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Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#751

Post by RoyalHenOil »

preommr wrote: post #434
baw-bag wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh my god, it isn't the same product but I was the user of a similar thing at an old job I had for 2 years only it was a slider from 1-10. I always chose 1 no matter how productive, happy or driven I felt. I remember that HR called me in because of this and in a round-about way said I can't just keep doing that as it was bringing the whole purpose of the system down. If I didn't want to interact with the system then…

Probably unpopular opinion: Silly excercises like this are a good way to see who bends the knee and who is a maverick, and projects only work when most people are docile enough to go with the flow and follow orders. Identifying people that make waves and evaluating if they're worth the hassle is an important part of running a successful business. This is often sad and depressing, but sometimes it's just about doing y…

Poorly run businesses need docile, dishonest employees who won't point out how badly the business is run, so that it can continue circling the toilet for as long as possible.

Lean, well-run businesses rely on people who are sharp and willing to search out problems in need of fixing. This is necessary for real innovation and competence.

You see this pattern not just in business, but it all kinds of situations. For example, governments that harshly suppress their populations' speech gradually turn into economic backwaters (requiring them to suppress even harder and harder to stay afloat), while governments that foster the exchange of ideas and roll with the punches become the world's economic and geopolitical kingpins.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#752

Post by roydivision »

drpixie wrote: post #333
brightball wrote: post #228

I once worked for a VP who needed to sunset an old internal tool that people were unwilling to part with, so he asked me to make it suck intentionally. Added random sleeps to slow down performance. Random alert messages about fake errors. It was weird. EDIT: Since this is getting some votes I'll add some more details. He would also come by to tell me how happy he was about all the complaints he was getting about it.

Different but similar. I once wrote a trivial lotto number selector app, at the request of some colleagues. It just emitted a few unique random numbers. Silly but why not. They hated it. I added moderate, random delays before emitting each number. They loved it, and used it every week for quite some time :)

I wrote a similar little app for the office lotto syndicate, way, way back. The older colleagues didn't trust it, and preferred coming up with their own 'random' numbers.

I still don't really know what there isn't to trust about generating random numbers for the lottery.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#753

Post by roydivision »

Biganon wrote: post #702
seabass-labrax wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great blistering barnacles! That's quite a story. Would you mind posting the link to your site here? I'm very curious to see it.

Sure, it's https://www.ectoplasme.com/ (It's in French, should have mentioned that)

Superbe site, je l'aime beaucoup. Quel boulot.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#756

Post by Lutger »

danielscrubs wrote: post #541
baw-bag wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh my god, it isn't the same product but I was the user of a similar thing at an old job I had for 2 years only it was a slider from 1-10. I always chose 1 no matter how productive, happy or driven I felt. I remember that HR called me in because of this and in a round-about way said I can't just keep doing that as it was bringing the whole purpose of the system down. If I didn't want to interact with the system then…

My boss said everything bellow 9 is a failure with a hard look. Our metrics happiness level rose to 9 the very next day. Boss got promoted because he was creating such happy teams. Sometimes I wish I didn’t live in a Dilbert strip.

This is how Russian democracy works. Like in your job, there's a scale of punishment for non-compliance, and the ultimate is being sent to the Gulags instead of getting fired.

Almost everybody knows its BS but nobody is able to mention it

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#757

Post by liamN »

I was working on a mobile team, the order came down from on-high that google recaptcha was no longer cutting it for verification during user signup and we were switching to Arkose for our captchas, for some reason, no one could tell me why other than "my boss's boss says so".

The Google and Arkose SDKs were fairly different in their implementation and the Arkose SDK needed a lot more tweaks to get working in our code. The entire company spent around a month migrating web, iOS, and Android and then coordinating a simultaneous release. All went well, congratulations all around.

Fast forward to a year later, new order from on-high: we're switching from Arkose to Google Recaptcha because Arkose was too expensive! Rumors were circulating around then that the only reason we had switched to Arkose was that some VC had a buddy on the Arkose board and pushed really hard to get our company signed on, and then immediately left.

I left the company not too long after the migration back to google Recaptcha, but was waiting with baited breath for another order to be given to switch back to Arkose.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#758

Post by lippihom »

liamN wrote: post #757

I was working on a mobile team, the order came down from on-high that google recaptcha was no longer cutting it for verification during user signup and we were switching to Arkose for our captchas, for some reason, no one could tell me why other than "my boss's boss says so". The Google and Arkose SDKs were fairly different in their implementation and the Arkose SDK needed a lot more tweaks to get working in our code…

They're adding value and they're proud of it!

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#759

Post by gentschev »

enraged_camel wrote: post #276
calvinmorrison wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I manage a team of Consultants at a small ERP firm focused on mostly manufacturing and distribution the #1 cause of failure is summed up greatly by Isaiah Bollinger, paraphrasing "most bad implementations are because people are trying to buck the system they bought, rather than work with it, understand how your ERP, eCommerce or other system does a workflow and match it. There's billions of dollars going in and out o…

I worked in consulting for over a decade, and... yeah. When people migrate from one system to another, they try to make the new system work exactly the way the original system does, especially if the original system is homegrown. That lack of flexibility tends to be responsible for more than half the cost (and time span) of the migration.

There's also the related failure mode of deciding you're going to fix all your other system problems as part of the migration, bloating the scope and creating too much complexity. Just do the necessary stuff, migrate, and then go back and fix the nice to haves.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#760

Post by ernest_jones »

tcmart14 wrote: post #495

Still pretty early in my career, but this is probably the most pointless thing I worked on. The company I work at, we do statement generation, our clients have clients that they bill monthly. The statement system on a set day of the month generates the statements and applies any charges with their customers not paying their bill on time. First part, the system itself did not allow customization on which day. All of o…

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