Have you ever seen someone claim other peoples code?
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A lot of times I would have just liked to have handed them one of my personal libraries to show that I actually know what I am doing. I do understand the problem with that, they actually cannot know if you were the one who wrote it. Although, if they seen it and were willing to talk about it, they would know instantly who the author was. About 20 years ago I spent some time fixing and then playing around with a program that I had found on a bulletin board. It was a lot of fun, but I never would have claimed to have created the original. A couple of weeks latter, a young man comes in for a job interview and he decides it would be a good idea to show us a program he had written. In less than 30 seconds I got up and fired up the same program on my machine. I think the actual code had originally been written before he was born (I could be wrong). Suffice it to say, he did not get the job. :laugh:
INTP "Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra "I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
I once had to write an interface for a PLC I had never worked with. Their docs had a sample to read from it but nothing on how to write to it. I figured out how to do it and the company's rep asked me to send him the code. Imagine my surprise when the next revision of their documentation included MY code as a sample of how to write to it. Of course, there was no acknowledgement what so ever.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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An ex co-worker wrote his LinkedIn profile in such a way that made it sound like he almost singlehandedly wrote all the software when he actually barely worked on some of the projects.
I used to do a lot of tech interviews -- I'd receive resumes where the candidate appeared to have done everything on a project, using a wide range of in-demand technologies. During the interview I'd figure out he had done a trivial part and didn't understand most of the technologies involved, much less use them. This taught me about reading resumes. These resumes typically stated the technologies used in the project but did not specifically claim the candidate worked with them. Technically, these guys didn't lie, but anyone reading the resume quickly would assume wrongly.
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I was working for a company where the team lead was very close to the manager. I made a fix to some of his code and got in trouble because of it. It turned out that he had seen my fix and then had gone to the manager and proposed my fix as his solution to the issue. When I later reported my fix in the weekly reports, I was censured for claiming his work as my own! I had only been with the company a short while whereas he had been there for years - therefore... I left as soon as I could.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
This is among the reasons I like version control. It helps keep people honest. Or it keeps them busy trying to get around revision control ...
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I once had to write an interface for a PLC I had never worked with. Their docs had a sample to read from it but nothing on how to write to it. I figured out how to do it and the company's rep asked me to send him the code. Imagine my surprise when the next revision of their documentation included MY code as a sample of how to write to it. Of course, there was no acknowledgement what so ever.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
Rick York wrote:
included MY code as a sample of how to write to it. Of course, there was no acknowledgement what so ever.
And that's what it annoys me most... damn... saying thank you and giving a note of "written by XXX" is not that much energy wasted.
M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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I once had to write an interface for a PLC I had never worked with. Their docs had a sample to read from it but nothing on how to write to it. I figured out how to do it and the company's rep asked me to send him the code. Imagine my surprise when the next revision of their documentation included MY code as a sample of how to write to it. Of course, there was no acknowledgement what so ever.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
I had developed some novel aircraft telemetry monitoring analysis code for my current employer - who did not pay well and my manager treated me like a second class citizen because I impressed his manager with my working code. Anyway, that's another story. Needless to say I was looking for another job to escape to. I went for an interview with another company doing similar work on helicopters, not a direct rival. I spent all day there meeting managers and engineers who all treated me with respect and friendly professionalism. They went into great detail about how they did their telemetry work. They bought me lunch at their canteen and talked a lot about what I had developed. A few of the questions were along the lines of, "We have a problem doing X, how would you solve it?" This was a great bragging opportunity for me as I was a young programmer who hadn't ever been treated this well in my current position. After lunch one of their engineers came up with some follow-up questions, based on my answers earlier. They then asked if I could meet with more of their people tomorrow and offered to put me up at hotel overnight. I realized they weren't interviewing me, they were picking my brains on how to solve issues they had - I was being used as an unpaid consultant (not counting lunch and hotel expenses). I was quite shocked as they had appeared to be a large, reputable company. At this point, I had been there over six hours and, as the technical questions got very specific, I said I couldn't say any more due to confidentiality and security restrictions. They immediately wrapped up the questioning and started talking about when I could start and hinting at how much they would pay me, even offering some minimal relocation expenses. It turns out they paid as poorly as my current employer and the relocation expenses was an advance on my salary which I would have to pay back over a year. I made excuses about catching the last train (I actually drove down) and made an exit. A random guy working in the office was assigned to escort me off site and I chatted with him. He quite openly referred to the company as interesting to work for when things went well for but a "skinflint" operation who often fired people who complained too much and that things hadn't been going well recently. I obviously didn't take the job and, in less than a year, the company went bankrupt and were bought out by a foreign rival. Maybe I could have saved them with my technical knowledge and amazing code skills, but probably not.
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Rick York wrote:
included MY code as a sample of how to write to it. Of course, there was no acknowledgement what so ever.
And that's what it annoys me most... damn... saying thank you and giving a note of "written by XXX" is not that much energy wasted.
M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
I forgot to mention the REALLY annoying part - they removed my "written by" note in the code. That really chapped my backside.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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A lot of times I would have just liked to have handed them one of my personal libraries to show that I actually know what I am doing. I do understand the problem with that, they actually cannot know if you were the one who wrote it. Although, if they seen it and were willing to talk about it, they would know instantly who the author was. About 20 years ago I spent some time fixing and then playing around with a program that I had found on a bulletin board. It was a lot of fun, but I never would have claimed to have created the original. A couple of weeks latter, a young man comes in for a job interview and he decides it would be a good idea to show us a program he had written. In less than 30 seconds I got up and fired up the same program on my machine. I think the actual code had originally been written before he was born (I could be wrong). Suffice it to say, he did not get the job. :laugh:
INTP "Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra "I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
No but I have had someone claim my entire job, I had a contract with Dell Australia leading a small team of 4, a year after the contract finished successfully I happened across the junior devs linkedin profile where he claimed he was the lead developer on the project. I let him live as he had moved to the US and was concentrating on sharepoint, which he was welcome to.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity - RAH I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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I forgot to mention the REALLY annoying part - they removed my "written by" note in the code. That really chapped my backside.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
:wtf: :wtf: :omg: :omg: :omg: :wtf: :wtf: WHAT? I would have made some noise with that... :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:
M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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[this is 40 years ago but ...] I was coding for a graph plotter (physical pens pushed left / right by server motors, on long rolls of paper driven forwards / backwards on a roller) using a 'backend' driver. The driver was very buggy but we had been sent the source code. I fixed loads of bugs, made some sections more efficient, and added missing features. I then sent it to the supplier as a kind of issues / bug report. There was no acknowledgement from them; but later they issued a new release which only consisted of my fixes (with minor source code layout changes). I do not know whether we were charged for the upgrade or not.
Well what do you know. An original hacker. That is were the term came from, MIT students (I think) modifying the original code that was supplied with the equipment, a printer as a matter of fact. They would make improvements and send them back to the company. The company would use them in the next release. Latter on the company changed there policy to closed source, so sad. :(
INTP "Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra "I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
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I once had to write an interface for a PLC I had never worked with. Their docs had a sample to read from it but nothing on how to write to it. I figured out how to do it and the company's rep asked me to send him the code. Imagine my surprise when the next revision of their documentation included MY code as a sample of how to write to it. Of course, there was no acknowledgement what so ever.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
I am not surprised. Although I have never experienced that myself. One time I did have access to another companies internal code (with NDA of course), to help me develop a means of communicating with it. Their code was actually very well written. I did a code review and found a few bugs that they were unaware of. Their lead engineer was surprise and happy that I found them and thanked me publicly via their company email w/CC's. It is always nice to get credit from strangers that you have never actually met.
INTP "Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra "I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone