I'm utterly bored, I changed jobs a year ago because of family reasons. The company is great in a lot aspects (team culture, benefits, technology). I got asigned a project where I did a successful POC which was already shown the costumers and management. But after the POC the project is now on hold, there is no decision from managment since 4 months. I still have weekly calls with the PM, which tells me how he wants the project to continue, but rumor is he'll change positions shortly. My boss won't assign me to another project as he doesn't know how the project continues and wants to hold me back as resource. So since months I'm dabbling around trying to support my teammembers with random scripts and tools to do at least something useful. I've got an offer from another local company which I'll probably will take, just to do something useful again.
Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?
531–540 of 862 posts
Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?
#532I was just recently fired, but honestly I was about to leave. I work in a two person branch of my current gig. The other person is my supervisor and is learning how to be someone. He's constantly looking over my shoulder and decided to fire me because I missed the goals, that he forced me to quote. The project wasn't ready for a deadline. I honestly got tired of all the little supervisor experiments as well. When he…
> The project wasn't ready for a deadline. I really like that way of looking at deadlines and project lifecycles. I haven’t ever heard the relationship expressed that way.
I interpreted it as "the project wasn't ready [in time for] a deadline". But I agree, the concept of a project that is somehow too immature or unprepared for a deadline is though provoking.
Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?
#5332017, due to a misconfiguration or lack thereof, the system that manages 250k employees marked me as terminated. Security came to my desk and escorted me out of the building like a criminal. I was hired back 3 weeks later, with a small apology and no pay. I looked for another opportunity right away and quit the job. Today, I design and build automated systems for a startup. I made sure that the "AI" has a big red but…
interesting. I thought it only happens in movies.
Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?
#534Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What's are the arguments against version control here (if any)? * I don't understand it * You're overcomplicating things * We're not using any of that free shit here * It doesn't say Microsoft or IBM * The last guy we hired that tried to use it was smarter than I was so anyone else who tries is a threat to my leadership. (because everyone knows you can only manage people who have a strict subset of your own knowled…
I'm not sure what the answer is for version control, but I refuse to accept it's Git. I don't understand how it became so popular - did nobody say "wait, there might be a reason why Linus is known for cloning an OS and not coming up with a brilliant design for one from scratch?"
> I don't understand how it became so popular
Git follows in spirit the model of BitKeeper, a software that already worked exceptionally well for Linus and other kernel devs. So Git had both a known good design from the very beginning and a decently sized installed user base (kernel devs) with an important project (the kernel).
IMO there's nothing wrong with the cloning of software. You make it sound bad, can you give reasons?
Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?
#535Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any time you're called in for an emergency off-work hours, you should get time and a half, minimum of four hours paid. Blue collar industrial jobs treat their people better than software usually does.
> called in for an emergency off-work hours Yes this should be the only time your ever called in off hours, there better be a threat of people dieing. hah The reality of oncall is the server is filled up because no one can bother to rotate a log file, so you get paged at 4am to delete a file.
I suspect we work at the same company :D
Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?
#536Earlier quoted context omitted.
You do know that HIPAA violations can land you in jail, right? Run. Don't walk. Vacate immediately. Leave. I'm finding myself hoping that this is a fake, because I wouldn't wish this situation on anyone at all.
You won’t go to jail if you do nothing wrong, but legal fees. Ugh, yeah, you’ll be in court as a witness and possibly defendant if you don’t leave ASAP.
> be in court as a witness and possibly defendant if you don’t leave ASAP
Might be able to quit the job, turn them in for HIPPA violations and also claim unemployment (source: I did this at a job that was violating HIPPA)
Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?
#537I don't want to be fired. I absolutely love my job and the people I work with. But I can just smell that we are about to hit a sticking point with how I don't do on call (it was never mentioned in the interviews or part of my contract) and I don't respond to work after 5pm. If it does come to that sticking point I'm trying to figure out how to be the most assertive and diplomatic. I.e. How do I convey that I badly wa…
In professional settings, when it comes to these kinds of awkward topics, I have found a method that has served me very well: A. Meet with the person who is applying the unwanted pressure (it works best one-on-one, so if more than one person is pressuring, you may need to figure out who is best to speak to). B. Frame your concern as asking for advice. For example, "I'm struggling with how to handle this on-call thing…
Thanks. It is really good advice. Seems like dropping little bit of ego, gives lot back.
Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?
#538Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you say that it fails in practice, is that your opinion or is that a general opinion? Presumably, in some cases the regulation that you mention works the way it was intended? I wouldn't mind not working in the notice period; it would be a plus for me. The other question is also of course: What kind of a law should supercede such a law? I am not saying I disagree with you or anything like that, but what I am saying…
It is not just my opinion. I have friends that are HR managers and this view seems to be generally accepted among them. The hiring is another issue. Over here there is always a 6 month 'trial' period when you hire someone. During those first six months, both the employer and the employee can end the contract without repercussions. This acknowledges that no screening/hiring process will be perfect, and that bad matche…
> employment law and regulation is not easy to change as it impacts the lives of so many
OK, so assuming a significant amount of people disapprove of these laws, why are they not changed? Do you suggest that it is institutional inertia or populist pressure?
I know about the 6 month rule; it seems like a logical and useful feature.
In South Africa the answer is simple about why our practical implementation of regulations is not good: our government is dysfunctional. From a point of view of our actual laws, they are well written and better than many European countries, but they are selectively implemented.
Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?
#539What really gets my goat... Working for a boss who's a dangerous cocktail of arrogance, incompetence, and is self-conscious of it. He's the kind of person who keeps a copy of Steve Jobs' biography and The Design of Everyday Things around his desk. If you ask him a yes-or-no question he responds with, well that depends . And if you ask him to clarify be prepared for a journey through tales of the south, hippie commune…
That sounds exactly like my ex-boss. Never stopped going on about how he once worked for Qinetiq and they had him implement an FFT on an FPGA... last I checked that was a fairly common student assignment in FPGA courses.
Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?
#540My last day at work is Friday. I was hired three years ago to write web apps for a major children's hospital, but given no web servers to run the apps. That hasn't changed much. Let me repeat that. My job is to write web apps. I have no servers. The first "servers" I was given were three old RedHat boxes that were used in a share environment by researchers. Ports to the box weren't open and basically everyone was roo…
This is both funny and sad, but it just leaves me curious what did you spend your time doing for three full years working like that?
I'm gonna guess side-projects. The sort of thing you throw together on a lunch break to learn a new library or tool or otherwise scratch an itch.