YES
Did my old job only exist because of fraud?
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Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?
#62I was on a government project where I found out I was being fraudulently billed on my hours. It was towards the end of the year and my manager was trying to use up the budget of the client. Although this is normal in the private sector I told him from the beginning that you can't do this on a government project. The project was $1M+ which was enough for prison time. He had gone into our billing software and edited my…
Okay… do you not feel culpable at some point? Do you feel no obligation to expose these various individuals fleecing the tax payers? Your boss, the academics, and everyone else who participated or knows and remains silent. Obviously, you are now in the later group. Yes I know it’s not all that rare, BECAUSE people can’t be bothered to blow the whistle.
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Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's what a healthy economy looks like.
At a small company, anyone can damage the company prospects. But product people have outsized negative impact when they are wrong. They can tank the whole company in short order. Which is maybe as it should be, but it does pit agonized debates over detailed technical work in perspective.
All true but every time I tried to help with an outsider's perspective -- and IMO us as engineers with systems thinking _can_ contribute -- I was told to shut up and stay in my lane (more politely than that but still crystal clear what's the underlying message + a clear show of we-will-not-debate-this-again).
So let them do damage. I do what I am told, I have the strategic thinking but not many have made use of it. OK. It's their right. I still pocket a wage. They could have gotten more for their money but consciously chose not to. Who am I to stop them? (And not like I actually can.)
Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?
#64Why does any of this actually matter? Why were you shaken? You weren’t committing fraud. You did real work. Now you’re in the US with a family and a career. Happy Father’s Day.
You know that feeling when you work on a feature for weeks or months and then something comes along and the feature is no longer needed or the project is cancelled? It's a pretty frustrating experience -- was it all for naught? Maybe it's useful to vent about it a bit.
> You know that feeling when you work on a feature for weeks or months and then something comes along and the feature is no longer needed or the project is cancelled?
I would have thought most people would grow out of having this kind of feeling after their 1st job. But I also definitely work to live, not live to work, so YMMV.
Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?
#65I was briefly employed by a robotics company in the US ... robotics is too nice: glorified if/then/else is better. The owner was the son of an old school magnate out of PA. Among other things his line has always stuck with me: "A whale that surfaces is soon harpooned." The company never made money. I think the whole thing was run as a loss on purpose for tax purposes. I became tired of the head manager/engineer combo…
> The owner was the son of an old school magnate out of PA.
If you have a lot of money it’s fun to LARP the startup life. The experience working for such a company is highly varied and completely depends on the personality of the founder. But even if it’s a healthy place, it’s usually a black hole from a career development POV.
Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?
#66I was on a government project where I found out I was being fraudulently billed on my hours. It was towards the end of the year and my manager was trying to use up the budget of the client. Although this is normal in the private sector I told him from the beginning that you can't do this on a government project. The project was $1M+ which was enough for prison time. He had gone into our billing software and edited my…
Okay… do you not feel culpable at some point? Do you feel no obligation to expose these various individuals fleecing the tax payers? Your boss, the academics, and everyone else who participated or knows and remains silent. Obviously, you are now in the later group. Yes I know it’s not all that rare, BECAUSE people can’t be bothered to blow the whistle.
Now that you know, do you feel culpable?
Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?
#67One of the many reasons to never actually care about the work you are doing if it is a for-profit endeavor, and you are not the owner. You are there to collect a paycheck so you can survive. If you want a job that you should care about then work in public service, at a non-profit, or for yourself.
It's a reasonable stance until the point where most of society is ran by for-profit companies. Then that mindset actively makes the world worse. Your bosses might not actually care about the work you do, but your users and customers sure will.
Your proposed solution?
Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
You know that feeling when you work on a feature for weeks or months and then something comes along and the feature is no longer needed or the project is cancelled? It's a pretty frustrating experience -- was it all for naught? Maybe it's useful to vent about it a bit.
> was it all for naught? I accepted a long time ago that it is all for naught :) Enjoy our time on this earth, do what we can, focus on people and it'll be alright
Yep 90% of companies don't matter and don't affect things. Only 10% of people do. That's just the way the world works. There's no way to know before you start so just live while you can enjoy.
Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
You know that feeling when you work on a feature for weeks or months and then something comes along and the feature is no longer needed or the project is cancelled? It's a pretty frustrating experience -- was it all for naught? Maybe it's useful to vent about it a bit.
I definitely had this feeling early on in my career, but it did flip around somewhere around halfway through. "We're not shipping? Well, that's a bummer, but also, what a relief! If building it that was this hard, I can only imagine how bad shipping it would've been; now we can delete that code and with it all of the maintenance we would've had to commit to for years." The personal attachment just had to go eventuall…
look at you you lucky devil, getting to delete code!
Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it actually true, or just a trope? Anyone in a position to manage hundreds of millions worth of projects is smart enough to know that some projects will run under budget.
I work with people who are well smart enough to know that. It’s also still a reasonable question to ask “well, last year we budgeted $15M and you got acceptable results while spending only $14M; perhaps you only need $14M/yr…” And despite its reasonableness, many people would prefer to oversee a $15M/yr budget.
I think a reason for this is suppose the next year you run into some difficulties so it requires 14.2M. Now you have to fight to request an extra 0.2M added to your budget that you wouldn't have to worry about if you had 15M.