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The worst programmer I know

dannorth.net

601–610 of 668 posts

Re: The worst programmer I know

#601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...or broke it down into smaller achievable tickets that continuously added to their points totals. These teams were filled with happy stress free developers. But that is part of the point of scrum. To break down stories into consistently stress-free achievable stories, rather than big risky ones filled with unknowns. I'm not saying this was a good workplace, it doesn't sound like it at all. But to me, it sounds li…

What Scrum "intends" to do, and what it actually does, are radically different.

Yes, nobody has ever really explained to me how you handle problems that don't neatly decompose into simple tasks.

In my experience this is usually handled by pushing back on the requirement or kicking the can down the road.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#602

Some 20 years ago, I worked at a moderately large software company that sold a desktop application for Mac and Windows. The team had mostly Mac experience and they were just getting their feet wet with Windows. So naturally the Windows version had some problems. At the time, I was known as a "Windows expert", so they hired me to help improve that version and help the team get more familiar with Windows programming. I…

I suppose this comment will not be liked very much, but let me offer one another perspective on this. In one team in our organization, someone was hired who offered themselves (by their own initiative) as a developer coach with the intent on pairing, reviewing and in general helping other devs. They were very confident, and as we employ team recruiting, the team decided it's worth a shot, as the candidate displayed knowledge of relevant skills and - as already mentioned - was very confident to educate his peers. It was an intra-organization lateral move, so not much risk involved. Everyone was on board with that decision, and the expectations were clear: they would not be expected to produce code and/or design documents and so on, they should just support the other devs. It should be mentioned that the team they wanted to join was a really high performing team - still (or because of this?) they were open to the idea of having a well-trained, experienced pairing partner and so on.

Well after a few weeks it turned out not so positive. They had quite a broad knowledge of things, but not in depth. They didn't think far enough (like for example, giving the tip to "use a FIFO SQS queue" despite not really understanding the fine-print, but still they persisted and it ended up in a prod rollback), they preferred educating about code style, didn't really listen to feedback (not in the sense of ignoring it, they didn't even realize that they weren't so senior compared to the rest of the team at all) and in general slowed everyone down without bringing much benefit to the table.

In the end they didn't get fired or something like this. They did another lateral move as the team explained why the team doesn't want to continue this. After their next team change, they talked about that this specific team didn't want to accept their help and that they had received bad feedback since they didn't produce code.

Obviously this is just an anecdotal counterexample, but still this can happen as well.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're letting HR who have no idea what they're doing, go from "a hundred CVs" to "two openings" you are bad at your job. HR's job, like legal, or many other departments, is to facilitate what you actually do which in this case means work like chasing references and ensuring the candidates have somebody who can answer stupid logistics questions without bothering the interviewer, not figuring out who is the best fi…

> If you're letting HR who have no idea what they're doing, go from "a hundred CVs" to "two openings" you are bad at your job. What I said was different. How many CVs should we eliminate before calling people back for the two openings? What if the pile is 500 CVs? Call all of them? I guess you stop coding for the next two months and that's ok? Or maybe you let HR help you sort the CVs by priority. > who have no idea…

> HR will definitely reject someone because of the title of a blog post.

> I've worked with some very talented HR people.

No doubt, since apparently you expect worse than useless it's likely hard not to exceed your expectations. What a buffoon.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#604
i have been looking for such a thing for long time.. always had to do that AND also coding and architecting and generaly moving the whatever project. Except just once for 4 months (from ~15 years).

Well, last 2 years i played that without the coding part (as a CTO!).. but not sure if anyone up-there noticed.

So i slowly start to dispirit and go bitter.. Seems Consumerism (throw-away-buy-new culture) ate the software/knowledge profession too.

i don't know, either noone needs deep, experience-backed, 360' looking knowledge, or it started grow on trees?

Re: The worst programmer I know

#605

Evaluating someone’s performance, especially, software engineers by non-tech people might produce dramatic results. Let me tell you a story about a friend of mine, codenamed tommy . Tommy was an IT guy with incredible skills in networking. He moved to an energy company, fully-owned and operated by the government. Just a few weeks from his arrival, they had to rebuild the entire network from scratch with new, modern,…

He should’ve had a friend make a company and bid for the job. Then, later on, Tommy could be brought on as a contractor for extra pay

Having some knowledge about how such contracts usually go there’s approximately zero chance of him getting it.

It’s not just about potential corruption but also about how risk averse large organizations are. The tender would definitely include revenue, employee count, and potentially other thresholds, as well as require that X such projects have successfully been carried out during the past Y years.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#606

Some 20 years ago, I worked at a moderately large software company that sold a desktop application for Mac and Windows. The team had mostly Mac experience and they were just getting their feet wet with Windows. So naturally the Windows version had some problems. At the time, I was known as a "Windows expert", so they hired me to help improve that version and help the team get more familiar with Windows programming. I…

Just last February I was let go from the best gig of my career, under similar circumstances. I knew that I was not hired specifically to help other devs, but it appeared to be appreciated and encouraged. Well, I guess not.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#607
post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like nothing more than a desire to gatekeep experience? Being employed as a programmer means you're gaining experience...Even if you work at a single company for 20 years, you're not going to get some mythical competence that you could only get by staying in one area. This line of thinking seems like nonsense.

Whether you have a single year of experience 10 times (or whatever ratio you experience) is orthogonal to whether you work for the same company. Being employed as a programmer may or may not gain you new experience (which is what matters if you are to be a good generalist). Whether it does depends on whether you are _doing things new to you_ while being employed.

Doing new things is experience. Repetition in one area is also experience. This concept you're describing is just made up.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#608
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I am from Europe, so I have a fairly good idea of what Unions can do, also thanks to having lived and worked in two different countries). I am not against Unionizing "per se" but the role of Unions has never been "tell the management how to run their business". There has been some cases of (smallish) company being "acquired" by their own workforce, and the Unions might have helped with formalizing the deal, but this…

Unfortunately union / labor movements in the US suffer from a big problem: due to historical circumstances they’re very combative. The labor movement here never grafted the idea of being business oriented on behalf of workers into the movement (like in Germany) rather, they treat the business as the enemy pretty much from the outset. Some of that is indeed earned by the businesses reputation, but ultimately this is w…

Police unions are very business oriented. And they might be the most successful unions

Re: The worst programmer I know

#609

Some 20 years ago, I worked at a moderately large software company that sold a desktop application for Mac and Windows. The team had mostly Mac experience and they were just getting their feet wet with Windows. So naturally the Windows version had some problems. At the time, I was known as a "Windows expert", so they hired me to help improve that version and help the team get more familiar with Windows programming. I…

I quit a job way long ago for very similar reasons. I cared about raising the level of the people around me. I wanted the junior folks to get credit and advance in their career. This meant my work was not readily visible.

A director said to me: "I can't remember the last thing you worked on." In that moment I knew it was time to leave. I was gone a few weeks later.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#610

Some 20 years ago, I worked at a moderately large software company that sold a desktop application for Mac and Windows. The team had mostly Mac experience and they were just getting their feet wet with Windows. So naturally the Windows version had some problems. At the time, I was known as a "Windows expert", so they hired me to help improve that version and help the team get more familiar with Windows programming. I…

Just last February I was let go from the best gig of my career, under similar circumstances. I knew that I was not hired specifically to help other devs, but it appeared to be appreciated and encouraged. Well, I guess not.

I have made this mistake more the once as I actually like working with people and helping them level up. Something I do now is make sure that if I am being hired as a developer of some sort, the metrics of success outlined clearly in my offer letter also include giving mentorship. It’s measurability usually revolves around peer reviews and how much others value my help. I have been accused of gaming my performance metrics because I would literally be helping people until they are able to tackle the problem independently. Which, I don’t know, sounds like a job well done to me.
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