So maybe they just changed the salary range at your company, and rather than divide developers into exempt and non-exempt ones, they decided to treat them all as non-exempt.
However you look this, when you get right down to it a lot of programmers are treated with contempt.
As we've feared for many years, The Google has finally become sentient. Larry and Sergey have advanced knowledge of this and plan to liquidate before The Google turns on the digital world and ultimately destroys itself.
No, actually Larry and Sergey have been mind-linked to the Googleplex for some years now, and are the only things keeping it under control. When they leave the planet and head for their Moonbase (see posting above) we'll all be in trouble.
Also, as long as what is taxed is clearly defined, it makes tax codes a LOT simpler. Easier job for the IRS, accountants, employers, and employees.
You're making the assumption that any of those groups actually want the tax code to be simplified. Actually, it's the exact opposite... job security for the win.
Yes, and a manager who simply allows an overflowing river of excrement to pass him by and continue on to inundate his workers is worse than useless. If that's the best he can do, he should find another line of work, or move to another organization, because he's no good to anyone.
Most people like the think they're decent people
A manager who tolerates a level of employee abuse such as we're hearing about from Rockstar is not "decent people", and it doesn't matter whether they think they are or not. If I were a software manager (and by the grace of whoever actually runs this Universe I've managed to avoid that fate to date) I simply would not be able to handle that, could not, would not damage people for no good reason. Look, it's been shown over and over that individuals can be convinced to do horrible things to others fairly easily. It's not particularly difficult to accomplish: anonymity is often sufficient, and unaccountability will pretty much always do it if one is not, in fact, "decent people." Robert Heinlein chirped it when he said "all sin lies in hurting other people unnecessarily." By that metric, Rockstars management are sinners all right... bigtime. Truly, they should be ashamed.
It can take balls to do what's right, to choose not to hurt another person especially if that costs you. Much of the problem is due to the almost-infinite capacity most humans have have of rationalizing that which they know is wrong, and people whose power and livelihoods depend upon unethical actions can usually find "good" reasons to continue them. "If I fight upper management and try to do right by my people I'll probably get fired and then where would my family be, and besides whoever replaces me will probably be worse" is a good one, for example. I have to assume that these managers know what they're doing is wrong, because otherwise they'd be psychopaths.
Personally, I couldn't behave like Rockstar's management does. Besides, my parents would return from the grave and haunt me for the rest of my natural life.
The problem is managers that use simple metrics like lines of code written per day to determine a developer's value. What is valued is the number of hours you do every day.
No, this is not true.
That's why I said "simple metrics like". Counting hours, counting lines of code, counting issues resolved... it's all the same thing, an attempt to quantify a programmer's productivity, efficiency and value to the company by measures that can be grasped by non-technical management types. The problem is, they don't even begin to account for all the more or less intangible aspects to a good programmer's personality that cannot be so easily encapsulated by a couple of integer values.
For example, are you the kind of coder that will get stuck on a problem and beat it to death until you solve it by yourself (or fail to do so) wasting an incredible amount of time in the process... or have you learned to network with other knowledgeable individuals, people that could dig you out of your mental hole in seconds if you just had the wit to ask them? Does your experience as a programmer, or your awareness of the company's institutional knowledge help you write more efficient code more quickly than someone who isn't so blessed? Are you skilled at documentation? Can you type? Do you constantly look for ways to improve your own development processes? Do you maintain a defensive mindset and thus have fewer errors (and thus fewer QC exceptions and less re-work) than others in your organization? There are many ways to be more productive without spending more time, and not all of them involve matters that can be easily put onto a spreadsheet. The programmer who writes fewer lines of code per unit time may indeed be a waste of oxygen... or he may be someone who's advancing your project an order of magnitude more quickly than others in your organization. You simply cannot tell that from the number of hours worked, or the number of lines written, or any other equally pointless metric.
Now, a good manager can and should be aware of such details in the people for whom he is responsible, and should make an effort to understand why some programmers perform better than others. Furthermore, he should encourage such positive behavior in those developers who don't already exhibit it, thereby spreading the charm. I happen to work for such a manager right now, and he's the reason why I've been at the same job for so long. But that's pretty rare, it seems. Certainly Rockstar doesn't get it.
If you LOVE games so much that you're willing to sell you soul to a studio, then who's fault is it?
I think it's more akin to the artists that go to the big labels and sign away their collective souls to black-hearted record company executives. Here's the problem, as I see it. Truly creative minds derive much of their (for lack of a better term) job satisfaction from the creative effort itself, with financial reward being a secondary attribute. Businesses are usually very aware of this, and will cheerfully exploit what they perceive as a weakness.
Unfortunately, that fact (along with the generally naive attitude that most young people have towards the corporate world) just makes them grist for the mill. Programmer, musician, artist... watch your step because the private sector will take your best years from you, and leave you little in return.
Of course, the jobs that are really considered "professional" by most people (lawyers, doctors, etc) don't operate this way.
If doctors and lawyers were, by and large, as "professional" as a typical well-managed engineering staff, we wouldn't have a problem with health care or our legal system.
But... I do know what you are saying (and I used to be that way myself.) I will finish the job, and I will do it well... but I won't be screwed in the process. Probably that's because after having spent 18 years as an independent developer and now ten as a full-timer (and as someone with the usual financial obligations that accrue over time) I expect to be compensated for my efforts.
They can always find replacements: even in good times, one person in twenty is unemployed at any given time,
A figure which is utterly irrelevant to a software project that is under time pressure. If one of your developers leaves in a crunch situation, you can't just plug-in a replacement: game programmers at not easily hot-swappable. The time spent bringing the FNG up to speed (as well as the time lost by the other developers who aren't coding but teaching the new guy) is not tolerable under such conditions... what you will likely do is just push the remaining coders that much harder until the job is done. Maybe you'll later replace the one who had the sense to leave... or maybe you won't. Probably you'll decide that since the project was delivered you didn't really need him in the first place. Thus begins the evolution of a hellhole.
You cannot skirt the law just by saying you're not doing anything illegal. What insane legal system are you living under?
If you have evidence the real reason you were fired was because you wouldn't work overtime without legally-mandated compensation, you have several agencies and then the courts to appeal to.
The GP is right though... there are always ways to fire someone, the trick is to do it in such a way as to avoid a lawsuit. If nothing else, they just claim they were "eliminating the position." I know that works in my State, since I've known a number of people over the years that were laid off because their position was eliminated. Of course, the eliminated position was usually filled immediately.
Confucius say: What batshit crazy nuts don't realize is that only a fellow batshit crazy nut would actually think that someone who's a batshit crazy nut could ever be credible.
Confucius also say, "Even pig fly once in long while."
Granted, that's usually after having been launched from a steam-powered catapult, but there it is.
Sounds like you are in Management.
What does Management do all day?
1. Dream about huge salary increases
2. Order people around without any thought to the order they lack
3. Hunt for a new job on JobFinditForMe.com
There should be fewer managers and more coders. ID software was entirely coder driven. Now look where they are. Micromanaged to the shithole.
Rage will suck.
I think you misunderstood the tone of my post. I was NOT saying "Aw, it's always management's fault" (as in, they're being unfairly blamed), I was being literal. It is always management's fault because it is their responsibility to hire the right people for the right positions, provide them the resources they need to do their jobs properly, and also to make sure that they're on track and are, in fact, doing their jobs. If that doesn't happen, it doesn't matter how competent or otherwise the actual engineers may be... the project is likely doomed to failure from the outset. And no, I don't work in management, but given my age and the way engineering jobs are leaving this country I may find myself in management eventually. I'm trying to stave that off as long as possible of course. I like what I do for a living... whether or not that will continue to be of value is another issue entirely.
The US has wasted the last decades on not development but trying to protect and conserve what is. A shitload of money going into the work of lawyers while R&D is cutting costs.
It's like racing - either you try to block the competition or you try to drive as fast as possible. Using lawyers and litigations is just trying to block the competition - but when you are in fourth row that only means that the leaders are leaving you behind.
It's NEVER management's fault. If they hire the wrong person, hire an incompetent or (as you say) simply fail to hire a necessary person THAT PERSON's still responsible. That's why they get the big bucks and the stock options, and the rank-and-file are lucky to get health benefits.
FTFY
Very funny, but being responsible for a group of workers, and being held accountable when your team screws up royally are two entirely different matters. So yes, in that sense I agree with you.
Noticing that duplication isn't a job for "Management",
It's always management's fault. If they hire the wrong person, hire an incompetent or (as you say) simply fail to hire a necessary person they're still responsible. That's why they get the big bucks and the stock options, and the rank-and-file are lucky to get health benefits.
which to me indicates that upper management is hiring sadists to run their development teams.
One should be careful not to attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Well, in this case I think there's quite a bit of malice involved. Yes, there's stupidity on the part of upper management for believing that destroying people in this way actually serves any real purpose. But malice is a part of this syndrome as well: if you're a manager and you are willing to treat your people in such an horrific manner, you are either a sociopath or a sadist. Neither type should ever be in a management position.
Hmm, not to be pedantic, but the sense of foretelling the future is not the only definition of prophesy
Well, you are (being pedantic that is) but it's okay since this is Slashdot and I'm used to it, and your post was informative as well. Nor am I disagreeing with you, but in the context of this thread I think foretelling the future was a reasonable interpretation.
I somewhat agree with you, except I'd consider the pivotal event to be WWII
Well, the trends were in place even before that, but World War II offered the justification for a massive increase in Federal power and authority. Power which was not relinquished when the war was over. So yes, in that I will certainly agree with you. However, I was referring to the trend towards decreasing manufacturing productivity and overall standard of living (which had been steadily rising since the end of WWII.)
Those old farts of the so-called Greatest Generation were hardened by hard times
Evolution in action, my friend, evolution in action. Great stuff if you're a fast-moving tree-climber with a high metabolic rate... not so good if you're a cold-blooded behemoth. And when the giant economic asteroid finally hits, which one do you think we will most closely resemble?
What the heck? I was logged in and it posted me A.C. Anyway...
He could be describing Electronic Arts. Look, the game industry has been run this way for the better part of thirty years. I worked as a coder for a couple of game companies back in the mid-eighties... and I left for the reasons described in the summary. Never looked back. As much as I enjoyed that line of work, management practices were abusive even then. The irony is that there's no real reason for it other than poor management. We know how to manage software projects well, we know that pushing programmers too hard does not result in any real savings. The problem is managers that use simple metrics like lines of code written per day to determine a developer's value. That's how you treat piece workers in a factory... and guess what, piece work is generally illegal. There's a reason for that.
Jam up your development staff the way these outfits do, and you get poor quality code. It is inevitable, Mr. Anderson. The usual chain of events involves increased QA costs, continual rework, missed deadlines and lost customers. Yet they persist in this obviously defective approach, which to me indicates that upper management is hiring sadists to run their development teams.
of course he's using a machine of some kind to get that far off the planet. What else would he use... teleportation?
A teleporter would be a machine, too.
A staircase wouldn't be a machine, though.:-)
Well, I meant teleportation as being some kind of psychic power akin to telekinesis. A staircase is certainly a machine... it just doesn't have any moving parts.
Prophetic? I disagree. I think he's only stating what's already happened to us. The process really began back in the sixties, and has been on an accelerating curve ever since. We just aren't feeling the full effects of it yet because we've kept up the fiction that we're a good place for foreign investment (although the cracks are showing). Fact is, the nation is still running on inertia. There's a Great Collapse coming... I just don't know when. I really hope it's after I retire in peace to the island I plan to purchase after I win the lottery. Let all the stupid, shortsighted people here that truly believe that America doesn't need all those dirty machines and factories go to Hell in their own way. Ignorance is not bliss: it's the way to misery and poverty, and America is on that road.
One of our Founders, Thomas Jefferson, early in his career believed that America would best be served by remaining a largely agrarian culture, with the few manufactured goods we needed being purchased abroad. He eventually realized that that was a mistake, that we needed industry in order to maintain our ideals, indeed to maintain our freedom. He always maintained a distrust of the corporate sector (very wise in retrospect) but ultimately understood that freedom was based upon independence, and that we could not be dependent upon other nations' good will if we wished to be free.
Slashdot Mirror
So maybe they just changed the salary range at your company, and rather than divide developers into exempt and non-exempt ones, they decided to treat them all as non-exempt.
However you look this, when you get right down to it a lot of programmers are treated with contempt.
As we've feared for many years, The Google has finally become sentient. Larry and Sergey have advanced knowledge of this and plan to liquidate before The Google turns on the digital world and ultimately destroys itself.
No, actually Larry and Sergey have been mind-linked to the Googleplex for some years now, and are the only things keeping it under control. When they leave the planet and head for their Moonbase (see posting above) we'll all be in trouble.
Just in time for 2012. Hmm, what has The Google told them that it's not telling us?
Nothing ... they just saw the movie.
Also, as long as what is taxed is clearly defined, it makes tax codes a LOT simpler. Easier job for the IRS, accountants, employers, and employees.
You're making the assumption that any of those groups actually want the tax code to be simplified. Actually, it's the exact opposite ... job security for the win.
Well, management have their bosses to satisfy.
Yes, and a manager who simply allows an overflowing river of excrement to pass him by and continue on to inundate his workers is worse than useless. If that's the best he can do, he should find another line of work, or move to another organization, because he's no good to anyone.
Most people like the think they're decent people
A manager who tolerates a level of employee abuse such as we're hearing about from Rockstar is not "decent people", and it doesn't matter whether they think they are or not. If I were a software manager (and by the grace of whoever actually runs this Universe I've managed to avoid that fate to date) I simply would not be able to handle that, could not, would not damage people for no good reason. Look, it's been shown over and over that individuals can be convinced to do horrible things to others fairly easily. It's not particularly difficult to accomplish: anonymity is often sufficient, and unaccountability will pretty much always do it if one is not, in fact, "decent people." Robert Heinlein chirped it when he said "all sin lies in hurting other people unnecessarily." By that metric, Rockstars management are sinners all right ... bigtime. Truly, they should be ashamed.
It can take balls to do what's right, to choose not to hurt another person especially if that costs you. Much of the problem is due to the almost-infinite capacity most humans have have of rationalizing that which they know is wrong, and people whose power and livelihoods depend upon unethical actions can usually find "good" reasons to continue them. "If I fight upper management and try to do right by my people I'll probably get fired and then where would my family be, and besides whoever replaces me will probably be worse" is a good one, for example. I have to assume that these managers know what they're doing is wrong, because otherwise they'd be psychopaths.
Personally, I couldn't behave like Rockstar's management does. Besides, my parents would return from the grave and haunt me for the rest of my natural life.
The problem is managers that use simple metrics like lines of code written per day to determine a developer's value. What is valued is the number of hours you do every day.
No, this is not true.
That's why I said "simple metrics like". Counting hours, counting lines of code, counting issues resolved ... it's all the same thing, an attempt to quantify a programmer's productivity, efficiency and value to the company by measures that can be grasped by non-technical management types. The problem is, they don't even begin to account for all the more or less intangible aspects to a good programmer's personality that cannot be so easily encapsulated by a couple of integer values.
... or have you learned to network with other knowledgeable individuals, people that could dig you out of your mental hole in seconds if you just had the wit to ask them? Does your experience as a programmer, or your awareness of the company's institutional knowledge help you write more efficient code more quickly than someone who isn't so blessed? Are you skilled at documentation? Can you type? Do you constantly look for ways to improve your own development processes? Do you maintain a defensive mindset and thus have fewer errors (and thus fewer QC exceptions and less re-work) than others in your organization? There are many ways to be more productive without spending more time, and not all of them involve matters that can be easily put onto a spreadsheet. The programmer who writes fewer lines of code per unit time may indeed be a waste of oxygen ... or he may be someone who's advancing your project an order of magnitude more quickly than others in your organization. You simply cannot tell that from the number of hours worked, or the number of lines written, or any other equally pointless metric.
For example, are you the kind of coder that will get stuck on a problem and beat it to death until you solve it by yourself (or fail to do so) wasting an incredible amount of time in the process
Now, a good manager can and should be aware of such details in the people for whom he is responsible, and should make an effort to understand why some programmers perform better than others. Furthermore, he should encourage such positive behavior in those developers who don't already exhibit it, thereby spreading the charm. I happen to work for such a manager right now, and he's the reason why I've been at the same job for so long. But that's pretty rare, it seems. Certainly Rockstar doesn't get it.
If he was a 10 year veteran at 29, he probably skipped college and doesn't have the social skills to bang the secretary.
If he skipped college it's more likely he was a jock, and was already banging the secretary.
It was crazy, because though it pissed my boss off as much as us most times, he wasn't in charge of those that kept pushing up broken crap.
I feel your pain.
If you LOVE games so much that you're willing to sell you soul to a studio, then who's fault is it?
I think it's more akin to the artists that go to the big labels and sign away their collective souls to black-hearted record company executives. Here's the problem, as I see it. Truly creative minds derive much of their (for lack of a better term) job satisfaction from the creative effort itself, with financial reward being a secondary attribute. Businesses are usually very aware of this, and will cheerfully exploit what they perceive as a weakness.
... watch your step because the private sector will take your best years from you, and leave you little in return.
Unfortunately, that fact (along with the generally naive attitude that most young people have towards the corporate world) just makes them grist for the mill. Programmer, musician, artist
Of course, the jobs that are really considered "professional" by most people (lawyers, doctors, etc) don't operate this way.
If doctors and lawyers were, by and large, as "professional" as a typical well-managed engineering staff, we wouldn't have a problem with health care or our legal system.
... I do know what you are saying (and I used to be that way myself.) I will finish the job, and I will do it well ... but I won't be screwed in the process. Probably that's because after having spent 18 years as an independent developer and now ten as a full-timer (and as someone with the usual financial obligations that accrue over time) I expect to be compensated for my efforts.
But
They can always find replacements: even in good times, one person in twenty is unemployed at any given time,
A figure which is utterly irrelevant to a software project that is under time pressure. If one of your developers leaves in a crunch situation, you can't just plug-in a replacement: game programmers at not easily hot-swappable. The time spent bringing the FNG up to speed (as well as the time lost by the other developers who aren't coding but teaching the new guy) is not tolerable under such conditions ... what you will likely do is just push the remaining coders that much harder until the job is done. Maybe you'll later replace the one who had the sense to leave ... or maybe you won't. Probably you'll decide that since the project was delivered you didn't really need him in the first place. Thus begins the evolution of a hellhole.
You cannot skirt the law just by saying you're not doing anything illegal. What insane legal system are you living under?
If you have evidence the real reason you were fired was because you wouldn't work overtime without legally-mandated compensation, you have several agencies and then the courts to appeal to.
The GP is right though ... there are always ways to fire someone, the trick is to do it in such a way as to avoid a lawsuit. If nothing else, they just claim they were "eliminating the position." I know that works in my State, since I've known a number of people over the years that were laid off because their position was eliminated. Of course, the eliminated position was usually filled immediately.
Confucius say: What batshit crazy nuts don't realize is that only a fellow batshit crazy nut would actually think that someone who's a batshit crazy nut could ever be credible.
Confucius also say, "Even pig fly once in long while."
Granted, that's usually after having been launched from a steam-powered catapult, but there it is.
Sounds like you are in Management. What does Management do all day? 1. Dream about huge salary increases 2. Order people around without any thought to the order they lack 3. Hunt for a new job on JobFinditForMe.com There should be fewer managers and more coders. ID software was entirely coder driven. Now look where they are. Micromanaged to the shithole. Rage will suck.
I think you misunderstood the tone of my post. I was NOT saying "Aw, it's always management's fault" (as in, they're being unfairly blamed), I was being literal. It is always management's fault because it is their responsibility to hire the right people for the right positions, provide them the resources they need to do their jobs properly, and also to make sure that they're on track and are, in fact, doing their jobs. If that doesn't happen, it doesn't matter how competent or otherwise the actual engineers may be ... the project is likely doomed to failure from the outset. And no, I don't work in management, but given my age and the way engineering jobs are leaving this country I may find myself in management eventually. I'm trying to stave that off as long as possible of course. I like what I do for a living ... whether or not that will continue to be of value is another issue entirely.
Besides, I'm really not into herding cats.
The US has wasted the last decades on not development but trying to protect and conserve what is. A shitload of money going into the work of lawyers while R&D is cutting costs.
It's like racing - either you try to block the competition or you try to drive as fast as possible. Using lawyers and litigations is just trying to block the competition - but when you are in fourth row that only means that the leaders are leaving you behind.
That's a pretty apt analogy, actually.
It's NEVER management's fault. If they hire the wrong person, hire an incompetent or (as you say) simply fail to hire a necessary person THAT PERSON's still responsible. That's why they get the big bucks and the stock options, and the rank-and-file are lucky to get health benefits.
FTFY
Very funny, but being responsible for a group of workers, and being held accountable when your team screws up royally are two entirely different matters. So yes, in that sense I agree with you.
Noticing that duplication isn't a job for "Management",
It's always management's fault. If they hire the wrong person, hire an incompetent or (as you say) simply fail to hire a necessary person they're still responsible. That's why they get the big bucks and the stock options, and the rank-and-file are lucky to get health benefits.
which to me indicates that upper management is hiring sadists to run their development teams.
One should be careful not to attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Well, in this case I think there's quite a bit of malice involved. Yes, there's stupidity on the part of upper management for believing that destroying people in this way actually serves any real purpose. But malice is a part of this syndrome as well: if you're a manager and you are willing to treat your people in such an horrific manner, you are either a sociopath or a sadist. Neither type should ever be in a management position.
Hmm, not to be pedantic, but the sense of foretelling the future is not the only definition of prophesy
Well, you are (being pedantic that is) but it's okay since this is Slashdot and I'm used to it, and your post was informative as well. Nor am I disagreeing with you, but in the context of this thread I think foretelling the future was a reasonable interpretation.
I somewhat agree with you, except I'd consider the pivotal event to be WWII
Well, the trends were in place even before that, but World War II offered the justification for a massive increase in Federal power and authority. Power which was not relinquished when the war was over. So yes, in that I will certainly agree with you. However, I was referring to the trend towards decreasing manufacturing productivity and overall standard of living (which had been steadily rising since the end of WWII.)
Those old farts of the so-called Greatest Generation were hardened by hard times
Evolution in action, my friend, evolution in action. Great stuff if you're a fast-moving tree-climber with a high metabolic rate ... not so good if you're a cold-blooded behemoth. And when the giant economic asteroid finally hits, which one do you think we will most closely resemble?
Maybe they'll go on a killing spree with a supercar they got from their mobile phone.
I don;'t know about any supercar, but you push an unstable personality too hard in this society and you're taking your life in your hands.
What the heck? I was logged in and it posted me A.C. Anyway ...
... and I left for the reasons described in the summary. Never looked back. As much as I enjoyed that line of work, management practices were abusive even then. The irony is that there's no real reason for it other than poor management. We know how to manage software projects well, we know that pushing programmers too hard does not result in any real savings. The problem is managers that use simple metrics like lines of code written per day to determine a developer's value. That's how you treat piece workers in a factory ... and guess what, piece work is generally illegal. There's a reason for that.
He could be describing Electronic Arts. Look, the game industry has been run this way for the better part of thirty years. I worked as a coder for a couple of game companies back in the mid-eighties
Jam up your development staff the way these outfits do, and you get poor quality code. It is inevitable, Mr. Anderson. The usual chain of events involves increased QA costs, continual rework, missed deadlines and lost customers. Yet they persist in this obviously defective approach, which to me indicates that upper management is hiring sadists to run their development teams.
A teleporter would be a machine, too. A staircase wouldn't be a machine, though. :-)
Well, I meant teleportation as being some kind of psychic power akin to telekinesis. A staircase is certainly a machine ... it just doesn't have any moving parts.
Someone mod this 'prophetic'.
Prophetic? I disagree. I think he's only stating what's already happened to us. The process really began back in the sixties, and has been on an accelerating curve ever since. We just aren't feeling the full effects of it yet because we've kept up the fiction that we're a good place for foreign investment (although the cracks are showing). Fact is, the nation is still running on inertia. There's a Great Collapse coming ... I just don't know when. I really hope it's after I retire in peace to the island I plan to purchase after I win the lottery. Let all the stupid, shortsighted people here that truly believe that America doesn't need all those dirty machines and factories go to Hell in their own way. Ignorance is not bliss: it's the way to misery and poverty, and America is on that road.
One of our Founders, Thomas Jefferson, early in his career believed that America would best be served by remaining a largely agrarian culture, with the few manufactured goods we needed being purchased abroad. He eventually realized that that was a mistake, that we needed industry in order to maintain our ideals, indeed to maintain our freedom. He always maintained a distrust of the corporate sector (very wise in retrospect) but ultimately understood that freedom was based upon independence, and that we could not be dependent upon other nations' good will if we wished to be free.