Coder on the Cross

Salon has a nice story of start-up greed and stupidity. It's not the first, and it's not the last, but it's good reading, in a schadenfreude sense. :)

Comments

Re:overworked employees

[Anonymous Coward]

Bull again. Capitialism could NOT run unchecked it the same people that abhor captialism would actually vote. There IS a certain day where EVERYONE is equal, and that day can easily change the power in this country. The same neo-socialists that complain about captialism are usually the same group that fails to turn out to the polls.

People ALWAYS vote their pocketbook, and there are many more "have nots" than "haves". If the people cared, they would do something about it. Unions, like many ideas this country has had, started with noble intentions, and turned into another money machine, quite comfortable stepping on it's own members.

Your Friendly Libertarian

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

• Human ambition, specifically the one that feeds our need for material wealth, is what has gotten us where we are

What, an overpopulated, polluted, resource raped planet, most of which lives in poverty, and the rest of which works longer and longer hours to hold onto what it has, while a few hundred individuals accumulate ten digit bank balances to hide the sorry fact that on a global scale, most "money" is imaginary and doesn't equate to actual resources?

Perhaps you could consider looking outside your air conditioned gas guzzler occasionally.

Re:OT: slashdot is messed up

[Anonymous Coward]

I got 3 mods up then I had 5 mods down. I got a nice message telling me that I had my posting privilages suspended for 24 hours.

That is fucked. How is it the poster's fault that the moderators are acting like idiots?

Re:Amen!

[Anonymous Coward]

You have a mildly interesting story, but, really, what was the point of the first two sentences where you paint yourself as the best hacker in the entire universe? It had no bearing whatsoever on the rest of your story. Delete those sentences and the story is not dimished at all, but rather enhanced because it doesn't sound like it's coming from a blowhard.

Really, learn some humility. It doesn't matter if you're as good as you say or not -- saying it is divisive and makes the rest of your story sound as unbelievable as your initial claim. Even assuming that it's true.

I'm already there.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a salary that could get me a nice 4-bed semi with garden, a nice car, holidays abrad.

I don't need a 4-bed semi, I don't really garden, I can get most places I need by walking or bicycling (expensive bike, mind), and I just go for a chap package holiday.

End result? I'm wealthy in a job that pays fairly. I can take or leave the job (in another couple of years, I'll have the mortgage paid off, and I can afford to work at McDonalds if I have to...), and stress is something that happens to other people.

If you want to be happy, live *below* your means. If that means skimping on things that you want, then you work harder. Otherwise, make do with what you get.

This should probably apply to Salon

[Anonymous Coward]

Salon's about to get kicked off NASDAQ. They should have their writers talk to their financial department.

Re:This should probably apply to Salon

[Frequanaut]

Why is this modded to 5?

It's not insightful, its petty. It's not even applicable.

Now if the poster had mentioned the irony of questionable startups writing about the failures of other quetsionable startups...

This isn't always the way the world ends....

[Anonymous Coward]

I've done this a few times.

It's a total crapshoot.

Once I got to go to a faraway land, work on strange and interesting projects and kill deadlines, helping to score a $15M contract right out from under the nose of a competitor. I was one of 5 Golden Boys and we did nothing but eat sleep and drink code for almost 3 months straight. I got paid well and got a vacation out of it at their expense in the end.

Most recently, I went back in the barrel for two months, coded my ass off, gave the demo of my life and practically brought tears to the eyes of the CEO. She still canned the lot of us 2 minutes later, citing problems with their "burn rate".

What did I learn?

It's a total ride and a total crapshoot. When you win, you win big, when you don't you tend to create new and interesting geographical features known as "impact craters".

Also, just my personal experience, you tend to win more often when the project's scope is more than just "owning the space" or "conquering the market segment" and not just in a karmic,spiritual sense either.

Why sign up for a 3-5 year gig when your owners(and I do mean owners) have a 3-month (1 Quarter) attention span?

Re:This isn't always the way the world ends....

[feorlen]

>It's a total crapshoot.

Which is why, even now, people get sucked into a good line if they are not careful. And even some who are. There are just enough "overnight successes" to make people believe it could happen to them. It's like the lottery that way, and without the benefit of clear and overwhelming mathematical evidence to the contrary.

Maybe it will, maybe it won't. But since nearly all companies have long since stopped having the slightest concern for employees beyond ROI, I have exactly the same position when it comes to my personal life. Professional pride spurred me to many a late night, but when it becomes a regular and expected occurrence, there has to be more in it for me than some assumed loyalty that never goes both ways. And I'm not even as mercenary as some people I know. (You included, Mr. Nobody-Knows-Me AC, despite occasional comments to the contrary.)

I want to believe that my employer actually lives by the platitudes they dispense about how their people are their greatest resource. I pretend to believe, when necessary, but I cannot in truth. And almost all the tech professionals I know think the same. Anybody who doesn't is suspected of being incredibly naive or stupid.

Someone told me that if my employer discovered they could make fifty cents more by digging potatoes, we would all be issued shovels. Every time someone tries to give me a line of hype about how, as a competent Professional, I need to sacrifice my personal life to someone else's cause, I think of that. And I don't take on other people's causes lightly.

Maybe that means that you should go off on your own. You certainly won't be working any fewer hours, but at least it will be for your project and not so someone else can go to Bali every year while you sit home and write code until 3am.

His first mistake.

[Tim]

"The rumors were true; it was the infamous Microsoft interview, and that first question would be followed by increasingly confounding ones."

The real question in the Microsoft Interview is why the hell people don't run the other way while they have the chance.

Re:His first mistake.

[pedro]

They don't realise that the 'microsoft interview' employs a tragically familiar cult indoctrination tactic: getting you to think *in* their box right out of the gate.
It works like this.
You want in. They're hip. They're cool. You want it.
They seem distant but vaguely knowable. They challenge your intellect to *think like them*.
You do so, successfully, probably damaging your neural pathways in the effort.
You are congratulated. Now you're in! WHEE!
You are now expected to 'hive think' like M$ does.
M$ has a campus. They make it feel like college, where everybody has Status, to be taken or surrendered.
M$ is a battlezone, much like college.
Bill is the guy in the mask asking you to bend over for a whack to enter a fraternity.
It's his revenge.
It's also pathetic.

Re:Schadenfreude

[Caine]

How can you have a language without "skadeglädje"? =) (Swedish)

Re:I disagree.

[Caine]

The problem is that the unions in the states have gravely misunderstood their purpose. Just like american law, they take it by the letter instead of by intent, which makes everything go horribly wrong. Unions are supposed to protect the workers from mistreatment by the companies, not, as they are, trying to be as greedy as possible.

Look around you in other countries for better examples of good and working unions.

(And yes, I'm on of those socialist bastards from Sweden)

Re:So what?

[Eccles]

Why? You were just given $100 a share of profit, as far as I can tell.

If my stocks go up in value, I don't pay taxes until I sell them. If my house goes up in value, I don't pay taxes until I sell it (ignore the one-time exemption here). Rare stamps? Beanie babies? The same rule applies. So why should options be different?

Re:sorry to say this

[sjames]

Yes. "Drop everything" does indeed have a different meaning for different people.

Sadly, I have found that for many managers, this actually means: Give this assignment your undivided attention until it is done. Also give each other project your undivided attention. Your unwillingness to violate physical law for the good of the team astonishes me.

Re:I disagree.

[pod]

I get seen HOLDING a screwdriver, and the electricians union goes crazy and files a grievance.

Unions are extremely strict in this respect. If you're ever seen anything you're not explicitely supposed to be doing you're obviously taking someone else's job away from them. If you have to do something that someone else in the union is paid to do, tough luck, you'll be put in your place quickly. Unfortunatelly, those of us who like their jobs (despite being unionized) and like to work and want to excell, unions are just shackles, you can't lift a finger without their say so.

Now go away, don't you have a coffee break to take or something?

Re:Schadenfreude

[sql*kitten]

It means taking pleasure in the misfortune of others. Like all German philosphical concepts, it doesn't translate particularly well into simple English. It's a bit like a smug "I told you so", but not quite as petty, if that makes any sense.

Re:The Eventual Downfall of Every Man

[sql*kitten]

it's all just exo-structure built to obscure that we're all greedy and no-good. Hobbes was right, I guess, in that respect. We need to make society so complex we can fool ourselves into thinking we're doing something good. 99.999% of us aren't. Me included.

I don't buy this at all. A lion is not evil when it kills an antelope; that just the way it is. The lion is simply living according to its nature, which might be bad news for the antelopes, but moral good and evil don't even come into the picture.

In fact, the lion is living exactly as it is supposed to. If anything, that is the definition of good, from its own perspective (apologies for the anthropomorphication, but good/evil is a human concept).

Now you say that for man to live according to his nature - i.e. self-interest as motivator - is evil. But I ask you, how can it be evil? If this is how we are, how do we gain by denying it? You don't see lions trying to grow crops, do you? And you don't see lions forging weapons to fight hunters on their own term either.

I will leave you with some Nietzsche:

"Think again before postulating the drive to self preservation as the cardinal drive in an organic being. A living thing desires above all to vent its strength - life as such is will to power - self preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent consequences of it".

Re:Schadenfreude

[Chang]

That's funny. I always thought many German words were long enough to be sentences in other languages.

Re:Money, ideology, conviction, ego ...

[Squid]

What is so difficult about the software industry that it eats up people like this?

Good question. It's not the industry, as such, that's eating people, far as I can tell - it's this sort of universal "corporate disease" that hits technology companies, or at least the tech divisions of companies, hardest. But why THIS sector of the economy? Why THESE companies?

Maybe it's the "gold rush" mentality. I mean, people don't get burned out doing architecture, or doing graphic design (usually), maybe that's because in those industries, you have to BE one before you get put in a position to manage. In high-churn sectors, like the dotcom craze at its peak, you get a lot of nontechies owning companies and putting other nontechies in positions of power. Managers who don't understand what's really involved with a ship date, or who don't understand the mental stresses of keeping huge blobs of code straight in one's head for days on end. Leadership who thinks "if I don't understand it, it must be simple." And for that matter, leadership with dollar sign eyeballs, who simply don't care about anything except profit and don't even notice the burned-out empty husks of programmers sitting around the computer room. On the other side, programming isn't like manual labor, where your body wears out before your brain; most people don't understand mental stress and what it does, and thus will continue to put in 70 and 80 hour weeks, not making the connection between that and the routine fainting spells.

Or maybe, this crap happens in EVERY industry, we just don't hear about it. :-)

translate.ru

[Pseudonymus Bosch]

Also, I'm noticing more and more German borrowing in the hacker world. Is it just me? If it's not, any speculation on why?

The Jargon File has something about Jewish (Ashkhenazi?) hackers, and there are some traditional terms there from German. Maybe.

But I don't see it apart from Slashdot stories. Maybe German-speaking editors?

And now that Altavista's owners are certifiably evil (having patented things like web crawlers), are there any other places we can go for translation needs?

Check translate.ru. I don't know if it's better but it translates to/from Russian as well.
__

Re:translate.ru

[MadAhab]

Ashkenazi (sp?) means "European" jews. For that reason, "Yiddish" is saying "Jewish" in German, with a jewish accent, and there are lots of yiddish slang words found throughout the film and television industry - from schmaltz to schmutz to smut. Personally, I'm not too familiar with these type of words in hackerdom (where there are a lot more Israelis than American jews, I think). In hackerdom, the words seem to be predominantly sui generis, e.g. "luser".

But "schadenfreude" is a pretty well established loan word. I don't know that American jews have much to do with it; Nietzsche does.

Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.

Re:Work ain't what it used to be

[armb]

> You seem to be leaving out those of us that enjoy their work and take pride in it.

He said _can_ be, not _is_.

I've worked at a job in a startup (not a dot-com) where paychecks were sometimes uncertain and planned raises never happened, because I enjoyed it, took pride in what we'd done, and also because I knew that the next person to leave would be the end and I didn't want to end it for the others; and I still thought there was a chance we could make it, and then the shares would make it all financially worthwhile too.

In the end it wasn't enough, and the company went under. With hindsight, it would have been much better for my family if I'd left earlier.

Now I'm somewhere where I still enjoy the work and take pride in it, but don't spend so many late evenings and weekends away from my wife and children, and the paychecks turn up on time, in full. The stock options aren't worth as much as I had hoped at the moment, but that will probably change, and it's not the end of the world if it doesn't (they're for a _vastly_ smaller proportion of the company than the startup, but it's a bigger company, and it's growing).

--

Re:Schadenfreude

[bstadil]

Quote Also, I'm noticing more and more German borrowing in the hacker world. Is it just me? If it's not, any speculation on why? Your idea about Shadenfreude is wrong. The idea behind the expression is complex. Its more than just taking pleasure in others misfortune, it has an element of hybris as well as relating back to one self. It makes ones own lot in life better as its compared to someone elses. On German or other idioms. I think its a question of using the best Tool for the job so to speak. Other languages often has expressions that captures the essence succintly. Like Raison d'etre. This is not a dig at English remember how many English espression has entered into other languages.

Re:sorry to say this

[JanneM]

_Good_ programmers are hired for their communication and management skills as well as their programming skills. Lots of people can code, but a programmer that is an asset management-wise as well is worth his/her weight in gold.

/Janne

Another truism ...

[SimonK]

is that all average programmers, without exception, believe they belong to the tiny minority of the truly talented.

In some respects exceptional confidence in your own abilities is a more reliable indicator of inability, because you lack the ability needed to judge your own work critically. Noone truly brilliant I have met or heard of in any field believed themselves to be any better than average.

Re:Schadenfreude

[Tim Browse]

Oddly enough, you would have done better if you'd looked it up in an English dictionary.

The above link defines it as "Pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others."

It's not new for English speakers to use this word.

Tim

Re:Take a look at the name...

[Tim Browse]

it is a truism that a very good ("great") programmer's productivity is 10X better than a merely good one's [sic]

Not as far as I recall. That's the best versus the worst (10x difference). The difference between the best and the average is something like 2.5x - see Peopleware by DeMarco and Lister for accurate figures (my copy's at home).

I know quite a few really good programmers, and none of them think that they are a "uniquely talented hacker", or that they have "never met anyone better".

On the other hand, I've met plenty of arrogant jerks with big egos who can't work in a team, can't document their code, don't like anyone else even looking at their code - never mind working on it, and can't build any sort of large system, that think just like this.

YMMV

Tim

Re:Schadenfreude

[seeken]

There is no spectacle more agreeable than watching an old friend fall from a roof.

Confucious

Surfing the net and other cliches...

Re:OT: slashdot is messed up

[Syberghost]

Two thoughts:

1) The fact that you got moderated down to -1 as off-topic is a nice example of how you're wrong.

2) I would subjectively say that out of a typical month of meta-moderation, I have 27 days of at least 9 "fair", often all ten, and 3 days where about 8 are unfair, all of them up-mods of troll posts. I'd say meta-moderation is working pretty well.

-

Re:Social Life? What's that...

[Lumpy]

Umm, B is how most of us got there. I tore into everything electronic I could, and then when I finally got my first computer (KIM-1) I started to learn assembler. and on and on and on. Hell I still take things apart, it's the first thing I do. and I still design and invent. (making a linux replacement for the clarion autopc by redesigning from the chip level up.. I am actually 3/4 if the way done and will be having some boards made this year!)

Most of us are learn-ed frum our rooms and dem there books. We didnt git to go to an expensive college (I was way above my "professor" in every CS class I took (and slept through) I guess that's what happens when you wrote your first b-tree sort in assembly at age 14 without an instructor (other than byte magazine) )

I bet that most of the programming gods are not the product of any university, they university wes there for the damned piece of paper that is required by the Business's that were programmed by the universities.

The Power of Choice

[Cybergrrrrrl]

What really struck me about this article was the fact that this guy did a lot of whining and blame throwing, but never really took responsibility for his part in what happened - because HE made the choice to take the job, even though there was plenty of data out there to support that this type of thing could happen to him. We make our own choices, and thusly we need to accept responsibility for what happens as a result.

When I first got started in the tech sector 4 years ago, I chose to take a job with a start-up consulting firm that offered me next to nothing, but gave me an opportunity to learn a great deal. After a while, the company didn't have the money to pay me and I nearly got evicted from my apartment - meanwhile, I was working 12-14 hour days, 7 days a week.....

And when the company went to hell, and they fired me - claiming that I wasn't a good worker, though in reality they just couldn't afford to keep me - I threw a pity party for about five minutes. Then I realized that I had learned a lot, not only about computers, but about how business works (and especially the shady side of it). That kind of knowledge is invaluable.

Plus, I recognized that I had no one to blame but myself. I had seen this coming for a long time, and yet I chose to stay. I could have gotten another job any time I wanted. The guy who wrote the article could have left, too. He even admits that early on, he "began to see through the veneer"...He chose to stay, and now we're supposed to feel sorry for him because he ignored the reality of the situation, even though it was staring him in the face, and continued to live in a idealistic and self-indulgent fantasy.... ignoring, all the while, the fact that we all have free will.

/exit soapbox

Re:The Power of Choice

[bongwater2002]

To a large extent you are correct. I was at the company David wrote about in his article and usually didn't work more than 50-55hrs/week. Why? Because I drew my boundaries early.

The CEO and other founders knew that and eventually came to respect it. Unfortunately, it took me 5 years in new media to learn how to define my boundaries with regards to hours and such...

However, it's unfair to David to say it was strictly a boundary issue. David and I had different jobs. His was very broad and mine was very focused. I was usually able to complete my tasks and then go home while David's often shifted and changed and dragged on.

So yes, it was a matter of personal choice but only to an extent.

Re:So what?

[Black Perl]

Yep, if you actually want to be fucked up, the best remains AMS

Care to explain the obvious discrepancy between your comment and the fact that Fortune Magazine rated it as one of the best places to work? Their ranking is based on employee opinions, by the way.

Just curious.

Work ain't what it used to be

[HardCase]

Way back when, say, 5 or 7 years ago, the guy who busted his butt to perform was generally the guy who got recognized as an achiever. Right now, that's not necessarily so, but I'm thinking that the new mode of performance assessment is changing back to the old mode.

The idea of working illness-provoking hours to demonstrate your loyalty to the company is slowly becoming passe as small, high tech firms are dying.

All of the people who decided to sacrifice their social lives, their families and their health for some nebulous pot of gold at the end of the dot-com rainbow are now realizing what people like my dad (at age 70) learned a few decades back: There's more to life than making a bucket load of cash.

While money is a great tool that lets you do the things that you want to do, work can also be a horrible way to keep you from enjoying the parts of life that make existence worthwhile.

It seems to me that the moral of the story is that working a brutal schedule and producing a lot of product isn't always the winning combination for a successful life. I guess my dad wasn't such a dummy after all.

BTW, I've figured out my own secret of success. I'm an engineer at a big electronics company. I work 40 hours a week. And that's it. And I go home, forget about work, mow my lawn, go for a walk, watch the sunset and enjoy my life. And still make enough money to do everything that I want to do.

-h-

Re:Work ain't what it used to be

[odaiwai]

Hear! Hear!

To quote: "No-one ever said on their deathbed that they wished they'd spent more time in the office."

dave

Re:Work ain't what it used to be

[Mr. Slippery]

You seem to be leaving out those of us that enjoy their work and take pride in it.

I (generally) enjoy my work and take pride in it too. But I also enjoy my karate training. And time spent making music and poetry. And the company of lovely women.

I even think that time spent on one of these things often develops skills that are useful in another. Poetry works the language skills, oh so important for writing documentation for the code I write in my day job. Martial arts training fosters the sort of defensive "what-if" thinking required for robust programming.

Spending all you time and effort on one task is ultimately self-defeating, as it limits intellectual cross-pollination. That's why the stereotypical hacker has multiple competencies.

Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

Re:Work ain't what it used to be

[Chagrin]

• work can also be a horrible way to keep you from enjoying the parts of life that make existence worthwhile.

You seem to be leaving out those of us that enjoy their work and take pride in it.

Re:Valley startup syndrome. My life in a bucket.

[sammy baby]

Apparently "drop everything" has a different meaning for different people.

I used to have this problem all the time. Poorly planned projects were dropped on my desk, and a meeting with the uberstaff would produce a list seven to ten items long which were absolutely, positively, top priority. Each and every one.

The management refused to go into further detail as to what the real priorities were. So finally, deciding that it would be better to take a stand and risk a little job security, I shook my head. "Which one do you want me to do first?" The uberboss shook his head. "They're all top priority." And, at that point, I had a too fleeting moment where I actually connected with the boss, and uttered the following words:

"Making everything top priority doesn't mean it all gets done faster."

When I repeated my original question, I got a real answer, and things have been (somewhat) better ever since.

BTW - I hate the fluorescent lights too. As I'm lucky enough to have my own office, I turn them off, and use desk lamps only. It got to the point where my coworkers referred to my office as "The Grotto" because of the groovy mood lighting.

Re:So what?

[NMerriam]

I'm not out for "protecting" anyone from themselves. I'm a Libertarian, check my .sig

I know you're a Libertarian, and so is every other person complaining about the AMT, for some reason.

The AMT wasn't invented this year. It's been around. Libertarians are the ones who say that people should be held accountable for their actions, that they should hold up their end of a deal/contract, because they knew going in the terms. Well, stock options and the AMT are nowhere near as complex as people seem to be making them out to be (certainly no more complex than any other rules Libertarians defend corporations enforcing on customers).

You don't just get $1 million in stock for a few hundred dollars and expect that there will be no financial effects. Call an accountant and find out what they are.

Geez, what's the world coming to when even Libertarians don't want people to take responsibility for their actions!?

---------------------------------------------

Re:So what?

[NMerriam]

This is part of the tax code that MUST be changed

Why? You were just given $100 a share of profit, as far as I can tell. If you are too short-sighted/greedy to capture some of that profit to offset your tax liability, then you're risking the value will go down and you're left holding the bag.

Should we protect people who short stocks from the possibility it will go up in value? Should we stop margin calls because some people don't keep enough in their accounts to cover the margin and have a forced sale of their stock to cover the margin?

This is playing the market, and if you don't want to play, then don't play. No one was complaining about the rules when they were exercising the options and getting hundreds of millions of dollars for free. Sometimes the market goes down -- should we all pay more taxes to cover these people who are too greedy to accomidate this fact?

---------------------------------------------

Re:Moral of the story...

[NMerriam]

. It is OK to love your spouse, OK to love your kids, yet, for those with neither, it should be OK to love you job equally

But can your job love you back?

That may, in the end, be the moral that we all need to learn...

---------------------------------------------

Re:shit happens get over it

[sharkey]

nobody owes you nothing!

Do you really believe that everybody owes you something? You might want to look at that view again, or you're probably going to get a huge disappointment down the road.

--

Re:Schadenfreude

[sharkey]

According to Lisa Simpson, it translates to "shameful joy."

--

shit happens get over it

[Saint Stephen]

nobody owes you nothing!

working too hard means one thing: you let yourself get worked to death.

it means precisely "dick" to the planet.

get up and dust yourself off and maybe don't make the same mistake next time

Money, ideology, conviction, ego ...

[LL]

What makes people tick? (in the sense of why choose a particular course of action). If we take a leaf out of the spy business, money is actually one of the least effective motivators. GNU appeals to ideology of "free software" whereas ESR notes the power of the ego in scratching an itch. Example of conviction motivated work (citatioation anyone?) was hersay about someone who released some gee-whiz tools (implmeneted nearly single-handedly) just for genomic analysis purely because he didn't want the for-profit group to do it first and fence off that intellectual common. Looking at this example shows the destructive tendences of choosing a task for the wrong reason (stock options + geek-lek comparison with superstar programmer).

One thing you have to admire about Bill Gates is his ability to motivate a bunch of geeks. Yes, it is possible to produce a bunker mentality (cough*North Korea*cough) and studies have shown that you can accomplish superhuman feats. However, our psychology is not designed to be running in war-zone 24 hours a day. There are reasons why troops are rotated out. The problem is that complex software often requires really convoluted linkages and the optimal unit for holding it is one brain. However smart you are, you have a finit working memory unless you encode stuff at higher abstractions (one of the tricks mathsmatics train you). This leads to dimishing returns in that to progress software (shorter release cycles) more work can only be accomplished by concentrating the thinking into a smaller group of people which naturally leads to burn-out. So managers have to continually come up with tricks or one-upmanship to motivatae the microserfs to stay committed ... whether stock options, coolness factor, kudos or just appeal to ego, increasing use of these psychological tricks is likely to be an indicator of dysfunctional companies. One prof once said that the difference between normal engineering and software engineering is that you can look at a bridge design and say you can't build it in 90 days with 6 people but customers expect otherwise with software (even though the complexity may be equivalent).

So given the horror stories and even web-sites describing the non-living (former employeees of Intetel, Amazon, Microserf, etc), why do people continue to act this way? Why become an economic slave for an absentee landlord (Wall Street sentiment)? How many talents will leave the industry because their bodies can't handle the stress? What is so difficult about the software industry that it eats up people like this?

LL

Re:Money, ideology, conviction, ego ...

[Fjord]

Example of conviction motivated work (citatioation anyone?) was hersay about someone who released some gee-whiz tools (implmeneted nearly single-handedly) just for genomic analysis purely because he didn't want the for-profit group to do it first and fence off that intellectual common

I read it on /. so it must be true.

Ah, the high-school job...

[flimflam]

I worked at a software company when I was 17 (this was before the whole dot.com thing -- this was back in 1989). I got paid $8 an hour (it was my first job -- I didn't know any better!). Before I knew it I was coding on some of their core products and working on some custom projects. (I later found out they were billing my time to their clients at $80 an hour). Everything was done using some libraries that my boss had written (all in Pascal). These libraries has, shall I say, some "deficiencies", so I kept my own copy of them and took to improving them for one of the projects I was doing. Of course, being 17 and never having worked with a team before, I never told anyone -- but hey, they liked the results!

Somewhere around this time I found out that the two co-founders of the company had met in prison (one for Medicare fraud, the other for drug smuggling), and had some feud going on between them. One worked in an office in the city (they did hardware development), and the other (where I worked) ran the software end in an office upstate. Well, one day when my boss was out of town at a convention, a big moving van showed up and some guys came, told us we were all fired, and started taking all the computers.

About a month later I heard from my ex-boss that he had heard that no one could compile any of my code, so they had had to hire a bunch of new programmers to rewrite everything from scratch. I then told him about my custom libraries. He gave me a big pat on the back and took me out for drinks.

I think he's back in prison now.

Re:Valley startup syndrome. My life in a bucket.

[Gallowglass]

Ah this is so typical of bad-to-middling managers. The problem is that when a problem presents itself to them, their immediate reaction is to go and find someone to fix it. They never stop to think about what you may already have on your plate. (Bad managers won't have a *clue* what tasks you are already busy with.)

How to handle Managers
to whom the Latest Crisis is the one with Top Priority

1. Put a prioritized list of your tasks in a prominent position in your office.
2. When your Clueless Boss rushes in screaming "Emergency!! Emergency!! Drop everything and handle this Right Away!!!", point over your shoulder to your taks list and say, "Put it on my list where you think it should go."

Most common result of the above strategy:
Boss looks at your task list for a couple of minutes, then goes, "Ummm. . . ahh, ohhhh nevermind," then departs looking for someone less busy.

"Perverse pleasure"

[delmoi]

Is I think what you want, as in "I took Perverse pleasure in seeing him fail."

What a Crock of Shit

[Beg4Mercy]

This is the biggest load of horse-shit I have ever seen. There is one simple fact: Businesses fail sometime. Get the fuck over it.

This article is trying to teach us the persistance and hard work will never pay off. What, are you a bunch of communist IDIOTS? Just look at Blizzard Entertainment, for example. It says right on their job requirements page "Able to work long hours when necessary". People at Blizzard work hard and get the job done. They are one of the most successful gaming companies in the world.

You anti-capitalistic wackos are morons.

Re:What a Crock of Shit

[dwadler]

Hey Genius,

I never wrote that. I didn't even intimate that working hard without cementing your business plan (i.e. how are we going to make money?) is a stupid endeavor. In fact, I never said that working hard is a waste of time - that's just stupid. MOST businesses fail. The story is about making sure you're aware of what you're doing and what you want to/should be doing. Time for a re-read and perhaps an introductory course on The Interpretive Arts: Understanding What You Read.

Re:sorry to say this

[Salamander]

You're right that the programmer should have brought up the issue of conflicting commitments *when the "drop everything" order was given* instead of later, but other than that I think you're totally off-base. Saying "drop everything" without meaning it is a major error *by the manager*. Blaming the programmer for it, dismissing the identification of the manager's own role in the misunderstanding as a "smart ass remark", jumping to conclusions about the programmer's motives, slamming the door on a dialog that could clear things up productively - those are all just plain unreasonable. You sound like a manager yourself, the sort who accepts no personal accountability for what happens within their group because hey, it's the programmers doing tha actual hands-on work so it's their responsibility, right? BS.

When an unclear order is given, both parties have a responsibility to seek a clearer understanding. But this wasn't an unclear order. It was *crystal* clear - just wrong. The manager conveyed a clear meaning that was not what he actually intended. Weaseling around with "'drop everything' can mean different things" is like "depends on what the definition of 'is' is".

Re:Valley startup syndrome. My life in a bucket.

[bridgette]

"They're all top priority." And, at that point, I had a too fleeting moment where I actually connected with the boss, and uttered the following words:

"Making everything top priority doesn't mean it all gets done faster."

Word! That's even better than my standard: "That's mathematically impossible, a list where everything has the same priority is an unprioritized list. I would like prioritization, if you can't give any off the top of your head, then maybe I should just use my best judgement or maybe we should meet and go over the task list in a finer granularity and work together on crafting a schedule?"

Don't get the logic problem

[ajs]

My answer was 1, which seemed the only reasonable answer. The problems that I had with the answer are:

1. No where in the problem statement is there any mention of it taking 1 day for someone to come to a conclusion (thus "end of the third day" is an ignorable unit of time).
2. Why are we assuming that the people in the village are competent logicians?

Hell, the way it's worded, it's perfectly reasonable to answer: all of them. Every last villager is a sinner, and it took them three days to pack their bags.

I hate stupid logic problems. Give me a simple math problem any time.

Re:Don't get the logic problem

[holzp]

while the problem is still fscked. i do get the one day part. every villager sees every other one at least once a day. so if it takes you O(day) to check out the status of all other villagers, you are able in a day to at least know if anyone else is marked (if they are clearly marked)

Re:Don't get the logic problem

[gargle]

I think you've to assume that a villager will only leave the village at the end of the day. In which case, the answer should be 3 sinners.

Re:Don't get the logic problem

[update()]

4 people - A, B, C and D see each other on the first, second and third days. They all leave that evening.

No, because D, for instance, could think that it's only A, B and C who are marked. It's not until the fourth day when they see the other three haven't left that all four realize they also must be marked .

Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.

Re:Don't get the logic problem

[update()]

2. Why are we assuming that the people in the village are competent logicians?

That's a given. People in these riddle villages are always excellent logicians.

My answer was 1, which seemed the only reasonable answer.

Here's my analysis:
1 person - A goes around town, sees no one marked. He leaves town at the end of the day. (Or on the second day -it's ambiguous.)
2 people - On the first day, A and B see each other. On the second day, they see the other is still around. They both leave, at the end of the second day or on the third day. I think this is supposed to be the answer.
3 people - A, B and C see each other on the first and second days. They all leave at the end of the third day or on the fourth day. This might also be the answer.

OK, I damn well want karma for this one!! ;-)

Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.

Re:Don't get the logic problem

[KagakuNinja]

The article gives the answer, basically the same as yours. I don't understand why the answer stops at 3 people.

4 people - A, B, C and D see each other on the first, second and third days. They all leave that evening.
5 people - A, B, C, D and E see each other...

Isn't the answer N, where N is greater than 0, and less than or equal to the total number of villagers?

Re:Don't get the logic problem

[smashdot]

Not only that, but the way the problem is stated, it fails to mention that the "higher power" told all of the villagers that at least one person was marked. The answer to this riddle lies in this very important truth.

Totally agree about college life

[brianvan]

Lemme just say that it's not as bad as you say it is... unless I let assignments accumulate for a while... but that I've been through your whole scenario.

Right now I'm in the middle of school hell. I'm working on a time-consuming internship with a project team, where the company fucked us over and delayed our project three weeks in the past 5 weeks... and now me and one other girl on our project team are the only ones who can code at all and the weight of creating all the software for the project is on both of us. In the meantime, for the SAME PROJECT, I have to complete our benchmarking report, which means taking one of the top ten insurance companies in the nation and looking at a year's worth of claims data to find anomalies in trends. We have less than two weeks to do this. That's just one class. I only have one CIS class, but it's a pain in the ass... the professor is disorganized and swamps us with logic work and projects late in the semester due to his ineptitude to stay on schedule with anything. Now I have too much on my plate the next two weeks. Furthermore, my remaining courses are burying me with work, I have no job when I graduate in 24 days, I have to spend extra time at my part time job to make current ends meet (which means usually 5pm-3am shifts), I have to take a large "advance" from my parents just to pay rent for my first month of living out of college (there's no signing bonus and no job to pay for it), I have no money in the bank worth speaking of, I've been sick for a week, and I'm developing an asthmatic condition from my ridiculous allergies due to the shitty quality of the air around here.

I have taken that ambulance ride before. Granted, that ambulance ride got me free passes to delay major projects for a few weeks, and I wound up getting on Dean's List as a result. That's the only semester I made Dean's List. Some of the rest of them are absolutely shameful. My GPA is shit, at least from where I want it to be. I'm just not a great consistent student, and I was unfortunate enough to get stuck in a major (CIS) where everyone works against you and your personal well being.

I'm not enjoying my final weeks here, to say the least. But, the satisfaction of being done, once and for all, after 4 torturous years, is the payoff I've been waiting for ever since freshman year, when I was as shitty a student as one person can ever be. I've improved drastically now, and I'm extremely consistent. My reward, of course, is going to have to look for a manual labor or all-nite diner job just to pay rent once I graduate. However, I cherish that thought... the last thing I want to do is work for a high tech company that says "You'll work an average of 50 hours a week" at this point. My heart just isn't in it.

I'll change the world on my own terms, thank you very much...

Re:overworked employees

[Mr. Slippery]

There IS a certain day where EVERYONE is equal, and that day can easily change the power in this country. The same neo-socialists that complain about captialism are usually the same group that fails to turn out to the polls.

The problem is all the days before Election Day when those in power act to limit the choices you have when you go to the polls. "Gee, do I vote for the rich white guy who's under the thumb of multinational corporations, or the rich white guy who's under the thumb of multinational corporations? The middle of the right wing, or the right wing of the middle?

Yeah, I go to the polls, but mostly to vote on local bond issues and ballot questions.

Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

Re:Valley startup syndrome. My life in a bucket.

[xtal]

And when you do leave, at the exit interview, make sure they know why, it's the sweetest revenge.

Why let them know? Wouldn't there be a better long-term "revenge" aspect from leaving for "personal reasons", and let the horrible downward spiral continue?

How can you possibly call yourself successful...

[devphil]

And I go home, forget about work, mow my lawn, go for a walk, watch the sunset and enjoy my life.

...if you have to mow your own lawn? Either get your kids to mow it while you walk and enjoy the sunset, or hire a high-school kid to mow it while you walk and enjoy the sunset, or genetically modify the grass to grow no higher than 3.7 inches and forget about it altogether while you walk and enjoy the sunset.

(I agree with you and your dad completely. I'm just teasing because I'd rather go back into the office than mow the lawn. I either stick with apartments where it's done for us, or I'll buy a house surrounded back a beautiful rock garden. Maybe some ferns.)

The Microsoft logic puzzles....

[NetJunkie]

For those asking about the "logic" puzzles, yes, Microsoft does ask those during interviews. I did an interview for an Infrastructure Engineer job and was asked several of them.

They are stupid and pointless. Let me give everyone some advice. If you ever schedule an interview with Microsoft (or ex-Microsoftees) do a quick google search and you'll find web pages going over their puzzles and how to answer them.

They say they ask those so they can find out "how you think". Well, when I need to find an answer quickly I use Google. That's how I think. :)

Re:The Eventual Downfall of Every Man

[Field Marshall Stack]

I don't buy this at all. A lion is not evil when it kills an antelope; that just the way it is. The lion is simply living according to its nature, which might be bad news for the antelopes, but moral good and evil don't even come into the picture. In fact, the lion is living exactly as it is supposed to. If anything, that is the definition of good, from its own perspective (apologies for the anthropomorphication, but good/evil is a human concept). Now you say that for man to live according to his nature - i.e. self-interest as motivator - is evil. But I ask you, how can it be evil? If this is how we are, how do we gain by denying it? You don't see lions trying to grow crops, do you? And you don't see lions forging weapons to fight hunters on their own term either.

Unfortunately, you've confounded "natural" and "moral." Thanks for playing, though.

--
"HORSE."

Re:Schadenfreude

[Bilestoad]

Schadenfreude - it's what you feel when you're working with someone on a project, and you are able to prove it's their bug that is causing the problem. I think of it as "evil joy".

Re:No it' not 'evil joy'. Its...

[Bilestoad]

It is worth noting that James Joyce was fluent in German, and used a very German-like word joining style, especially in Ulysses.

Microsoft Interview.

[Capt_Troy]

I once had a MS interview while I was in college. The first question I got was...

"How would you test a toaster?"

I thought about that for a second and then replied with...

"I'd make some toast!"

Well, needless to say, that was not the correct answer.

capt.

Re:overworked employees

[oldman1080]

Listen, you may abhor unions but it's a necessary evil and the alternative is much, much worse: unchecked capitalism. History shows us most of the inhumane ills: women and children working 70 and 80 hour weeks and worse. Like it or not, without unions the common worker has NO power in the present system at all. In a world that runs on money, only the corporations have the power to lobby, bribe, give campaign contributions, etc to politicial candidates. Only the threat of socialism (which incidentally didn't arise out of a vacuum, but was a reaction to the worst excesses of capitalism of the late 1800s and early 1900s) and repeated striking and unionization among the people have the autocrats of the United States decide to give SOME assurances to the workers: 8 hour days, safety regulations, etc. And we see them trying to slickly circumvent those all the time, don't we?

It's unfortunate that people like you who only care for their own upward progress in the present system forget the past so quickly and have no sympathy for the people who live in the world with them. After all, it's just evolution right? Get rid of the stupid, the lazy, the ugly, the outcast. What right do they have to a decent living? None, if they're in your path up the corporate ladder and a six-figure salary. The sad thing is people like you are rewarded, climbing that ladder, firmly grinding your heel on the fingers of those below you because you are firmly convinced they don't climb fast enough, though perhaps they just chose to enjoy the scenery, actually have a social life, a significant other, or a family.

And, by the way, for every person that has been "rewarded for being excellent in their jobs", there is another one who has been taken advantage of just like the one in the article. Yes, he could have voted with his feet, but they had tied him to his cubicle with bonds stronger than any chains: the American Dream*.

* Incidentally, the American Dream is largely a myth. History has shown that at least 90 percent of the obscenely rich have risen from the upper middle-class or upper class. The remaining 10- percent is paraded out and overdramatized in hollywood, as a lure to keep the rest of the people working hard.

Re:overworked employees

[AppyPappy]

This ain't 1900. Employees are free to leave and find new jobs. It wasn't that way in the early part of 1900.

The last thing we need is a group demanding that someone work at a job they hate because they are a "member" of a union.

Re:Valley startup syndrome. My life in a bucket.

[flyfisher]

There are 2 possible explanations for this situation, both are management issues.

1. The manager is an idiot who can't communicate his needs and doesn't track his assignments well. Hence, when HIS idiot manager yells fire, he does the same to those below him. Use the list idea given in one of the posts.

2. The manager is a jerk and is doing this on purpose. Its called whipping the horses. You keep cracking the whip and yelling EE-HAW and they keep running until they keel over. Then you get new horses. Use the list idea given in one of the posts.

A word about using the list. Since the guy your dealing with is also the guy who largely decides what kind of raise you get, caution and forethought are required on your part. The best weapon you can use on someone who is abusing you for whatever reason is to be reasonable with them. He is transfering his stress to you. Don't let him. The list idea is great, but be reasonable. It'll force him to be reasonable too. Being reasonable may take some restraint on your part since he may still try to ratchet up the stress level. Let him keep the stress.

Lastly, what you really need to do here is project management. Since your manager isn't doing it, you do it. That's what the list of prioritized tasks is all about. This is great experience for when YOU are in a position to manage projects. You'll learn how to negotiate priorities, how to define tasks, how to estimate effort and how to talk to unreasonable people without getting mad or offended. You'll also be able to take your lists (now accomplished) at the end of the year and put together a "Why I should get a really BIG RAISE + MORE STOCK OPTIONS" letter to show why you're very valuable to the company. (Just put all of your lists in a file folder, instead of the round file.) Don't bail on the company before trying this stuff. Many companies are run very much like this, so you'll just end up dealing with the same problems elsewhere.

So give it a few months. Make your list and talk to your (idiot && || jerk)manager from the "Gee I'd really like to do what you want, but I'M confused and here's my list of current tasks, what do you REALLY want me to work on first" standpoint. Things will get better.

Re:Schadenfreude

[StrawberryFrog]

It is a loan-word that is now accepted as part of English.

If you wan't it defined, there are some good writeups on it on www.everything2.com. Yes, one of them is mine.

Wow...

[dimator]

I really need some of what you're smoking.

Human ambition, specifically the one that feeds our need for material wealth, is what has gotten us where we are. Did Ford create cars so he could be a hero, or so he could make wads of cash? Did that one dude that created the portable insulin thingy want to help the world, or did he want to patent it and sell the shit out of it across the globe?

The point is ambition is not evil. Ambition fuels progress.

As for me, money is not the most important thing in my life -- but it ranks up there. Once I have enough to buy one of these, I'll probaly change my tune.


--

So what?

[CaptainCarrot]

It seems to me as if this guy used a whole bunch of words to say pretty much, "I worked too hard for a bunch of assholes, and it sucked."

Well, OK. But there have been a bunch of people left a lot worse off than him, like the poor slobs with the worthless stock options who owe thousands of dollars they don't have on the Alternative Minimum Tax. I have trouble working up a lot of sympathy for someone who, by comparison, not only got off easy but did it to himself.

Re:So what?

[GigsVT]

You don't just get $1 million in stock for a few hundred dollars and expect that there will be no financial effects. Call an accountant and find out what they are.

You are missing my point. I am not arguing that people shoudn't be held responsible for things already done. I am calling for a change in the way things are done in the future.
-

Re:So what?

[GigsVT]

Well, OK. But there have been a bunch of people left a lot worse off than him, like the poor slobs with the worthless stock options who owe thousands of dollars they don't have on the Alternative Minimum Tax.

That is a very good an often overlooked point. For those non-tax savvy out there, basically, if you exercise an "in the money" option, you owe the AMT the year you exercise the option, on the difference between the option price and the market price when you exercise, even if you don't sell the stock.

So Bob Geek gets options that let him get the super high-flyer stock that is worth 134 bucks for 4 bucks a share. Generally, he will have to pay tax on $130 per share, the year he exercises the options, whether he sells the stock or not. Stock then drops to $3 a share, and he is left with tons of taxes on money he never saw. Even if he sells all the stock now, it won't cover the taxes owed on it.

This is part of the tax code that MUST be changed. The only way around it currently is to sell the stock as soon as you exercise the options, something people generally don't want to do if they believe in their company's future. This is also not good for other investors, as this will increase dilution.

It also brings up issues about this budget surplus we have been seeing in the US. Once people are burned a few times on options, they won't want them anymore and the employers will just stop offering them. This will cause a lot of tax revenue to disappear. I sure hope that congress takes this into account when they give dubya his big tax cut, otherwise we will end up like we did with Reagan, cutting taxes without reducing spending enough to cover it.
-

Re:So what?

[GigsVT]

Why? You were just given $100 a share of profit, as far as I can tell. If you are too short-sighted/greedy to capture some of that profit to offset your tax liability, then you're risking the value will go down and you're left holding the bag.

I'm not out for "protecting" anyone from themselves. I'm a Libertarian, check my .sig.

I just don't think the IRS should be charging an income tax on money that isn't income (yet). As someone pointed out, when they put this in the code they never intended it to affect Joe Schmoe anyway. It promotes things that are contrary to one of the IRS's goals, that is holding long term investments for retirement. It creates motivation to sell out immediately, increases stock volitility and dilution, and in general is a bad thing.

Of course, I think the common person should be able to use the Mark-to-market election for normal capital gains too, but that is just my opinion.
-

Re:So what?

[slashdot_commentator]

You have to be joking. Programmers should become MBA's before taking a job offering stock options?
The AMT has only been around for 10-15 years, and the economic conditions in which it was drafted is significantly different than today. Its a law that did not take into account a changed economic climate, and its flaws should be corrected.

How can you "capture" profit if you're restricted from selling until after a certain point in time???

I agree with you that there is more to options than what meets the eyes, but even "margin calls" are restricted in what you can do in order to alleviate catastrophic loss. And before AMT, they still had to pay taxes on the sale. (It was hardly free.)

Finally, the AMT situation is being generated by the IRS! If you think that the IRS's primary function is to redistribute wealth, then I can see why you are in favor of the status quo. But I think the tax code that needs correction (simplification) and focused on collecting gov't revenue for services, not sticking the middle class with the tab. (The rich 1% gets the loopholes, the poor don't pay as much as everyone else...)

Re:So what?

[Tyler-Durden255]

No this does not cause tax revenue to dissappear. (Unless the Dot.com crowd is truely not able to ever shoulder there AMT debt, that can't be erased by bankruptcy!)

Basically the businesses who granted the options took a tax break on the diffrence at the time options were granted. Many Option granting companies (like cisco and MS paid NO income tax, but did get there employees to shoulder it for them!) The same amount of tax is being assigned it's just being paid back by the little guy.

Lets see your employer got you to work 80hour weeks for options, ran the business into the ground putting you out of a job and making those options worthless and got you to pay the businesses tax debt! Rock On Capitalism!

Re:Amen!

[phliar]

[I'm the original poster.] The original reply had the right idea - how good I am (or think I am) has little bearing on the "killing oneself" syndrome. I put that in as a note to illustrate that I wasn't working longer than normal hours because I was overwhelmed; I was doing it because I was driven.

I have yet to encounter a fast programmer who could write non-spaghetti code no matter how detailed the specs are. The original poster described himself as a hacker, which I interpret as someone who writes fast and messy; code that is absolutely unintelligible to a maintainer (or even him/herself after a few weeks or months).

You haven't met me.

I'm not fast and messy; I write detailed documentation - not just comments in the code, but design and architecture docs (which are vastly more helpful). Incidentally, this is one place that most free software fails. I am involved in a large free project. It has excellent documentation which is how I was able to make significant contributions even though I had to learn another language to do so.

When I say hacker, I mean it in the original sense of the word - not one who commits hacks or kludges, but one who can come up with an insightful and non-obvious way of doing something in a way that is understandable. I place the highest premium on clarity and transparency. As Abelson and Sussman say in SICP, computer programs are for humans to read, and only incidentally for computers to execute.

I'm also a writer; and I've found that every other good hacker I've met writes.

Re:Take a look at the name...

[phliar]

His name is "phliar". There is a liar in him.

Ah, you're paying attention! I use that name (and not just on slashdot) because I'm a writer, and it's an obscure reference to the platonic belief that art is a pale imitation of life, like a reflection of a horse in a mirror is not really a horse; hence art = lies.

Re:Take a look at the name...

[phliar]

arrogant jerks with big egos who can't work in a team, can't document their code, don't like anyone else even looking at their code - never mind working on it, and can't build any sort of large system, that think just like this.

Of course I could be an arrogant jerk with a big ego (I'm pretty sure I am) - but if it does make any difference to you, I picked my next job because I thought it had the best team and the most cooperative atmosphere. I pride myself not just on the quality of the code, but on the design of the whole system as well as the documentation. As the team grew, I handed off large parts of my code to others. Thanks to my excellent documentation [arrogant jerk alert!] the handoff was smooth. I have done this at two separate companies.

Unfortunately this is all off-topic.

Amen!

[phliar]

Without writing up a bio, I'll just say that I am a uniquely talented hacker; I have never met anyone better (and I've been around). In three days I finish what it would take a good hacker a month. A few years ago I decided to quit my cushy silicon valley job and join a startup. The paycut wasn't too bad, and there was the dream of hitting the tech stock IPO lottery...

What happened instead was that very quickly I didn't care any more about the money or the options. I worked just about every waking hour. I did it because I really liked the work and the people I was working with. Others might call it obsession but that has such a negative connotation! I was having a blast. Sure, maybe I should have taken care of my health (chronic medical condition) but I don't have time to go wait in a doctor's office....

Well, the management was as bad as the technical people were good. After 2.5 years of nearly killing myself, the company went under. Suddenly, it was all gone! My code! The system, the design! And it was really cool stuff, something that would have made a difference! And, oh yeah, no more health insurance.

Now after three months of unemployment I've been able to come back to halfway normal. Health still bad but at least I eat and get enough sleep and spend time with friends. I'm finally ready to start thinking about going back to work. Well, actually I start in a week - at another startup. Now the question is: have I learned my lesson (whatever it is) or is this going to be the job that kills me?

Re:Amen!

[VultureMN]

Without writing up a bio, I'll just say that I am a uniquely talented hacker; I have never met anyone better (and I've been around).

It's absolutely amazing how many "hackers" I've met who claim that they're the Best Thing Ever. Then I see their code and am reassured that, yes, indeed, they're suffering from Overinflated Ego Syndrome.
I dunno if this applies to you, but your statement reminds me of the attitude an ex-coworder of mine had. *shudder*

Re:Amen!

[Rudeboy777]

Agreed. I have yet to encounter a fast programmer who could write non-spaghetti code no matter how detailed the specs are. The original poster described himself as a hacker, which I interpret as someone who writes fast and messy; code that is absolutely unintelligible to a maintainer (or even him/herself after a few weeks or months). That said, most management types prefer guys like this as opposed to slow and elegant.

Re:Amen!

[kstumpf]

I know exactly where youre at and how you feel because I had to make the same decision. I decided to try a normal 9-5 job with a good manager. What I found is that I have plenty of time to do what my employer wants (whether I agree with it or not!) and then go home and do what I enjoy doing. Its a healthy separation and everybody wins.

Re:Isn't there something wrong with the riddle?

[holzp]

the riddle is too vague. how do you know what the markings are? what if they were placed there at birth? then everyone still looks the same? sounds like the makings of a witchhunt to me. burn the readheads!
besides wouldnt you *know* if you sinned? then at least you rule yourself out. but how do you know if you and God's definition of sinning and yours are in agreement? sounds more like game theory then anything else.
anyway there is no way im gonna leave just because some other fucker hid his sin marking under a hat or something.

Re:No job...

[iso]

You know, this may sound stupid, but to me right now it sounds like college life...

this reminds me of something i used to argue about with my classmates at University. i went to the University of Waterloo for Electrical Engineering. for those who don't know, Waterloo is widely viewed as the best engineering and CS school in Canada, and certainly not an "easy" program. i graduated from there in 2000, and while many of my classmates worked like dogs as you have described i did (comparitively) jack all nothing and pulled 1 (one) "all nighter" the whole time. and i honestly think that this is part of the point of post-secondary education.

i got through University not by doing the work, but by simply "beating the system." i made friends with people who were a year or two ahead of me (perferably "off-stream"). when it came time to do assignments, i copied like crazy, or i worked together with others. sometimes i did a half-assed job of the assignments, other times i didn't bother doing them at all (based on their marks/effort). i attended around 2% or 3% of my classes, and i foudn out what needed to be done by having casual conversations with classmates or looking up information on the school network. when it came time for exams i crammed for 2 or 3 days but i only studied that information that i deemed important judging by comments from classmates or past exams and skipped the rest of it.

the result? i have the same physical degree as all of my classmates, but put in (conservatively) 5% of the effort. sure i got averages in the 60 and low 70s (60 is the minimum to pass) but i realized quickly that the actual grade didn't mean anything, only the degree itself (especially with the work experience i gained through the co-op that was more important to potential employers than grades).

my point is, you really don't have to work all that hard. i've carried the same "get the job done" over "work hard" methodology into my real job and it's working great. i'm getting phenomenal reviews while "working" at home 3/5 days a week. the really important part is that you have to learn to prioritise what's important and what's not and get the job done. i'm a really happy person with a great social life and no stress. i'll never work 40 hour weeks again.

- j

Unchecked capitalism may not work for you...

[Greyfox]

But I'm damn good at my job and I get paid well for it. I'd rather not have some outside force dictating my salary just because the other end of the bell curve is whining about not getting paid enough. Maybe a career change is what you need.

Sounds like you're agreeing with him.

[Len]

Salon.com's stock is trading at $0.35. The reason isn't the quality of their content; as you point out, the writing is excellent.

So whose fault is it? Management, maybe. Or it's the "business model". Or their "vision". Who knows if salon.com resembles the writer's company, but it does seem ironic for a troubled dotcom to publish that article.
--

four sinners on the fourth day?

[jschauma]

Following the logic at the end of the article, it seems to me it would make sense to assume that this problem can scale:

One can apply the exact same logic for every number, thus concluding that four sinners left the fourth day, five sinners left the fifth day and ultimately n sinners (the entire village) leaves the nth day.

Ok, ok, I see the problem states they leave the third day, but nonetheless, this feels stupid.

Re:Valley startup syndrome. My life in a bucket.

[marcushnk]

I hear you.
But I have a soloution for you as well.
The very fact that you know your weakness and down falls means you can fix them.
If I can give any usefull advice it is this:
Find someone to train you in personal Administration.
Your problems are the same as mine, When being asked too much (under the pump). My personal administration is the first thing to suffer when I'm scrambling to get my mind focused on what is important.
The thing that "makes" Managers, Team leaders, Lead programmers etc succesfull is not raw talent or skill, It's the ability to stay in touch with ALL aspects of the world around them while being pushed harder and harder.
I still have a long way to go in that respect, but I can see an obtainable point where I'm going to be HAPPY, WELL PAID and still ENJOYING my JOB!
And its all because my personal administration is becomming under control.
Good luck. It's hard work no-matter how you go about it.

It's all perspective...

[TopShelf]

If the play results in a comeback victory, it becomes "heroic" in hindsight.

For instance, in Game 4 of the 1990 NBA Finals, the Detroit Pistons trailed Portland by about 10 points with 2 minutes to play. By playing solid team defense, they held the Blazers scoreless the rest of the way and won the game on a relatively routine jumper by Vinnie Johnson with 0.7 seconds left on the clock. That same shot taken 20 minutes earlier would have been completely forgettable, but because it was the margin of victory in the game, Pistons fans will always remember it.

Another example came last night when the Devils beat the Maple Leafs in overtime. The game-winning goal was a lucky bounce off a defenseman's skate, but it'll go down in Devil's history as a great score...

Re:Moral of the story...

[otisg]

Of course. If your job is not loving you back then you have a serious problem, and you should sit down and figure out for yourself about what's important for you, what you enjoy doing, etc.
If your job is not loving you back it it not necessarily your manager's fault. The easiest thing to do is to accuse others like that...

Re:From the article's author

[otisg]

So it sounds like this was not the first time that you made the same mistake? Uh , uh:(

Re:Nice tale, but remember...

[otisg]

I guess people made the mistake at the very beginning by taking those low salaries in the first place. Why? Couldn't you find anything better? A year ago the job market was still good. Imagine if you had additional baggage, like being a foreigner, worrying about visa issues, and the very limited time you can legally be without a job! Lovely. Anyhow, but you are saying you had bad programmers. Bad programmers mean bad code, bad progress, bad product, etc. which leads to no $ from VCs. So ideally you should have recognized all those bads and left, no? What kept you at the job? I'm just curious... Thanks

When Unions are a good thing

[dingbat_hp]

Unions WERE a necessity back during the first half of the 1900's, but the battles were won

I agree with your sentiment, but not your literal statement.

Read Marx - he's still as accurate as ever, if you can apply the appropriate contextual changes. His model of "industrial production" described the situation where a few individually expensive machines were assembled into factories, and the work was carried out by large numbers of unskilled or semi-skilled workers. This situation hasn't gone away; it has just shrunken or moved overseas. Nike's child sweatshop workers in Vietnam need a union today as much as Victorian miners or millworkers ever did.

Even in the "high tech" world, unions still have a place. Look at call centres; they're classic instances of industrialisation on the Marxist model. How many bank or mail-order service operators can leave tomorrow and work for themselves, without the owners of the call-centre operation behind them ? Even back in the affluent west, there are still plenty of workers who need unionisation and would benefit from them.

This simplistic view of industry doesn't cover skilled geeks, and those who work in similar areas, because the capitalist owner has no means of controlling my means of production. A PC and a mobile are cheap - I can start work tomorrow as an independent consultant, and make a good living without my large corporate employer. This is my current defence against exploitation, and (in the context of similar workers) it works better than joining a Union would.

There's also a US / UK issue here. The UK has had inept, greedy and self-destructive unions (BECTA !), but we were spared the widespread corruption and graft that blighted the US union system.

Re:The Eventual Downfall of Every Man

[ed1park]

The lion is not living exactly as it is "supposed" to. Your idea of the purpose/meaning of whatever the lion is "supposed" to do is a human concept. apologies for the antrhropomophication?! Is that even a word? bah... A living thing desires above all to vent its strength? I'm sitting here imagining a tiny female hamster with rippling muscles venting its supposed strength flying along in the old hamster wheel... LOL... or better yet, a nice cow munching on grass venting its strength somewhere through tremendous farting. heh... I find that most pseudo-intellectuals out there quote nietzsche all the time. way overrated. and so is this message. a 5? c'mon guys.

How many sinners, then ?

[bockman]

For those of us who would never make it in an MS-style interview ...

Next time I get a CS degree, I'll be sure to attend some theology class ... just in case.

Sorry (Was Re:How many sinners, then ?)

[bockman]

You got modded down. There is not anymore respect for the eldest!

Re:The Eventual Downfall of Every Man

[RoninM]

A lion is not evil when it kills an antelope; that just the way it is.

Well, there are a few differences between fair lion and fair man. When Lion takes down an antelope and eats it, he does not care whether it was good or evil. When Man makes a buck to feed himself or his kids, he may worry over good or evil. Man thinks himself above Lion. Not because Man has intelligence or reason or adaptability, but because Man has a "soul" and has the capability to be humane. Yet, we define our compassion by playing through a system that we have specifically designed to create the lower class, the impoverished, and those less fortunate.

I don't argue against this system. I do argue that all too often we blindly follow it. Things'll probably turn out okay for you if you run blindly for the cheese at the end of the maze. At least you have ambition, of a sort. The problem is many people don't realize they're running the maze.

It's not that man is cosmically evil, it's just that man is not as good as he would have himself believe.

The Eventual Downfall of Every Man

[RoninM]

On my soapbox...

It seems to me that the most natural assumption one can have about life is that there are highs and lows. It's a cliché, I know, but that doesn't make it any less true: what goes up must come down. No-one ever thinks that far ahead, though. Everyone thinks he can milk it for more. The smart ones get out when they should get out. But we never hear about them except when the company experiences yet another meteoric rise afterwards -- then they're the stupid ones that could've been even more rich.

I fancy myself a scientist, so I don't believe in karma in any honest respect. But I think it has an uncanny way of working out. Greed never accomplishes much of anything. It's astounding to me that it's so often seen, so commonly cherished. In terms of money, past a certain point, you really don't have use for more. Why do people want to live in luxury? Comfort is enough for me. Money can get you that, but not peace of mind (the red tape of modernity is driving me insane). People that live in luxury, even, want something more. They want paradise. And those that can afford paradise? They still want more.

People often tout money. They say, happily, "You can never have enough." And use it as an excuse to seek more. That doesn't make sense to me. If you can never have enough, what value is more? Part of the problem with modern society is that we have hundreds of billions of dollars locked up in the hands of a few people that aren't putting it back into the economy. There are people starving, of course, but I need to have the closest thing to the Garden of Eden that has ever existed in my backyard.

Enough is enough. It's time we start to learn that money isn't everything, it's not the only thing, and it's not the most important thing. It's just more red-tape. I'm not against Capitalism, I don't argue against the foundations of our economy, but after a while, you begin to see that it's all just exo-structure built to obscure that we're all greedy and no-good. Hobbes was right, I guess, in that respect. We need to make society so complex we can fool ourselves into thinking we're doing something good. 99.999% of us aren't. Me included.

Sometime down the line, I'm hoping, we can see the fractal nature of our life, how it's neatly reflected in sport and art to such a high degree. It's the NBA playoffs and I've seen a lot of teams down by 3-6 points as the game is coming to an end. They have time to do things the right way, to build it up, make solid moves, and win the game. But they go for the dagger, the deathblow, the dramatic rise to heroism and victory. Their hopes rise with the desperation shot that they didn't need to take. And the fall from that emotional high is swift and hard. So often they end their hopes by placing it all in one place, everything on one shot, and when it rims out, it's game over. You can see the same in art just as well. And in other sports. Life is full of microcosms we choose to ignore. We're an amazingly reflective society, but astoudingly blind to the messages we're sending ourselves.

Maybe I won't be a millionaire in my lifetime. But I won't die trying to be one.

Re:The Eventual Downfall of Every Man

[great throwdini]

I fancy myself a scientist, so I don't believe in karma in any honest respect. But I think it has an uncanny way of working out.

Unfortunately, the "traditional" notion of karma is that it "works itself out" over a series of lifetimes. The notion of karmic checks and balances within the span of a single lifetime (or a span of week, as some seem to understand the term) is largely a Westernization of the original concept.

Sad to say, but from what I've seen, benefits due the industrious and good-natured are still meted out in the traditional manner ... :P

Re:The Eventual Downfall of Every Man

[tylerh]

Moderators, sorry this is offtopic, but a common intellectual error has occurred.

"Think again before postulating the drive to self preservation as the cardinal drive in an organic being.".

Close, but no Cigar

The cardinal drive is SELF_PROPAGATION. Think of this planet's most successful animals (as measured by biomass): ants. Individual ants have little sense of self-preservation -- but are wickedly well adapted at self-propagation via the queen. This story plays out again and again. Things that successfully self-propagate (ants, bacteria, internet jokes, the GPL) tend to stick around. Things that don't (sterile mutants, incomprehensible jokes ,dot.com startups) tend to vanish

OK Back on topic now.

Re:The Eventual Downfall of Every Man

[themoodykid]

All good points, but on the flip side, what a boring world we would live in if there were no highs and lows such as the ones you mentioned.

If a team was down by 6 points and somehow managed to come back and win the game through amazing heroics, wouldn't that be so much more exciting than if they had done so through solid team play? What I'm getting at is that going for the gusto and failing miserably (most of the time) is what makes us human.

If you wanna get high, you have to be willing to come down later.

Re:The Eventual Downfall of Every Man

[Hater's Leaving, The]

"
Unfortunately, you've confounded "natural" and "moral." Thanks for playing, though.
"

'confused'?

I have to back up sql*kitten here. I think he's fully aware of the fact that our view of morals is an introspective one applied by humans onto humans, and that they cannot be directly applied to tha natural living world. (Or the non-living either!)

If we were to anthropomorphise the lions briefly, then their view on killing antelopes would be their morals. They would also view our behaviour as 'nature'. OK, let's stop that anthropomorphising immediately, I don't like making such a projection.

It appears you are saying "from a fixed point of view, these two things are different". sql*kitten is perhaps saying "these things are different, but by changing ones point of view they can be made equivalent"? You're both agreed that they are different.

However, I can't concur completely with Nietzsche's "will to power" quote. I believe that the "will to power" has evolved as a succesful trait in very many creatures. I don't believe it's universal or even evolutionarily necessary. Nietzsche is perhaps over-anthropomorphising here.

THL.
--

It's never a good start...

[intmainvoid]

They wanted to pay me less than half of what I had been making

Looks like things were good from the word go!

Re:It's never a good start...

[OhPlz]

Exactly!

What ever happened to, "if it's too good to be true"? If the technology is so good that it can't possibly fail and you're able to choose your VC's how can you not afford to pay people MORE than they'd make at other places?

As any type of computer technologist, even with today's market, you should still be able to name YOUR price. If you're getting screwed from the get go what makes you think when you strike it rich they're suddenly going to share the wealth? Even with stock options there's not even the hint of a guarentee.

If you're being worked like a dog then you probably are a dog.

Re:work attachment

[sl3xd]

That, of course, depends on what your goals are; I would never sacrifice my efforts for a place of business-- unless doing so directly solved my own goals. Money, of course, is not a goal.

A few years back, I was seventeen and working as an IT manager - yes, manager. And, I worked whenever I wasn't in school.

I worked a lot of overtime hours - but for me, the goal was ca$h - college costs money, and I wanted to go. My parents can't help me out, and despite my grades and test scores, scholorships were lacking (due to my choice of major, my sex/ethnic background, and the trend towards diversity severely limiting offerings.)

So - I worked my tail off to earn money. And you know something? It paid off in a very big way - I learned every aspect of system administration - from the corporate UNIX machines to Macs, to PC's to dummy terminals; and what's more: This has given me a serious advantage now that I am in school, and am using software packages and tools that only exist for UNIX - I can finish my projects with ease, where others are bashing their heads in just to start the program!

There is a healthy attatchment - but only when it serves your personal interest directly. The hope for 'future recognition' is a useless endeavor.

In my experience those who live for and wait for the future do little more than waste their time waiting for it to happen.

Nothing is going to happen if you aren't working to your own goals first.

Re:Schadenfreude - Etymology

[sunking7]

I been living in Germany working on a project. So let me share an American's insight in the etymology of this German expression...

Shadenfreude.

As an Auslander these are my observations...

When something bad happens to someone here they tend to say "Shade" which means something like 'pity' or 'what a shame'. It can be said in sympathy or mock sympathy, the latter lending itself most easily to the full expression.

I haven't actually seen a lot of Shadenfreude here, maybe they're really keeping their exhiliration at another's failure deeply hidden. What good is that huh? Why have a joy you can't really enjoy?

Anyway, Ich bin der Auslander, signing off :)

Re:Moral of the story...

[Mzilikazi]

It is OK to love your spouse, OK to love your kids, yet, for those with neither, it should be OK to love you job equally

But can your job love you back?

You haven't met my wife and kids. Work is a fscking love fest compared to home.

Re:Isn't there something wrong with the riddle?

[Lozzer]

It was a given in the problem that all the sinners left on the third day. Not that it stops the problem being badly worded, but your "counterexample" that nobody leaves on the third day is crap.

No job...

[Darth Turbogeek]

Is worth what he put in. No way. It's just not worth trying to kill yourself - or was it a protracted form of suicide? I can appreciate what he went through as I have done such things myself.

You have to have a balance. Sure, working to get ahead, do that, it may work out, even if in this case it didnt. But you have to ask yourself - is it me I put first, or the company? Is it really worth it?

Re:No job...

[dagoalieman]

You know, this may sound stupid, but to me right now it sounds like college life...

Take three junior level coding courses, and two gimme courses, and what do you get? 8:30AM to 4:30AM days, coding taking up a majority of this time. Oh, and since I work the local IT equivalent, that adds some more to the plate.

The thing is though, the classes are the killers- when I have three different courses in which I'm writing 75+ printed page programs at once (yes, they are simple, but it's the fact those 75 pages are in relatively short amounts of time...), that's insane coding time, much less debugging time. (And I'm a horrid coder, so up the debug time from normal..) Many times over the past three years I've become very sick from lack of sleep, over exertion, etc, even taking a couple of ambulance rides due to the times I neglect myself.

You say no job is worth what was put in. The problem is though, to get a job or keep a job these days, it sure seems that in many workplaces this is dead minimum. And each year the IT/development expectations grow.. so where does it stop? Should I just head to McDonald's now, or rough it out?

Put me first, then I'll have to leave school (any less hours, I lose scholarships, and any less coding, I won't grad. in time..). So, I lose my dreams. Put "the company" (or search for a job/degree) first, and then I end up losing my body, sanity, and God knows what else. So I still lose. If I didn't love my IT job so much, It seems like I should leave, because this appears a no win situation.

Green money

[Nishi-no-wan]

[...] remember that all we've lost is the fantasy that those little green pieces of paper actually mean something.

Green? When I visited the States a couple of months ago, the money had turned off-white. I could have swarn the restarant I used my travellers check at was giving me counterfiet money for change. But everyone seemed to take it.

Off topic, but needed saying.

You just don't understand :-(

[Poligraf]

Moderation is sacrificed ...

The ONLY STRENGTH of any union is in its EXCLUSIVITY.

It means that in order to get workers, a company MUST deal with THE union (and there is no competition between unions). It works the same way from the other end of the "Employer - Union - Employee" line, i.e., in order to get a job, someone MUST become a union member.

If you neglect this exclusivity, you lose the only good point because the union can't protect its members because it can't prevent employer from getting non-unionized employees. This exclusivity is the only line of defence for any union (if you fire this union member, you're risking a strike).

Thus, the regular union rules apply, and incompetent idiot who calls himself a programmer after graduating from 3-month VB classes lawfully gets the same salary as Master of Science in Computer Science :-(

Another effect is that you'll be PROHIBITED FROM PROGRAMMING if you're not a union member in the unionized enterprise; any user who writes his own Excel or Word macros can be prosecuted ;-)

What You Need Now

[Poligraf]

Even though I might loose some precious karma to a stupid moderator, I have an advice for you regarding your health. Start doing qi-gong or some form of yoga; it will help you to restore health and get more stamina and endurance (for example, I can drive for 7 hours straight and still be able to move after; I was pretty much dead after driving for 4 hours before I started qi-gong).

It is not a panacea, but it helps a lot.
Visit www.qi.org for info.

Re:Take a look at the name...

[Poligraf]

The thing is that you can never estimate the difference correctly if it's about algorithmization.

You can compare two CODERS on the quality of CODE, but how can you evaluate the gain from me coming to the company, learning everything about the task in two hours and spending another two hours for generating an intuitive algorithm that was a million times better than everything three people have thought of in three months? ;-)

freaky...

[connorbd]

The thing is that a couple of months ago I was doing some heavy reading into Scientology and Amway. Much like the subjects of my studies, this situation looks a bit... uh... cultish? Very disturbing. Very disturbing indeed.

/Brian

Re:sorry to say this

[vsync64]

Which is why you should check what the person who spoke to you meant.

Excellent point, which is why I did. I mentioned the other things I had on my plate at the time, asked whether I should try to balance the activities, and was told "Work on this 100%. Ignore everything else until this is completed. This is crucial to the success of the business.".

Instead, what you did was to take the most literal interpretation possible

Not to be that annoying literalist geek, but that's how I am, and I view it as the safest option. If you want me to spend 90% of my time on something, say so. Don't say "drop everything", because I will. You manager, I coder, you say, I do. And I view the potential consequences as far lighter than the possible "Did you get X done?" "No." "Why not?" "I was working on Y and Z." "#@$^B&^%$?! I explicitly told you to only work on X until it was complete."

literally stop work on another important task

For 1 day. The stuff was due to be done in a week or two.

And at the core, who should be managing things? I'd suggest the manager.

and assume that you had made the correct interpretation of someone else's priorities from a quick, rushed conversation.

People where I work like to do everything as a quick, rushed conversation, and it's caused me and others no end of problems, which is why I've taken to doing all this sort of communication by email. In fact, I'm going to put up a sign at my desk: Ask me to do it through email. If you ask me in person, it didn't happen.

Frankly, in that manager's position, I would strongly suspect that you had just blown off the job and were using "drop everything" as an excuse.

Yes, streetlawyer, you would.

In short, you're in the position you're in because you're a poor communicator.

Partially, yes. I have a hard time getting shunted around to a million different projects at once and I've missed (accidentally!) more meetings than I really should. I also know that I'm pretty much unable to say no. I think every problem is a quick 5min thing, and I accept too much on my plate. I'm working on that.

I'm fully aware that I'm not without my faults, but all I ask is that I not be castigated for trying to do my job as I was directed.

--

Re:Valley startup syndrome. My life in a bucket.

[vsync64]

Well, I'd like to thank all of you who replied with comments and/or advice. Even streetlawyer; he had 1 or 2 sentences of thought-provoking value.

I really liked the ideas about making the managers manage (whiteboards and all) and was actually planning to implement such a scheme (well, I was going to make a little HTTP app to do it, but whatever :). I had also decided that it wasn't worth scrounging for respect, and had started checking out other opportunities.

We were pretty much all laid off yesterday. There is some irony in this.

--

Re:Valley startup syndrome. My life in a bucket.

[vsync64]

As an interesting side note, I work with Zeio. He's the "IT guy" mentioned below...

Several things struck me immediately in this article:

The application I had written was finished, but I received no kudos from the management at the team meeting. [...] I fell just short of "superstar." It wasn't for lack of intellect, I was told, but for lack of focus. Overdelivery was my coping mechanism; I figured that no one would be able to overlook the fact that even though I was spread far too thin, I kept hitting deadlines.

This is me, except for the "meeting deadlines" part (I'll be the first to admit that long-term concentration is not my strong point). Where I work, I'm having my "top priority" constantly jerked out from under me by my boss. Then I rush to get acquainted with the new situation, rush to get something accomplished, get 50%-90% done, and then get my "top priority" reset again.

The most frustrating experience I can recall in recent memory is when I had been working on learning our new system and porting my bug fixes to it (despite being told that I'd be a valuable team member, come up with neat stuff, etc, I ended up getting assigned to bug fix after bug fix) when I was told that I absolutely needed to drop everything and work on getting a new QA server set up. So I did. I got in sometime in the morning and worked completely straight until 1900, no breaks of any sort, my coworker hovering over my shoulder and breathing tobacco-smoke-tinged breath on me. Finally, I finished what I could do, and with a splitting headache, I took my laptop and sat on one of our futons.

"Did you finish the bug fixes?" I look up to see my boss standing over me. "What?" I am the tiniest bit incredulous. "What's the status of the bug fixes?" "Not done." "Why not?" "Because you told me I had a new top priority." "Well, yes, but you have other priorities as well." Apparently "drop everything" has a different meaning for different people.

Anyway, this is pretty much par for the course. When I do get a moment to myself, I'm unable to just sit down and code. I can't just hack new code in between 5e6 other things; my mind doesn't work that way. I'm not blaming anyone else for this, either — I know I'm not getting anything done — but it sucks to want to be creating new code, to add a little piece of myself to our product, but to sit and fester when I have the chance to do so.

So I'm unproductive, unhappy, and unfocused. Yippee. This is not at all the environment I was promised when I was hired, and a number of coworkers have exactly the same cheated feeling. I'm the butt of all jokes, the person all odd jobs get handed to, and the assumption is always that I can pick up whatever crap J. Random Sloppy Coder left lying about. My suggestions are mocked, my self-esteem is shot, and at the core, I know only I can earn any respect for myself, but I'm sick of trying to impress these people. Oh, and when I had a deadline the next morning and did my best to stick to my word and have it ready, I was openly insulted for being so gauche as to spend the night at the office.

My resumé's up now, and I've got a few job offers coming in, but I don't know how firm they are, and I really don't want to leave one company in which I have stock options (no matter how few) and a decent salary for another one which might be just as bad.

I've taken to sitting around with our IT guy and posting to Slashdot. I don't feel like a vile festering leech; I'm actually helping get things done for the company, but it's not what I was hired to do, and I know that my "projects" are getting held up while I cower in the corner. I'm just hoping that I can work myself back up to writing something decent tomorrow or this weekend (yay for wasting my weekends doing a poor job of recovering the time lost during the week).

AND I HATE THE FLUORESCENT LIGHTS!!! They give me painful headaches and destroy my concentration. But what am I supposed to do? Sabotage the circuit breakers?

Whee. What a rant. :-P

If you're a manager, the one useful thing I hope you get from reading this post post is to give your people a chance to accomplish what you've assigned them, and treat them as competent professionals.

--

Re:I disagree.

[top-dog]

I don't think you understand the statement about the screwdriver. All it was used for was to turn a fastener 1/4 turn to open a panel. It is just a "doorknob". It had nothing to do with performing work or taking anyone's job. Some overzealous electrician sees this and recognizes a way for him to stand around for half a day doing nothing but holding a screwdriver, so he files a grievance. How would you feel if you had to call and schedule a locksmith to open every door that you need a key to open? It is the same idea.

I disagree.

[top-dog]

I have to disagree with your post and agree with the parent post. Current day unions really don't help the workers out much. They may help you get that 1% raise every year and that 15 minute cofee break every hour, but they really hurt those who want to excell. Unions WERE a necessity back during the first half of the 1900's, but the battles were won. What were the unions supposed to do after that?

I work in a union, and I work with a few other craft unions. Some of the practices today are just plain ludicrous. For example - let's say I am an engineer that wants to examine some electrical switchgear using thermography. All I will be doing is taking a few images without touching any of the wires. But in order for me to be able to see the wires, I must use a screw driver (or quarter) to turn a fastener 90 degrees to open the door. I get seen HOLDING a screwdriver, and the electricians union goes crazy and files a grievance. Now, whenever I need to do thermography, I have to arrange for an electrician to come hold a screwdriver for a few hours. Worse, most of the time there are no available electricians, so I can't do anything. Hold on, it gets better. Every hour while I am taking pictures, I have to stop so the electrician can go take a 15 minute cofee break. It is terrible.

I will admit, there are many guys who work in unions that work their butts off just because they care. Unfortunately, there are more guys that know that they get their $20/hour, no matter how hard they work or how good their work is. And if management tries to take a hard line to ensure quality, if the contract does not specifically state that quality control is grounds for reprimand, then the laborers go on strike or file grievances.

Re:I disagree.

[cavemanf16]

The above post, and the one modded up below make two very good points that we should all realize as people with interests in the IT work world.

Unions are necessary, but not to serve those in 'charge' of the union, but the worker. At the same time, people should have a choice to join unions if they so desire. If I know that a particular union is predatory, encourages laziness, and benefits the 'powers that be' instead of me as a worker, I should be allowed to not join that union, charge less for my services, and receives plenty of work contracts from employers because they too will recognize the corruptness of the union. This in turn will keep unions on their toes to make sure they have more productive members.

OR, if I knew a union was a great organization, one that fought for the little guy, and was well respected for the work of its members by employers in general, then I would choose to join that union. I could then benefit from the mass organization of productive workers.

The problem, as stated elsewhere in this thread, is when a union becomes a monopoly and all competition to their work ethic, no matter how good or bad it is, is stifled. That's when it becomes bloated and subservient to the greediness of it's leaders, much like communist or dictatorial regimes become corrupted by greed and general human sinfulness by those in control of the system. I can see the US heading this direction too in recent years, with many judges and elected officials taking campaign contributions from the corp's instead of from the little guys like you and I.

Re:sorry to say this

[OhPlz]

Yes, because it means the company can then hire "managers" to build empires, squander budgets, and become the scorn of all these valuable programmers.

Programmers are hired to code, now what exactly is the manager's job? To manage (i.e. communicate effectively with one's subordinates, assign realistic priorities, supervise the going-on's with other departments etc..).

Programmers that can communicate seem to end up being sucked into the vacuum of sales & marketting, never to be seen again. The frequent flier miles can't be all that bad though. Meanwhile the coders that are impossible to talk to sit in their cube and actually get stuff done.

Re:sorry to say this

[OhPlz]

Well that would be the fault of management for not paying attention, wouldn't it?

In some companies the coders run the show. They decide what new features will be added, how they'll be implemented etc.. In that case it can't really be the "wrong stuff". Why? Management at these places are so inept that they can't understand the technology, they can only "manage" the people working on it.

"I don't understand what you're doing but make sure you meet the deliverable, work nights and weekends if you have to."

Re:sorry to say this

[OhPlz]

The slashdot mentality is that coders code. PHB's hinder that goal with meetings, pointless debates, requests for documentation etc.. therefore they're inept as they should be facilitating, not hindering.

If a PHG prevents a PHB from doing his/her job than it's up to the PHB to do something about it. A PHB has powers over the PHG be it a firing, issuing a bonus, adding/removing resources, forced training and such. If a PHB puts up with an incompetent or non-cooperative PHG it's their own damn fault because of their own ineptness.

A PHG, on the other hand, has no powers over an incompetent PHB. PHG's in number MAY be able to do something about it in some organizations but it's somewhat rare. Therefore the poorly managed PHG's have no outlet but to whine about the PHB's on /.

Besides all that, show me any coder who actually knows what his manager does. They appear from time to time to yell about something then withdraw into the woodwork. Perhaps if the geeks could understand the boss's mission they could actually help each other out. Too bad geeks aren't entitled to know what goes on behind the closed doors.

Re:sorry to say this

[OhPlz]

No, I think you're confusing the coders with tech support.

But all kidding aside.. what I'm saying is that's the slashdot mentality. A good manager would be facilitating the process: asking the right questions, not being stupid or redundant, and actually asking for the coder's input. I don't think the code geeks actually mind this type of manager. They're part of "the group".

A bad manager would hinder the process with dumb questions probably already answered a million times, meetings "to get everyone on the same page because I have no freaking clue what you people do" and so on. These are the PHB's. If no one wants to talk to you either you smell real bad or you're annoying the hell out of the person.

I actually had a boss not too long ago that said "I have no idea what you do but you're doing an excellent job". WTF? Before that I had one that yelled at me for not keeping enough equipment on inventory. He couldn't believe it when I told him I was hired as a Software Engineer and had nothing to do with purchasing. Those were both PHB's.

Re:sorry to say this

[streetlawyer]

Meanwhile the coders that are impossible to talk to sit in their cube and actually get stuff done.

.... and it's usually the wrong stuff.

Re:sorry to say this

[streetlawyer]

There appears to be a double standard at work here:

Management don't understand the technology: dolts! They're inept! Coders, those legendary judges of what users will pay for, should run the show.

"Coders" can't handle human interaction: that's totally acceptable! They can't be expected to communicate clearly, that's the job of management.

The truth is clearly somewhere in between -- it is the responsibility of management to understand the technology to a degree, and the responsibility of programmers to communicate properly. What I don't understand is this Slashdot mentality that whines non-stop about "PHBs stopping me from doing my job properly!" while failing to condemn pointy-headed geeks who systematically make it impossible for managers to do their job properly.

Managers are paid to manage people. A normal manager can manage normal people. To find someone who's capable of instantly interpreting the hundred and one varieties of geekish grunt? Maybe one in a thousand, and you bet he'll be well paid. If you expect a reasonably competent manager to communicate with an entire room full of "problem" employees, you will get the same results that you get by giving the coders inadequate tools. It cuts both ways, and nine times out of ten, aggrieved geeks have received precisely the management they derserved.

Re:sorry to say this

[streetlawyer]

PHB's hinder that goal with meetings, pointless debates, requests for documentation etc

In my world, this behaviour is known as "trying to extract valuable information from someone who can't or won't communicate".

sorry to say this

[streetlawyer]

... but you are at least partly the author of your own misfortunes. Let me analyse this vignette from an alternative point of view:

The most frustrating experience I can recall in recent memory is when I had been working on learning our new system and porting my bug fixes to it (despite being told that I'd be a valuable team member, come up with neat stuff, etc, I ended up getting assigned to bug fix after bug fix) when I was told that I absolutely needed to drop everything and work on getting a new QA server set up. So I did. I got in sometime in the morning and worked completely straight until 1900, no breaks of any sort, my coworker hovering over my shoulder and breathing tobacco-smoke-tinged breath on me. Finally, I finished what I could do, and with a splitting headache, I took my laptop and sat on one of our futons.

"Did you finish the bug fixes?" I look up to see my boss standing over me. "What?" I am the tiniest bit incredulous. "What's the status of the bug fixes?" "Not done." "Why not?" "Because you told me I had a new top priority." "Well, yes, but you have other priorities as well." Apparently "drop everything" has a different meaning for different people.

Yes. "Drop everything" does indeed have a different meaning for different people. For a lot of people it just means "this is urgent". For a lot of people it means "drop everything, do this right now, but not at the expense of severely delaying something else". It's a very ambiguous term. Which is why you should check what the person who spoke to you meant.

Instead, what you did was to take the most literal interpretation possible, literally stop work on another important task, and assume that you had made the correct interpretation of someone else's priorities from a quick, rushed conversation.

Your boss comes back, and the bug fixes aren't done. Now, it's very hard to say the sentence "But you said, 'drop everything'" without it sounding like a smart-ass remark (try). I'm guessing that, whatever you intended, it in fact did sound like a smart ass remark. So from his point of view, he's not got the bug fixes he wanted, he's got an employee who failed to remind him of other tasks he was carrying out at the same time and (from his POV) randomly reprioritized the job queue, and that employee has justified his action by acting like Mr Fucking Spock and hanging everything on the phrase "drop everything". Frankly, in that manager's position, I would strongly suspect that you had just blown off the job and were using "drop everything" as an excuse.

In short, you're in the position you're in because you're a poor communicator. You don't make an effort to find out what people mean, you don't give information to the system about your status (something that even C++ objects can manage) and you make smart-ass remarks to justify your behaviour. No wonder your manager regards you as a management problem.

Being talented with computers is not an excuse to act the stereotyped g**k. It is not reasonable to demand of busy people that they submit their requests as if they were a Unix kernel, and it is *your* responsibility to ensure that someone else knows what your workload is like. Burning midnight oil in a heroic quest to get half a job done as a one-man team is no substitute for communicating and prioritising.

And when people say "work smarter, not harder", that's what they mean.

Re:sorry to say this

[weylin]

It's all very well to criticise the programmer but managers are hired for their communication and project management skills, programmers are hired for their programming skills. Good managers are at least as rare as good programmers.

Re:sorry to say this

[CaptainCap]

"Drop everything" means drop everything.

Re:sorry to say this

[beth_linker]

That's a lot of nonsense. If I tell a programmer to drop everything and do a new task, and that new task takes 12 hours, it's completely unreasonable for me to come back 12 hours later and ask why something else isn't done.

It's pretty unambiguous that "drop everything" means put this new thing first on your to-do list. The issue is really not whether or not one has other priorities, but whether or not one can do two jobs at once. Most people can't, and it's unreasonable to expect that introducing new work into a full schedule won't push everything else back.

Re:sorry to say this

[dinivin]

This doesn't change the fact that the manager told him to "drop everything". If the manager didn't want him to drop everything, he should have told him to.

Dinivin

Re:Roleplaying - what would I say

[smack_attack]

Top 10:

10) Do you want to hire a programmer or someone who thinks about sinners and reflective surfaces all the time and never gets anything done

9) I think my phone is ringing.

8) hang on a sec, I have to search google.

7) I think I just burst a blood vessel in my brain.

6) HA! what a pathetic riddle, the obvious answer is 3.

5) goatse.cx

4) Obligitory Linux Sux, Microsoft Rox joke here.

3) Obligitory Beowulf cluster joke here

2) spork

1) 3, ask another riddle Roland. BTW, Stephen King is dead at 58.

---

Re:Schadenfreude

[loraksus]

Sadism? Sadistic Pleasure?

I'd say that the former covers it more than anything else.

After all, you are drawing amusement from other people's pain (problems).

I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.

My short story

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

I had something similar, I think a lot of folks can say that, though instead of just eBay, I read Slashdot. Mohan read The Onion.

I think the basic problem with the dotcom thing was ignorance, thinking that the Net changes all the rules. One rule it didn't change; a disorganized business school grad with no management experience can't run a successful company. Teambuilding exercises don't replace respect for coworkers and management.

I don't want to come off like a jerk here, but I don't think we should feel sorry for Mr. Wadler. I sure as hell don't feel sorry for me. I went to Cali, leaving Chicago my only ever home, to do a startup. I knew it was risky, that 80% of new ventures fail within 2 years or whatever. I sacrificed, worked long hours. Diving deep into work wasn't a problem - I didn't know anybody in SF anyway. I went through the Emperor has no clothes thing (my CEO royally screwed up and nearly missed a meeting with investment bankers right when we needed cash the most, we didn't get it). There was a pseudo-triumverate of folks who I thought were smart. Then they started getting canned because of lack of good attitude. Hell, CFO told the first to go that she wasn't smiling enough. You get fired for not smiling? Then our lead client programmer gets forced out, I'll always remember walking through the urine stained streets of SF's Tenderloin to wipe out his drive on a warn Sunday morning. My year was soon up, and I left at a year and a day, just long enough for my worthless options to vest.

But this Jesus metaphor has gotta go. I walked into this myself. I dedicated my time to this, nobody forced me to do anything. I took a risk, a possible huge upside countered by a very probable got nothing. I got nothing. No problem. I realize that above all I have choices. I have more choices available to me than maybe 99% of the folks on the planet (wanna tell some kid dying of measles or some other ridiculously preventable disease in the Congo and see how much sympathy you get?). And I made one. I wan't killed by it, I had fun in a new city, went to some dot-com parties before their VC money ran out totally. And I learned from it too, my anger control is much better than before. So don't cry for me Argentina. I worked long hours by choice, and the folks I worked for just didn't get it. And I chose to leave once it didn't work for me.

Re:Valley startup syndrome. My life in a bucket.

[MrBogus]

A long time ago, I had a job that was exactly like vsync64's (not coding, but mutiple, conflicting "This is the top priority" directives). It didn't help that they were firing people left-and-right and dumping their responsibilities onto me.

I tried to do exactly what you said by running a list on a whiteboard and pushing back on them to priortize the workflow. It was actually quite successful for a month or two. Until they decided that whiteboard itself was some metaphorical totem of my lack of respect, it was actually my fault that you can't squeeze a gallon of lemonaid out of one lemon, and I too was eventually fired. To nobody's real suprise, the company was pretty much shut down and certain stuff was outsourced at great cost within a couple months.

And I'm afraid that's the boat vsync64 is in. They don't respect him. They're dumping shit on him percisely so that he takes the blame. He's got more work than he can do, and no amount of manager-massaging is going to change the fact that every potential scenario involves him getting shit on. He's personally involved in a company's self-destruction, and there's no real good solution except a new job.

Re:Schadenfreude

[IvyMike]

that's what the english word means. if it's an english dictionary you're not looking at the german word, and hence your post is irrelavent. on the other hand, that's not to say michael didn't intend to use the english word.

Well, let's see: Michael was speaking in English, and the English word makes more sense in this context than the speculated German meanings. I think it's relatively likely that Michael intended to use the English word.

Re:Schadenfreude

[IvyMike]

No need to go to a German translation; it's a word that appears in most good English dictionaries.

What do you mean GREED ???

[cOdEgUru]

Salon has a nice story of start-up greed and stupidity.

Micheal, you just threw everyone who works in the Valley down the drain. The millions who work here, not all are working for making millions the next day. We are here because we believed in something, we loved the work we were doing and we love the weather down here. Not just because we wanted to be millionaires (ofcourse the thought of that obviously helped). But the way you say it makes it look as if you were some high and mighty puratinist who never cared for a dollar and does editing and readiing all day. Yeah right. Go ask Andover.net..or else..Go figure.

I know its kinda Flaming.. But I just couldnt help it. The idiot had some nerve...

Re:What do you mean GREED ???

[Hater's Leaving, The]

I also always prefer to moderate up. However, I want to prefer to moderate those who are prepared to put their name to what they say, those who are not be ashamed of what they believe.
A wise AC will still get upmodded, the contents _are_ more important than the envelope used.
I also tend to prefer the 3-liners to the treatises, personally.
For example earlier there was a "Nietzsche knew nothing about evolution and molecular biology" post. That was all - the perfect length for its payload. If I hadn't already posted, I've have given that +1 on the spot, whether it was AC or not.

THL.

--

Re:work attachment

[fonebone]

Bah. This part I disagree with completely. You don't have goals. You are an individual. You signed an employment contract, basically promising to devote your every waking hour to the company. Get over it. It's not like you're a slave and can't quit.

On slashdot, theres always someone talking and asking about employee contracts, so that's not my concern. (If you don't like a contract, don't sign it!)

You say individuals needn't have goals, not when they're at work anyhow. Maybe I'm young and naive, but I have a general idea of what I'm going to do in my life, and I'll use jobs to further my interests, with the side-effect of paying for my food.

I'm not afraid to make little money while doing things I love, but I'm not afraid of making good money doing the same. Because of this, I'm not going to let work get in the way of my goals.

Anyway, I guess the point I'm trying to make is, maybe it only makes sense to have a passion for your employeer if you realize you're working towards your goals through the company. If your work is just a place you waste your day at to get some paychecks, then there's no reason you should go above and beyond what's expected.

---
if the rain comes, they run and hide their heads. they might as well be dead.

work attachment

[fonebone]

On top of looking at how places can overwork their employees, this is also an issue of company attachment. There's so much propaganda at a work place, if not just the feeling of company success as being 'good', and failures 'bad'.

As a side note, what do you think is a 'healthy' attachment to your company (if you're not the owner, etc.)? Should one feel obliged to work long overtime hours in order to further the goals of the place they work? Or should we always remember to work towards our own goals firstly?

What have you found yourself doing?

Re:work attachment

[ocbwilg]

There is a healthy attatchment - but only when it serves your personal interest directly. The hope for 'future recognition' is a useless endeavor.

Agreed. While recognition is nice, a week after you've gotten it you've got nothing to show for it. Time off, more money, better opportunity, additional education...those are the ways to really show that someone is doing a good job.

Re:Valley startup syndrome. My life in a bucket.

[ckedge]

Holy shit, you're me, or I'm you, or something or other. What I mean is, I know EXACTLY where you're coming from.

Currently the team/group I'm with is about 50% relatively new people and I'm a technical lead. I am also largely responsible for a few of the major products, and so am the only person who can answer a lot of the technical questions from marketing and support. There's always a few of the new people doing tasks that require a lot of direction/help from me due to the lack of documentation from the past 3 years. It's gotten me to the exact same point where you are. The experiences have left me *totally* demotivated. I've spend the last MONTH doing around 3 days of work, 10-15 days of dealing with all these other non-task related interruptions, and 12 days of doing absolutely nothing due to my motivational state (get in late, slashdot, mail, mope, browse favorite web pages/cartoons, lunch, mail, meeting, mope, etc etc).

It's gotten me to the point where I think it would be better for the company and for me to ask for a transfer to a different division, or for an indefinite leave of absence. Of course there's always the chance that they'll decide to fire me for slacking off and doing nothing, instead of trying to do something productive to get me back on track. Of course even I have no idea as to what to do about this. Guess I should read some management type books, figure out what's missing, and tell them. Of course now that I think about it, I can easily come up with a half dozen things. I just can't figure out how to tell them, nor what to suggest to do to deal with it...

( When's the last time you heard of anyone going to their manager and saying "by the way, I'm horribly unmotivated and I haven't done any work for a month, you should do something about that!" )

Another semi-related story: A while further back I was on a project where I was sysadmin/troubleshooter/etc of ten million in hardware and software. It was fun, it was interesting, and I got to interact with users and developers and new systems going up, everything. But then the project deadlines came in and the occasional emergency, so I was handed some real tasks to get done. Unfortunately my days as a sysadmin consisted of 30% rote tasks and 70% interruptions for important things. You can draw the conclusion already, just guess at how much I got done while being interrupted 5 times an hour for important-critical systems things? Now I didn't mind, but it got to the point where my boss basically stood over my shoulder for an entire day and micromanaged what I did. It was only at that point that he understood what the hell was going on and why, and gave me the authority/direction to de-prioritize these interruptions. That helped a ton.

Re:OT: slashdot is messed up

[ckedge]

Yes. Lately huge amounts of moderator points are being handed out. Just last week I got moderator access 3 times in a row. Normally I only get it once every 1-3 months. (I have a karma around 40.)

Someone's over-reacted to some perceived situation. I mean there is always the occasional story that ends up not getting enough moderation, and posts to older articles not getting their share of moderator eyeballs, but this is ridiculous. Since everything I think should be a 4 or a 5 is already at 5, then I end up hunting down something else to moderate up that normally wouldn't go so high...

And I imagine with all that extra moderator points, they're not so 'valuable' or 'rare' any more, and so there's less disincentive to moderate down.

Very easy to relate to

[rhysweatherley]

I can definitely relate to much of this article. Especially working longer, harder, faster for little extra recognition. Confronting management usually back-fired. Health-wise, I was a mess, just like the author of this piece. I eventually escaped, and now am blessedly self-employed. But it took me six months to deflate and become (sort of) social again. Managers and VC-crazed CEO's have a lot to answer for over the last 5 years. Unfortunately, they seem to get away scot free when their bad decisions hurt the employees. There really does need to be a "tech guild" of some sort, or dare I say it "union", but I despair of ever coming up with a way to stop the union turning into the problem it is trying to solve. "Equal work for equal pay", protectionism, and other traditional union bureaucratic nonsense is not what we need. But we definitely need the right to strike to protest irrational decision making. "You want a global e-commerce system in 3 days? Sorry, you'll have to take that nonsense up with the union".

Re:Very easy to relate to

[GigsVT]

. But we definitely need the right to strike to protest irrational decision making. "You want a global e-commerce system in 3 days? Sorry, you'll have to take that nonsense up with the union".

We don't need a union, we have root access. :)
-

Unions are losing their value

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

My Dad worked for a large equipment manufacturing corporation and was a member of a union, for about 30 years. I remember repeated contract negotiations at regular intervals (2-4 years) which generally resulted in additional pay and benefits for the workers. Sometimes there were work strikes, one or two in that 30 years extended for at least 6 months.

But the union got a little cocky in my opiniun. They tried asking for a bit more than they should have, from a company that they knew at the time, was losing money because of a slowdown in their current market.

My Dad didn't like the idea, but he nevertheless went along with the Union's decision to strike. Almost all of the townspeople, and the local press, thought a strike was a bad tactic. They were already well paid and compensated. But the Union wanted to squeeze blood from a stone, I guess.

Eventually, my Dad noticed the talks went nowhere and it was a useless waiting game. I'm proud of my Dad for making the decision to cross the picket line and think of his family and his welfare at a time that it was completely obvious that the Union stopped doing so. The Union was blind to what was going to happen, even though everyone else knew that the company must shut down their operations in this town to survive as a business. Still, the Union members supported their side of a losing battle. For those people, I have no sympathy.

The company hired temps to fill in positions and rewarded those who did cross the picket line with available overtime work and continued benefits coverage, even though the original union contract ran out.

My Dad made a fortune on overtime pay, so to speak. He was able to pay off all his bills, the mortgage, etc. To him, nothing was different as before the strike, except maybe loads of voluntary overtime and doubletime with the associated pay.

The company did eventually shut the doors, even while the picketers were STILL standing at the front gate. Those, like my Dad, who decided many months ago to cross the picket line received various compensation depending on their seniority. My Dad recieved early retirement, with pay and benefits. Not bad for a guy who is more than a decade away from federal retirement age.

He's not filthy rich from it, but with his mortgage, bills, and cars paid off, he can still live comfortably with what he makes with his retirement benefits. Had he stuck with the almighty union, he wouldn't have the time he has now to spend with his grandkids.

Also... This was no two-bit union. It was the UAW

start-up horror stories

[Samarian Hillbilly]

Is there a place on the web for start-up horror stories? I've started writing up mine which is the worst one I've ever heard. Complete with spies, assasins and military officers with briefcases full of cash. Enough time has passed I think I can publish it without danger of recrimination. Where should I put it?

Re:start-up horror stories

[bongwater2002]

Try Netslaves.com. A good site and required reading for anyone in new media.

Re:Valley startup syndrome. My life in a bucket.

[Danious]

When the Boss came back to bitch about the bug-fixes, he knew what he was doing. He has you pegged as the sort of person that he can keep loading all the crap jobs on, knowing that you will keep taking them on, and keep on delivering (even if a little late), unlike the others who bitch and moan and refuse to take it. By nagging about the bug fixes, he keeps the fire under your ass and relys on your guilt to keep you moving at 200%. He's just being a bastard to get the work done and make himself look good, standard management practise, really.

Some free advice from someone who's been there, done that: push back. Refuse to take on the extra crap, manage your workload downwards.

And when you do leave, at the exit interview, make sure they know why, it's the sweetest revenge.

Re:New economy, new cynicism, new faking

[GigsVT]

About the writer David Wadler is a writer, performer and techie in New York.

My thoughts exactly. He seems like a pretty creative writer, with a basic knowledge of the computer industry. Interesting that he doesn't mention any specifics about the software at all, only dangling the "paper clip" comment about how revolutionary the software is. A nice work of fiction, but likely just that, no more.
-

Re:Roleplaying - what would I say

[GigsVT]

Logically correct, but it's in fact a trick question. if a sinner would leave the village willingly, Microsoft would have been leaving computer industry long time ago. This question is to test your common understanding of Microsoft..

Hehe, I agree that it is a badly written question though. It never said that the villagers, a) act rationally, or b) they would leave willingly once they knew they were sinners.

Which of course would lead me to what I would answer, "It's impossible to know", which would be correct, unless you make assumptions about their behavior.

Anyone that answered three, I would count wrong. Nice logic, but logic based on assumptions without basis is only as valid as those assumptions.
-

Re:I rode a similar wave...

[GigsVT]

We had tons of regional offices, who paid an absurd fee to be able to sell advertising space in a region of our web site

What was this, some MLM scam?
-

Re:I rode a similar wave...

[GigsVT]

We'd sell people the right to sell web sites in those regions

Good idea getting a lawyer. Illegal pyramids are defined by requiring payment for the right to recruit new members. Now, it really depends on exactly how they had this structured, but it sounds on the dark side of a grey area. :)

Thanks for the follow up, it's amazing the amount of iffy schemes that economic bubbles create. Everyone talks about how terrible this economic downturn is, but I think it's a good think, sort of like pruning a tree, to cut off the dead branches, and the more sickly branches, that contribute little to society, and could actually cause harm if left to grow unchecked.
-

Nice tale, but remember...

[Spinality]

Several comments below regard this as a true story. It is possible, I suppose, but note that the author's bio lists him as a writer and performer. (The quality of his writing speaks for itself.) There are also a few lacunae in the narrative that don't feel like fact. I won't point 'em out; let the author try to spot them before his next effort! ;)

I'm not complaining -- it's an amusing cautionary tale. And it's possible that it is truth, or based on truth; there have been many failed startups that followed a similar path. But don't lose too much sleep for this guy, who I expect has accomplished exactly what he wanted -- writing a plausible-sounding story that will be accepted as fact. There is a huge tradition of doing this on the 'net, as you know ("The real, real risks of margin" on www.fool.com and the famous rocket car story come to mind as examples).

JMHO -- Trevor

Re:Nice tale, but remember...

[Spinality]

If you're super-curious, send me an email...and I'll indulge you with a resume. Also, check out Ari Feldman's posts on the WWWAC list. He was a co-worker of mine and was more offended than I when people questioned the veracity of the story. -- dwadler

Interesting. I'm glad you didn't see my comment in the same vein as some of the flames. Jeez, some of these guys need to lighten up. Besides, I did say "The story might be true" -- I wasn't convinced either way. I didn't and don't have any craving to show your work up as fiction; it just struck me as more likely an invention than a journal. Your response is convincing -- true, it could be a fabrication, but if you were the type of writer I suspected you were, and you were true to your star, you would never come out and say "this really happened" if it hadn't. You would smirk, wink, and say "you make some good points."

Since you're curious, and apparently not just another Internet novelist, I'll describe a few features of the story that rang false.

You described the start-up as a software company, founded by some high-fliers. They were impressed and excited by you, and gave you the title of Technical Program Manager. Given that background, I'd expect you to have shown some real heavyweight technical skills. This is not intended as a slight, just my experience with lots of startups with exactly that profile. I couldn't see them hiring someone who had your apparent skill set (as revealed in the story) for that job. So I assumed the story was actually a melange of a few different life stories, the way a journalist approaches this kind of situation. You know, person A went to startup X as a DBA and this happened, person B went to startup Y as a graphic designer and this happened, person C went to startup C as a Unix hacker and this happened, etc.

The founders took a short vacation within the first two years of business. Unbelievable!

A software company with hardly any programmers. Unbelievable!

The only programmers were the senior guys, and they went away at the same time, leaving an unknown resource (you) to tackle a serious programming project. Unbelievable!

Programming tasks got tacked onto your non-programming to do list, and you were a pretty senior guy. I haven't seen this happen very often.

You seemed surprised about working long hours and losing your personal life in a startup. Yet you seemed to get weekends off to sleep. And the office workday seemed to have a normal starting time. None of this made any sense.

Your description of your programming project just didn't ring true for a company founded by a bunch of experienced software guys. Perhaps these weren't actually software guys, but guys from some other part of the MS empire. That would make the whole thing alot more plausible.

Well, that's enough to convey the idea. There were other things as well.

I might add that, frankly, your P.S. about preferring call-by-reference to call-by-value, and the idea that you might have stolen it from "some obscure website," actually rings false as well. It's just the kind of thing a journalist with a little development experience might come up with. Contrast that with, let's see...something substantive about reference counting for storage management, LR(1) parsers, lexical scope, lambda expressions, callback pointers, or outer join processing.

But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, since there's no reason for you to have fabricated this whole position. There *is* a good reason for (and a grand tradition of) a serious writer constructing a work of fiction and passing it off as fact. So if you had done this, I'd say 'bravo' and move on. There is *no* reason for such an author, when the fiction is revealed, to refuse credit for a good job. So I take your explanation at face value.

I'll just add the following thoughts: 1. Despite the track record of these guys on paper, they clearly hadn't thought things through and were flying by ego. This is not a new thing. Many guys who are successful in a big business somehow get the idea that they're entrepreneurs and can succeed in a small business. 2. When faced with an unbelievably great opportunity that looks too good to be true, it often is. Use the "mirror test" to evaluate it: stand in front of a mirror and describe the deal, and see if you can do it with a straight face. 3. A small business is a leap of faith, a labor of love, a marriage. Everyone involved had better be prepared to bleed plenty, give up any hope of vacations or a social life, wear many hats, and expect changes in plans and expectations as the realities reveal themselves. I've had my own business since 1980, and have all the scars to prove it. I'd never go back, but it's not a life for everybody.

I hope my comments are constructive. Good luck. -- Trevor

Re:Nice tale, but remember...

[Spinality]

This all makes much more sense now, as some details are filled in. A game company...it's much easier to understand now. I was imagining an eCommerce business, a B2B arbitrage site, a help desk software product -- something with a bit more density. From David's description of the founders, I was picturing $10M apiece of seed money, a cadre of experienced engineers, etc.

And plenty of start-ups with *that* profile had the same essential story. :O

Thanks for providing more background.

Re:Nice tale, but remember...

[dwadler]

Ugh. I'm at work and can't spend all day replying. The only artistic liberty I took with the story is setting the initial conversation. There were 2 founders at the table in the restaurant with me, but only one was grilling me. Your comment seems reasonable, unlike most of the drivel I've seen here. I list myself as a writer and a performer because that's what I WANT, so that's what I am. That's sort of the point of the story. Keep your real aspirations in mind even when doing other things. If you're super-curious, send me an email (it's at the end of the story on Salon), and I'll indulge you with a resume. Also, check out Ari Feldman's posts on the WWWAC list. He was a co-worker of mine and was more offended than I when people questioned the veracity of the story.

You wrote -- in a positive context -- "The quality of his writing speaks for itself." Thanks. ;-) Since I want to write, that is high praise whether or not you question the authenticity of my work. I'm interested in hearing about the "lacunae" (good use of Latin) in my piece. I suppose the old cliche, "Strange, but true," is appropriate here.

-David

PS If you include 1 year at college, I've been coding for 6 years. So, when I write, "I prefer passing by pointer," I know that means that I am using a memory address and not a copy of the data. Granted, you need to dereference said pointer, but it makes for faster code and I'm just used to it. Now, I'll probably be accused of stealing that from some obscure website. I can't reason with the unreasonable, so I'll cut my losses and leave Slashdot on its own.

Incidentally, I wonder how many so-called "technical people" are in on the joke /. Probably a bunch or windows users who are confused: "Why is there no backslash?"

Re:Nice tale, but remember...

[bongwater2002]

Dan Frumin and Jeff Simon were 2 of the 3 ZapSpot founders and the primary developers for the company.

As a startup (and mentioned in David's article) our salaries were anywhere from 15-20% below market rates in NYC a year ago when the company got off the ground.

As you may know, hiring programming talent in a tight technical market is expensive. It gets even more expensive when you factor in the fact that most of the so-called programmers ZapSpot interviewed failed the various programming tests. In other words, they didn't make the grade. I mean shit, writing some code to pull data from a db isn't rocket science. Even I can do that and I dropped out of my college's comp sci program after 2 semesters and barely learning anything.

For what ZapSpot was doing, we needed *good* programmers and the sad truth was that there were very, very few. Those that were potentially available were way beyond the company's price range. Understand also that we never got VC financing so we were essentially on a shoe-string budget and couldn't afford to pay for the few who were able to pass our tests.

Remember, we were creating games old-skool style. This means efficient code and routines that could generate 50,000 unique and solvable levels as well as plot shit on the screen.

As David mentioned, our dev cycle was quick. Everything had to be specc'd, designed, coded, and QA's within 2 weeks before it was sent to 350,000+ users.

As for the founder's vacation - I shit you not. Both Jeff and Dan went away that week. Both had weddings or some affairs to take care of. They left David hanging in the breeze and despite having a ton of bricks dropped on him in terms of working with a new and strange API and a short time-line, he did a great job.

See for yourself on www.download.com. Search for ZapSpot and for the game called BullyFrog. I know this because I did the artwork for the game and sat in the cube across from Dave.

Re:Nice tale, but remember...

[bongwater2002]

Cool, I'm pleased that you see the picture clearer now. David probably should have been more specific but what's done is done. Shit, if we had $10 mill in seed money I'd still have a job!

In the interest of disclosure

[Spinality]

In the interest of full disclosure, let me make the following comments, if anybody is still paying attention to this story. I've had a few email exchanges with the author of the salon story, David Wadler, who has made a number of posts here. I apparently pissed him off big time, and though doing so was not my intent, I thought it might be a nice gesture to clear the air.

I posted a comment a couple of days ago where I suggested that the author of the salon.com article might have fabricated the story as a work of fact-inspired fiction. I think I said this in a nice way: there's a great tradition of doing exactly this, both on the Internet and in literature. There's no shame in being a writer. And I furthermore don't think it was a stupid conjecture based on the text at hand.

Subsequent posts by him and by others have provided a wealth of plausible additional detail: names, locations, etc. The participants have vehemently maintained that the story was true in its essentials. I see no reason to doubt this. While it's always possible to construct a conspiracy theory for any outrageous chain of events, I see no reason why he and his colleagues would have maintained such a fiction to this point. (If this had been a work of fiction, he would have quietly smiled at the suggestion, or admitted his cleverness. So I have no reason to question what they say.)

Mr. Wadler seemed to resent the fact that I didn't do more research before making my suggestion that the story could be a fabrication. It's my contention that it is quite appropriate to draw conclusions from the text of an article as written, and that the burden of selection and presentation and plausibility falls to the author. Some things we read, and we *know* they're true. Other things we read, and we scratch our heads. I stand by my original assessment -- it *could* have been a fabrication. But I'm prepared to accept the author's assurances that it was not. (It didn't seem like such a big deal, since it all came out in the wash anyway. I thought the message was more important than its basis in fact. This is a useful cautionary tale for people embarking on a small business venture. It wouldn't be any less useful if Mr. W. had constructed it from his experience on half a dozen different startups, or from the stories of a dozen friends.)

Here's the rub, and the main reason for this post: In our email conversation, Mr. Wadler suggested that *I* post the text of one of his emails here on slashdot. I said I thought it would be more appropriate for *him* to post it, as a response to my last posted comment. (I felt that it might seem strange for me to be posting his message; it might look like I was one of his coworkers, posting under an alias. So rather than my shilling his point of view, I suggested that he post it directly, if he felt these were important points.)

I had good intentions, but this suggestion apparently pissed him off no end, and led to his accusing me of being intellectually immature, needing to grow some testicles, trying to hide in anonymity, etc. Well.

I don't understand what all the fuss was about, since I thought we were having a mature discussion until this turn of events. I still think it's odd for party A to post party B's message, except in certain situations. Part of the conflict, no doubt, came from my other email comments about startups, the software business, PHB's, etc. I meant well, but I probably came across as a dinosaur, since I've been in the biz for a very long time. But I wasn't accusing David W. of making stupid choices or being incompetent. (I mostly had sympathy, unlike the flamers who have just told him to "get over it." I've had so many friends in exactly this situation through the years.) I *did* say that it's hard to make the right call when you're in the thick of battle, and that even with hindsight, it's often hard to know what the right choice would have been.

Perhaps my general observations came across as personal slights, I dunno. That wasn't the intent.

But as far as anonymity is concerned, I guess that's another matter. I don't feel that I engaged in a personal attack, and I did share my email address etc. with him (though as a policy I don't publish it on the net, since I get so much spam already, and I'm temporarily stuck with a low-speed connection).

But I am happy to identify myself, and to stand by my comments.

Trevor Hanson
Hanson-Smith, Ltd.
218 N. Jefferson St. #102
Chicago, IL 60661
312-831-0722

I hope this makes Mr. W. a little happier with me. Sorry if the rest of you just want us to shut up. "These aren't the 'droids we're looking for. Move along."

Re:Banal story overwritten; the Salon formula?

[Rudeboy777]

...this one is flavorless, dull, cliched, and precious.

Usually I don't point out contextual spelling errors, but this one almost made me spit Coke all over my screen :)

Money has meaning ...

[MRossland]

Physical paper money is just a way to exchange labor for other things, like food. Wealth might be meaningless, if you come from the hippy mind-set, but money is our labor, skills and time. And, what alternative do we have to capitalism? Socialism is dead, or dying. Communism works for ants but not us. What's left? Feudalism?

This is a common thing i suspect, until..

[wonder]

I work for a multi-national software development company. It is my first job straight out of university, and i really needed the job, since i'd had no previous job experience in IT. I used to be a musician :) I, however took the best job offer i received. It was by far the best actually, it paid substantially more, included way more benefits, and bonus, it was even in the same town as where i was going to university, so i didn't have to move. Now, i just celebrated my one-year anniversary at this company yesterday in fact, and i'm thinking i'm a wiser person than i was, and this is why. After the first couple months of getting used to working as opposed to school, learning the company and its systems, and really taking ownership of a project, i started doing much the same thing as the victim of the article we all just read here. For 9 months, i worked no less than 12 hours a day, every day, including weekends. I worked up to 20 hours a day, and yes, i still made it in the next day. Usually, i averaged 15 hrs on weekdays, 12 on weekends, and the longer hours were reserved for those times when the boss "just had to have something done". This happened all too often though. I'm not whining or complaining here, i loved my job, and i still do. That having been said, i realized that it didn't matter how much i worked. I got sick 4 times in those 9 months. A week with less than 80 hours of work was essentially a holiday. I didn't see my friends much at all. I went home to see my family exactly 3 times in those 9 months: Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. The best part is, i work salary, not hourly, so i get paid the same each pay-period no matter how much i work. So what did i learn? It doesn't matter how much you work. I got no special recognition from management. I got no extra pay, no days off, no bonuses, nothing. This may not be the same in all companies, but don't expect too much more. I learned a very simple lesson: A job is not worth your life. Even if i had received much praise and fabulous wealth, i sacrificed too much - my friends, my health, my family. I work no more than 10 hours a day now. I spend time with my friends and family, and i feel great. The moral of this story is not one software geeks struggle for self-realization. It is that this kind of this probably happens to the majority of us. I think however that it's a lesson that you have to learn on your own. I wish it weren't so, but ask yourself if you've ever sacrificed your life for your job, even if it's not to these extremes. Did you ever hear someone (probably an experienced worker, IT or otherwise) say something to the effect of "it's not worth it"? Did you listen? If you did, did it make a difference? Probably not. That's why many of us go out there and work ourselves to the bone, thinking we can change the world on our own. Well, to save myself from sounding completely cynical, it isn't totally "not worth it". I gained all kinds of work-related experience, i'm reasonably well respected at work as someone who knows his stuff and can get the job done. But i could have accomplished the same thing by working half as much as i did. I guess it's a personal decision - what is important to you? For me, I learned the hard way that my job, while important, is not more important than my friends, family or my health. I realize that much of the /. crowd is on the younger end of the demographic scale. Many of you will find yourselves in similar situations. Hopefully you'll realize quicker than we did what's *really* important to you. I still love my job, and i still get my work done, and my company is still happy with me, but i have a life now. A life and a job are not mutually exclusive entities. Just try to remember that when it matters.

Re:overworked employees

[limejuice]

Unchecked capitalism is not the terrible thing you make it out to be - particularly in this day and age. One reason that corporations have come to be so large and powerful, is that they can procure employees of good quality in order to grow rapidly. Labor unions and high taxes have actually made this easier by disouraging the entrepeneurial spirit that made this country great. Think about it. Fewer and fewer people these days are putting their asses on the line to start their own businesses. This is because working for someone else is much easier these days. Why risk losing everything if you can just work for someone else? This results in fewer small businesses, and produces a smaller number of large businesses. Those large businesses then eat up other large businesses, completely squash any remaining small businesses, and competition is flushed down the crapper. This of course screws over everyone. Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot and the like would not be doing so well, and would not be killing the little guy, if it were not for their ability to hire people who know their shit. No one would shop at these places if they failed to provide an acceptable level of convenience, service, and low prices. They would not have any of the above if they were being run by a bunch of idiots. I know theres loads of companies out there who are completely half-assed but they are just competent enough to survive. (ala Dilbert's employer) Unfettered capitalism would mean lower taxes, fewer government restrictions, therefore enticing more people to get out of the job market to start their own businesses, igniting more competition, lowering prices, and making businesses more efficient. Everyone wins.
--

Re:overworked employees

[mu_wtfo]

My favorite part about unions is that you do less work, get paid more, get more benefits, and can never be fired

Yeah, that's mostly true, but you have to balance it against the seniority system, which promotes people just cause they've been there a long time, and not necessarily due to any competence or reliability, and often restrictive unofficial policies regarding what employment members can take on outside the union.
Damn, that was a long sentence. Here's some punctuation, use it yourself. .,,.:;!?..,""

overworked employees

[mu_wtfo]

not to spiel or anything, but that's one of my favorite things about unions - they protect those of us who love our jobs from ourselves. Yeah, I can work all night and all day if I choose, but at least now I'm well-compensated for it. (no, i'm not in IT)

Re:overworked employees

[mu_wtfo]

Sorry for the brutality, but Bullshit.

Gus, I've worked with organized labor for 5 years now, and....you are absolutely right. Those are the bad points of union employment. The $$$ and bennies are the good points. Fortunately, the more intelligent members know how to get the good without exposing themselves to too much of the bad.
Oh, and you forgot the way-too-common mob mentality whenever management doesn't approve that 35% pay raise.

Re:overworked employees

[ocbwilg]

Listen, you may abhor unions but it's a necessary evil and the alternative is much, much worse: unchecked capitalism. History shows us most of the inhumane ills: women and children working 70 and 80 hour weeks and worse.

There are child labor laws in the US that prevent the exploitation of children in the manner that you have mentioned. For the most part, children aren't even allowed to work and are therefore unable to be "protected" by unions to begin with. Those that can work are still limited by state and federal laws as to the hours that they can work until they reach the age of majority (legally considered an adult).

As far as women working 70-80 hour weeks, I see that all the time today. I see men working the same kinds of hours. It's called being a salaried employee in the busy company.

Only the threat of socialism (which incidentally didn't arise out of a vacuum, but was a reaction to the worst excesses of capitalism of the late 1800s and early 1900s) and repeated striking and unionization among the people have the autocrats of the United States decide to give SOME assurances to the workers: 8 hour days, safety regulations, etc.

Once again, there are laws that protect workers from unsafe work environments. Ever hear of OSHA?

The appalling working conditions that spawned the birth of unions just don't happen today. They didn't exist because employers are evil slave laborers, they existed because of poor economic conditions and the fact that we were only beginning to enter the industrial age. There were no clearly defined limits. The government and laws hadn't caught up with technology enough to be able to protect the workers. Now they have.

Unions are a bad thing. They enforce mediocrity while robbing the people who they are supposed to protect. They lobby for legislation to increase their powers and assure their future, but they don't do anything to actually help people anymore. And yes, I used to work a union job.

Re:overworked employees

[gus goose]

The fact that my above remarks generated +6 and -5 mods (so far) indicates that this is a seriously debatable thing ... these unions.

My comments above are largely based on the negative aspects of unions. There are positive aspects as well. Some unions work.

Still, my experience of unions (My father in a metalworkers union in South Africa, my fiance as a teacher in Toronto) is such that I have little faith in them.

As a classic example, the school support staff in Toronto recently went on strike for four weeks for an 8% increase over 2 years. 4 weeks is nearly 11% of their income for a year. Thus, it will take years for the increase to cover the lost income during the strike, if ever. Where is the logic in that?

I agree with other posters that the unions have had an important role to play in the past, but their relevance is rapidly diminishing.

I believe that the power of the union is not so much in "collective bargaining", but rather through it's tight grip on the balls of the employers. It is no surprise that the forces most credited to the mechanisation and implementation of technology at mines, industries, and other manufacturing centres in South Africa is without doubt the unions.

It is ironic that the forces designed to protect jobs, income, and people is the force which is reducing the availability of jobs in South Africe.

Here in Toronto the unions have managed to bring industry to a near halt simply by having the schools closed. It was estimated that on some days, nearly a quarter of the workforce was required to make alternative plans for their children, often at excessive direct cost or through having to take leave to care for children.

This is pure blackmail, and should not be tolerated.

As for the lack of unions, it is apparent that the teachers at private schools generally are better paid, are better rewarded for excellence, and never go on strike. As a parent, I would have to considder the welfare of my child by considdering a private education. As a teacher, If I was good, I would be better to move to the private sector as well.

Unions have had a strong negative impact recently in toronto. Next up are the nurses and EMS unions.

Again, the benefits of unionship are marginal at best, and at worst very destructive.

Re:overworked employees

[gus goose]

they protect those of us who love our jobs from ourselves

Sorry for the brutality, but Bullshit.

Unions are a collective bargaining force. They are paid to make sure that the average member is happy. Unions do not allow for the reward of those people who excel, and do not allow for the (easy) removal of those who do not. Unions protect the job, not the person.

Without unions, those people who are excellent at their jobs would be better rewarded for it. Thos people who are poor at their jobs would be encouraged in to a new vocation which would perhaps be better in the long run.

Unions do nothing more than enforce mediocrity.

Never underestimate a person's ability to vote with their feet.

Re:overworked employees

[Tyler-Durden255]

Just a short note on private -vs- public schools I don't know how things have evolved in canada, but most people who arn't involved behind the scenes in american schools would at first glance believe the same thing is true here in America, regarding private sachool teachers being better paid and more compitent than public. Priivate schoolds cost money and most of the staff have the appearence os being fically helthy and well trained as teachers. The fact is that Private school teachers tend to be very poorly paid in comparison to public school teachers. Few private school teachers make as much or more than a public school teacher, those that do are normally administraitors. Private schools are less standardised when it comes to evaluating teachers, often offer little training incentives and pay poorly. The most extream case is catholic schools that may pay below $12,000 a year to a full time teacher, not a nun who lives on campus and took a vow of poverty, but a full time teacher. Teacher accrediation in private schools is not manditory, many of the assistants or teachers of lesser classes don't need to be accredited at all. Not taking fedral money puts the school farther away from standardization. Some private schools may be diffrent, hoever most are not.

Re:overworked employees

[Tyler-Durden255]

Bullshit to you too. I don't like Unions, they seem sort of grey and burocratic. However not having them is much worse. Trust me when I say that the writer of the article, though possibly quite bright, was on the way OUT, regardless of the fate of the company. He Dragged his ass around the office, eyes glased and tired, he jumped around departments and dropped assignments, others had to finish major coding projects for him. Trust me when I say that the second he burned out he was gone. In a right to work state like mine that means NO severance, NO options, and often NO unemployment! I've been in that situation. Libritarian individualism sounds good for the workplace but the practice is horrible.

Schadenfreude

[namespan]

Schadenfreude = "harming joy" according to the fish.

German speakers: I'm wondering if this is along the lines of decadent/destructive pleasures ("tainted love") or if it's more like training for a marathon or putting up flaws in someone you love.

Also, I'm noticing more and more German borrowing in the hacker world. Is it just me? If it's not, any speculation on why?

And now that Altavista's owners are certifiably evil (having patented things like web crawlers), are there any other places we can go for translation needs?

--

Re:Schadenfreude

[ender's_shadow]

that's what the english word means. if it's an english dictionary you're not looking at the german word, and hence your post is irrelavent. on the other hand, that's not to say michael didn't intend to use the english word.

Re:Schadenfreude

[SkiHardTX]

Schadenfreude doesn't translate well directly into English. Better to give a description of what it is. You know that kind of good (albeit selfish) feeling you get when you see bad things happen to other people (probably deservedly so)? That's schadenfreude.

AMT != Day Traders

[(H)elix1]

The reason this bites is it really affected those of us who were being fiscally responsible with our stock options. Day traders cash out every evening and any gain is considered taxable income. To work around some really ugly tax rates, you hold the shares for twelve months before you sell. It also means planning for taxes. Got to love capital gains... AMT was intended for the Rockefellers, not the (non-CEO) Joe coder. Unforeseen consequences... but haven't we all been burned by an obscure piece of code? This one just happened to be tax code, that's all. Makes bit shifting look easy if you ask me.

Easy solution: No loyality

[NineNine]

It sounds harsh, but I think that that's the only way to work in the softwrae industry. Have no loyality to to anyone or anything other than yourself. I'm not saying not to work, but do your work, take your pay, and go home. Ideally, do it as a contractor. Most companies today (expecially software) don't really care about their employees, so why should you care about them? So treat work as just that: work. It's NOT your life. I always suggest that programmers work as contractors so you DON'T have to spend your entire life coding. Work your 40, and go home. They want you to work more, they pay you. I know it sounds harsh, but I'm convinced that it's the only way to work in this industry and NOT get screwed.

OT: slashdot is messed up

[ConsumedByTV]

Anyone notice that the times are gone from the front page? That extra karma is being given out? that slashdot is going awry? Whats gone wrong?


Are you on the Sfglj (SF-Goth EMail Junkies List) ?

3 sides to each story

[abcbooze]

His story, thier story, and the truth..This guy seems to hav a big ego. Who here believes that he was basicly the only one who was trying to save the company? I don't know..I wish I could have the 10 minutes I wasted reading that story back. Just sounded like some guy's rant about a crappy job he had. Why this is /. material I don't know.

Re:3 sides to each story

[3am]

It sounded like a mid-tier writer slopping together a $-per-word story. it also sounded like he didn't even know VB, let alone real computer languages.

i, too, want my ten minutes back. eh, i'd probably waste them anyway.

Early warning signs in the article

[_N0EL]

...I described it as "the paper clip of ideas."

I seem to recall that paper clips can lead to quite nasty consequences.

It's just not in the valley

[discovercomics]

Take out all references to coding and computers and this story could apply to any startup in any field.
Two years out of college back in 1988 or so I went to work for a "startup" in a small town. I was underpaid and worked long hours, while I didn't have stock options I had "promises" of an ownership stake and visions of store expansion into multiple locations. As time went on my responsibilities increased and my pay went up, not alot, but up. I would stay late to get a head start on the work for the next day. Allways trying to move the company forward. The crushing blow came when I realized that I had wasted 8 years and this "startup", wasn't ever going to get beyond the point where one person, the owner, could be rewarded well.

I was living to work instead of working to live.

So what did I do? I went back to school to get a CIS degree and here I am now ready to enter the brave new world.

How fitting for May Day

[the real jeezus]

Well, it's still May Day somewhere. Capitalism has its finer points, but it's best to see the seamy underside now and then--the hopes, the deceptions, the slavish devotion, the shattered dreams. I think that a purely collaborative model would enable us to have the same, if not higher, standard of living but without the dark side effects of capitalism.

Buckminster Fuller (not a communist) proved, so to speak, that wealth is infinite. It's a concept that--like capitalism--everyone has to buy into in order for it to work. The whole supply/demand model that they pushed in my undergrad buz classes is a similar concept that only works if everyone buys into the notion of perceived scarcity.

My point is that we can still have innovation, etc. without the damned rat-race and constant shift of wealth to the already wealthy. Money has become God in America, and we are spreading this religion throughout the world by force of treaty. When the illusion is finally shattered; i.e.--next time the economy crashes, remember that all we've lost is the fantasy that those little green pieces of paper actually mean something.

Ewige Blumenkraft!

Re:what would I say

[jsse]

Hehe, I agree that it is a badly written question though. It never said that the villagers, a) act rationally, or b) they would leave willingly once they knew they were sinners

No...I think it's a pretty nice question. I asked my friends with some modifications: a prison full of selfish bald prisoners who are not allowed to use mirror. One day the officer in charge annouced that at least one prisoner marked with 'mark of freedom' behind their bald head, with this they can leave the prison freely, otherwise they'd be shot when being caught escaping. Since the prisoners are selfish, they'll not tell the others if they are marked.....etc.

I won dinner with this...thanks! :D

best translation service I know (Re:Schadenfreude)

[Hank Chinaski]

is on dict.leo.org. According to them it's

On this page you will find the developers and maintainers of the legendary LEO German/English Dictionary. In 1995 this Dictionary was founded by Achim Jung, a former student and scientific assistant of the Technical University of Munich. Since then it is online, available free of charge to every internet user world-wide. In the tradition of the pioneers of the Dictionary all members of the LEO Dictionary Team - supported by the diligent helpers - currently make big efforts to permanently improve and extend this service. So we can provide you (further on) the world's biggest and fastest help on English-German translations.

HTH h.c.

Re:Isn't there something wrong with the riddle?

[ocbwilg]

It was a given in the problem that all the sinners left on the third day. Not that it stops the problem being badly worded, but your "counterexample" that nobody leaves on the third day is crap.

It also doesn't seem to work out correclty if the sinner's sin is not believing in a divine entity or ignoring the commands of that entity.

Re:shameful joy / Dachshund

[Someone Different]

I'd say shameful joy is just a part of the whole thing. Maybe that's why you say schadenfreude and not just shameful joy. :-)

I guess dachshund is an old term. I never heared anybody say it in German. They were breeded to have short enough legs so they can get into the holes.
I guess a wiener is the only thing they can actually hunt down in in a running-after sense...

No it' not 'evil joy'. Its...

[Someone Different]

...really complex.
And that is why I risk being redundant here, but having read the other comments I got the impression that that really nice word gets off to negative. So...

Yes, it's true, it describes the joy you feel about other peoples misfortunes. I once got told (on German TV) that it is caused by the relieve that something bad that happened to someone else did not happen to you.

That can be something really bad if it happens to someone you dislike. I just felt really good about reading the Microsoft IIS hole gives System-level access article at The Register. This is really bad for Microsoft, but I laughed anyway. Or just because of that. That's one case of Schadenfreude here.

But usually it's the smaller tricks life plays on other people that make you feel this way. Like when you walk along with your buddy, he turns his head to look at 'the woman in the red dress' and bumps into something. Funny.
Or maybe if you sit together with some friends in the evening, and one of them spills wine over that ridiculous Hawaii shirt.
Most classic cartoons work this way. And they're damn funny. I'm sure in every coutry there are TV shows that feature home videos about kids falling off bicycles, dancers slipping and falling to the ground and various other people falling into/off stuff. That is supposed to be funny, too (I think it's not. But if I would have actually been there when these things happened, I would feel Schadenfreude).

But no, it's not funny to watch your best friend being run over by a truck. That would be sick, not Schadenfreude.

German has the advantage that virtually all words can be combined to form a new one. Sometimes they describe certain things pretty well. Some you might heared of are Weltanschauung, Fahrvergnügen, Autobahn, Kaffeeklatsch, Hinterland, Poltergeist. And yes, also the infamous Blitzkrieg. Blitz is lightning, Krieg is war. It is supposed to be a war that is over really quickly...

We use a lot of English words here. We even make up our own! A mobile phone is called 'Handy' in German. We have Showmasters. I have no idea why we do this. But you call a 'Dackel' Dachshund, don't you?

Re:Take a look at the name...

[slaytanic killer]

I got that number off Jim Clark's head engineer on his latest bioinformatics project... but your number sounds more reasonable and I'm inclined to trust Peopleware more.

Depends on what "average" means, since that is the least well-defined quantity. In fact, it could probably be defined from the figures you gave, in absence of any scientific data-gathering. ;)

Banal story overwritten; the Salon formula?

[Voltaire99]

It's not simply that these stories are told all the time now -- it's that this one is flavorless, dull, cliched, and precious.

Yes, Salon runs some good political writing (by people such as Jake Tapper), but so much of Salon is self-indulgent tripe of this sort that it's not surprising at all that the site has months, maybe less, left before it closes, too. Unless somehow the "tasteful" porn market can rescue it -- but how many sepia tone silhouettes of nipples can they really shovel out a week?

Re:I rode a similar wave...

[KupekKupoppo]

Essentially, yes. We had a server with a web site divided by region. We'd sell people the right to sell web sites in those regions. We also developed the sites for them. We charged an insanely small fee for everything to the regional offices, who then charged more to the clients.

So yes, basically, it was an MLM scam. But it did have some good intent behind it. One client ended up selling his products to Oracle founder Larry Ellison, and making a hearty amount of money for it.

Of course, knowing what I know now, I would never be associated with such a company.

Oh, and I want everyone to note, that before I took all the office stuff, I had been seeing a lawyer and protecting my ass. If you're working for a legitimate business and you're getting screwed and you're leaving (seems contradictory), what worked for me probably won't work for you.

In fact, if you try it, you might just get to visit the old CEO in jail.

Luckily, I had a rightful claim to the money, and I was always hard-ass enough to make the CEO realize he would have to pay me.

-k.

I rode a similar wave...

[KupekKupoppo]

When in high school, I did the same kind of thing. At 15, I was expected to maintain an ISP, repair and build PCs, teach classes (even a week-long computer camp), and maintain our network.

We were an Internet cafe, web portal, ISP, and computer store--and why not? Every one of those was making money back then.

Quickly enough, the CEO found it quite easy to just fire everybody but me and have me do everything. Don't read that sentence as hyperbole--I'm being quite literal. Eventually, I worked there, his wife was the secretary, and a middle-aged guy took on web design without being paid for 4 months (then, not at all).

I had EXCELLENT job security. The small town afforded no one who could replace me, and I was not about to go home without my paycheck. The CEO kept me paid, and I got bonuses if I seemed disillusioned (yes, I know that's poor business practice). When I was promised a Christmas bonus, I got it in writing. And I got it (a $1500 bonus is really nice when you're in high school). But nobody else was being paid.

Remember what I said about being a web portal? Imagine eFront, but more ghetto. We had tons of regional offices, who paid an absurd fee to be able to sell advertising space in a region of our web site (divided by state, county, and city). Eventually, as the CEO guzzled away the finances of the company and my moral side got the best of me, I did the only thing I could do:

I destroyed the company.

At that point, I'd get $50/hour when I came in on off-hours, and $20+ at normal times. But it felt like hush money, and as the regional license money was pissed away and not invested into the company, I knew we were going down the toilet, and I wasn't about to go with them. Of course, the FBI snooping around town helped me decide, as well.

I warned the regionals. Without me, the server would soon go down--it could maintain itself, to a degree, but if you have ever managed a 8 GB+ web site that's using FrontPage extensions to an extreme (yes, NT, sorry), you will know how unstable it can get. They prepared to wrest the company from my boss.

At that same time, he was preparing to leave town. He didn't want to go to jail, so he fled to California. The server was co-located, and I remotely managed it. My assistant, who was hired on later, also managed the checking account for our office location.

My paycheck was coming due, and the account had $600. I was owed $2000, and my co-worker was owed $800. We called to find out how we were getting paid, and we got the runaround. My co-worker liquidified the bank account, and kept it all (which I agreed to--since I had no expenses, I thought he might want to actually pay his bills and live). I moved all the office equipment into the back of my truck, and we sent out our resignations.

The company decided it was in their best interest to provide me with the hardware as payment, and then the CEO gave a horrid speech about how terrible employees we were to all the offices. They already knew the true situation, and have now taken the company from the CEO (in prison, I've heard).

The company never made it big, but I think that prevented them from dying in the dot-com crash. One of the regional offices appears to manage everything now, and they're doing a decent job, and offered to re-hire me, but I like college better.

However, from the experience, I learned a few things:

If you're being screwed, you should leave.
If you're watching someone be screwed, you should leave.
If you're screwing someone, then you're the CEO.

-k.
(sorry for the scattered nature of the post, I'm sleepy).

Moral of the story...

[gus goose]

Life is a long, hard road, and many lessons are learned on the way (My grandfather told me this....). In his terminology, this story would be described as school fees. School fees are the price you pay for an education.

The education in this context, is not that it is bad or wrong to sell yourself or your sould to your job, the real lesson is that you should be more careful about who you sell your life to. There are jobs which are worth giving up your life for. Speak to Nuns. Speak to pop-stars.

Still, the lesson is that you need just reward, or the consequences are school-fees.

It is a great thing to see a person who is sold out to a good cause. It is OK to love your spouse, OK to love your kids, yet, for those with neither, it should be OK to love you job equally.

Labor Unions can get too powerful too!!!

[Brian_Ellenberger]

If this is so true, why are so many states now passing right to work laws just to protect workers from the unions???

The problem isn't capitalism. The problem is human beings. Whenever an organization gets big and powerful for whatever reason it seems to take on a life of its own. The people who end up running the big organization get big heads, become power hungry, and end up forgetting all about anyone else.

My mom and her hospital were just reciently the victims of a union. 150 nurses just left two months ago. The union came in, took their dues, and then did nothing. Now they can't get out of their contract till 2002 and are screwed. Thank you union.

The main problem is that unions are monopolies. When a company "unionizes" there can only be one union and everyone has to work for that union. This SUCKS!!! Why not have freedom to work? Why not have freedom to choose not to be in the union, or have three different unions to choose from? Why? Because the monopolies benefit the higher ups in the union. Not because it in any way benefits the workers.

Not to mention unions could give a dam* about the company itself. As long as it gets those union dues...

More fun ways to loose your social life

[CrazyJim0]

Find a software product someone else hasn't made, or that someone hasn't created properly, then learn all the technical details you need to code it, and spend 2 solid months(500ish hours) on coding up and making it a reality and successful. Then when Microsoft comes to pay you a visit, they're there to compete with you and steal your ideas.

Valley startup syndrome. My life in a bucket.

[Zeio]

I am currently under the employ of a Silicon Valley startup. I was allured by the prospect of becoming rich from the stock options. While I did receive a 16% raise in pay, I moved 2800 miles from home to come to this new position as an 'IT Manager'.

So, with my new salary in hand I go off to the land of the high-tech, the SI Valley, the birthing place for the greats. Yeah, the land of high rents, outrageous gas prices, ludicrous state taxes and the best weather this earth has ever seen.

I arrive at the startup to find this mongoloid 'IT Manager'. My dreams of truly attaining a higher rank are smashed in a single moment. I have to get into a dick waving contest with a valley kid who covets Microsoft. We were officially deemed both IT Managers. I knew I just had to wait this loser out.

Finally, the hard rain falls and economics kicks in. Valley boy gets the boot and I get to pick up all the slack. Under-funding is abound. The two fools before me squandered $750,000 and I have no budget. The end result is a lot of time spent on AIM, email and Slashdot. Hopefully, I'll be moved from the IT group to something more intelligent, I can only hold my breath.

So here I am, smack in the middle of Silicon Valley during job-nuclear-winter. I'm afraid to get too cocky to be fired because jobs aren't growing on trees. So I keep coming back for budget-less existence. The one thing that stands out the most - the job I left which was paying rather well was sending me to school/training/etc. I received several certifications under their employ. Now I will get nothing, unless it is done under my own volition.

Here I am with my worthless stock, high rent and outrageous taxes from the foul state of California (good weather though). It's not all that bad, its really a long, almost paid vacation without any schooling.

All in all the company is interesting, I have the possibility of expanding my horizons with some new things to administer, and luckily this startup has weathered the storm of .com deaths... It's not all that bad, but I would have been better off leveraging my offer with a counter offer with my former employer.

Don't fall into the trap, and make sure a bonus, schooling/education/training is in the contract!

There is no free lunch.

Re:Valley startup syndrome. My life in a bucket.

[Magumbo]

Your use of BR
Is like a haiku to me
Might I suggest P

-

What you sow...

[loydcc]

He worked himself to a nub so that he could feel like he was doing something important? Sounds like BS to me. He wanted the money.

Sure he did step up to the plate when things got rough but that was only to try and keep the gravy train rolling.

Re:New economy (clarification from the author)

[lightfoot jim]

Wow, a reply from the author. Well you'll notice that my post had two points to it. (Of course I'm not a professional writer so please forgive me if I was unclear.) The first one I mention is that articles like yours have become rather popular and I don't trust the media outlets not to fabricate when they run out of burned IT workers who want to tell their stories.

As for "writer, performer, and techie" perhaps a different discussion would have been better suited for this particular article. After reading it, I can assure you that no one would hire you to configure BIND.

On a more personal level, I'm impressed that you did reply. As far as the references to your code-fu, I'm not. Talking about your coding talent in such a forum as /. is about like bragging about your 180 lb bench in misc.fitness.weights. Nonetheless, I extend my sympathy to your predicament and wish you he best of luck in your future projects.

New economy, new cynicism, new faking

[lightfoot jim]

As I read the article, I couldn't keep from thinking that this new trend in the press is really depressing. The whiz-bang new economy left a lot of good people burned. They cried, I cried, the v.c's cried. Now isn't there something else to report on? I'm not saying it's not valid news, but at this point everyone's heard this story more times than they can count, and yet they still keep wanting to hear it again.

I wonder how long it will be before some instrument of the press sees that the profitability of these articles exceeds the number of available stories. What then? Hire a journalist with a creative talent and a fair technical vocabulary? Good heavens no! From the article:

About the writer
David Wadler is a writer, performer and techie in New York.

Social Life? What's that...

[House of Usher]

I guess what gets me the most is that to be an incredibly gifted programmer there are two ways to get there.
A - You are exceptionally gifted and have incredible understanding and knowledge of how things work (a great class offered by UVA's Physics Department).
or
B - You spend your life in that room in your house, working constantly at revising code, tinkering with different technologies, getting them to bow down to you. . . eventually your AI machines post to /. on your behalf.

However, I don't think that option B will happen anytime soon, hence it means that those of us that weren't built with a Athlon Thunderbird under the hood will be slaving away tinkering and lacking all social skills whatsoever...

Dot Com

[surrealcode]

I remember working in a startup company. I was one of the 3 developers. The company consisted of 40 people, 37 of whom were managers/admin/sales types, who made coffee all day. They worked upstairs amongst the plants and bay windows. We worked downstairs in this dimly lit dungeon with no windows and a small pipe supplying air to us. We'll to cut a long story short, the company went bust when it was discovered that the MD was taking all the venture capital for himself. Motto of the story is you ae getting less air than management, then you should leave. There is no point in working 100 hours a week when management works 40 hours a month.

Bud Light Presents Real American Heroes

[Bud Light Presents]

Announcer: Bud Light Presents... Real American Heroes.
Singer: Real American Heroes!
Announcer: Today we salute YOU, Mr. Slashdot Hidden Goatsecx Link Poster.
Singer: Mr. Slashdot Hidden Goatsecx Link Post-er-er!!
Announcer: Nothing says "manly" quite like a giant, gaping anus.
Singer: OOoh-hoo that's gro-ooo-ss!
Announcer: Without you to keep us on our toes, we would be blindly following links without checking, and double checking. Because while we have no business reading slashdot on the job, we do it anyways.
Singer: Please! Don't get me fired!
Announcer: So crack open an ice-cold Bud Lite, Mr. Slashdot Hidden Goatsecx Link Poster.
(Sound of can opening)
Announcer: Because the slashdot populace isn't quite paranoid enough without your work. So we'll hover over those links, and when we do, we'll remember YOU, Mr. Slashdot Hidden Goatsecx Link Poster.
Singer: I'll always remember to ho-over-er-er!!
Announcer: Bud Light Beer, Anheuser-Busch St. Louis Missouri.

One, two, or all

[meamone]

He was wrong about three the answer is One, two, or all.
if one is marked every one sees that he is marked and they don't leave and that person leaves.
The next day if one more person is marked. every one sees but he may not know since one left. either he chooses to leave because he thinks that there is another one and it is him but if there is not another marked then everyone applies this logic and leaves or stays.
If more than 2 are marked on the first day then they stay thinking it's another. The next day everyone leaves.
This happens when unmarked people see two marked people and assume there is a third them with all unmarked using this logic everyone unmarked leaves
The two marked people assume that since the other didn't leave that they are marked too and leave.

He wan't thinking from the unmarked's perspective.

Re:New economy (clarification from the author)

[dwadler]

OK, I can't read all of the posts, so I'll respond broadly. First off, thanks for thinking that I'm a writer who "faked" the software stuff. Since writing is my real passion, the fact that I have an ability to convey ideas with the written word should be extremely helpful. I don't mention the company because I don't want to risk a libel suit. As for my technical abilities, I'm happy to get into a pissing contest with any one of you. Until you've passed a function as a void* and casted it, don't even think about it. :-) I designed the entire middle tier of the architecture. I also wrote many thousands of lines of C++. In a prior job, I wrote SNMP agents in C that do enterprise network monitoring. I also co-wrote some of the software (C++ again, but this time for Windows) that you can download at http://www.allenresources.com. For those of you who didn't seem to catch on, the reason I am "a writer, performer, and techie" is because I DON'T WANT to sit in the corner writing endless lines of code. I don't want to re-configure sendmail. I don't want to work with Samba, DNS, BIND, or any of that crap. I'll continue to code for fun (currently, I'm working on a nifty MP3 tagging tool, but there is no scheduled release date as I'm doing a lot of writing). Yes, I made a bad decision. Ultimately though, I came out of the job with a clearer picture of what I want to do. If my foresight were 20/20, I could have avoided this and concentrated on my REAL goals from the get-go. If any of you is blessed with prescience, please help us all. -David Wadler

From the article's author

[dwadler]

Hi All,
I've been enjoying some of the posts - even the flames. However, I'd like to clarify some things that didn't fit into the published story.

Yes, the thought of making an obscene amount of money was most definitely appealing to me. I had my first dotcom start-up in 1994. I assume you are all familiar with HotJobs? Same premise - just a few years earlier. At the time, however, nobody was sure whether the Internet was a viable medium for making money. Additionally, I was a full-time college student.

The opportunity to be one of the first people -- and a high level person at that -- at a company with established industry veterans was extremely compelling. The job sounded perfect on paper, based on what I thought I wanted to do. I was going to have significant input into technical and strategic decisions for the company. Basically, my upside was limited because I wasn't a founder, but I thought the idea was great and knew that 3 MS Vets had deep pockets and good connections.

I wanted to kick ass during my first few weeks on the job. I guess I was convincing because the work started to pile up. The expression, "You can't see the forest for the trees," comes to mind. I was so immersed in what I was doing -- the immediacy, the urgency -- that I could no longer see the bigger picture. My girlfriend, friends, and parents were all right, but I figured (at the time) that they were so far removed, that they weren't in a position to accurately gauge what was happening.

I think that many of you are victims of the same crap and haven't yet let go of the bitterness and anger. It's easy to pin my decision-making process on greed or stupidity. It's also easy to think that the story is for pity. In retrospect, I absolutely made stupid decisions. That's not up for debate; I'm culpable. But the focus of the story isn't a plea for sympathy or well-wishing. Frankly, it's about losing the ability to be objectively introspective inasmuch as one can be objective about one's self..

Another thing that I'd like to point out is that I did call my CEO "a fucking asshole," and wasn't the meek techie in the corner. I stood up for myself verbally, but always delivered my work. I was made promises with regards to salary increases, bonuses, health insurance, etc. I accepted these promises at face value. Stupid? Probably, though I do think my situation was a bit extreme.

I have other things to do, but I hope that if you re-read the article with all of these points in mind, you'll take away something very different than you might have initially. I don't want your pity - the upshot of this experience is that I am increasingly convinced that I am now doing the right thing.

Illegitimi Non Carborundum.

-David Wadler

PS I think it's pretty disgusting that some of you revel in the misfortune of others. Walk a mile in their shoes and then decide if it's funny.

Re:From the article's author

[bongwater2002]

Our CEO was a fucking asshole but due to his cult of personality, it took David and I (and others) to see him for who he really was a fat, arrogant, lying fuck.

The author can code...

[bongwater2002]

I had the pleasure of working with the author of this article and can say without a doubt that he can code. Writing games is a real test of a programmer and writing complete games from scratch in 5 days (which David did) is a testament to his programming prowess.