What was the absolute worst programming job and why?
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Another one is one of my current projects. The client came with a small web application concept and called it a web widget. After talking to him I found out he needs a mobile messaging application with user accounts, subscription plans and support for multiple SMS gateways - which should be pluggable so that more gateways can be added later. At first he asked for a proof-of-concept application to see what I could do with a gateway, so I created it. It was thrown away and I still don't understand what he wanted it for... Then he insisted on having weekly meetings on Skype and discussing the project. I started writing a functional specification and creating UI mockups in Visio. After I worked on the mockups and the documentation he had some new features or changed his mind about something each week, so I was back to the 'drawing board'. I told him a few times to slow down and expressed my concern that we will be stuck designing forever if it goes like that and that we should have something working and then build on top of that instead. Meanwhile he told me he doesn't like Microsoft world because there are license costs and he would rather develop this using an open source server/framework/technology/language/whatever (%#$%# red flag for me!), yet he chose to hire me (a .NET developer) to do the job. But he wanted not to use Microsoft stuff if he could, so first we decided not to use ASP.NET controls and ASP.NET AJAX. I had to evaluate some other UI toolkits and chose ExtJS finally (it's great, by the way!). Then he said he would need custom attributes for contacts, in our terms it means implementing an Entity-Attribute Value[^] model. Every blog post I visited (even one where someone shown a complete implementation for MS SQL) said not to do it at all costs. Crap. Two weeks ago he told me they will need email support along the SMS functionality, but I asked him to defer it to a later phase. The whole process took about 130 hours of which we spent almost 20 hours talking about new features and reviewing the mockups, 30 hours spent evaluating toolkits and 3rd party web services and 44 hours writing the spec and working on the mockups. He is angry that he doesn't see any progress besides the functional spec and I heard yesterday that he would have expected to have the working application in that time and budge
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Straight out of college I took a position with a small family run business. It wasnt just that the job was bad (and the pay was pitiful), but my boss and I had serious communication issues. I literally was handed a napkin with some scribbles on it and was told that the scribbled notes were supposed to be the documentation for the project he had just sealed the deal on. Three months later when there was a critical part of the project that was missing he blamed me for missing it, because it was inside the folds of the napkin. And here I was thinking that all of the documentation was on the front, go figure. Later, when I was discussing my future with the company I expressed a desire to take on a bigger role, maybe lead the team through some projects. My boss was quick to tell me "this is a family company and you dont have the right last name for that type of position." A couple of weeks later I was handing in my resignation. Luckily, since then I have moved through some great learning positions and into a terrific job with a top notch team.
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Just about any you show up for and accept a wage/salary for. How about this: "We are converting legacy code that was written over 10 years in VB4 - VB6 to RealBasic for use in Mac environments" for $12 an hour. I'm a cook now.
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I'm assuming you're young and/or just getting started in the workplace? If I'm right here - just go with it. You can learn loads for free on the internet (I've never paid a dime for training anywhere, and the training that my employers have paid for has been no better than training I was able to find at no cost), and you should take every opportunity to do it - piss on what your old-guy control-freak bosses are telling you. You can learn a TON here too... If you have a question - post it! Regardless of whatever faces people put on, we're all just here, and while some may be more organized than you or seem to be more "together", you're just as capable as anyone if you put the time into it. And - if you aren't happy where you are - get your resume out there! It makes very little sense to say that your worst job ever is the one you currently have and NOT do that.
I like to think I'm young (33 y.o.) and am working for this company for 6 years now, previously as desktopadministrator, systemadministrator and networkadministrator. So the company isn't new. And internet is definitely very much filled with enough resources; that's where I got most of the stuff from for the software I wrote in the meantime (so yes, I was able to get some things going). But there is a point at which I don't know anymore where to look for some things. And I wouldn't dare to post newbie-questions in the forum(s) for which I should know the answer myself because of it being working knowledge for any level of programmer.... (no offence meant to this and/or other communities, just my own personal thoughts/feelings)... As for the resume-part... I've started treading that road... This workplace has been 'in development' for nearly two years, now, and only very little progress has been made (we've looked at trainings about a year ago, and still no trainings followed, for example, because of hesitation of the manager and sabotage from the CFO). Since I've been in IT for some years longer, I think I can say this is actually quite bad... (at least I hope never to have such a workplace again, be it in programming or sysadmin).... and now, let's barf a bit an be rid of it... ;)
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- It uses an Access database and we don't know the admin password. (true story)
Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface
Jon beat me to the punch! But mine is a combination of Access and "the bosses code". Since I like to type and just finished my second cup of coffee in less than an hour... here we go! At my first corporate job I was going to be a programmer analyst supporting a "suite of applications" which were really just MS Access databases split into a front end / back end setup. All 5 of them were completely written by the boss over the Christmas break the year before, to pitch our company to a study sponsor. I spent my first year learning VBA from a Visual Basic developer, Bill. As I grew my knowledge of VBA and learned of the drawbacks of the JET database engine for large datasets I started to think about alternatives. I know, I know, big mistake that thinking stuff. Anway, Bill listened to my suggestions on how I wanted to fix the bad code and maybe knowing what was ahead and wanting me to learn my lesson, he helped me out. My big plan (and mistake as it turned out) was to replace the monster function that printed reports. To add a new report you had to add yet another if statement to a string of about 85 of them and off you went. I thought that could be improved upon and created a looping function that cycled through all the checkboxes on the reports form with a certain naming convention, then looked up the report name in the database. Not brilliant but better, I thought. I completed it, updated the function in QA and ran some tests with Bill. All was well. The changes went to production for one of our studies. Everything came crashing down because the backend database hand't been updated. I was hung for it and managed to salvage my job only because the boss was not well liked and was already on his way out. I was moved into a project lead role for the system that was going to replace the now notorius MS Access applications where I spent the rest of my time at the company. The boss left quietly and the last I heard those databases were still being used, although only one developer is still on staff who knows how they worked.
Mike Devenney
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The worst I had was writing an interface between a retail banking system and the cash drawer hardware. The spec was simply JFDI. My boss had every faith that I would deliver and I did. Due to some clever shinnangans, we were tripple billing the client for my time and I got a nice little bonus; no complaint there. The "worst" part was that while I was doing the work I was also supporting the migration of the bank from its old (really bad) system to our new (best in field ;P) system. The migration haqd to be done outside banking hours so it meant working nights in an office the size of a rugby pitch with three people in it. Me, an un-named and ever changing security guard, and the bank's migration manager. He was a complete 'next Tuesday' and had bad-breath to boot. I would do anything to avoid him and he would use any excuse to come over to talk. The only solution was to go to the pub BEFORE work. I started around midnight and worked through to sometime after eight when my boss came in and released me from torment. I spent tfour weeks not seeing any one, sleeping all day, going to work half cut, writing an unspecced interface to stupid hardware and finishing early mornings. Great days! [And Pete, if your reading this, I wasn't /that/ drunk...]
Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done.
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Anything that includes one or more of the following statements: - I just need a button that... - We had this system developed for us and would like you to... - It shouldn't be too hard to do... - Our last programmer was on drugs... (true story) - Do you know Lotus Notes? - We have an old system that we want converted to :insert language here: (as if it will happen by magic?!!??!!) - No, we don't have the source code - do you need it? (again, true story) Feel free to add to the list!!
-------------------------------------------------------- Knowledge is knowing that the tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in fruit salad!!
_Damian S_ wrote:
We had this system developed for us and would like you to...
That is how my last job started out. They wanted their system rewritten. The original took over 2 years. After I had been there 7 months and made some good progress on the core of the project they came and said we need you to set up this customer on your system. The system not being complete yet, I had to jump through some hoops to get it to work. After that I was never able to get back to making the darn thing work the way that it was supposed to. I was let go just before one year because they suddenly were loosing customers. And of course it had to be my fault.
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The worst I had was writing an interface between a retail banking system and the cash drawer hardware. The spec was simply JFDI. My boss had every faith that I would deliver and I did. Due to some clever shinnangans, we were tripple billing the client for my time and I got a nice little bonus; no complaint there. The "worst" part was that while I was doing the work I was also supporting the migration of the bank from its old (really bad) system to our new (best in field ;P) system. The migration haqd to be done outside banking hours so it meant working nights in an office the size of a rugby pitch with three people in it. Me, an un-named and ever changing security guard, and the bank's migration manager. He was a complete 'next Tuesday' and had bad-breath to boot. I would do anything to avoid him and he would use any excuse to come over to talk. The only solution was to go to the pub BEFORE work. I started around midnight and worked through to sometime after eight when my boss came in and released me from torment. I spent tfour weeks not seeing any one, sleeping all day, going to work half cut, writing an unspecced interface to stupid hardware and finishing early mornings. Great days! [And Pete, if your reading this, I wasn't /that/ drunk...]
Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done.
It started out as a good job, creating web apps with PHP. After I completed the first major project, they decided to make the HR lady the project manager on the 2nd major project. The HR lady had no clue to programing, workflow or anything close to application development. Her concern was to make it look "pretty" first and then worry about the data intergration. We had conflicts on a daily basis and in three weeks, I was given my walking papers. She sucked!
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I've liked most of my programming jobs in the last 32 years ... but there was ONE ... About 10 years ago I was hired by a large financial company to work on interfaces to a large loan origination package. As a senior-level developer I figured I'd be doing some new development. Not so. The first 2 months I was on this particular job they had me writing Install-Shield scripts! Then after that was done they had me doing piece-meal bug-fixing and maintenance on some of these interfaces that were already thrown together by some other contractor. Horrible code. I wouldn't hire the developer of those things to cut my lawn! When I wouldn't give in to management pressure to turn a "sows ear" into a "silk purse" in an impossible amount of time they fired me ... on the 89th day of my 90-day "probation period". When in my exit interview the guy didn't even want to know why I was let go. I was able to collect unemployment, though, because the company couldn't give a valid explanation to the unemployment agency why I had been let go. (Normally you don't get Unemployment if fired, at least in FL). I learned a couple of years later from the guy I had worked for there that the company liked to hire "contractors" for 89 days, then axe them so they didn't have to pay benefits. Sheesh. I've been with my present company 9 years since that one. -CB
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It started out as a good job, creating web apps with PHP. After I completed the first major project, they decided to make the HR lady the project manager on the 2nd major project. The HR lady had no clue to programing, workflow or anything close to application development. Her concern was to make it look "pretty" first and then worry about the data intergration. We had conflicts on a daily basis and in three weeks, I was given my walking papers. She sucked!
James Hendrix wrote:
HR lady
That's the problem. She probably failed 3 from 3: Human? Resource? Lady? ;P
Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done.
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James Hendrix wrote:
HR lady
That's the problem. She probably failed 3 from 3: Human? Resource? Lady? ;P
Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done.
I was in shock when I found out she was going to be in charge of that project. And of course, with her being the HR person, really had no where else to turn. After I left, things got much better for me (salary and working conditions).
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This should be fun: -getting hired to work on a .NET application only to find out it is VB6 -sitting down the first month to a WIN98 PC while it's owner is on vacation -waiting 3 months for my very own copy of Visual Studio -no development process whatsoever -code stored all over the network in random locations -no source control -PHP,Perl,VB6,Java,C++,.NET(C# and VB),ASP,Batch files, Linux,Windows, etc. all rolled into one! -A boss who used to program 30 years ago -spending half your day everyday in meetings -requirements change, deadlines don't (ever, no matter what) This is all in the last job I had, one employer. I can't believe I stayed a year and a half.
"Half this game is ninety percent mental." - Yogi Berra If you can read thank a teacher, if you can read in English, thank a Marine.
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I'd like to see some real world examples showing that it actually works. I'm interested in agile methodologies but pair programming... I don't know. Does that mean the client pays for two full-time developers working on one routine at the same time (one is a backseater)? Everyone has a different coding style and it may lead to the exact situation that you depicted (fighting). Maybe pair programming is good when you need to improve performance of some routines/modules? Maybe if it involves a complex algorithm it's better to have two brains to think about it? But otherwise than that wouldn't unit tests, naming conventions and coding standards be enough?
My only experience with paired programming was good. With a single programmer there are delays when you get stuck on something and have to figure out a workaround. With two programmers working together, these delays happen much less often. Mistrakes are less frequent too. There are also more good ideas on how to proceed. Also both programmers often pick up tricks from each other. Another advantage is that two people are now familiar with that section of code. I think it's good to change pairings every few weeks.
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My predecessor was from India and used some kind of Farsi-derivative language for variable/class/namespace declarations. If that isn't bad enough, he wrote virtually everything in VBScript: ASP.NET pages with embedded VBScript; JSP pages with VBScript embedded in client-side script blocks; PHP pages with VBScript embedded in client-side script blocks; C# desktop applications that rely on external .vbs scripts; etc. After 2 years, I only have 17 more apps to rebuild, then this'll be the greatest job ever.
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This should be fun: -getting hired to work on a .NET application only to find out it is VB6 -sitting down the first month to a WIN98 PC while it's owner is on vacation -waiting 3 months for my very own copy of Visual Studio -no development process whatsoever -code stored all over the network in random locations -no source control -PHP,Perl,VB6,Java,C++,.NET(C# and VB),ASP,Batch files, Linux,Windows, etc. all rolled into one! -A boss who used to program 30 years ago -spending half your day everyday in meetings -requirements change, deadlines don't (ever, no matter what) This is all in the last job I had, one employer. I can't believe I stayed a year and a half.
"Half this game is ninety percent mental." - Yogi Berra If you can read thank a teacher, if you can read in English, thank a Marine.
Brent Lamborn wrote:
-A boss who used to program 30 years ago
Don'cha just LOVE them :|
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Ignorance is bliss - for the ignorant... Its hell for the rest of us. My fav was a job where nobody had ever figured out how to add dates... The result was a whole new month that occured yearly and a system in which every month had only 28 days. Nice!
VanityClaw wrote:
result was a whole new month that occured yearly and a system in which every month had only 28 days
:omg: There's a concept around here known as 13th salary. Sort of like an annual bonus. I never figured out how they came up with the name. Until now! :laugh:
To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.
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That sounds par for the course for most game companies :-D (I'm currently at my fourth one, after two shut-downs and a lay off...)
There are three kinds of people in the world - those who can count and those who can't...
Did you work at Flagship Studios?
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Anything that includes one or more of the following statements: - I just need a button that... - We had this system developed for us and would like you to... - It shouldn't be too hard to do... - Our last programmer was on drugs... (true story) - Do you know Lotus Notes? - We have an old system that we want converted to :insert language here: (as if it will happen by magic?!!??!!) - No, we don't have the source code - do you need it? (again, true story) Feel free to add to the list!!
-------------------------------------------------------- Knowledge is knowing that the tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in fruit salad!!
yes, - "It's just data." - "My wife and I run a business out of our house" - "Our current hosting company won't return our phone calls."
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Brent Lamborn wrote:
-A boss who used to program 30 years ago
Don'cha just LOVE them :|
My last manager didn't have a CS degree (I think he was into physics) but learned to "program" RPG on iSeries. I heard bad things about his code from some people, he also used to say that software architecture is just a gold-plating. ;) After working there for a few years he got eventually promoted to be a manager of a team of 15 or so developers. I don't know how this works, perhaps it's because it was not a software house, but come on... Seeing such things you gotta think of Scott Adams' Dilbert as a real story.