and make it just an online card game framework where people can make their own cards and rules? If people choose to use it to copy MTG that's on them (see Tabletop Simulator, for example) but they might also use it to create their own new games.
The challenge is that the level of complexity with rules interactions in MtG is absolutely enormous, especially if you want to allow the freeform format, which allows all sets and cards. Note: You can see all the rules here: https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Comprehensive_Rules
Oh I didn't implement a rules engine, that would be impractical. It's a freeform platform that gives you all the tools needed to use every mechanic in the game, but it's up to you to actually follow the rules. No different from playing in person with real cards. It's sort of like a drag and drop sandbox with a lot of extra features around the edges. It's a vastly improved version of Untap.in.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?
#353It was at Amazon and I don't remember exactly what the service was called, I think it was AdSomething. It was while I worked on the Kindle Special Offers (taking advantage of the "off" screen of an e-ink Kindle to show ads) project. I find that to be one of the less offensive forms of advertising, so I was generally pretty happy on that team for a time. But there was a service, AdWhatever, which let users go onto a s…
I always marvel at how bizarre it is that there's a permanent ad on the Kindle even when it's "off". The books they recommend are never pertinent to me in the slightest.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?
#354I made an app some years ago that let you order custom song books with chords (physical books), to play the guitar / sing along at campfires etc. I integrated the app with Spotify, a printing API, stripe, and ordered a few books for myself (basically you could import some Spotify playlists or just add some songs), compile it into a book and then place your order and get it delivered at home… all automated. I thought I could turn this into a nice SaaS, until I was told this is illegal as the lyrics and tabs/chords are protected by copyright. I couldn’t find more motivation after this major roadblock so I gave up. It’s still up and running, but only I have access to the printing feature. The name which I thought was clever was actually kinda confusing to people (lyrink.com as in lyrics + ink) and always autocorrected to “lyrics”. I worked on this printing feature for many months. There’s some really interesting programming challenges with trying to fit dynamic content from the internet, with chords and lyrics (where the chords have to be placed correctly near the lyrics) etc. into a nicely formatted physical book (without using a monospaced font)
Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was an internal tool and the VP was the head of IT. Everything still worked, it was just painful to use. He could have pulled the plug on it at any time.
I don't think any of those details matter, that's still illegal and you could've gotten in trouble legally.
I'm curious; what law was being broken, exactly?
Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?
#356This was a publicly traded SaaS company. After acquisition - we were handed down the order to migrate to AWS. This was after (in the mess of the merger) the colo contracts were basically ignored and not renewed. Once someone within the company realized the issue, it was the 11th hour. After many, many attempts to discuss our (Operations team) concerns, we abandoned our protests. It was clear the new CTO wouldn't cave…
Sounds like a company that later migrated to Google Cloud
Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was an internal tool and the VP was the head of IT. Everything still worked, it was just painful to use. He could have pulled the plug on it at any time.
I don't think any of those details matter, that's still illegal and you could've gotten in trouble legally.
What law was broken?
Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?
#358Pretty much everything I have ever worked on.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?
#359Well, this has nothing to do with programming and goes way beyond being merely "useless"; yet it might offer some perspective on your question and perhaps help you relativise things. There's a global industry involving thousands of healthcare professionals, lawyers, judges, police officers, and child protection workers who have spent 50 years prosecuting tens of thousands of parents and caregivers for allegedly shaki…
Someone I knew was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 20 years after taking his child to the ER. The doc there decided it was "shaken baby syndrome" and called the cops. After that, he was on the guilty-until-proven innocent track. The body was cremated with no second opinion.
He still has three or four years to go. No parole here for "baby killers."
Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?
#360I was hired to implement and operate a specific product for a specific customer who paid for four years of onsite support. I do other things too, but that's my one contractually obligated responsibility and my primary one. Turns out the customer didn't read the (enormously expensive) SOW. They don't want the product, can't ingest its output, don't want to do the work necessary to implement it, and on a recent roadmap…
One of the weirdest psychological insights, which many people including myself have discovered recently, is that a fake job that doesn't actually require any work can be more stressful and unpleasant than a real job.
A consulting firm I worked with had great sales people.
They could get software consultants anywhere, especially where they were not needed.
A former colleague of mine got assigned along another to assist an Italian bank with their software projects.
He told me that in his office there were 6/8 people, barely doing any work. Two of them were leads in that office and did their best to never ever be seen or meet anyone. They would just close themselves in the office the whole day doing god knows what. If you knocked they would pretend to not be there.
My colleagues tried to get some work to do desperately for months, but consultancy said to shut up because the contract was huge.
He says it was one of the most miserable periods of his life because "there's enough Youtube a person can watch for 18 months" and there were more than 2 hours per day of commuting on top of that.