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The worst programmer I know

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Re: The worst programmer I know

#241

Post by Given_47 »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #181
KSS42 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That impact should show up in the plus/minus score? https://www.espn.com/nba/statistics/rpm For 2022/23 Green ranks 38. His defensive impact is very high but it is offset by his negative offensive impact.

Yeah that's what I meant by impact metrics. In the 2015-2017 playoff runs Green's impact is almost on-par with Curry. But for most people who watch basketball, they just look at the box score and don't look at advanced stats.

Not even just playoffs either, I think his rank in that three year RAPM range was fourth or something staggering, after Curry, Lebron, and I think Kawhi? My go-to RAPM site that did all the calculations was taken down so can’t currently cite the numbers

Re: The worst programmer I know

#242

Post by jokethrowaway »

shultays wrote: post #212

Tim’s productivity score was zero I also have a Tim in my team but he is a net negative. Most of the time he would try to pair up. He just make noises that implies he is following your work. But you can see that is not the case when he tries to make a comment or a suggestion, he is clueless. Trying explaining things to him is a waste of time. Rarely he decides to work on a task himself. No matter how trivial the task…

In Europe firing people is not always straightforward.

There are so many people doing jackshit which make me go insane. I guess, good for them and I'm glad I'm not a shareholder.

Management handle the most blatant cases in 6 months. There are so many people who are not completely clueless at pretending to do something and they go undetected for their entire career.

From previous experiences, in a US startup they would be fired in 2 weeks.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#243

Post by johnnyanmac »

Aperocky wrote: post #117

Smells fishy. Senior engineers in my knowledge and experience are all delivering on something relatively high impact while contributing massively to the team by occasional/often "pairing". I've seen rare examples who don't "pair" but just deliver by themselves. I've never seen an example where they don't deliver on anything (planning, design, architectures included) but only "pair" as their job every day.

Too lazy to track down the exact company, but the author does link to Tim's LinkedIn. He has many titles as "Agile coach" and his lede is

>Enabling technology teams to operate at their full potential

Sounds like he is a very particular type of developer focused precisely on enabling teams in this manner.

-----

also, I can just post the obvious here but: he may be doing work but not tracking it. I've never been perfect at creating stories for every task I get, especially retroactive ones that pop up in the middle of the week.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#244

Post by 8n4vidtmkvmk »

jongjong wrote: post #18

It sucks being that person today because everything is about optics and that person will get purged. I know from experience. Team players, mentors, software architects; they tend to be tossed aside to make room for coders who can churn out large amounts of code, even as the company's capacity to deliver and maintain features declines over time due to tech debt. Managers always love a developer who can consistently wr…

I love writing code. I usually "score" on the higher end for LoC which managers like to praise me for while simultaneously saying LoC isn't everything but there aren't many good measures. Lol. But! In my defense, I delete as much code as possible. Love deleting code. Not sure if that counts in the LoC. I see lots of others copy and pasting and leaving little bombs everywhere. I refactor, clean, delete. So.. hopefully my LoC is mostly that and not adding fluff.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#245

Post by SlightlyLeftPad »

shultays wrote: post #212

Tim’s productivity score was zero I also have a Tim in my team but he is a net negative. Most of the time he would try to pair up. He just make noises that implies he is following your work. But you can see that is not the case when he tries to make a comment or a suggestion, he is clueless. Trying explaining things to him is a waste of time. Rarely he decides to work on a task himself. No matter how trivial the task…

Unfortunately, I have seen many of these types of people pass by management. The worst ones are the ones who do play political games correctly because they’re the ones who either get away with it at the very least or worse, make the talented engineers want to leave. Basically, the latter can completely destroy good teams.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#246

Post by holoduke »

shultays wrote: post #212

Tim’s productivity score was zero I also have a Tim in my team but he is a net negative. Most of the time he would try to pair up. He just make noises that implies he is following your work. But you can see that is not the case when he tries to make a comment or a suggestion, he is clueless. Trying explaining things to him is a waste of time. Rarely he decides to work on a task himself. No matter how trivial the task…

They need to fire his manager first and then assess this guys capabilities. Maybe he is not guided enough. Maybe he is plain stupid. Full responsibility of his manager.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#247

Post by [deleted] »

jongjong wrote: post #119
padjo wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m 10 years older, my experience has been that getting to ask stupid questions is one of the joys of age/seniority/security. Very often everyone else in the room has the same stupid question but you get to look like a stone cold genius because you were willing to risk looking silly.

I guess maybe in 10 years I'll be working with 30 year olds who understand and value of that approach as I do today. My current reality is that I'm a 33 year old working with 20 year olds who think they're geniuses who are going to take over the world in 5 years; from that viewpoint, I'm essentially a failed engineer because I didn't build a Facebook, Uber or AirBnB even though I had 10 years to do it.

[deleted]

Re: The worst programmer I know

#248

Post by johnnyanmac »

gumby wrote: post #98

One really good developer I worked with wrote excellent code and also terrible code that had to be replaced immediately — and both made him great to work with. The value of writing good code is self explanatory. You probably use some of his code today. But he was also great in a firefight: customer is dead in the water and it might be our fault. He’d show up cold and “jam his fingers in the holes in the dam”: quickly…

>I was actually much more impressed by the latter skill — among other reasons it’s simply rare

Not exactly something to encourage, but it sounds like he has experience in competitive competitions, where generating code to a problem on the fly is necessary. It's not something you can't learn yourself, but rote memorization of common problems and solutions (to the point where you can mechanically type down some algorithm from memory) is the bane of my existence

Re: The worst programmer I know

#249

Post by jokethrowaway »

beebmam wrote: post #200
jongjong wrote: post #18

It sucks being that person today because everything is about optics and that person will get purged. I know from experience. Team players, mentors, software architects; they tend to be tossed aside to make room for coders who can churn out large amounts of code, even as the company's capacity to deliver and maintain features declines over time due to tech debt. Managers always love a developer who can consistently wr…

If your leadership is tossing these incredibly valuable engineers aside, then it's time for you to toss that leadership out. You can do that by leaving, or talking to management about this, or unionizing. It's crazy to me tech workers aren't unionizing anyway.

[flagged]

Re: The worst programmer I know

#250

Post by _gabe_ »

softfalcon wrote: post #193
owenmarshall wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Annoyed? I’d love it: it would be an incredible door opener anywhere you went.

Yeah, this is a great opener to break the ice with during an interview. You can even add some prestidigitation by having them take 30 seconds to Google it and your name comes up. Play it off as a joke and now everyone has a little smirk/chuckle over it. Now they know you have a good personality and can tell a funny joke about yourself. Goes a long way to putting you in that “I can work with this person” category. Als…

You both make good points, on second thought it’s all about how you spin it :)
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