I worked somewhere where the support manager somehow managed to get approval to bill his costs against each product group based on the lines of code in their product. We spent part of a week refactoring and reformatting to cut it by 70% before we gave him our numbers.
-2000 Lines of Code (2004)
51–60 of 134 posts
Re: -2000 Lines of Code (2004)
#524 months into a new job, and I realized I had contributed about -4000 lines of code. I thought, how weird it would be to explain (especially to someone less technical), that I'd pretty much just been deleting code since I started. I'd also added a number of important features along the way. Since then, I've taken some pride in trying to be a "net negative" (by line count), contributor to any code base I work on. Not…
Show management a picture of the code. Show them a visualization of all of it with its myriad connections. Tell them you just got rid of 4,000 lines of that crap. Show a visualization that's smaller and connected neatly. Promise to continue attempting this incrementally and safely in between new features. New features that are coded similarly neat. Not sure if it will work but I keep wanting to see someone try it. :)
I've pretty much exactly that, and it did work. Though it was at a company that had a headcount of 15, so in a larger org it might not go down so well.
Re: -2000 Lines of Code (2004)
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
No... there are recruiters who are a lot more invasive and pushy (and a couple employers I've run across). "Proof of previous income" was required at one place I applied years back, and I've heard similar stories from colleagues. No, of course, I don't bother going forward in those situations. "What are you making now?" is crass. The good recruiters I've worked with phrased it as "what are your salary expectations?"…
I've gotten "I need a number for us to continue" multiple times.
Just say "my salary expectations for this position is $XY0,000". I use it as an opportunity to set the ballpark for the negotiation. Sometimes bosses don't know what people are worth so they ask these kind of questions. Once we opened an office in a new country, and when we hired people, we asked them what they expected and gave them that + 20% because we really had no idea how much we should be paying.
Re: -2000 Lines of Code (2004)
#54Porting a large piece of PC code to a console:
- every deleted line meant we could have more content
- the code ran faster
- there were, axiomatically, fewer bugs (and we fixed a lot of bugs on the way)
- the code was more understandable
Re: -2000 Lines of Code (2004)
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The justification they told me was that they weren't going to give me a 20K raise if I wasn't making that much right now Even after 20+ years in the labor force, I've never understood that justification. "I'm a nosy bastard" at least has a ring of truth to it.
Don't be so literal about it. I used to get defensive about that question too, but the truth is they aren't asking you how much you are making, they are asking you to start the salary negotiation so they can get a feel for what it's going to take to hire you and describe you adequately to a hiring manager. It's just an opportunity for you both to ballpark the situation and eject early if there's going to be a wide di…
I would say "only if you tell me what you have budgeted for this position"
Has nobody here played poker? You don't just say what your hand is when you start betting.
Re: -2000 Lines of Code (2004)
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the current average in a language like C# or Java for a skilled developer? Average that goes into production rather than what's likely thrown away.
In a week long project (some supporting tool, or something similar) it's easy to write 10k lines a week. In a 6 months project, 10-100 lines are more likely, and in an "eternal" software that is already mostly written, 0 is a perfectly fine number.
I dread the day someone starts tracking LOC vs productivity in TFS. I might be switching between C#, SQL, CSS, HTML and Javascript on a busy day. A context switch == a productivity hit.
Re: -2000 Lines of Code (2004)
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The justification they told me was that they weren't going to give me a 20K raise if I wasn't making that much right now Even after 20+ years in the labor force, I've never understood that justification. "I'm a nosy bastard" at least has a ring of truth to it.
Don't be so literal about it. I used to get defensive about that question too, but the truth is they aren't asking you how much you are making, they are asking you to start the salary negotiation so they can get a feel for what it's going to take to hire you and describe you adequately to a hiring manager. It's just an opportunity for you both to ballpark the situation and eject early if there's going to be a wide di…
That sounds a lot like a friendly way of saying "you should lie."
I don't really disagree, but we might as well be honest about it here.
Re: -2000 Lines of Code (2004)
#58I worked at a furniture company where in order to delete code you had to have the head IT guy, the IT Director and an outside consultant sign off on it. Yes, that is right! 2 people that didn't know how to code and an outside consultant that we paid to look over "IT" moves before we made them. However, I didn't need anyone to sign off on commenting out code and replacing it with something else. :-)
Could you one week later delete "comments" without sign off?
Re: -2000 Lines of Code (2004)
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
No... there are recruiters who are a lot more invasive and pushy (and a couple employers I've run across). "Proof of previous income" was required at one place I applied years back, and I've heard similar stories from colleagues. No, of course, I don't bother going forward in those situations. "What are you making now?" is crass. The good recruiters I've worked with phrased it as "what are your salary expectations?"…
> "Proof of previous income" was required at one place I applied years back It's best to immediately walk away from a situation like this.
Yes; proof that everything that comes out of your mouth isn't a lie suggests a lack of trust.
Re: -2000 Lines of Code (2004)
#60I had a job interview once where the HR rep asked me how many lines of code I wrote a week. I responded, "On a really good week -1000, I don't remember the exact figure." She was extremely confused by this answer and wanted me to give her a number. So she said, "I'll just put down 10,000." This is also the interview where they refused to continue unless I told them how much money I made (which I don't do anymore). Th…
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