Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#551

Post by isthis1984 » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 10:41 AM UTC

throwawaymyjob wrote: post #37

Please sign me up! I had at least a dozen projects in as many months started, reach a completed state, then canceled. I'm on a very small team, I am the only expert in infrastructure, but all infrastructure code is reviewed by the lead engineer who is a complete novice at AWS/GCP. I've written thousands of words of documentation and had entire weeks of phone calls to explain what is going on and the rationale behind…

I worked on contract at a place for 4 years, worked on 5 or 6 projects. Only one went to production, the management changed their mind on the others after they were finished, the money was good though.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#552

Post by cryptica » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 10:41 AM UTC

People who have money and power today are on average less intelligent and less competent than people who don't. I guess this is the result of the past 10 or so years of expansionary monetary policy. It enabled greedy people with very little talent to capture a lot of money. Value creation was sacrificed for the benefit of value capturing (rent-seeking) activities.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#553

Post by filoeleven » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 10:42 AM UTC

hn_temp_10_1_19 wrote: post #262

I just walked from a job after a week and a half. Applied and interviewed for a junior full stack java/angular developer position. Really excited for it. Got and accepted an offer just to show up day one to a weird point & click/drag & drop visual programming thing called BluePrism. Tried to make myself like it, but couldn't stick it out. Moved 800 miles for that job too, just to get bait & switched.

Ah, Blue Prison. One of several RPA (robotic process automation) tools—AKA glorified screen scrapers—that all cost tons of money, work horribly with web apps, and have no public documentation on improving the situation. Each one has its own special way of interacting with a browser, and none of them is half as good as scripting with Selenium.

I have to support clients who are all getting into RPA and wanting to know how to use it with our web app that was never designed with those in mind. If the tech were better, it’d be fine and I wouldn’t even know about it. As it is, it’s a ton more work for everyone involved than just asking us for an API. But then you don’t get to watch a browser window change magically in front of you, I guess.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#554

Post by tjpnz » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 10:47 AM UTC

rogy wrote: post #525

CubicsRube wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TechLead, a youtuber that worked at Facebook, has covered this story [0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbEQriZEfoI

Everytime I see one of this guys videos pop up I can't help but this he's a bit of a parasite. Leaching off anything for views. He doesn't seem to provide any valuable advice in any video I've watched, yet people lap it up (although his following have a very distinct demographic)

I've tried watching him a few times and got the same feeling. He also goes to great lengths to remind everyone (all the time) of how much money he makes. Is that normal for people in Silicon Valley?

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#555

Post by spag1024 » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 10:51 AM UTC

paulcole wrote: post #209

uhhhhhhhh wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will echo other comments and say that I enjoyed this post. IANAL, however, in all seriousness... I think you should talk to a personal lawyer about your situation ASAP, especially now that you posted this publicly. HIPAA is not to be trifled with and now you've shared that you have knowledge of a breach. You've also provided enough detail in this post that (if found and traced back to you) could be used as proof that…

HIPAA is absolutely to be trifled with. Look up who is actually fined and face actual consequences from HIPAA violations. It is 99.99% big universities, hospitals, and insurance companies. Everyone else gets (at most) a slap on the wrist and has to promise not to do it again. Once in a while they’ll fine a small family practitioner $25k for not shredding papers properly but it’s a total joke. HIPAA Compliance Service…

Agreed. The organization would likely get fined for a breach, not the engineer. I work a senior IT role in Healthcare and I've seen what breaches look like. I've never even heard of someone going to prison, let alone for what this story tells.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#556

Post by gryzzly » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 10:53 AM UTC

Any amount of blaming from management onto the employees will get me to decide to leave immediately.

Lying to employees. Army-type discipline at the office.

Any non-payment of salary (unless it’s not employer’s responsibility, but 3rd party and I‘m given full transparency on why that is, like a bank transfer issue etc. with a promise to sort this out).

Indeed, I quit a bunch of jobs for these reasons.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#557

Post by gryzzly » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 10:56 AM UTC

gryzzly wrote: post #556

Any amount of blaming from management onto the employees will get me to decide to leave immediately. Lying to employees. Army-type discipline at the office. Any non-payment of salary (unless it’s not employer’s responsibility, but 3rd party and I‘m given full transparency on why that is, like a bank transfer issue etc. with a promise to sort this out). Indeed, I quit a bunch of jobs for these reasons.

Every one of these decisions to quit led to the next job being better in terms of managers, experience I got and compensation.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#558

Post by jimnotgym » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 10:59 AM UTC

rjplatte wrote: post #114

reificator wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listen. If not using version control is a problem for you, you're already more hirable than a lot of developers I've seen. Learning is always important but don't use that to procrastinate. You don't have to go straight to the best job in the world. Just find something better (and do your homework to verify) and take it.

I'm in a small city, where not much work is available. I need to pad my resume a little more to make the work I do more attractive, but the reality is that LAMP devs aren't in high demand near me. I apply to several jobs daily, but not much is around. I'd appreciate pointers on how to improve my prospects, but the last place I interviewed was a seedy adult entertainment company, and I wouldn't have taken an offer if…

Magento shops are always looking for LAMP devs. A national recruiter told me they place PHP devs at the big Magento shops without the job ever existing.... There must be a Magento agency in your city?

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#559

Post by ivanhoe » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 11:07 AM UTC

dav1app wrote: post #403

On my last job, a new manager called me for a meeting on Friday 4PM. I spent the whole month on an extremely stressful project. The meeting was about an app that integrates credit card payments, billets and bank account on a terminal that is going to be available to the general public. The deadline? 11PM of the same day. Final version. From 0 to 100% in 6 hours. I said that it was impossible. He said that I was incap…

Dirty HR tricks when they want you out of there, but have to justify it legally. Funny thing is that you could probably still win them in court as any expert would confirm that task was unrealistic, so it's such a bureaucratic nonsense...

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#560

Post by epiphanitus » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 11:08 AM UTC

huntie wrote: post #346

I work in a factory and I see all of the problems my older coworkers have. Along with that I think the company wants to move the whole plant to Mexico so there is no long-term job security. I've learned programming in my spare time but when I've tried applying for jobs I didn't get a response, which I assume is because I don't have a degree. I've been trying to get back into university but I'm not sure that it will h…

I recently changed careers myself. My advice is to look at positions that look interesting/are in high demand, check out the technologies that they are using, learn them, build them and put them on your Github. And make sure to put the keywords of the technologies you know on your Linkedin - if you actually know them (because otherwise you will embarrass yourself in a technical interview).

Since your time is limited, make sure every time you sit down to code you are learning something new rather than retreading the stuff you already know.

This won't be easy - you will have to be stubborn and persistent and really commit to it. I for one got here because I became obsessed with tech and spent countless nights coding instead of socializing. But the rewards are there if you have the passion to stick it out.