Ask HN: Worst working conditions you have written code in? • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by gcheong » Sun, Apr 12, 2009, 4:04 PM UTC

banned_man wrote: post #5

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…

Being the trading app whipping boy to a bunch of BSD (not talking about Unix here) equity traders; one of whom actually complained to me that he couldn't log into his trading app because his username wasn't pre-filled in the login prompt of the app.

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

#32

Post by azrealus » Sun, Apr 12, 2009, 4:05 PM UTC

dbrown26 wrote: post #4

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 rand…

dbrown26 why did you stay there so long?

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

#33

Post by rrhyne » Sun, Apr 12, 2009, 4:12 PM UTC

Sitting in a dusty concrete building, deep in Baja, down a 180 mile road dirt that takes 4 hours to traverse at 45-55mph, in a town with the best right hand point break on the west coast.

Hard to get work done with that right point firing and visible from the window.

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

#34

Post by csomar » Sun, Apr 12, 2009, 4:19 PM UTC

Ok, at home, my parents and my sisters are really kind and they don't do noise. Also my mother understand that I need some concentration when i'm on computer, although she don't know what the benefits of 'sitting for long hours in front of a screen with much gadgets and text!!'

The worst time is at school, when my friends (tech-savvy people) ask me for questions in a very noisy way that I loose concentration. So I agree with most of you about concentration, we can class it then

Concentration

Computer bugs and speed

Screen (if u sit for long hours)

Mouse and Keyboard (especially for those cheap laser mouses!!!)

Computer noise (if it's an old dirty one)

your girl friend (if u got one!!!)

Those are all factors that can affect your programming or whatever you are doing if it's mind related, like Math or Physic calculations

Also I posted it in SOF, no the question was not closed

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

#35

Post by mechanical_fish » Sun, Apr 12, 2009, 4:30 PM UTC

tjake wrote: post #22

mechanical_fish wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a grad student who worked in a fab. I found that after a couple of years wearing that bunny suit, mask, and rubber gloves for 6-8 hours per day (or, more likely, per night) I was completely used to it. I used to catch myself surfing the web in the clean room after hours. "Wait!" I would say to myself, "I could be doing this outside the clean room, where I could take off this silly suit!" But they are stressful…

yeah, no tunes, and i just couldn't get used to the sweaty hands from the gloves. i forgot about the mask. those dark red lines in your face, i much prefer my aeron chair and office now :)

There are these cloth glove liners. They worked well for me, although everyone has a different reaction to these things.

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

#36

Post by mechanical_fish » Sun, Apr 12, 2009, 4:32 PM UTC

makecheck wrote: post #27

tjake wrote: post #7

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.

Finally, a keyboard that is free of bits of dirt. :)

Well, in the academic fab... you can't be too sure.

There was a day when I was sitting there in an academic fab, in my bunny suit, and a fly flew by. At first I didn't notice. Then I did a hilarious double-take.

I believe the airlock design has been improved since then.

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

#37

Post by orangebanana » Sun, Apr 12, 2009, 4:33 PM UTC

On a balcony overlooking Western Baghdad figuring out why our (old and pretty well tested) network code didn't see fit to push packets. Was outside because we suspected the sat terminal was causing the problem. Only ended up taking a couple hours but it was probably my least favourite coding/debugging session.

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

#38

Post by dmillar » Sun, Apr 12, 2009, 4:38 PM UTC

I had to write code in a run down house that had been converted into a make shift office. There was no AC, and my desk was fit for a kindergartner (no exaggeration). My chair was a metal folding chair and my boss was a sales guy that had no idea how to write even an Excel function. I wasn't there long.

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

#39

Post by phugoid » Sun, Apr 12, 2009, 4:57 PM UTC

Well, I nearly killed myself with a line of bad code. I made a silly change to a flight simulator's "unusual attitude" logic. Unusual attitude training consists of putting the aircraft in a very difficult orientation (45 deg nose down, 60 deg left bank, etc.) and training pilots to recover.

Here's what the simulators look like: http://blafsen.net/photos/simulator.jpg

I changed the code, and brought the simulator up on motion to test it... and the machine started bucking like a horse and tossing me around the cabin. I had the instructor console right in front of me, and for a while it was physically impossible to hit the freeze button - I was being tossed around too badly.

That day I learned a lesson about testing: first check it with motion OFF.

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

#40

Post by sr3d » Sun, Apr 12, 2009, 5:05 PM UTC

tigerthink wrote: post #29

markessien wrote: post #11

When I started programming I used to work taking care of paralysed people. This was a night job, and you had to stay awake for the entire night and listen in case any noise came from the bedroom, in which case I had to go check to see that the person had not moved to a position that could be dangerous for him. Since there was nothing else to do apart from listen, I wrote code the entire night. The problem was that wr…

You could have bought one of those noise-amplifying toys, stuck its microphone inside the bedroom, attached headphones to it and turned the volume up.

Or write a program that analyze the noise level from the recording device to detect any motion and alert you. Hooked up with Growl and IM and now you have a dead-alert system. However, since it's a life-or-death situation and you couldn't focus 100% your commitment into it, I'm glad that you move on to a different job now. Working on your startup or side projects and you may end up killing someone isn't the kind of thought you need for the rest of your life.