Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

541–550 of 862 posts

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#541

Post by 29athrowaway »

halfer53 wrote: post #430
dav1app wrote: post #403

On my last job, a new manager called me for a meeting on Friday 4PM. I spent the whole month on an extremely stressful project. The meeting was about an app that integrates credit card payments, billets and bank account on a terminal that is going to be available to the general public. The deadline? 11PM of the same day. Final version. From 0 to 100% in 6 hours. I said that it was impossible. He said that I was incap…

This is one of the reason I hate about PIP( performance improvement program). They set ridiculous goals for you in very short amount of time that nobody can possibly complete, then fire you on grounds of incompetence. A friend of mine who works in Facebook told me that an employee committed suicide due to the pressure of PIP. I suspect that guy was put into PIP due to poor rating (meet most), then was given a ridicul…

Performance improvement plans are a way for companies to keep a paper trail for legal purposes, rather than a effort to improve performance.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#542

Post by epiphanitus »

theanine wrote: post #85

I wrote about my experience at my current job a few weeks ago [1]. I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for all your support. I recently got an offer for the field I've always wanted to be in, with around a $25k pay raise too. It's such a huge weight off my shoulders to finally see a way out and I feel so much better, basic things like my appetite are back and I don't dread waking up. I already have so much more f…

Seattlelite here. So glad to hear you found a better job! Those hell gigs can really crush you.

Just to warn you it can get dark and rainy this time of year but there's plenty to do.

Recommended:

- The Underground Tour. A fascinating historical tour of the seedy gold-rush roots of the city.

- Pike Place Market. It's an iconic Seattle spot that has great food, a great view and great people watching.

- The Ballard Locks. This is the mechanism that keeps Lake Washington from draining into the ocean while allowing fish to pass through. Go when the weathers good.

- Mt. Rainier, the Cascades, great for hiking and skiing if the weather permits

- Breweries. We have tons of great craft beer, and our coffee is legendary too

Not recommended:

- The gum wall. This landmark is the grossest excuse for a tourist trap ever conceived.

- Driving in, out, or around the city on weekdays between 7 and 11AM or 3 and 7 PM. You're going to have a very bad timmeee...

Have fun!

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#544

Post by croh »

throwawaymyjob wrote: post #37

Please sign me up! I had at least a dozen projects in as many months started, reach a completed state, then canceled. I'm on a very small team, I am the only expert in infrastructure, but all infrastructure code is reviewed by the lead engineer who is a complete novice at AWS/GCP. I've written thousands of words of documentation and had entire weeks of phone calls to explain what is going on and the rationale behind…

> The problem is, I believe in the company, even if my team is killing me.

This is the real problem. Don't trust company. It is not yours. They will throw you when then don't need you. Better spend time on your well being and get better job.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#545

Post by isthis1984 »

I work in this place where I've made quite a few nice products the management are selling, they are, in part, keeping the company competitive. However they spend all their time trying to convince me that the work I do is crap and they could do it themselves easily (they're developers to - its a small company).

There is this continuing comedy where a bug or enhancement arrives and they say they'll do it - we don't need you (implied). I say sure, and they fiddle around for days or weeks, occasionally a small one is fixed, but usually they just fiddle around the edges. Eventually they give up and I do the work, and they spend all their time trying to poke holes in what I do so they can prove that they don't need me.

I asked for a couple of pay rises initially and they don't want to pay me more. Here's the bit that really gets me - this has been going on for a couple of years, and competitors products are overtaking ours which were leading edge. They spend all their time saying they don't need me and to the extent that they're actually hurting their business.

I've given up a long time ago and have moved to part time and I'm developing my own business, so I don't really care, the cash coming in is enough to keep me going, so all good. They still keep asking me to go back full time, but they don't need me, and they don't need anything changed. It truely is the most bizarre experience.

(It feels good sharing this :-) )

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#546

Post by spag1024 »

rogy wrote: post #525
CubicsRube wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TechLead, a youtuber that worked at Facebook, has covered this story [0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbEQriZEfoI

Everytime I see one of this guys videos pop up I can't help but this he's a bit of a parasite. Leaching off anything for views. He doesn't seem to provide any valuable advice in any video I've watched, yet people lap it up (although his following have a very distinct demographic)

What's the demographic?

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#548

Post by sah2ed »

croh wrote: post #533
ibudiallo wrote: post #447

2017, due to a misconfiguration or lack thereof, the system that manages 250k employees marked me as terminated. Security came to my desk and escorted me out of the building like a criminal. I was hired back 3 weeks later, with a small apology and no pay. I looked for another opportunity right away and quit the job. Today, I design and build automated systems for a startup. I made sure that the "AI" has a big red but…

interesting. I thought it only happens in movies.

Based on the gp's handle, I believe the full story [0] had been posted here [1] before:

0: https://idiallo.com/blog/when-a-machine-fired-me

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17350645

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#549

Post by isthis1984 »

Porthos9K wrote: post #429
Waterluvian wrote: post #72

I don't want to be fired. I absolutely love my job and the people I work with. But I can just smell that we are about to hit a sticking point with how I don't do on call (it was never mentioned in the interviews or part of my contract) and I don't respond to work after 5pm. If it does come to that sticking point I'm trying to figure out how to be the most assertive and diplomatic. I.e. How do I convey that I badly wa…

Start with, "Fuck you, pay me." If you try to be diplomatic with people who are trying to take advantage of you, they will eat you alive.

sadly I feel this is the best advice. Modern management are a bunch of feeding piranha when it comes to people who can do stuff.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#550

Post by antihero »

Had a job working for an online gardening shop, where I was on minimum wage and despite being a junior I was probably one of the more switched on devs there (I had to convince everyone to use a git when joining, previously they edited files directly via SFTP on the prod oscommerce site that had not been updated in 6 or so years and had lots of config.php.2009.barry.bak type shit going on).

Someone not in the IT department went around our back (held us in disdain because we pushed back with his silly demands and deadlines) and got an outsourced team to build us a solution to replace our proprietary accounting software, which needed to tap into the accounting software's MSSQL db, and our ageing OSCommerce MySQL database.

Because he didn't talk to us, the spec was completely absurd and he didn't even mention that there were two completely different databases.

So my task was basically to take the immensely poor quality, wrongly specced code, and "make it work". Think having to chew through a giant class with literally thousands of mysql_ (no escaping or anything like that) queries and having to rewrite them either using PDO or the mssql extension. I think I lasted about a week on this project before I got up from my desk and left, never to return.

Post reply on HN