Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#171

Post by bryanmgreen » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 1:32 AM UTC

Getting fired from a bad job is like having the best sex of your life but with the worst human being ever.

Feels amazing for a brief moment but you need a very long shower and a doctor's appointment after.

Then confusion and anxiety sets in because you're afraid you'll never have that high again and some part of you wants you to go right back for that perverse rush even though your smart brain says "HELL NO".

You see all your friends working for their dream companies and wonder not if you'll ever have that, but if ~anyone~ will welcome you again and you long for that filthy job.

You're spiraling into darkness and come to HN for the Who's Hiring posts and see all the other depraved lunatics and that's when you realize - you are not alone and you are not special and that you're gonna be downvoted just like everyone else - and it feels like home and it's ok that you're a miserable aspiring founder like everyone else who isn't happily employed.

(I say it with love from past personal experience)

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#172

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 1:33 AM UTC

MFLoon wrote: post #151

throwaway58129 wrote: post #64

I didn't know this format was a thing and am so very excited to discover it. I hope you folks enjoy reading horror stories. I got a job as a Software Engineer in my current company 4.5 years ago; friend-of-a-friend sort of thing. The company had an apparently disastrous piece of software that was their main LOB. They had gone through pretty much every local consulting agency - at least once, on a few occasions they h…

I lost it at "What the fuck is HIPPA". Who the fuck buys a healthcare company and doesn't know what the fuck HIPPA is? Great read.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#173

Post by LegitShady » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 1:34 AM UTC

etxm wrote: post #130

ctoinhiding wrote: post #105

I am an acquired founder working in the bay area. The acquisition made me rich, I'm liquid, and I love my product and my team. Everyone did really well in the acquisition. The acquirer means well, but as a public company there is little intellectual honesty and projects are going off the cliff while my fellow executives not sharing the truth of how bad things are going and asking for help from one another for the goo…

wear sweat pants and no underwear and put your foot up on stuff while you talk to people in the office. If you don’t have a penis, put a strap under the sweat pants. No one is going to fire you with cause for not being aware of your obviously swinging dick.

either that or he'll make HN

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#174

Post by perl4ever » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 1:38 AM UTC

eropple wrote: post #148

uhhhhhhhh wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will echo other comments and say that I enjoyed this post. IANAL, however, in all seriousness... I think you should talk to a personal lawyer about your situation ASAP, especially now that you posted this publicly. HIPAA is not to be trifled with and now you've shared that you have knowledge of a breach. You've also provided enough detail in this post that (if found and traced back to you) could be used as proof that…

Seconded, hard. You can't spend that $165K a year when you're staring down the barrel of willful HIPAA violations. Leave the company as soon as humanly possible. Leave and hope that the blowback from the inevitable disclosure--which won't be from your company--is happy enough eating the executive team that remains. And get a personal lawyer who understands HIPAA and explore avenues for whistleblowing; turning over on…

The story exceeds my suspension of disbelief. What particular jumps out at me is the backwards details - nobody off the street knows what "TPA" means, sure, but everybody who's ever gone to see a doctor knows what HIPAA is, even if they think it's called "HIPPA".

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#175

Post by perl4ever » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 1:39 AM UTC

MFLoon wrote: post #151

throwaway58129 wrote: post #64

I didn't know this format was a thing and am so very excited to discover it. I hope you folks enjoy reading horror stories. I got a job as a Software Engineer in my current company 4.5 years ago; friend-of-a-friend sort of thing. The company had an apparently disastrous piece of software that was their main LOB. They had gone through pretty much every local consulting agency - at least once, on a few occasions they h…

I lost it at "What the fuck is HIPPA". Who the fuck buys a healthcare company and doesn't know what the fuck HIPPA is? Great read.

That's (purportedly) a quote from the person posting this on HN, not the purchaser of the company.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#176

Post by bartread » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 1:40 AM UTC

toop43 wrote: post #69

throwaway29488 wrote: post #2

Not with the job in particular, just want to take a break from tech especially from being a programmer. Tired of staring at a screen for 80% of my awake time and constant puzzle solving. Sick of people in this industry making you feel you're not smart enough, that you're not enough no matter how many times you prove yourself in past work.

> Sick of people in this industry making you feel you're not smart enough, that you're not enough no matter how many times you prove yourself in past work. Dealing with this in the heavy right now. I've built a lot in my 10 years as a programmer. Infinitely, and automatically scaled application server based on load. Hasn't crashed or had a single downtime ever since release. I've built mobile applications 100% myself…

> These fucking algorithms are killing me, and making me have a hard realization that maybe I'm just not cut out for this. Yea, I've built shit... but you know what... anyone could.

I wouldn't get too discouraged about this: they couldn't - not necessarily anything of value anyway.

I've worked enough places now where the product the business is built on was written by somebody who wasn't necessarily a great programmer, yet this "bad"[1] code is the foundation of the company's success and may be the sole reason they're able to pay me.

You can build a really successful business on really "shitty" tech.

[1] Inefficient, non-scalable, hard to follow, poorly architected, spaghetti code - call it what you will.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#177

Post by eropple » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 1:41 AM UTC

perl4ever wrote: post #174

eropple wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconded, hard. You can't spend that $165K a year when you're staring down the barrel of willful HIPAA violations. Leave the company as soon as humanly possible. Leave and hope that the blowback from the inevitable disclosure--which won't be from your company--is happy enough eating the executive team that remains. And get a personal lawyer who understands HIPAA and explore avenues for whistleblowing; turning over on…

The story exceeds my suspension of disbelief. What particular jumps out at me is the backwards details - nobody off the street knows what "TPA" means, sure, but everybody who's ever gone to see a doctor knows what HIPAA is, even if they think it's called "HIPPA".

Maybe it's bull. But it has the ring of truth to it, to me, and I've worked for a few healthcare startups. A lot of developers think of themselves as "just developers" and a lot of people are brutally incurious about the world until it hits them in the face.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#178

Post by kregasaurusrex » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 1:41 AM UTC

throwaway58129 wrote: post #64

I didn't know this format was a thing and am so very excited to discover it. I hope you folks enjoy reading horror stories. I got a job as a Software Engineer in my current company 4.5 years ago; friend-of-a-friend sort of thing. The company had an apparently disastrous piece of software that was their main LOB. They had gone through pretty much every local consulting agency - at least once, on a few occasions they h…

Thanks for sharing. Between your salary, stock options, 8% matching 401k, and being in the Midwest you can probably accomplish FIRE even faster than by age 40.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#179

Post by lacampbell » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 1:42 AM UTC

reificator wrote: post #102

rjplatte wrote: post #100

I'm the sole developer working on my current project, which is overhauling a massive DOS era application, as well as overhauling an early 2000s era CRM/business management tool, that almost all of our work happens through. Did I mention that the DOS application is a HIPAA billing application that must meet all HIPAA guidelines as well as write EDI X12 billing files? I'm very junior, been coding for ~5 years, 3 profes…

> working on non-version-controlled code, having been expressly forbidden from using ANY VC by the CEO I've been there. Run.

I'm bewildered as to why a CEO would have any opinion on version control at all. Or why you'd ask a CEO whether you could use one. It's like a builder asking a construction company CEO if he can hold a hammer lower in his hand and that CEO forbidding it. Can someone explain?

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#180

Post by dsfyu404ed » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 1:43 AM UTC

eropple wrote: post #148

uhhhhhhhh wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will echo other comments and say that I enjoyed this post. IANAL, however, in all seriousness... I think you should talk to a personal lawyer about your situation ASAP, especially now that you posted this publicly. HIPAA is not to be trifled with and now you've shared that you have knowledge of a breach. You've also provided enough detail in this post that (if found and traced back to you) could be used as proof that…

Seconded, hard. You can't spend that $165K a year when you're staring down the barrel of willful HIPAA violations. Leave the company as soon as humanly possible. Leave and hope that the blowback from the inevitable disclosure--which won't be from your company--is happy enough eating the executive team that remains. And get a personal lawyer who understands HIPAA and explore avenues for whistleblowing; turning over on…

>You can't spend that $165K a year when you're staring down the barrel of willful HIPAA violations.

It's much harder for the government to take back your $165k after you've spent it all. Sure they'll garnish your wages but they'll do that either way so you may as well live a little in the meantime.