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The Worst Development Job You've Ever Had?
manavendra asks: "I'm currently working for a solution provider for telcos, and as part of product migration the entire API has to be 'internationalized'. Owing to a legacy architecture, most (if not all) application logic is still embedded in PL/SQL stored packages. My job: find hard coded strings, and replace with calls to the globalization API.
Yes there is a script written to handle most tasks, but its quite primitive (not to mention fears of automating 'too much'). Boredom is at all time high. Have tried all means of whittling away the time, and hence this question to other Slashdot users: What's the worst ever job you had to do in the name of 'software development' (or as a software developer)?"
Yeah. Populating a database .. manually.
Internet startup.
Turn batch perl scripts for searching domain names for sale into a live cgi.
The "server" was a P133 running bsd. Once I got it to run, it would take 15-20 minutes
to generate the output. The web page would periodically reload once a minute. The Boss
had a cable modem set-up where after a certain number of reloads, they would just cache the
page. He never actually got to see it work.
THe next day another guy just loaded all the possible names in a database on a fast machine
with gigs of ram. Response time? Sub-second.
I still got paid, though (much to the chagrin of the owner).
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Unless you were in the manager's office I don't know anyone who would like working on a production line.
"I work at Slashdot and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt"
worst. job. ever.
In my dad the worst job I ever had was converting those bloddy cog wheel counting machines into valve computers. We considered ourselves lucky if we got one vavle each too. Software? Kids these days are so spoilt.
EGG, the Electronic Gamers Guild
a developer job you insensitive clod!
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Writing worms and viri for spammers. And go figure, the fucker split when I had finished and paid me in Penis Enlargement Pills.
Worked at a startup .com that thought it was going to make billions selling cult/foreign movies. My boss was a flaming 300lb male crossdresser who hired other 'developers' who barely knew front page. I was under pressure to make this amazingly creative super site while the Big Gay Al constantly changed his mind about what he wanted.. I had to be frisked before i went to my office because the rest of the employees often stole stuff (our office was above one of their video chains in nyc). And if things wernt working out, my boss would threaten to "fuck our asses.".
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No matter how thin you slice it, its still baloney.
*shudders* That is wrong on at least two levels.
Converting a quarter of a million lines of VB code to Java...
How many billions of lines of Java did you end up with?
[ shudder - twitch ]
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
"The plural of anecdote is not data" -- Bruce Schneier
The XAS code was closed and only the boss had access to it. However he wanted us to develop some VB apps that would work with it. We had no documentation and when I asked why the boss told me that we don't work with documentation anymore but with UML. I asked where the UML models were and he muffled something about not having any.
I tried guessing what things did by their variable name but the boss enjoyed variable names like varTempOne, var1, var2, var3, generic1, generic2, myVariable, etc...
One day I asked if I could see the source code to XAS. I learned quickly that it was a mistake.
Clients were constantly calling because the XAS servers were going down unexpectadly. The problem was the logs growing to more than 2 gigs in size. Every second line of the logs would have a copyright description with the name of my boss all over the place. He was so proud of his XAS. Unfortunatly though his XML wasn't valid in any sense. He pissed me off so much!
After 22 days of this BS I had rashes from the stress of working there. I told the boss I needed XAS source code to work with or documentation to work with. That night I received a phone call telling me I didn't need to come in the next day, that they were going to do without me. I was so relieved I did a huge party.
I talked to the boss's boss the week after. I explained what was going on and a month later the boss I had trouble with got fired along with his bum buddy. I was so happy! :)
Last I heard the guy's wife left him too. I couldn't be happier! :)
Where do I begin? Oh yes...
I once was employed by an insurance product publishing company in indianapolis. The project manager made all his decisions with rock-paper-scissors. I'm not making this up. Whenever a bug needed to be fixed, he would call all the developers into a room and play RPS until there was a loser.
Once, I worked for a company run by Scientologists. They did software for the timeshare industry. I lost that job when the IRS seized the company for failure to pay payroll taxes.
While working at walgreens corporate, i was once asked to clean desks with paper towels and windex... for $68/hr.
I once worked for a trading firm in downtown chicago where my boss, while standing behind me to look at my code, would put his... package... on my shoulder. I would scoot in to get away and he would step closer until I could no longer get away. That job didn't last long.
These are just the highlights of my ilustrious IT career.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
You know, we're looking for some political candidates...
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
So, you worked for SCO?
JADBP
Oh, you worked for hotmail?!!!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I doubt this qualifies as the worst software development job ever in anyone's mind, but it's a story nonetheless...
I was working at a dot.com-focused consultancy during that period in which the "New Economy" was going down in flames but no one was really talking about it yet. After completing my development work on one project, I was informed that I, along with a few other developers that had survived the last round of layoffs, was being given an "alternate assignment."
Since our sales department couldn't sell work for shit, we were assigned to work to help them find leads. What that amounted to was the following: we were each given a section of a list of big companies in the area. First, we were to ascertain what kind of web presence they currently had, and propose some ways our company could help them improve it. Wait, that's not the funny part.
Second, we were to obtain direct contact information for their CEOs, CTOs, etc. by whatever means necessary. Now, occasionally you could dig something like this up via the company's literature, possibly with the assistance of a phone book, but usually it wasn't publically available. In this case, we were encouraged to call up the company and tell them whatever we had to for the receptionist or whoever to give us that information.
Picture, if you will, a small handful of mostly socially inept geeks. Picture them cold-calling companies and try to string together various tall tales, misdirections, and outright lies to scam poor employees of said companies out of the direct line phone number, e-mail address, and home address of several of the companies' top executives.
Hilarity ensues!
The project was outsourced to India, where more time can be wasted for less money. This will ultimately be good for the economy as a whole.
I had to assemble my own cubicle. I died a little bit that day.
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
He'll let you know when he's done....
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Why not just use a couple dozen lines of perl?
reech bee-yond ur clip-0n
At CompUSA, mine had the delectible odor of cigarettes and coffee. It was super-great when I'd be sitting there hunched over a computer, removing some part, and he'd come over and start talking to me about how I should be doing it, like he knew a better method for removing RAM or something. Nothing worse than a smelly dumbass for a boss.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
My first programming job, right out of school was with a small mortgage company. I knew things were going to be bad when the monthly processing run to distribute interest payments to the various loan 'investors' crashed on my 3rd day, while I was still figuring out where my predecessor had hidden stuff before he was fired.
2 years later, I quit after my entry in the employee pool on which regulator would close them didn't win. My final check wasn't really a check, since no bank would open an account for them. I got a paper sack literally filled with small bills.
I thought I was done with them, but 2 months later the trustee handling their bankruptcy called and I went to work for him as a consultant, recovering their data. We got almost 90% of the principal identified and recovered, which surprised everyone and netted me a nice bonus. But the real bonus didn't occur until over a year after that, when armed guys with badges and everything showed up at my door. I didn't even know postal inspectors carried weapons, but they do. They wanted me to help them prosecute and convict the owner of the mortgage company.
There is nothing in the world as satisfying as the sight of a former bad boss being led off to serve time in federal Pound Me In The Ass prison.
One of the funniest and scariest things I've ever heard in my life: >extreme anger "GOD DAMNIT VISUAL C IS A FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT! IT ONLY ALLOWS 16384 LOCAL VARIABLES!!!!"
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Because no monitor known to man is capable of displaying lines that long.
Initech?
-ashot
My boss can be a total bitch sometimes. She drools, screams inceasantly and demands every waking moment of my time. I'm on call 24/7 and I do mean 24/7. There hasn't been a day this week where I wasn't called by her at 4am and spent at least an hour working before getting to go back to sleep and wake up again at 7am to her voice. Oh, did I mention that there is no monetary reimbursement for this position? I get paid in shit, literally.. My boss is my 9 month old daughter..
On the bright side, she is definetley the most intelligent boss I've ever had and when I do spend time with her, its been the best use of my time among any other boss I worked for. Plus I'm guarenteed a vacation in another 17 years and 3 months!
The road between democracy and tyranny is paved with secrecy in the name of security.
One summer, I worked in a web dev team in a university hospital. We took in "orders" from various professors in the medical school (class webpages and whatnot) and made it for them. One of the huge projects that summer was a complete and concise pictorial encyclopedia of all known STDs (and I don't mean std::cout - well, I suppose it comes from careless std::cin std::cout std::cin std::cout). Let me tell you - I managed to save a lot of money that summer - because I did not need to eat lunch all day during my 8-hr shift after looking at these pieces of art. It's amazing what people can manage to do to themselves.
On top of all that - it was $9/hr.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.