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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."

12 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!"

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    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 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.

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    5. 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.

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    6. 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! :)

      --
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    7. 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.

  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/

  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 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!

  4. 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.