Ask HN: Worst working conditions you have written code in?

#1

Post by saurabh » Sun, Apr 12, 2009, 11:55 AM UTC

There are good times and there are worst times. I recently had to write code in a hot room with temperatures near 107F; nothing to sit on; warm water for drinking and a lot of distractions. I am sure many people have been in similar situations and would like to know your experiences.

PS: I asked this question on StackOverflow but it was closed.

Re: Ask HN: Worst working conditions you have written code in?

#2

Post by nreece » Sun, Apr 12, 2009, 12:10 PM UTC

Had to write code in Sanskrit on a banana leaf in an isolated island... but then, it was just a dream.. that may come true someday.

Re: Ask HN: Worst working conditions you have written code in?

#3

Post by trapper » Sun, Apr 12, 2009, 12:34 PM UTC

Not working conditions per se, but debugging a legacy bioinformatics program written in perl. Comments were in french which I do not understand. It took three days to run and exited with:

"Error - good luck finding the bug".

Re: Ask HN: Worst working conditions you have written code in?

#4

Post by dbrown26 » Sun, Apr 12, 2009, 12:46 PM UTC

Back in 2000 I was working at a startup in Washington, D.C. and we had been working 80-100 weeks for nearly 1.5 months before management finally brought in some contractors as reinforcement. All of the developers were in a 20x20 or so room working at folding tables. One of the contractors that they brought in had a form of Tourette's that caused him to make this noise that I can only describe as a loud squawk at random intervals, about every 60-180 seconds. Combine that with the pressure, lack of sleep, and the effort to concentrate and it became my own personal version of Chinese water torture. I truly think I came close to having a nervous breakdown during those two weeks.

Re: Ask HN: Worst working conditions you have written code in?

#5

Post by banned_man » Sun, Apr 12, 2009, 12:48 PM UTC

Trading desk, as a research quant. The office was open-plan, there were constantly people passing behind me, and expletive-laden interruptions related to market conditions were frequent.

For the first 6 months, it was very exciting, but eventually the sensory overload and taxing environment got to me, and I started having health problems. In retrospect, I think the open-plan office was much more of a contributor than the noise, which could be tuned out pretty easily. Open plan => needing to pay constant attention to how one is perceived => anxiety => diminished productivity => more anxiety => immune system fails => very sick.

I think 107 F is worse, though. I stop being productive around 90, and I'm pretty sure I'd die after 8 hours in that heat.

Re: Ask HN: Worst working conditions you have written code in?

#6

Post by zackola » Sun, Apr 12, 2009, 12:50 PM UTC

Pales in comparison to your story but I worked in a basement office, with awful fluorescents, no natural light, with 95.5FM a top 50 hits station blaring through the overhead system, in a open space for a man who was a pretty dead on 50/50 mix of Michael Scott from The Office and Buster from Arrested Development whose puppy would love to run around and shit in the back corner of the office near the server room. Other than that, it was a pretty sweet first job :)

Re: Ask HN: Worst working conditions you have written code in?

#7

Post by tjake » Sun, Apr 12, 2009, 12:55 PM UTC

Wrote custom test-set software in a clean-room. Bunny suit, mask and rubber gloves for 8 hours a day. It was a windows box connected to a x-ray diffraction machine so I had to be in the room.

Re: Ask HN: Worst working conditions you have written code in?

#8

Post by Jakob » Sun, Apr 12, 2009, 1:04 PM UTC

I worked at home in my living room for the last year. Rented an office again this year. In retrospect working in your living room was very unhealthy for me.

Re: Ask HN: Worst working conditions you have written code in?

#9

Post by epi0Bauqu » Sun, Apr 12, 2009, 1:06 PM UTC

While dealing with a crying baby.

Re: Ask HN: Worst working conditions you have written code in?

#10

Post by nl » Sun, Apr 12, 2009, 1:10 PM UTC

A hot, noisy hotel room, dial-up internet, 4:00am writing in _VB6_ to connect to some weird COM+ service that used VB calling conventions, then a C++ COM wrapper for that, then a C wrapper to connect to a Java JNI service. At 8:00pm I didn't know VB, either. And it had to work by 9:00am when some system it interfaced to started up. Oh - and I couldn't actually test it against anything but stubs.