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Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

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Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#391

Post by snapetom »

My last day at work is Friday.

I was hired three years ago to write web apps for a major children's hospital, but given no web servers to run the apps. That hasn't changed much.

Let me repeat that. My job is to write web apps. I have no servers.

The first "servers" I was given were three old RedHat boxes that were used in a share environment by researchers. Ports to the box weren't open and basically everyone was root to install whatever they wanted.

The second set of "servers" I was given was this "enterprise solution" called BlueData. It basically runs crippled versions of open source software and to top it off, our "DevOps" team did things like not open any ports to the farm and set up one command line ingress to it.

I spent years arguing this was insane and I finally had it. It was low stress and I hardly did any work, but at the end of the day, I didn't feel good about taking salary for money that can go directly to children's care.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#392

Post by puranjay »

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…

Amazing. I know I shouldn't be laughing at the expense of your misery but this sounds like something straight from The Office.

How are people like this able to become CEOs and attract investors? Does it just take a shit load of lying and knowing a lot of people?

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#393

Post by wbl »

marrone12 wrote: post #242
house9-2 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> working on non-version-controlled code, having been expressly forbidden from using ANY VC by the CEO Version Control is a basic requirement of professional software development in this day and age. You could try explaining to your CEO it would be like telling a carpenter they can't use a hammer to build your new house. Or just take the initiative and use Version Control without telling them. In my mind it isn't som…

This is bad advice. If you accidentally leave personally identifiable healthcare information on some random stage server and that server gets hacked, that is a federal crime. If the data and application code are very intertwined (likely in a pre-SOA era), it can be very difficult to version control code completely isolated from PII.

Huh? Why would the code have medical data in it?

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#394

Post by [deleted] »

selimthegrim wrote: post #15
anon4lol wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not. They should do what I do -- silently "crop dust" the other cubicles as I drift past on my way to an unimportant meeting. But seriously, I have a cubicle-mate that goes through a box of tissues every two days. He is constantly grunting and blowing his nose. He also spends 15 minutes brushing and flossing in the bathroom twice per day. I say 15 minutes, because he has his phone propped up with a timer. Every…

He clearly reads McSweeney's - https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-brush-my-teeth-at-work... > You retreat to the furthest stall for your afternoon constitutional. Perhaps you hope to wait me out, but you underestimate my resolve. Dentists recommend brushing for 2 to 3 minutes, but I will be here for a minimum of 10 minutes — possibly 15 — to ensure that I’ll be seen by as many coworkers as possible. Yes, I will st…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#395

Post by throwaway7137 »

voidhorse wrote: post #259
throwaway7137 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tried that approach and got told I was condescending.

Thats cause it is. its snarky. solving someones problem and telling them they could be doing something better are two different things. its often offensive to mix the two. it also shows an incredible lack of empathy—sometimes someone is asking you something because theyre swamped and you seemed helpful, if you respond like that theyll go from thinking youre helpful to thinking you’re a know it all jerk. heres a bette…

I'm less sure that works when I'm the one that wrote most of the docs. But thanks, yeah, I understand how it can come off.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#396

Post by brokenmachine »

selimthegrim wrote: post #15
anon4lol wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not. They should do what I do -- silently "crop dust" the other cubicles as I drift past on my way to an unimportant meeting. But seriously, I have a cubicle-mate that goes through a box of tissues every two days. He is constantly grunting and blowing his nose. He also spends 15 minutes brushing and flossing in the bathroom twice per day. I say 15 minutes, because he has his phone propped up with a timer. Every…

He clearly reads McSweeney's - https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-brush-my-teeth-at-work... > You retreat to the furthest stall for your afternoon constitutional. Perhaps you hope to wait me out, but you underestimate my resolve. Dentists recommend brushing for 2 to 3 minutes, but I will be here for a minimum of 10 minutes — possibly 15 — to ensure that I’ll be seen by as many coworkers as possible. Yes, I will st…

I guess it's all a matter of perspective, but I'd just be thinking he's some kind of weird loser with OCD that can't manage his own personal grooming at home, but for some reason isn't bothered by spending a lot of time in a public toilet.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#397

Post by PeterStuer »

Side note:

Over here employers must give you a notice of termination, the length of which depends on how long you worked for the company. For employees with over a decade of loyalty, this period can be a year or more.

The intent is that a worker can get enough time to find a new employment.

The regulation has a perverse effect. As an employee who is on notice is generally no longer trusted to prioritise the company's best interest, the practise is to just pay out the wages for the notice period but prevent further access to the business and its clients.

This makes firing someone with enough tenure an expensive deal.

There are two ways around this. (1) If you can fire someone for 'grave and urgent resons', let's say you caught them stealing from the till, the the termination period does not hold, and you can fire them on the spot. Problem is that 'grave and urgent' is not a very well defined concept, and therefore is open to abuse. You got ill and did not submit a doctor's notice within 24hrs to HR? That is formally 'illegal absense' and could be a 'grave and urgent' termination offense.

(2) The notice period is reversed in case it is the employee quits. Then they have to give the company the lengthy notice. Same as above the employee is usually alowwed to leave much sooner if he agrees to tie up some loose ends and do a handover. In practice many employees that a company wants to fire will be nudged/pestered into quitting by making their work more difficult or less attractive.

The regulation is well intended and for the right reasons, but fails in practice.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#398

Post by EdgarVerona »

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…

I was sort of in a similar situation when I was your age - in over my head at a complex project where the owner had never heard of version control (though in my case, I was too green to realize that it even existed). They had 30 copies of the same software, one in a folder on a shared hard drive for each customer. If there was a bug and it wasn't specific to a customer, you had to go fix it in 30 different places.

I promise you, if they don't want to provide version control they aren't going to provide you with other benefits and necessities that you deserve.

Related questions to benefits and necessities:

* Are you getting healthcare? * How is your pay compared to other Jr. software engineers in your area? * Are they paying you hourly? If so, are they actually paying you for hours worked, or are they finding ways to reduce that number of hours? * What if you demanded that they used version control, and brought your best arguments: what would they say?

Consider the answers to those questions, and if you don't like the answers, I strongly urge you to leave. There's a complacency that can come with "settling" for a place that is a "known constant." Don't settle here, when you deserve more.

Put what you've done on a resume, and give it to a headhunter. They will find you a better job - maybe not an ideal job, but a step up. And your career will truly begin.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#399

Post by wbl »

reificator wrote: post #119
rjplatte wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He thinks it's all cloud based. It's sad, yes. I honestly enjoy the work when I know what's going on. We have a lot of unique problems to solve, and I have gotten positive changes made, as well as some really good weeks where I pounded out some good code, but other times it's slow, sad, and frustrating.

https://gitea.io/en-us/ (and its parent https://gogs.io/ ) https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/#self-managed https://github.com/enterprise

?? Git works just fine without any of that. CVS has been around since 1990, RCS since 1982. And SCCS is old enough to be OP's father.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#400

Post by ju577ry »

huntie wrote: post #346

I work in a factory and I see all of the problems my older coworkers have. Along with that I think the company wants to move the whole plant to Mexico so there is no long-term job security. I've learned programming in my spare time but when I've tried applying for jobs I didn't get a response, which I assume is because I don't have a degree. I've been trying to get back into university but I'm not sure that it will h…

I decided to make an account to comment on this. Build things, put them on github, write 500 words about it, add to resume, repeat.
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