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Programmer Automates His Job For 6 Years, Gets Fired, Realizes He Has Forgotten How To Code

Posted by msmash on from the that's dept.

An anonymous reader writes: A user on Reddit forum who goes by the alias FiletOfFish1066 (referred to as Mr. Fish hereafter) has been let go by his company after it was discovered that Mr. Fish hadn't actually done anything for six years. Umm, well he did something, but nothing new and productive, his Bay Area-based firm says, which paid him $95,000 (avg) each of these years. When he first got his software testing quality assurance job, he spent eight months automating all of the programming tasks. With all of his tasks fully automated by a computer, he was able to literally sit back and do whatever he wanted. Mr. Fish is pretty despondent in tone after he posted about getting fired from his job. He's upset because he has completely forgotten how to code, having relegated all that work to the computer, and now possesses no marketable skills. But, he also is not stressed financially, having saved up $200,000 during his 6-year long "career."

33 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. Smells Like A Fish Story by zenlessyank · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Fishin for fools...

    1. Re:Smells Like A Fish Story by mwvdlee · · Score: 5, Insightful

      He completely forgot to code after just six years, after having been able to code well enough to completely automate his job six years into the future...
      I wonder who's going to be dumb enough to believe that story.

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    2. Re:Smells Like A Fish Story by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I feel like I just read a Weekly World News article. The next article must have been "Bat Boy gets job programming in Bay Area! Seen buying a cafe late at Starbucks!"

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    3. Re:Smells Like A Fish Story by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I wonder who's going to be dumb enough to believe that story.

      One sign that a story is BS is when no actual names are used. The ex-employee is identified only by a pseudonym, and the company he worked for is only identified as "a well-known tech company in the Bay Area". So this story is just an implausible, and completely unverifiable posting by an AC.

    4. Re:Smells Like A Fish Story by dgatwood · · Score: 2

      Lives in Bay Area and saves 200k in 6 years at 95k year? highly doubtful.

      Depends. If you're in an apartment and you aren't sharing it with somebody else, then no way. If you own a mobile home free and clear (no mortgage), then it is probably doable.

      $95k means probably in the neighborhood of $57k after taxes by my quick hackish math. Subtract $33k per year in savings, and that leaves $24k for living expenses. Half that will go to rent and utilities. That leaves $12k for incidentals like food, gasoline, and Internet service. If you spend $1,000 per month on incidentals, you're doing something wrong..

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    5. Re:Smells Like A Fish Story by Kjella · · Score: 2

      He completely forgot to code after just six years, after having been able to code well enough to completely automate his job six years into the future...

      Yeah it's like:
      a) Short of a brain hemorrhage or stroke, you totally forget to code
      b) You got a crystal ball good enough to predict six years ahead
      c) You can code well enough to automate it already now
      d) All of the above

      Totally believable.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    6. Re:Smells Like A Fish Story by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'll be willing to believe a lot.

      but a bay area person keeping a job and not getting laid off in 6 yrs?

      yeah, something sure does smell fishy about that, right there.

      --

      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
    7. Re:Smells Like A Fish Story by Space+cowboy · · Score: 5, Funny

      Hmm. Been here 11 years now. *looks over shoulder* ...

      I'm a PEOPLE PERSON, DAMMIT.

      --
      Physicists get Hadrons!
    8. Re:Smells Like A Fish Story by onepoint · · Score: 2

      You must know Kurt, my old friend from the 90's, never deposited his payroll checks unless he was told too. just enjoyed working on logistic problems all the time. better times of pencil and erasers LOL

      --
      if you see me, smile and say hello.
    9. Re:Smells Like A Fish Story by irving47 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not everyone is driven by money. It's simplistic, it's short-sighted, it's hard to believe sometimes... It's also true. An introvert with all basic meeds net will happily stow away a boatload of money if he/she enjoys the other activities they are able to take part in. Add fuel to that if there's any kind of general or social anxiety in play. Getting social interaction through IRC/chat rooms is quite doable for some people. His gaming would absolutely compound that into a balanced (in his mind) life.

      (And yes, hell, yes, I'm projecting! :)

      --
      I had a sucky sig.
    10. Re:Smells Like A Fish Story by Matheus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Exactly. It is stories like this that make me wonder why I even read /. anymore... The title fails the test. The summary fails the test HARD. I admit I didn't RTFA because... are you kidding me?

      I don't know why I'd bother with digging deeper but just because:
      1) A modern QA engineer's job largely centers around automating as much testing as possible. The more automation you do the better you are at your job (so long as the quality stays high)
      2) That being said I've never worked at *any company that could survive on a *fixed set of automation for so long as 6 years. Features change and the automation has to change with it. If this story is even remotely true it would have to be: "Spent 6 months automating all testing; Didn't update the automation for 6 years and by miracle the tests continued to pass and no new features failed in prod (or if they did it was blamed elsewhere); at the 6 year point someone figured out this was happening (aka something broke in Prod HARD and they decided to evaluate the testing)."
      3) I could see being obsolete not having written any code in 6 years but forgot it all? rubbish. He learned how to script an automation tool and that knowledge got deprecated. Everything else he didn't have experience doing in the first place which just got worse the longer he continued to not work in the business doing actual work. Bummer.

    11. Re:Smells Like A Fish Story by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 2

      He completely forgot to code after just six years, after having been able to code well enough to completely automate his job six years into the future...
      I wonder who's going to be dumb enough to believe that story.

      I wonder if the real story involved him paying a pittance to either some high school kid or to some guy in India who wrote the automation code for him.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    12. Re:Smells Like A Fish Story by lgw · · Score: 2

      Lives in Bay Area and saves 200k in 6 years at 95k year? highly doubtful.

      Just be willing to commute. I lived in Fremont, in a nice modern 2-bedroom apartment that costs me less than $2K/month. My total spend was only $40k/year, plus what I set aside for my next car. That would actually work out about right at that pay (assuming I didn't buy a car).

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    13. Re:Smells Like A Fish Story by Darinbob · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Even when I don't code, I spend the majority of the day dealing with other people. Meetings, meetings about meetings, planning meetings, scrum meetings, all hands meetings, etc.

      A few things sounded false. No friends at work in 6 years. That's a long time at a job to make no friends, not even work pseudo-friends to have lunch with. I have zero social skills and I make friends.
      And software QA. Yes you can automate it, but you can't automate it so that it runs for 6 years. New tests have to be written as new bugs and features show up. Even if you automate them all you still have to show up to the meetings to answer what the status of the tests are.

    14. Re:Smells Like A Fish Story by Hognoxious · · Score: 2

      There was a story about that a while back.

      When a grunt like him does that, he gets fired. If the CIO does it he gets a bonus.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    15. Re:Smells Like A Fish Story by parkinglot777 · · Score: 2

      saving 20k a year and living off of 75k a year

      I guess you meant saving $33k a year and living off of $42k a year (taxes around $20k).

  2. A hero! by Robotbeat · · Score: 4, Funny

    This man is our hero. Isn't that what we all dream about? Is this the ONE man who truly beat the tendency for automation to lead just to more work?
    Relevant XKCD:
    https://xkcd.com/1319/

    1. Re:A hero! by snowsmann · · Score: 3, Funny

      And the other relevant xkcd:
      https://xkcd.com/1205/
      He went way off this chart! lol

      --
      timeo Danaos, et dona ferentis
    2. Re:A hero! by phantomfive · · Score: 2

      I don't know about you, but I like doing stuff at work. I'd rather not work at all (and still get paid), but as long as I'm at work, it feels good to be productive.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  3. Sounds like bullshit by AlphaBro · · Score: 5, Insightful

    He automated his entire workload and ignored development to such an extent that, over a period of 6 years, he forgot how to program? Sounds like bullshit. Things come up. People ask questions. Problems change. This is probably fake.

    1. Re:Sounds like bullshit by Kobun · · Score: 2

      Seconded. For this to be true, the testing program must have been a) rigidly defined and b) unchanging. Also probably c) overly simplistic.

      If he was handed all of that and did truly automate it, he didn't have much in the way of a skillset to begin with. Programming 201 level skills at best. Had those and didn't expand on them in the 6 years he had to make them better, I still have no sympathy.

    2. Re:Sounds like bullshit by Verdatum · · Score: 4, Funny

      No one ever makes things up on Reddit! Even if they did, surely they wouldn't delete the post and their account when the story blows up!

    3. Re:Sounds like bullshit by The-Ixian · · Score: 2

      I am not a programmer by trade. I do like my Perl and PowerShell scripts though.

      Unfortunately, there is not a lot of opportunity to do large, complex scripts and so I will go for years sometimes without doing much more than a few loops and some simple arrays.

      I will review code that I have written in the past, from time-to-time and I will think "man, you used to be smart!"... but really, all it takes is a few weeks of thinking in that mode again and I will fall back into it.

      So, yeah... I am with most others here by calling BS... there are other factors here that we aren't being told.

      --
      My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
    4. Re:Sounds like bullshit by barc0001 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Probably fake? I'd say 110% fake. Let's leave everything else out, how many "well known" software packages could be properly tested by an automated unit test that was written last year, let alone 6 years ago? Nobody adds features or changes UIs around?

    5. Re:Sounds like bullshit by swb · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I almost believe the organization chart bit, but the "some people" was probably a handful of people at most and how much equipment could a single person be allowed to check out at once? A router and a switch? I doubt you're backing up a moving van to the loading dock to get one of everything.

      Everything I've always heard about the CCIE certification, though, sounds like winning the lottery. I had a Cisco instructor tell us it was REALLY hard exam-wise, and the practicum was a two-day on-site affair at your own expense.

      Day one was a really complex setup of multiple devices and protocols with "but that won't work" dependencies that actually could be made to work and if it didn't work just right, you were done and had to go home.

      Day two was trying to fix that same setup they broke while you were gone in very subtle ways under a time deadline and knowing how it was broken.

      The instructor I had said that if you passed, a recruiter from Cisco was next in line after the person who handed you your certification.

      My instructor said he knew a guy (don't they all?) who had a CCIE and worked as an independent contractor making six figures for about six months of work a year.

      It's probably all grossly exaggerated, of course, but it's still a complex and difficult certification that demonstrates an extremely deep networking understanding. The problem is despite that level of knowledge, how valuable is a single person? Even in the gogo dot-com peak, one person wasn't going to single-handedly setup an entire carrier network or even a major branch office. Too much equipment, too much deadline, too many places to be at the same time, too much monkey work for someone making that kind of salary.

  4. Sounds like bullshit by MightyMartian · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm sorry. I just don't believe this. First of all, what kind of quality assurance job, particularly code review, would allow you to automate most of what you do? I would suggest any programmer capable of so significantly automating their job that they can sit back for over five years and jerk off would be among the most elite programmers on the planet...

    Which leads to the absurdity of the second claim, that the individual forgot how to program. Now I can imagine someone getting a bit rusty after four or five years of not coding. I've actually gone through fairly long stretches, as long as a couple of years, over the last decade I've done more management-end work, not doing much in the way of coding, and while I admit that it takes me a day or two to get back into the rhythm when I need to do it, in pretty short order I'm backing in fighting shape. It might mean some refamiliarizing with libraries, and if there's new versions or new tools, I might take a while to get acclimatized, but really within a week I can get on that bike again.

    I don't think I'm a genius. I just think that once you actually learn to code, you don't really forget. A long stretch would certainly mean you've got some learning, but if you were a coder of any worth, which someone who can automate their entire job ought to be, you'll pick it up soon enough.

    In fact, the whole thing sounds like an absolute load of shit, some anonymous poster yanking chains. Let's see:

    1. Essentially claiming absurd levels of technical competence.
    2. Bizarre claims of forgetting how to do the very thing he claims he was so competent at.
    3. Claims of boatloads of money. This is the real teller for me. Why do these liars always have to invent claims of great amounts of cash?

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  5. Re:I don't really believe it by mark-t · · Score: 2

    yeah.... barring some incident that drastically affects brain function like a stroke, I can't figure it out either.

    --
    File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
  6. Re:Why was he fired again? by JasonM314 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They pay people a hell of a lot more than that to do middle-management work.

  7. Uh, that user has no posts? by wardrich86 · · Score: 2

    So everybody in here is calling out how the story *may* be false etc... but what's even worse is that /u/FiletOfFish1066 is a 2-day-old account (as of June 13, 2016) and has 0 posts and 0 comments. So fake that the guy himself deleted the story as soon as it blew up.

    https://www.reddit.com/user/Fi...

  8. real programmers don't stop coding by ionymous · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If he had nothing to do and didn't choose to code during work, he obviously doesn't enjoy coding.
    So he's all ready to find a different career.

  9. Re:I don't really believe it by HornWumpus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I can figure it out; Liberal arts major trying to write a parable about smartass techs and failing.

    Clearly invented by someone who can't code.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  10. Not only that, but you don't forget by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 2

    I mean sure the skills get rusty, you forget specifics, but if you've learned fundamentally how to code, how to think like a computer, that doesn't go away. It is the kind of fundamental knowledge that more or less always sticks around.

    I don't code, I dislike it and I'm not great at it. I do systems and network administration. However, I learned how to code as a kid. Did some BASIC of a number of varieties, some C++, some scripting etc. Guess what? When it comes down to it and something comes up, which it does occasionally, and I have to look at some code and see what is going on or work on a simple program, I can make it happen. It all comes back pretty fast. No, I don't generate elegant code quickly like someone who does it for a living does, but I don't sit around going "I have no idea what is going on! This is all so confusing!"

    Goes double for if it is something you are actually good at (I was never good at coding, even when I did it somewhat often).

    This all sounds like a load of crap.

  11. How did this get greenlit? by Ramze · · Score: 2

    Anonymous reader posts story about anonymous programmer who may or may not actually exist that claims to work for an unknown company.... maybe. Oh, and they did a thing programming automation that doesn't sound credible, got busted after 6 years, lost their job, and then became an amnesiac at programming.

    News for Nerds! Wow, it's so nice to see that anyone can get a questionable reddit post greenlit... so much for reputable news with links to articles, quotes, and other credible sources!