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Cancer Survival for Software Developers
Paul Pareti writes "Doug Reilly has published an affecting, personal piece about Surviving Cancer if you're a Programmer. You don't have to be a sufferer to benefit from reading it, especially his conclusions, including the perspective-lengthening advice: 'Make sure you are not indispensable!'"
In the words of my former boss: "Graveyards are full of people who thought they were indispensable"
Res publica non dominetur
A few years back, I had a close coworker who was diagnosed with cancer. He decided that he wanted to work, be productive, and fight it as best he could, even though his chances were slim. He came to work every day he could and did his job, even when he was losing hair and using a laptop from the hospital bed.
After he died, our team was devistated. I'm not sure we accomplished more than simple maintenance activities for months afterwards. Even though he'd tried to put things in order, it was still tremendously difficult to fill where he'd been. It probably took a good year before things felt on track again.
It's strange even now, running across his name in code or tucked away in a database somewhere. I support his few remaining applications, which some day will be retired as well. The things we leave behind . . .
With all the deep sympathy for anyone with a serious disease, I find the ideas in the article ridiculous at best, appaling at worst.
To put it bluntly - who gives a flying fig about employers convenience, when life and health of individual are at stake. If only a few years are left for one to live, it is far better to spend them with loved ones or doing something that is important to the person (or makes a difference to the world, or both) then wasting your time writing useless code for someone's profit. Unless of course this happens to be "what is important to that person" - and then I would strongly suggest reviewing priorities, while there is still time.
Pretending that there is such a thing as "work ethics" and "loyalty" on part of employees when nothing is given or guaranteed by employers is both silly and dangerous.
Why the fuck would you want to be promoted?
Fixed it again. I'd rather do minimum wage grudge work than management.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Which is the situation at the moment in the games industry, where 70 hours is basically mandatory all the time in all companies and at all stages of a project.
That's why the games industry holds no interest for me- I'm a pretty decent 3D modeller but you couldn't pay me enough money to sell every waking hour to EA. Especially on a sequel. Until they all grow up I'm not going to touch them with a bargepole.
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
* Make certain that source code is where it should be.
My fellow seniors and I have a little rule where I work - if it's not in CVS, it doesn't exist. Nothing gets deployed to a server that isn't in source control. Hard drives die, things are deleted by accident, and developer PCs are not backed up. The CVS server is (or should be - if it isn't, at least we are blameless if the shit hits the fan).
* Clearly document anything "strange" in the source code you deliver.
That's just common courtesy if nothing else. If you think something is odd while you're writing it, imagine how it's going to look to someone else coming to it cold. I've lost count of the time I've seen wasted (and have wasted myself) investigating weirdness in code, or even removing things that look completely wrong only to have something break subtley in an apparently unrelated area.
* Make certain you have a "buddy" developer who knows what you are doing.
This one I'm much less bothered about. However, that may be because I tend to actively discourage any concept of code ownership. It's not *my* code, it's the $feature code. If someone else needs to get in there in the course of their work, all the better - they may catch a mistake I've made, or a bad assumption. Even if it's perfect, it's one more person who knows the code. I think that ideally everyone on a team of developers should get stuck in to pretty much every module. It's rare (in my experience at least) that any part of an application is so specialised as to only be within the ability of a single team member.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
The guy mentioned that he was a consultant. If you're a consultant, your income can disappear at a moment's notice; All your customers have to do is stop calling you. If you don't want that to happen, you have to be extra careful to not neglect your customers.
http://outcampaign.org/
As a testicular cancer survivor, I agree with most of the article. I was fortunate enough to have an employer who allowed me a six month leave of absence during my treatment. Thoughout that time, (before blogs) I kept an email correspondence with family, friends and co-workers. I went through two major surgeries and two rounds of intense chemo. That was now three years ago and by following through with the recommended followup diagnostics, I am still "cured". The down-side of this is that I had a great employer and medical plan. The medical bills for my six month treatment came to over $110,000 USD. If I was not on salary and insured, I would have been financially devestated. I was also extremely fortunate that my employer allowed me to come back after six months in the same position and same pay as I had before the leave. I don't think many people have that opportunity. So the jist of my response is, realize that extreme circumstances can happen to you and if/when they do, you will be amazed as to how anyone in your life will resond. (mostly in the postive)
I've managed to make myself dispensible, and lost the job. I set up an instrumentation/computer system for some psychologists, to make their fMRI experiments simpler to run. I did such a good job that my boss decided he didn't need my skills any more. Even if you play nice, your boss can still be a bastard!