What was the absolute worst programming job and why?
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Schedule gave me 6 months to do my part of the work, and another 3 months to do performance tuning and tweaking. A hard push, but just maybe possible. The schedule also showed a progress demo in 3 months to the customer. Scheduled for the demo: my part of the project, done, tuned and tweaked. Manager insisted that my schedule stood -- I had 6 months to get my part up and running, and another 3 to tune -- and also that the demo schedule stood (they had to have some progress to show the customer). Manager ignored the logical inconsistency there. Come demo, my part was done, tuned and tweaked, and (gasp) stable. I was so tired I fell off my bike on the way home a few weeks later, breaking my leg and tearing up my ankle. That was a fun summer :)
patbob
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I got brought in on contract to help out a team. I was switching a Paradox database to Oracle, using SQL embedded in C++. That part was cool, but the manager brought me in to help out a group that didn't think they needed help. It was like pulling teeth to get the others to let me know anything about what had been done or what was expected. I completed the work, but didn't ask if they wanted me to do more.
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The job I had for 4 or so weeks at a game company where the lead guy was reinventing the 3D engine and the company ran out of money and didn't tell their employees, leading them on with "I'll get your checks in a couple days" and then one day, the people financing the game (who stopped financing it, obviously) came in in the middle of the night and took all the computer equipment (which was their property so they had every right to do so.) Marc
Another game-related disaster for your amusement. The plan was to re-use an existing game's engine to create a game of a different genre. The problem is that there was no identifiable engine layer, it was written from the gound up to be exactly what it was. -The product at one time had 5 lead designers, some of which were unable to tell me definitively who was in charge of what. -For some time, both the lead programer and the creative director were contractors. -The game could never figure out what it wanted to be. Originally slated for an on-line service that never materialized, the game was practically re-invented twice mid-development. -Our level designer seemed more interested in tinkering with photoshop than doing his work. -The game passed off between 5 producers/managers throught it's dev cycle. I could go on, but you get the picture. Against the better judgement of many, the game was eventually released. As for quality, let's just say that one of the game's more talented designers referred to it as "colon blow" and insisted that he be removed from the credits.
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I recently worked for a small IT consulting company that posted on their website technologies that none of the employees knew or had any experience in. If one of us by chance had read an article or book on a technology, that was enough for them to put on the website that we could provide excellent resources to provide consulting. It's no wonder hardly any of the projects ended on a good note.
mgdth
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Another game-related disaster for your amusement. The plan was to re-use an existing game's engine to create a game of a different genre. The problem is that there was no identifiable engine layer, it was written from the gound up to be exactly what it was. -The product at one time had 5 lead designers, some of which were unable to tell me definitively who was in charge of what. -For some time, both the lead programer and the creative director were contractors. -The game could never figure out what it wanted to be. Originally slated for an on-line service that never materialized, the game was practically re-invented twice mid-development. -Our level designer seemed more interested in tinkering with photoshop than doing his work. -The game passed off between 5 producers/managers throught it's dev cycle. I could go on, but you get the picture. Against the better judgement of many, the game was eventually released. As for quality, let's just say that one of the game's more talented designers referred to it as "colon blow" and insisted that he be removed from the credits.
Sounds like most games these days.
Todd Smith
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not an actual story - more of an educated guess Being a coder on the CP website - imagine having your code being in front of that many nit pickers ;) Bryce
MCP --- To paraphrase Fred Dagg - the views expressed in this post are bloody good ones. --
Publitor, making Pubmed easy. http://www.sohocode.com/publitorOur kids books :The Snot Goblin, and Book 2 - the Snotgoblin and Fluff
bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep errr Great job! I love CP. Throw bob a high-five for me next time you see him. Then check your drink.
Todd Smith
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I've owned a development shop with a decent sized staff for 8 years now. I'm only 30 but I've seen a lot of projects gone wrong (and quite a few that have gone right as well). The absolute worst stories seem to come from web projects with a seperate marketing company involved. The marketing company claims they have a technology focus, which usually translates into no understanding of the web whatsoever. (Don't get me started on the BS that seems to be tolerated in the marketing world.) Anyways, the project was with very well known pizza delivery company, which the marketing "company" tricked into working with them. I say tricked because, had the pizza company known how unorganized and inexperienced, the two jokers that owned the marketing "company" were, they would have decided against working with them. We in turn, were hired by the marketing "company" to produce a system for email broadcasts from corporate, that management could add local content to before sending out. Sounds fun until we started working with the marketing jokers. Instead of being honest like most of our strategic partners, they lied to the pizza company, explaining that we were their employees. I didn't like the lie, but we had a project to complete. So as time went by we learned how one white lie can turn into a huge mess. This was mostly due to the fact that the marketing "company" decided that they wanted to keep both sides of their tricky web of lies in the dark. For example, every time we needed technical clarification on say, data definitions, the marketing "company" wanted to get involved. So what should have been a 10 minute phone call turns into a 3 hour waste of time. We would have meetings about meetings, and sometimes we could see how much the pizza company patronized the marketing "company" during the conferences which was always good for a laugh. (As a general rule to those out there starting their own companies, big corporations smell BS the best. Honesty is the best policy.) They could see right through the two yo-yos running the project. At this point most people with integrity would wash their hands clean and confess. But these idiots told more lies and made things only worse. Needless to say, the whole thing fell apart. We did have some successful run-throughs, but due to our lack of any type of control, we could not react and adapt the way we needed to as things changed. The marketing "company" had a hot mess on their hands and because of their management "techniques" we were unable to help them
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Maybe not my worst job but the same result. Got given wave 2 of a project that was originally set up by my boss. The whole thing went horribly wrong and over budget for a variety of reasons mostly Fuzzy spec (written and approved by my boss) so not what the client actually wanted Tasks agreed (by my boss) with the client but not included in the budget(controlled by my boss) so way over budget Got slaughtered by my boss for the projects problems and no bonus or pay rise as a result. The bit I loved the most was finding a "Post Mortem" report from my bosses original wave 1 setup from before I joined (which it seems also went wrong for exactly the same reasons) detailing what went wrong and how these problems must avoided in the future.
KungFuCoder wrote:
The bit I loved the most was finding a "Post Mortem" report from my bosses original wave 1 setup from before I joined (which it seems also went wrong for exactly the same reasons) detailing what went wrong and how these problems must avoided in the future.
Synopsis: It's easier to blame the new guy than it is to fix the broken process. Lesson learned: Never be the new guy. :)
Mike Poz
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Me: Do you have any coding standards? Boss: We have no coding standards, you can write it any way you like. Later I turn in some code. Boss: We don't do it that way here.
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Did you work at Flagship Studios?
Marc Arbesman wrote:
Did you work at Flagship Studios?
LOL - luckily, no. Seems to be at least a company a week goes to the wall in the games biz though. Hopefully my current one will last a bit longer...
There are three kinds of people in the world - those who can count and those who can't...
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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!!