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

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

#41

Post by ivanstojic »

Working as a tech team-lead for a large international company, I was assigned to a team that was a year behind schedule on an 8 month project. I rallied the people, we worked for 14-16 hours every day (weekends) and managed to get the code in production in about two months.

I was proud of my team, that is what got me through the days.

After that my boss denied my salary raise with the suggestion that if I don't like the salary, I know where the doors are.

I was insulted by the insolence. That was what got me through the door.

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

#42

Post by stonemetal »

Industrial automation controls programming at a tire factory in Georgia. It was 90 degrees outside and you're in a large room with row after row of tire ovens that run above a few hundred degrees. We had machines with thermal sensors set to fault out at 120 and ac units on their enclosures and they still faulted regularly. They spray the tires with lube so they don't stick to the ovens so there is a layer of black crap on everything. All the machines running made around 100DB of noise. I got put on the project towards the end as it was way past due and they wanted to appear to be doing something so they decided 24hr on site was the way to go so I was working 8pm to 8am.

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

#44

Post by agotterer »

In 2002 I was working with a startup (that later failed). The office was in the basement of a warehouse, because they got cheap rent. The office itself wasn't terrible, decent offices and equipment. Since it was a basement there were obviously no windows. We were working 80-100 hours a week, often sleeping in the office. We had a really bad flood a few weeks before our launch date. We got (most) of the water out, but the walls started molding before they could get everything fixed. I bought my own hepa-filter and eventually "took a break" because I couldn't take anymore.

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

#45

Post by lallysingh »

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…

Etymotic HF-2s (or similar) noise-blocking earbud headphones. People know that they'll be distracting you when talking, and they reduce the outside noise quite a bit.

As for the perception issue, that's more of a showmanship issue. For people who aren't in your field but do judge, I find a few stereotypes work out well. At my last job, I filled unused screen space with random API references. The busier and more technical my screen looked, the busier and more technical I looked as a result. It's the game you have to play when people don't let good work speak for itself.

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

#46

Post by banned_man »

Dilpil wrote: post #28
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…

Funny, even hearing these stories, some of us would kill to have that job.

I was like that, before working on a trading desk, and I had to experience it in order to know it wasn't right for me, so I have no regrets.

Some hackers love trading, for what it's worth, and there are finance jobs out there that have better working conditions than what I described.

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

#47

Post by SingAlong »

I'm still yet to graduate and feeling the goodness of working freelance at home.

oh my! you guys scare me off. I've always dreamed of an office for my startup where we work in a really nice garden full of trees and green grass, sitting on bean bags and chairs (freedom of posture :P) Maybe I should just do this. It's going to be really cheap and comfortable considering the temperature in my location is around 20c-24c during normal days.

I hate air-conditioned rooms. there's nothing better than the smell of green grass and evening wind blowing your nose. And listening to soft music in such an environment is really cool. But I would have to opt for a silent area for the office (which is far away from traffic jams) which would mean compromising the utilities/accessibility of the city center. When you have sounds of sparrows and pigeons in place on that soft-music, it sounds even more cooler.

I'll also have a huge hall to run for shelter incase it rains :)

And also I'll plant an umbrella kinda thing above every fella working, coz I don't want them to waste time washing them or their notebooks of crow/pigeon shit :D

P.S: anyway it's a dream office for my startup and sounds a do-able task :)

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

#48

Post by banned_man »

lallysingh wrote: post #45
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…

Etymotic HF-2s (or similar) noise-blocking earbud headphones. People know that they'll be distracting you when talking, and they reduce the outside noise quite a bit. As for the perception issue, that's more of a showmanship issue. For people who aren't in your field but do judge, I find a few stereotypes work out well. At my last job, I filled unused screen space with random API references. The busier and more techn…

I definitely had the screen set up as you described, but I still found working with constant open-back visibility to be pretty terrible.

As humans, though we share this with most animals, we have a strong desire to do important things (eating, defecating, sex, spiritual journeys) with at least some degree of privacy. Work, at least of the mentally taxing kind, falls square into that category.

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

#49

Post by memorius »

By far the worst: on site doing commissioning / systems integration testing of warehouse automation systems - cranes moving pallets around, boxes trundling on conveyors, etc.

The automated equipment we were debugging (and volume testing with things moving around continuously) was the least of it... the huge site was still under construction. All around me there was racking being cut and welded, electricians installing stuff, aromatic concrete floor sealant being applied, various random drilling and banging.

I had to write large amounts of new code on the spot as we found problems (missing features, mostly) during testing, while the automation engineers stood around annoyed and waiting.

When I first got to the site, I didn't even have a laptop - had to lug a desktop PC and CRT monitor there and back every day (carrying it across half the site and the loading dock) for the first couple of weeks. For part of the time, this involved carrying it across iced concrete, since it had been snowing.

Oh, and there was the engineer from one of the third-party equipment suppliers, an Italian company - nice chap but he didn't speak very good English; the noise level didn't help the already poor communication, and when we started our testing, we discovered he had developed his control software from an interface specification three versions old and half a year out of date.

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