It might be better to keep it low-profile. Go to a superior with the story of "told ya so".
Actually any organisation worthy of the label "engineer" should do a thorough, no-blame, and collaborative post-mortem of such events so they don't happen again, and that would include warnings given. Feature on time + risk, feature late + no risk (and anything in between), it's in the end an engineering and business decision and either choice might be the right one depending on the circumstances.
Sounds also like a good way for the two tribes (eng & mgmt) to formulate a way to communicate tradeoffs better.
Another option is to work at a consultancy where you hop aboard a new customer project every 3-6 months. Approach every customer as an opportunity to do some resume-driven development and pick a bunch of untested new technologies to experiment with. Be sure to do at least a couple of presentations to tell everyone about the hottest new things you are doing to bring value to the customers. Leave the project once it sl…
For maximum results, trade-off with a buddy: Spend Q1 each crashing your respective project; spend Q2 as a fixer undoing that damage using his knowledge of his own work. You’re both cutting edge and a proven fixer!
Government contracting is the pathological case for that: if they haven’t been allowed to hire civil servants, they have no choice but to use a handful of big companies. The shortage of in-house expertise makes it hard to know if the work is being planned or performed correctly so a common strategy is to hire one company to oversee the work of another company. Unfortunately, since there are only a few companies in the space and job hopping is the best path for a raise or to avoid layoffs when contracts turn over, it’s rare for anyone to be very critical of past or future coworkers.
I wonder if this is why some managers seem to go out of their way to generate chaos. I have no patience for it, and judge them harshly for it. They don’t get any credit if my book for “solving” problems they pulled out of their back side or willfully ignored planning for.
I'm sure there are some that do this. I once worked with a test manager that was effectively judged by how many bugs were found and how many tests were written. He was actually a nice guy just trying to play the game given to him, but if you didn't know this you would think he was doing exactly as you described. There will always be a few bad eggs in the mix, but I'd check the incentives forced on them before judging…
The ones I’m dealing with now aren’t very transparent about these things. I’ve tried fishing a little to see what’s behind it, but need to tread lightly to avoid getting yelled at for an hour.
Easy - half a$$ your code and when it breaks - swoop in, "fix things" (actually do it right) and play the role of hero! (I've seen so-called "Rock Stars" at places I worked do this over and over)
In high school I actually had a friend teach me this in a humorous way. In football we did sprints (the kind where you physically run) at the end. He said -- half ass the sprints. Then on the last sprint, run as fast as you can, you'll have more energy left, and when they see you running fastest you'll get all the credit. He was doing it as a joke, but lo and behold he out runs everyone on the last sprint by a lot, a…
In the case of football that might actually be a good lesson: save enough energy for the end of the game so that you can play best when the other team is tired. Of course you need to play the whole game, but if you play all but the last 5 minutes working just hard enough to keep a tie game, then you can pull ahead in the end.
This only works in time limited sports though. Most real world situations are not time limited like that and so the advice doesn't apply.
I've been contemplating the issue in the headline, as pertains to my value. When I help somebody in 40 mins with something they've been stuck on for 3 months, my value is clear to everyone. When I work there the whole time, and nobody ever gets stuck for 3 months, my value is unclear. Don't know how to deal with this paradox.
Life and its rewards aren't perfect. Work with honest, intelligent people; genuinely do your best; your days will be much better and the odds will be with you.
That hasn't been my experience. I don't get to choose who I work with, my days are stressful and unfulfilling, and my career has stagnated.
Life and its rewards aren't perfect. Work with honest, intelligent people; genuinely do your best; your days will be much better and the odds will be with you.
But most of the time you can not chose with whom to work
Then you just have to refer to the Karma bucket. "In my/their next life..."
I've been contemplating the issue in the headline, as pertains to my value. When I help somebody in 40 mins with something they've been stuck on for 3 months, my value is clear to everyone. When I work there the whole time, and nobody ever gets stuck for 3 months, my value is unclear. Don't know how to deal with this paradox.
Or worse: People get stuck quite frequently and ask you for help pretty quickly. You get everyone unstuck, but your own work falls behind and when your boss's boss asks for metrics on developers you have few points delivered and few LOC changed. Your boss tries to explain, but your head is the one that rolls next when layoffs happen.
As a senior engineer I've learned that is my job. I take on much less work than anyone else because I know I will be called on to solve those problems.
This is in fact known in management literature: assign your best people to the least important project. That way the second best can grow to become the best, while the best are always free to help out if your fourth most important project has issues - it isn't a big deal if your least important project doesn't get done on time and if they manage to finish it so much the better. (your best are also free should sales discover a short window where a quick feature can bring in a large sale - though this is obviously easy to abuse)
I should have, but it would have been obvious that I pulled a fast one on them as the fix was really quite simple. Instead of building a Hadoop cluster I replace a sql sub query with a bitmask. It really only took an hour to figure it out but they let me charge the whole day.
Ok, it doesn't sound that bad to me? You learned something about consulting, got paid 1600$ for one hour work, got good recommendations and now have time for another interesting opportunity. Don't waste your time and clients money on pretending to do work that you don't. Its ethically wrong (maybe even criminal) and it sounds like you would be bored to death wasting your talent. Don't blame the company for not wastin…
The problem is it takes typically takes days or even weeks of unpaid work to find the next paid job. If you get 6 months contracts that unpaid time is easy to deal with (and much of the unpaid work is really half an hour here easy to put in after hours while in the middle of the longer contract). Thus a 1 day job needs to pay a lot more perhour than a 6 month contract as the costs to get that contract needs to be paid from than 1 day - a fair price for a 1 day job is likely in the $20,000 range.
I've been contemplating the issue in the headline, as pertains to my value. When I help somebody in 40 mins with something they've been stuck on for 3 months, my value is clear to everyone. When I work there the whole time, and nobody ever gets stuck for 3 months, my value is unclear. Don't know how to deal with this paradox.
Reminds of when you see people questioning the usefulness of getting vaccines for some diseases because they have almost entirely disappeared for the past 50 years (especially in 1st world countries for some), without realizing that this is precisely the reason why they don't reappear.