The surreal experience of my first developer job • Hacker News Board

Re: The surreal experience of my first developer job

#111

Post by ghostbrainalpha » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 4:02 PM UTC

karmicthreat wrote: post #99

My first paid developer job was writing backend code for what I would later learn was the Canadian mafia. I was doing some backend and embedded work to build super shitty gambling kiosks for them. They already had some person "managing" project and the Indian contract house that was building flash games for the kiosk. He was useless, so I was stuck figuring everything out. Including getting things running on a then o…

Working for the mob can be a good deal.

Basically no oversight into what you are doing because they don't have the technical knowledge to judge your work. Overpay (if sometimes irregular), and easy hours.

As long as you don't "know" they are doing anything illegal with your work, and no one can prove that you know what they are doing. It can work out.

The worst part about it is they try to make up for their lack of technical knowledge as a manager by becoming close with you in a personal way.

Source: I worked for someone convicted of multiple crimes (racketeering, assault, intimidation of a juror), but on his legitimate business.

Re: The surreal experience of my first developer job

#112

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 4:02 PM UTC

Ansil849 wrote: post #62

gkwelding wrote: post #32

This literally could have been written by any developer in the UK. I think most of us start out like this! I think the best one was a company I worked for in Leeds, it was building a secure learning platform for schools which ultimately fell flat on it's arse. The company was run by a self-made millionaire who was notorious for scamming people. He'd randomly lay off huge numbers of the sales team, and the first anyon…

> The company was run by a self-made millionaire who was notorious for scamming people. You knew this before going to work for him, and still went to work for him? What does that make you?

[deleted]

Re: The surreal experience of my first developer job

#113

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

ramesh31 wrote: post #43

Surreal can't even begin to describe my first dev job. I'd never tell this story IRL, but this is an anonymous account so why not. I was broke, living in a roach infested hostel in Waikiki after buying a one way ticket to Honolulu to surf, bum around, and not a whole lot more. Things had worked out great so far... until the money ran out. I was about a week from being homeless and living on the beach. Fortunately my…

[deleted]

Re: The surreal experience of my first developer job

#114

Post by jlg23 » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 4:11 PM UTC

gkwelding wrote: post #32

This literally could have been written by any developer in the UK. I think most of us start out like this! I think the best one was a company I worked for in Leeds, it was building a secure learning platform for schools which ultimately fell flat on it's arse. The company was run by a self-made millionaire who was notorious for scamming people. He'd randomly lay off huge numbers of the sales team, and the first anyon…

> we'd have to ring the "office manager" (ex-SAS)

I'm not sure what's the fetish with the SAS, but I apparently know more people who where in the or with strong ties to the SAS than regular British folks... OTOH, after knowing some actual members of various special forces for 2 decades: If they saw action, they don't brag. They are usually shy to admit anything even if it is not classified. Or the other way around: Those advertised as "ex-SAS" (or navy seals or french foreign legion, your choice) usually ain't.

Re: The surreal experience of my first developer job

#115

Post by Kluny » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 4:11 PM UTC

rwmj wrote: post #13

There are lots of these half-arsed tiny tech companies in the UK (I've worked for a few). I wonder whether this is true all over the world, or is a peculiarity of the UK? It could be that we don't have a culture of VCs who would fund a company to the required scale and provide adult supervision. I remember when I ran a company, raising money or even getting a bank loan was impossible. (We just ran it on a shoestring…

Yeah, I had one in Canada too. I think we were making forms for insurance companies to onboard new clients more quickly? But the forms were fillable pdfs, which I then had to scrape the data out of in order to feed it to the app. Why not use normal web forms? I don't know, I was fired before I found out. They owe me $200 or so in back pay to this day.

Re: The surreal experience of my first developer job

#116

Post by Joker_vD » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 4:21 PM UTC

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #111

karmicthreat wrote: post #99

My first paid developer job was writing backend code for what I would later learn was the Canadian mafia. I was doing some backend and embedded work to build super shitty gambling kiosks for them. They already had some person "managing" project and the Indian contract house that was building flash games for the kiosk. He was useless, so I was stuck figuring everything out. Including getting things running on a then o…

Working for the mob can be a good deal. Basically no oversight into what you are doing because they don't have the technical knowledge to judge your work. Overpay (if sometimes irregular), and easy hours. As long as you don't "know" they are doing anything illegal with your work, and no one can prove that you know what they are doing. It can work out. The worst part about it is they try to make up for their lack of t…

When did the lack of technical knowledge ever stopped managers from oversighting the work? I for some reason don't think that "the mob" has any more lenience than the military, for example — and its pretty much the universal rule that the military believes in "tenacity prevails over everything, it prevails even over the reason" like no one else.

Re: The surreal experience of my first developer job

#117

Post by technofiend » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 4:25 PM UTC

BigJono wrote: post #6

This is eerily similar to a job I had. I also worked for a young asshole CEO called Andrew, with multiple rubbish businesses, pretending to have more money than he had, having no idea what he was doing, and faced jail time a few years after I left. If you replace "property market" with "education sector" and "UK" with "Australia" we could have almost written the exact same article. I wonder how many of these companie…

What is it with dodgy entrepreneurs and criminality? One of my first jobs was for a guy who after a week of mundane tasks revealed he really hired me to go through the source code of some program and change everything so it looked like he wrote it because he planned to resell it as his own. I politely declined. Turns out literally everyone there except me was an ex-con. I found a job with a different company across the hall and never looked back.

Re: The surreal experience of my first developer job

#118

Post by elwell » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 4:26 PM UTC

Sharlin wrote: post #12

lordnacho wrote: post #10

I think once you look outside of established brands, there's a lot of this type of thing that happens. Small business led by some random person with no particular competence, who's somehow found himself as the boss. The money comes from some unclear source, though that doesn't necessarily mean illegal, it's just hard to explain why someone thought to invest in this particular venture. I did something like this over a…

I guess it's the same with every new fad. "We'll do something with the Web!" "We'll do something with mobile!" "We'll do something with blockchain!" "We'll do something with AI!" and so on.

Well those aren't really 'fads' (maybe... blockchain)

Re: The surreal experience of my first developer job

#119

Post by foolproofplan » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 4:27 PM UTC

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #109

kebman wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard similar with the cleaning industry in Oslo. Ahem, regular cleaning, not the other kind.

Sorry, I don't get what you or parent are referring to. Are these supposed to be some references to mob run businesses or something?

"waste management"

Re: The surreal experience of my first developer job

#120

Post by Sharlin » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

elwell wrote: post #118

Sharlin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it's the same with every new fad. "We'll do something with the Web!" "We'll do something with mobile!" "We'll do something with blockchain!" "We'll do something with AI!" and so on.

Well those aren't really 'fads' (maybe... blockchain)

Web was absolutely a fad the first time around, and that bubble famously burst in a most spectacular manner. AI has been a fad several times, so much so that the term "AI winter" was already coined decades ago. Mobile is a very successful tech, I give you that, but it too had its false starts, and people who thought they’d be the next Twitter in no time if they "just have an app" were dime a dozen a decade or so ago.