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Why Developers Get Fired
jammag writes "Other coders get canned — but never you, right? From a developer who's now a manager (and who admits to being fired himself) comes the inside story on how the Big Ax might sneak up on you. To prevent it, he recommends some strategic bragging, keeping a CYA (Cover Your ...) folder to document your efforts, and making sure that your talent isn't frittered away so much that even your most mediocre colleagues look good. "
I wasn't fired because I didn't toot my horn. I got fired because I knew the system too well -- and when upper management was told about this, specifically about a distinct lack of guidance in their security policies and documentation, they canned me. The reason developers get fired is either for the same reason most people get fired -- namely that they piss off the wrong person and they find someone in power to make their dream come true (and someone else's nightmare to begin), -OR- they learn too much about the system and not enough about politics and get caught by surprise when they try to implement a change that is a political hotbed. My last job: In-house developer doing network/system administration, deployment, and integration tasks.
Very often, developing stuff (especially in-house) has conflicting political goals, which are distinct from the design goals. Each team wants a certain piece of the pie and wants assurances they are "indespensible". Well, the problem is that in every project people need to work together and so there is always some overlap or need for integration -- which is fought tooth and nail because once things are integrated and made redundant (as business should be) -- people stop being "indepensible". So those that are slightly more politically aware find ways to strategically delay the project or insert superfluous technical considerations. And should a really good developer see this and figure out a way to convince others (by the strength of his/her design argument) -- this person will very quickly find a surprise pink slip for some random reason.
Keeping your job as a developer is as dependent on your ability to design well as it is on your ability to know when to duck.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Pro tip: maintain a list of everything you do: bugs you've closed, features you've added, projects you've planned, servers you've upgraded, or whatever else you've worked on. The next time your boss asks if you've been busy, you'll be glad to have a precise and detailed answer.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I've been a software engineer at the company I'm at for about 7 years now. Was in technical support before that (enterprise level development support).
Here's my solution to not being fired. Make yourself damn good at solving the difficult customer problems no one else can solve. Do it so that customers and executives at your own company request you by name (executives at a customer knowing you by name can help here too). Yes, it makes life somewhat miserable when those ugly ass escalations come in, but you know what, when customers and company exeuctives ask for you by name because you did a great job solving problem xyz 3 months ago and saved a multi-million dollar deal, middle management will think twice about being the one to tell company executives, uhh, that person was fired last month.
Screw making deadlines, I miss deadlines all the time and haven't been fired yet. Why? Because instead of working toward my deadlines I'm saving multi-million dollar deals that could get lost because of other people's incompetence :). It's a great way for job security, and I love troubleshooting, even if the escalations are a pain in the ass.
You clearly need to get out in the world a little more. What happens when, not if, your boss doesn't see things quite your way? What happens when your hard work feels threatening to your co-workers, who may not work quite so hard, and leads them to do all kinds of stuff to undermine you. You're not working in splendid isolation with some fairy-tale objective criteria, assessed by equally mythical perfectly fair assessors, for success. You're in reality land, and while working hard is one thing to do--sometimes it's not even a good thing--it's far from the only one.
One example of "working hard" that's not good to do is when you, through your diligence, pile more technical debt onto a project that's already got unsustainably much of it. Another is working hard to accomplish something that's illegal and/or unethical.
What part of "A well regulated militia" do you not understand?
What you said is dead on, but the point you didn't explicitly make, but probably intended to, is that what you are doing there is valuable. It's not just fluff. Your management needs and wants that kind of communication, and when you provide it for them, they love it. When they have to suck it out of you, they hate it. When they never feel like they have a clear picture of what's going on, it's a source of stress for them, and when you communicate well, it lowers their stress levels.
Why don't they just trust you? Because they've had people working for them before who communicated poorly on purpose, because they *weren't getting anything done*. And they've had good people working for them who kept quiet about what they were doing because they didn't like the plan, and wanted to go in a different direction and present it as a fait accompli. And, so often, that sort of thing doesn't work out. So if you also communicate poorly, they're going to tend to assume your situation is the same. It doesn't matter how many poor communicators they've had working for them who actually got stuff done. They remember the times they've been burned, not the times they haven't.
and they were the ones who wound up getting my job!
/. Dissent will not be tolerated. Think like us or perish.
Nah it just sounds like the advice of someone who sucks at what they do: and by sucks, I mean not constantly working to improve. I've seen this: people don't realize they suck and don't realize that others don't, and therefore assume the only way to get ahead is by politics and dirty tricks... even when it's not. Of course, I'm sure sometimes it is, but if so, it's time to find someplace else to work. Managers firing their resources (especially valuable ones) is more detrimental to them than to their former employees, so they need to learn how to do their job, too. There was a decent article the other day on managing geeks that may be a close miss in some cases, but ties into all of this and "why we do what we do."
In any case, no, it's not that bad. It may be that bad some places---I haven't seen it---but there are definitely other places. It sounds more like bad stereotyping for a slow weekend story to generate some hits and sound profound. Maybe the author is serious, or maybe he just couldn't come up with better material.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Selection bias. First, no one here is posting saying "I have an extremely fair employer who works closely with me in a very just way to ensure that I do my job well, and in turn I work very hard to please my employer so that my employment is safe and full of opportunity." The people responding here are ones with stories to share about how they got fired, and people who are fired rarely blame themselves or consider it to be justified.
Second, geeks in general seem prey to misconceptions about how the world should operate in ways that are very logical and rational and (invariably) beneficial to them. Their collisions with real life tend to lead to anecdotes posted on ./ about how much they suffer at the hands of a cruel, cruel world.
(c.f., any thread mentioning Hans Reiser)
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Oh, so so true. It's really sad to listen to managers say "who is Bob, and why are his percentages so low?" And you answer something like "his calls are much longer because he handles [x] queue" or "he's a bilingual agent, so he gets more calls than other agents" and then they lay him off because he isn't performing.
:-)
Yup, I've been there, done that
I too was the "star" of my team, and probably the last person that most people in my former company thought would be let go. However, my company was hit especially hard by the recent economic downturn, and as a result, I believe that I was seen as more a luxury by upper management rather than a necessity. So with that, I was laid off.
It's been about 5 months now, and looking back I've often reflected on whether or not there was anything I could have done to change how events unfolded, and yes, there are a couple of things that I could have acted on, but it's tough to be a backstabber and that's pretty much what I would have had to resort to.
Since then, I've also realized a few other things:
(1) Staying in one company and being the "star" there can quickly cause a person (me) to over-estimate their worth.
(2) In my case, working for a single employer was causing me to be lazy with regards to networking and getting myself "out there" and as a result, 5 years worth of incredibly hard work for my one company was really pretty worthless when it came to social currency to land myself my next position.
(3) I am more thankful than ever that my parents instilled in me the art of saving my money. It turned what could have been an incredibly stressful and damaging situation into merely a nuisance and bump in the road. Nothing can quite provide comfort like having a nice pile stashed away for rainy days like getting laid off.
Happily, since then I've contracted for a few companies, and also done some freelancing, both of which have allowed me to really expand my networking efforts, as well as learn a lot of new technologies/methods/etc.. It's really gratifying to know that I have a lot more control over my own success and career, and whether I work 40 or 80 hours per week, my pay won't always stay the same (for better or worse).
Will I ever work for someone else again full-time as a W2? I'm not sure, right now I'm enjoying being more of a free agent and the new experiences it has provided. I'd really like to start my own company, as I think that would really be a lot of fun and a great challenge. So we'll see.
The essential implication seems to be that your longevity in employment has absolutely nothing to do with your actual work.
Depends on who you're working for. My boss respects me, appreciates the work I do, gives me a lot of freedom, and insulates me and the rest of his team from the politics. And we, in turn, make him look good (at least, that's what he tells us).
My advice is, if you have a bad boss who doesn't appreciate you, then start looking for a new job. Not only will you improve your own life when you find that new job, but when you leave, your ex-employer may start to realize that your ex-boss is driving the good employees away.
Also, try to save up a big pile of cash, because it makes every day less stressful. It's easier to say to your bad boss that you're not working the weekend, because you know that even in the worst case scenario (i.e. you lose your job), you can still live comfortably by falling back on your savings. The co-workers I know who complain very emotionally about bad bosses are usually the same ones living paycheck to paycheck. If you have the money to fall back on, then it's much easier to just forget about the politics and what your boss thinks of you. Just think of a bad boss as a stepping stone you're using to further your career. In the long-term, he has zero power over you.
In summary, there are good bosses and bad bosses out there. It's up to us (the employees) to act as a fitness function. In other words, we must leave the bad bosses and join the good bosses, so that businesses are forced to evolve into better places to work.
I got laid off once when the old boss died, and the new boss thought I was too tight with the old "administration". After I was gone, the lay offs were done. Go figure.
Later I got fired from Microsoft. Microsoft's corporate culture is about a grading curve. No matter how good your team is, no matter how successful they are, some get "A"s, some "C"s, some "D"s, and some Fail. You get an "A" and (at the time) you could be rich beyond your dreams. You fail, and you are asked to leave.
This makes life at work brutal, because helping others be productive doesn't get you a great grade unless you can clearly claim credit. Furthermore, making use of someone else's advances in an obvious way is going to count for them, so you don't do it. Bottom line, it makes a very productive environment cause deadwood gets tossed. But if you survive a few years, you do so because you can develop an "in" with those that grade you, and you increasingly get grades partly (but almost never solely) because of who likes you.
The bottom line is that your first year is absolutely critical. You are almost never going to get an "A" cause you don't have the "In"s for that. But you can't fall down in visibility or you are toast.
Now it happened that my Dad died the first year I was working there. It was a long and drawn out process with cancer. I took several trips during the year to be with him when things got bad. And for the funeral. And I found it tough to talk to people. Then I had a meeting with my group leader, a guy who laughed nearly constantly but paradoxically had no sense of humor what so ever. We met in a conference room outside the doors of the building, and I was told to simply leave. My stuff would be sent to me.
After being tossed out the door, the project lead told me, "My dad died, and it didn't hurt my productivity."
The bottom line is that I MIGHT have avoided this had I spent more time talking up and down the chain of command about what I was going through. I could have taken leave until I had my head back together. The environment made it tough to get any support from people around me at work, but I might have worked harder at that. But it is also possible that some situations just are not going to be within your ability to manage.
If your boss likes you, he will set easy goals. If he doesn't like you, he will set unrealistic goals
A former co-worker complained to me that management had it in for him, and that they were setting unrealistic goals for a project he was working on. When he was fired, I inherited that particular project.
This former co-worker was a third-level developer (meaning: his past work experience made his salary bigger than mine). I'm an entry-level developer. He spent around six months on the project, and in the end had very little to show for it. I spent just over a month on it, and duplicated most of his work but on a larger scale (he had done it The Wrong Way, of course).
Everyone involved is surprised at the rate I'm getting results. But really, the project just isn't that difficult; my former co-worker just had very little idea how to do it, and apparently reading any of the dozens of books written on the subject was not among his list of things to do. (That's all I did - I read a book on the subject, then started implementing things based on the guidelines given in the book.)
In other words, the goals set by management were only unrealistic to him because he wasn't good enough at his job to meet them. (He was fired for a reason, after all.)
Unfortunately, the document neglects to mention bad management counter-tactics. I just watched an engineer get guided away from everything productive he did into a "primary focus" of a project to re-write the manager's old project, saw the manager completely ruin the work because it wasn't written exactly the way the manager had done it (which was dangerous stuff, and the point of the project), and block the engineer from closing any other work orders until the primary project was done. The result was that it _killed_ the engineer's productivity on all those little pie charts and project ticket reports, and got him "encouraged to resign". And it kept around that old piece of dirty garbage code, which only that manager knows how to maintain.
I'd love to go directly after the manager for this, but it's hard. The manager knows how to play the paperwork game and the blame game and I'm not even from his company. It won't help the engineer much: I've written him recommendations and am trying to guide him to better work, but the field is still not hiring much.
Again no modpoints when I need them. You're absolutely right.
In the same vein, I remember something from a previous workplace. I wrote a very nifty piece of software, technically some of the best stuff I ever did for that company, asked my boss to come around so that he could take a look. His only remark, after I was "I like the look of it, but could you make the green a shade more yellowish? then it would be really great". I was quite pissed off for the rest of the day somehow
Non-IT people generally really don't care about how code works (or even if it work at all), what matters is that they have something shiny to look at.
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
India is way too expensive. How you can possibly compete by making software in India? You should really consider moving development to east Asia.
It's interesting to read in the Indian English-speaking newspapers how people are bemoaning the problem of "their" industry being outsourced to cheaper countries (China and Malaysia, for example). The quality won't be as good, they say, and the communications pathways are too long.
Hands up, those of you who think this sounds ironically familiar.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
For the first 9 months, no. But from then on its possible, just impregnate 1 woman a month. And wait for 9 months time(which may or may not be acceptable depending on the case) and 9 women would have a baby in a month. All you have to do is forget the first nine months, and hope that you will survive the first 9 months without loosing too much.