In response to "Life of an I.T. Grunt"



  • A Rant About "Life of an I.T. Grunt"

    <FONT color=#02469b>http://integrityconsulting.net/blog/</FONT>

     

    short version:

    someone posted a link to a bitter IT professional (?) who blames the problems of the industry on developers from other countries. there are of course many problems in the IT world, but i don't think any of them have to do with nationality. it's a matter of the quality of education in the sciences, which is something that has been degrading in this country for the past few decades.

     long, better version:

    these stories would be decent if this guy wasn't a racist prick. one of the reasons i love this site is because it isn't so full of ignorant flaming trolls intent on bashing everyone who doesn't look and think exactly like them. do i think that outsourcing is potentially hazardous because resumes of incompetent "developers" are often overinflated by consulting firms with dubious integrity? sure. i've seen it. but does that have anything to do with where they're from, or what their nationality is? no. i've seen plenty of incompetence in people who are from europe or the united states, too. in fact, incompetence is rampant in the IT world, and here is what the problem is: it's not offshoring, and it's not an invasion of workers from other countries. people just don't give a damn about engineering practices or computer science anymore. good programming practices and efficient languages have gone completely out the window because the Corporate Culture is obsessed with cutting costs. if you can throw 10 incompetent louts at a project cheaply and get back a solution that kind of works within one or two quarters, great. code is sloppy, training is inadequate, and most of all, Enterprise Applications are not very interesting to work on anyway. it's hard for even a good developer to become motivated by implementing some "business rules" of a mysterious workflow about which they know nothing.

     i work on an internal application for creating technical order forms for enterprise hosting solutions. the application itself is built in java using spring with hibernate and oracle. altogether, the "business rules" of the application don't mean a whole lot to me, and i don't have a great understanding of what, exactly, the application does. so it's a fairly standard application with some boring rules i know nothing about. i've found that by taking a moment to talk to some people who actually have used the application, i can learn a bit about our hosting services, and what all the parts of the technical order form refer to. this makes it more interesting, and easier to work on. there are even a few parts of the application that need improvement which i'm actually enthusiastic about working on; tuning performance and implementing more useful tools for the users may turn out to be a bit of a challenge, which i know will encourage me to work more diligently, more productively, and in turn cause me to write better code, since i'll actually give a crap.

     compounding the lack of interest in projects of good developers is the fact that poor developers even lack interest in programming. i majored in computer engineering and computer science in college and really enjoyed when i was given challenging problems to work on, and when i found new concepts to learn. i devoted my college career to learning everything i could about computers, algorithms, and programming principles because i am fascinated by logic, grammar, and formal systems. my interest has driven me to gain a deep understanding of the underlying concepts of computer science. i think this is more important than being well-versed in the syntax of a particular language, or the capabilities of a particular technology. as we have all seen from the stories on this site, poor code often comes from lack of understanding of the underlying principles of computer science, not from insufficient knowledge of languages and technologies. too many people enter IT without having any real interest in computing, and the large ranks of unmotivated, uninventive people pervading the community pollute it with too much enterprising and not enough ingenuity.

    those are my two cents, anyway.



  • There are plenty of great programmers from other countries that now work in the US. There are far, far, far more terrible ones that come in on H1-B visas and ride hopeless maintenance contracts and seem to get paid by the KLOC. And, yes, it sounds bigoted on the surface, but it is absolutely true: developers in the US who can barely speak coherent English will NOT be good developers in a team environment, since they can't communicate with their teams. It doesn't matter how great of a coder you are when that kind of language barrier exists.

    Now if you'll excuse me, I must be getting back to trimming this fabulous outsourced (thank you Mr. Nguyen) code base that consists of 25% dead code, 25% redundant code, 25% empty catch blocks, and the remaining 25% is C# that is obfuscated with completely fucking inappropriate Systems Hungarian notation, redundant casts, and code that can be reduced 30:1.

    P.S. This is not the first such code base from a half-rate H1-B/outsourced coder I've had to deal with.



  • @PerdidoPunk said:

    bashing everyone who doesn't look and think exactly like them

    Right. Around here, we don't bash different people. Our derision is universal. 

     

    those are my two cents, anyway.

    It felt a lot more like five hundred cents - you know, like when the old lady in front of you at the store decides to pay for her weekly shopping with a sack full of change, and so the loser behind the counter has to spend the next 20 minutes counting it while the queue backs up down the aisle.

    Write less, and in shorter paragraphs. Preferably with some capital letters. 



  • I'd guess that outsourced code is bad code in most cases. Just like spagetti code is bad in most cases. The whole idea of outsourcing is fundamentally broken. It tries to copy the principle of "design products in a rich country where people are smart, manufacture in a poor country where people are cheap" which works well for physical products, but not for software development which always requires design decissions throughout the whole project. If it is so simple and boring that a human can't do it wrong as long as he follow the rules, it's most likely possible to automate the process.



  • @asuffield said:

    It felt a lot more like five hundred cents - you know, like when the old lady in front of you at the store decides to pay for her weekly shopping with a sack full of change, and so the loser behind the counter has to spend the next 20 minutes counting it while the queue backs up down the aisle.

    Write less, and in shorter paragraphs. Preferably with some capital letters. 

     God, I'm glad SOMEONE said it.   It was in pain halfway through his post because of poor writing style and the fact that all of those enormous paragraphs were completely stated within their first sentence. 

    BTW, to the OP:  Writing in a dialect or accent is not racist, it's called good writing.  It makes the reader understand better the characters and brings about a level of realism that is lacking if it is left out.  Go pick up any good novel about the south and you will see that the writer uses dialect.   Furthermore, I'm pretty sure a lot of the people he complains about are white Americans, so he seems like an equal opportunity complainer to me.
     



  • @tster said:

    @asuffield said:

    It felt a lot more like five hundred cents - you know, like when the old lady in front of you at the store decides to pay for her weekly shopping with a sack full of change, and so the loser behind the counter has to spend the next 20 minutes counting it while the queue backs up down the aisle.

    Write less, and in shorter paragraphs. Preferably with some capital letters. 

     God, I'm glad SOMEONE said it.   It was in pain halfway through his post because of poor writing style and the fact that all of those enormous paragraphs were completely stated within their first sentence. 

    BTW, to the OP:  Writing in a dialect or accent is not racist, it's called good writing.  It makes the reader understand better the characters and brings about a level of realism that is lacking if it is left out.  Go pick up any good novel about the south and you will see that the writer uses dialect.   Furthermore, I'm pretty sure a lot of the people he complains about are white Americans, so he seems like an equal opportunity complainer to me.
     

     

    i didn't bother to read the entire blog, because i was rather put off by the most recent posts. i don't care if they are editorial comments, those posts are incendiary in nature and make a lot of broad stereotypical statements about race. at one point the author says asians think they're better than americans because they spend all their time studying for trig exams and don't get laid until well into their twenties. that's just a cheap blow that has absolutely nothing to do with IT. racial slurs have nothing to do with dialect or accent; they are simply derogatory terms used to belittle other people. a software developer of such high caliber should certainly have the mental acuity to find more valid things to criticize than race and language barriers. in response to complaining about white americans, i did see him refer to himself and other people as "crackers." some people may find this acceptable, but i personally do not. i was merely stating my opinion about an editorial that i found to be rank with bigotry, and offering my own opinion on the causes of problems within the computer industry. i also summarized my comments above the second, longer post, so if it was so painful for you to read, then perhaps you should have just left it at that.

    i am also not sure what you are referring to when you mention "poor writing style." since i spell correctly and my grammar is pretty good, i assume you're referring to the informal structure of my post. this is a forum; i don't think it's necessary to write a draft of every post, and i did preface my post by titling it "A Rant." what were you expecting? if i were to write an actual essay or article and publish it somewhere, i would spend more time making sure it flowed well and was cohesive. as for the length of my post, if you don't feel like reading it, then don't. i don't think i need to be apologetic about my verbosity. that being said, i do recognize that it was a lengthy post, and in general, i try to be more concise when write. sometimes i just let my stream of thought flow, though, and it tends to be wordy.



  • The reason "programmers in india" get such a bad rap, is because when companies outsource work to india, most of the time, they're outsourcing it to bad programmers with minimal experience and education.  A well educated, experienced programmer in India costs *just as much* as a good programmer in the states these days.

    In short, if a company is outsourcing to save money, they're hiring bad programmers.

     

    That being said, this post really is just a bunch of racist spew.

     



  • @merreborn said:

    The reason "programmers in india" get such a bad rap, is because when companies outsource work to india, most of the time, they're outsourcing it to bad programmers with minimal experience and education.  A well educated, experienced programmer in India costs just as much as a good programmer in the states these days.

    In short, if a company is outsourcing to save money, they're hiring bad programmers. 

    When ~70% of all projects fail, they might as well fail for 1/3rd of the price.
     



  • @PerdidoPunk said:

    in response to complaining about white americans, i did see him refer to himself and other people as "crackers." some people may find this acceptable, but i personally do not. i was merely stating my opinion about an editorial that i found to be rank with bigotry, and offering my own opinion on the causes of problems within the computer industry.

    Exactly what do you find unacceptable about persons referring to themselves as crackers?  Is pride something you denigrate?  For people who have lived in parts of the US South for generations, it's by no means a pejorative term, or is that your problem?  You do realize that the Georgia Crackers were the Atlanta minor league team before the Braves moved from Milwaukee, don't you?  I am, and always will be, a cracker, whether you "find it acceptable" or not.

     
    And learn to use a caps key, for crying out loud.
     



  • @merreborn said:

    The reason "programmers in india" get such a bad rap, is because when companies outsource work to india, most of the time, they're outsourcing it to bad programmers with minimal experience and education.  A well educated, experienced programmer in India costs just as much as a good programmer in the states these days.

    In short, if a company is outsourcing to save money, they're hiring bad programmers.

    QFT*1000

     I'm an application developer, and it pisses me off when I hear people making racist comments about "the Indians taking our jobs". I'm just as worried as the next guy about my job being outsourced, but if you have someone who doesn't know what they're doing because they're untrained, and say that it's because of their race, then all you're doing is exposing your own ignorance and bigotry. I'm close to a pretty big project here at work that was outsourced to an Indian development company to save costs. Everyone seemed so surprised when it went over budget and behind schedule, but I just kept thinking, "What do you expect when you hire someone at half the cost?"

    I stopped reading that blog when he got the bowling alley and started complaining about being the only white guy there. So what? If you don't like Asians, that's your own problem, not theirs. I started suspecting he was an asshole when he made a huge deal about insulting the CIO for being "gayish", but then went to all that trouble to point out that he doesn't care that he's gay. He wouldn't have made a whole blog post bashing him if there really was "nothing wrong with that".
     



  • Re: crackers.  Now that I've read a little of that guy's blog, I would like to apologize to everyone in the world on his behalf.  He sounds like a bigoted, worthless, bitter dick.  But that has nothing to do with being a cracker.  As we all know, there are bigoted, worthless, bitter dicks of many races and backgrounds.



  • @tster said:

    BTW, to the OP:  Writing in a dialect or accent is not racist, it's called good writing.  It makes the reader understand better the characters and brings about a level of realism that is lacking if it is left out.  Go pick up any good novel about the south and you will see that the writer uses dialect.   Furthermore, I'm pretty sure a lot of the people he complains about are white Americans, so he seems like an equal opportunity complainer to me.

    Writing in dialog is not [i]necessarily[/i] racist, but it certainly was here. Nearly every instance of it came up as something like:

    and then the stupid idiot who couldn't even speak English said "velly solly, mistah superior intelligence, no tickee, no laundry"

    None of the people he was complaining about were white Americans, as you would know if you read the entry on bowling.

    In fact, given that his account is likely to be highly weighted in his favor, he's probably a jerk who deserved to be fired. Even if his story had been true, with no mitigation for anyone else, I would have fired him based on his behavior.

    Even without the racist parts and personally rude things he did to people, he set off three of my internal warning bells:

    1. He referenced Joel on Software. I have seen some intelligent people mention Joel before, but the overwhelming majority of references I have seen come from people who probably should not be allowed to code for a living. I have a deep distrust of Joel, ever since I read his account of how he got a bunch of academics removed from the process of developing a macro language for Excel. That macro language eventually became VBScript -- Joel is responsible for a vast number of security flaws in Windows (and all the Office macro viruses that exist) and those tedious academics might have stopped that problem before it even existed. But no, Joel knew better than that. What a twit.

    2. He prefaced a comment with "this may be politically incorrect, but...". There are some good people out there who aren't politically correct, but they [i]never[/i] comment on their own lack of political correctness. They just get on with things, and don't notice. "This may be politically incorrect" is a euphemism, or maybe "code word" is a better term, for "I'm about to say something which is both incredibly rude and racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise nasty, and I know it, and I'm hoping that by raising the strawman of political correctness I can prevent you from calling me on it." In several hundred examples, I have yet to encounter an exception to this rule.

    3. He called someone a hippie for trying to do the right thing with their recycling. (Yes, you are supposed to cut up those plastic doodads.) This word, unless actually referring to someone who is a member of the Hippie movement, is also a code word. "Hippie" means "I am the sort of person who will mock anyone who thinks the world could be a nicer place if people behaved differently." That means this person [i]knows[/i] there is a choice between good and bad behavior, and not only chooses to behave badly but also mocks those who choose to be good. This attitude, in my experience, is usually held by the sort of person who will make extra work for everyone else -- the sort of person who litters, or leaves dirty dishes in the sink at work for other people to clean up -- and has contempt for the people who have to clean up their messes. A jerk, in other words.



  • @ammoQ said:

    I'd guess that outsourced code is bad code in most cases. Just like spagetti code is bad in most cases. The whole idea of outsourcing is fundamentally broken. It tries to copy the principle of "design products in a rich country where people are smart, manufacture in a poor country where people are cheap" which works well for physical products, but not for software development which always requires design decissions throughout the whole project. If it is so simple and boring that a human can't do it wrong as long as he follow the rules, it's most likely possible to automate the process.

    I know this is totally useless, but i want to say that i agree with you.

    I'm not alone, facing this logical truth.

    How cool ! 



  • @tster said:

    I'm pretty sure a lot of the people he complains about are white Americans, so he seems like an equal opportunity complainer to me.

    No, they're all Asian. Whatever, even if they were rednecks, he'd still be an asshole. (Although he's not too proud to deny that fact) 



  • @The Vicar said:


    1. He referenced Joel on Software. I have seen some intelligent people mention Joel before, but the overwhelming majority of references I have seen come from people who probably should not be allowed to code for a living. I have a deep distrust of Joel, ever since I read his account of how he got a bunch of academics removed from the process of developing a macro language for Excel. That macro language eventually became VBScript -- Joel is responsible for a vast number of security flaws in Windows (and all the Office macro viruses that exist) and those tedious academics might have stopped that problem before it even existed. But no, Joel knew better than that. What a twit..

    mmm this is interesting, i never really read many of joel's blog posts, but always thought i should at some point; Because he get's referenced a lot and i've almost finished my copy of code complete. Is he really that bad on his best practices advice? Or should you just take everything he writes with a bag of salt, but the points he makes are valid.




  • I've tried reading Joel's stuff, but I find that his writing is either a) so obvious it should be tagged with 'duh', or b) obnoxiously self-congratulatory.  Occasionally, it's both. 

    Once in a while he says something I deeply disagree with, but take any two people with strong opinions about the software discipline and that's bound to happen.  More than anything, I just get a sense of there being no 'there' there.

    -cw



  • I read every article that was posted here, with the exception of the two that were unrelated to the thread... at first I thought it was really funny that he kept referencing the Vietnam war, but only because I glossed over the pho reference and actually didn't realise he was referring to someone who IS asian.  I had pictured a tiny diminutive white guy, actually I pictured a guy who used to work in the kitchen at my university shift-work job, who fit the description to a tee except was white.  And an ex-con.  But yeah.

    I slowly realized he was a massive racist asshole.  After the Indian post (one of a couple blogs the O.P. posted that had nothing to do with the thread, which makes me almost as uncomfortable with the OP for including it as I am with the racist blogger himself), my sympathy had shifted to neutral, and I was super glad when they were both fired in the end.  And my critical-thinking trigger had already fired off, leaving me amused that he didn't really seem to know why HE was also fired.

    Douche. 



  • @stratos said:

    mmm this is interesting, i never really read many of joel's blog posts, but always thought i should at some point; Because he get's referenced a lot and i've almost finished my copy of code complete. Is he really that bad on his best practices advice? Or should you just take everything he writes with a bag of salt, but the points he makes are valid.

    Some of Joel's points are valid. Some aren't. You have to read critically, or else you might as well not read at all.

    Take the issue I just mentioned: Joel was assigned the task of writing a macro language for Excel. It turned out there was a group already doing this. He met with them, and discovered that they were a bunch of academic types doing a lot of theoretical talk about behavior in case of later extension, but no actual coding. He complained to a manager that they were getting in the way, and they were removed so that he could write protoVBScript. Joel's point in that story was how Microsoft's brilliant management prevented those old fuddy-duddy academics from delaying a product release, and how they should have been banging out code instead of just talking about it.

    From one point of view, he is correct. The management, in this case, certainly got the product out the door quickly. But in so doing, they guaranteed that the product would be completed by someone at the other extreme from the academics: someone who was not paying [i]any[/i] attention to theory, and who expected the product would never be extended (with all that that implies in terms of planning and security).

    Result: VBScript as we (ugh) know it.

    It is an oversimplification to say that Joel mistakes "code which compiles" for "good code", but he has a related problem. To Joel, security and good architecture are things to be imposed [i]post facto[/i], and the only important goal is finishing a product which does something -- [i]anything[/i] -- no matter how bad for the user that thing may be in the long run. Metaphorically speaking, if you gave Joel some rope and told him to hang himself, he would strain every nerve to make sure he was dead as soon as possible.

    In this respect (and, I suppose I am obligated to add, in my experience) he typifies Microsoft's response to the idea of security: some programmer at Microsoft has an idea for a new feature for product X. Since Microsoft knows all its programmers are geniuses, there's no point in asking whether this idea needs to be carefully thought out and tested. They just write it up and add it in, test it to make sure it works on their plain-vanilla test bed, and have it turned on by default. As a result, when it (inevitably) turns out a few months later that this new feature opens three obvious security holes and seven subtle ones, slows down the product by a factor of four, conflicts with three of the five most common hardware peripherals, [i]and[/i] creates an entirely new way for spammers to interrupt users, Microsoft is always amazed. This is the price they pay for always assuming that the programmers are intelligent, and for management which "gets out of the way."



  • Minor quibble: isn't Excel's (and in general, Office's) macro language VBA, not VBScript? Are the two identical and I've somehow missed that (lack of) distinction?



  • @stratos said:

    @The Vicar said:

    1. He referenced Joel on Software. I have seen some intelligent people mention Joel before, but the overwhelming majority of references I have seen come from people who probably should not be allowed to code for a living. I have a deep distrust of Joel, ever since I read his account of how he got a bunch of academics removed from the process of developing a macro language for Excel. That macro language eventually became VBScript -- Joel is responsible for a vast number of security flaws in Windows (and all the Office macro viruses that exist) and those tedious academics might have stopped that problem before it even existed. But no, Joel knew better than that. What a twit..

    mmm this is interesting, i never really read many of joel's blog posts, but always thought i should at some point; Because he get's referenced a lot and i've almost finished my copy of code complete. Is he really that bad on his best practices advice? Or should you just take everything he writes with a bag of salt, but the points he makes are valid.

    Pretty much everything I have seen from him has been a mixture of good points, sound advice, dubious/unsupported claims, prejudices, common wisdom among experts in the field, obsolete wisdom that the experts in the field have abandoned, and good old fashioned blind ignorance. The problem is that he doesn't appear able to distinguish between these.

    I suspect that he has been exposed to a large number of experienced people, some of whom were good, some brillant losers, and he's absorbed 'knowledge' from all of them without really learning how to sort through it. The best way to treat his writing is to assume it was written by committee: just because one sentence is valuable and insightful doesn't mean that the next one isn't a load of crap.

    Some of his points are valid. Some are badly wrong. If you lack the experience to sort them out yourself then you'll have to assume anything he writes is suspect.

    He gets referenced a lot by the really good people because they're pointing to the places where he makes good points - you just have to realise that this does not extend to mean the other parts were also good. 



  • @ammoQ said:

    I'd guess that outsourced code is bad code in most cases. Just like spagetti code is bad in most cases. The whole idea of outsourcing is fundamentally broken. It tries to copy the principle of "design products in a rich country where people are smart, manufacture in a poor country where people are cheap" which works well for physical products, but not for software development which always requires design decissions throughout the whole project. If it is so simple and boring that a human can't do it wrong as long as he follow the rules, it's most likely possible to automate the process.

    I disagree - it works badly for physical products too. The ingenuity of the cheap grunts always far exceeds the ability of the designers to predict the stupid ways in which they can bugger up the manufacturing process. This is a large part of the reason why so many consumer products are unreliable and frequently defective. 



  • @asuffield said:

    @ammoQ said:

    I'd guess that outsourced code is bad code in most cases. Just like spagetti code is bad in most cases. The whole idea of outsourcing is fundamentally broken. It tries to copy the principle of "design products in a rich country where people are smart, manufacture in a poor country where people are cheap" which works well for physical products, but not for software development which always requires design decissions throughout the whole project. If it is so simple and boring that a human can't do it wrong as long as he follow the rules, it's most likely possible to automate the process.

    I disagree - it works badly for physical products too. The ingenuity of the cheap grunts always far exceeds the ability of the designers to predict the stupid ways in which they can bugger up the manufacturing process. This is a large part of the reason why so many consumer products are unreliable and frequently defective. 

    You seem to assume that products were more reliable when manufactured in high-wage countries like mine. 



  • @PerdidoPunk said:

    A Rant About "Life of an I.T. Grunt"

    <FONT color=#02469b>http://integrityconsulting.net/blog/</FONT>

    *GASP*

    I've read some of his blog posts and I'm really amazed. He's a real jerk. It's not every day that you can see someone that aggressive towards other people and generalizing so easily.

    RE: foreign developers. I really don't see the problem. If you're outsourcing then you should evaluate the company in the first place. When you're hiring someone, you test him, check his experience and history. You don't take first random guy you find on the street. If you end up with someone who is not responsible, it's most probably problem with your recruiting staff. If you want to outsource - check the company first.

    Same thing applies when you hire someone from outside your country. Don't blame him for lack of skills, if you didn't ensure (s)he has them before hiring...

    "resumes of incompetent "developers" are often overinflated" - serious companies would use resume only to screen people for interview...



  • WARNING! Bad English ahead. 

    Indeed, nationality by itself has nothing to do with competence...

    I live & work in a far-away, under-developed country, where most of the colleagues I've met in the past 15 years fall into the "regular coder" category. Some are good, many are bad, some can craft fine WTFs - and I guess it's the same with most of you. Even if you live & work in a ultra-high-level, white, english-speaking society. It's not like "you" are all geniuses and "we" are the piss-poor mixed race code crunchers.

    Much of the time I have to read the code or the documentation of a foreign ("first world") product. Do you think I reach a state of awe every time I understand an API? Do you think I feel that I am blessed as if I'm acquiring superior knowledge? Absolutely not. I feel bored, mostly.

    So I think the "Grunt" arguments are too weak for my intelligence. Smelly food? Bad clothes? He must be very happy eating 10³ kcal burgers while wearing Crocs shoes then.  Writing ordinary code 10 minutes later.



  • Wow.  Just wow.  I started to read that blog (I actually bookmarked it, to read/laugh about later), and I just have to say that the guy who wrote that is the one who doesn't belong in the field, not the people he bashes.  And I thought I was an arrogant prick, but this guy makes me look tame in comparison!  It boils down to him thinking "Why is everyone except me so fucking stupid?".  I think he summed it up best in the post where he mentions his wife saying during an argument that maybe he's the problem.  His wife is spot on. 



  • @TheRubyWarlock said:

    I just have to say that the guy who wrote that is the one who doesn't belong in the field, not the people he bashes.

    It's not quite that simple. None of them belong in the field; the whole lot are useless. 



  • @asuffield said:

    @TheRubyWarlock said:

    I just have to say that the guy who wrote that is the one who doesn't belong in the field, not the people he bashes.

    It's not quite that simple. None of them belong in the field; the whole lot are useless. 


    We don't know that. We know he doesn't belong, because even when he's telling the story he's a racist sexist arrogant jerk. But because our details on other people are coming to us through the lens of a racist sexist arrogant jerk, we don't know how many of them are true, how many are technically true but irrelevant because his focus is on things that aren't actually important, or just outright lies that he put in because in his mind that's the way the world works. We don't even know whether his technical skills are any good -- if he is both stupid and arrogant, his complaints about other people's code may just reflect his lack of comprehension. I grant you that Charlie is probably a candidate for removal, but even that is doubtful. 



  • @The Vicar said:

    @asuffield said:

    @TheRubyWarlock said:

    I just have to say that the guy who wrote that is the one who doesn't belong in the field, not the people he bashes.

    It's not quite that simple. None of them belong in the field; the whole lot are useless.


    We don't know that. We know he doesn't belong, because even when he's telling the story he's a racist sexist arrogant jerk. But because our details on other people are coming to us through the lens of a racist sexist arrogant jerk, we don't know how many of them are true, how many are technically true but irrelevant because his focus is on things that aren't actually important, or just outright lies that he put in because in his mind that's the way the world works. We don't even know whether his technical skills are any good -- if he is both stupid and arrogant, his complaints about other people's code may just reflect his lack of comprehension. I grant you that Charlie is probably a candidate for removal, but even that is doubtful.

    I think you could be spot on, he says that charly doesn't communicate anything. But perhaps after being shouted at, discriminated and made fun of, for all charly cares the guy could drop dead. Perhaps the guy even complained to the boss, which would explain why the boss was so hesitant to do anything, because his newly appointed supervisor and a employ obviously hated each other, and in such a situation you really want to know who the trouble maker is before making any rash decisions. Which could explain why in the end he decided to just fire them both.

    pure speculation of course. 



  • "I tried to hold my nose and just code, but my boss was a clueless, sneaky bastard.", "Menopausal Bitch DBA", "clueless, gayish CIO", "chased Charlie deep into to the tunnel, had him cornered"

    I really wonder how this guy got ANY job. I.e. how did he get through whole interview without saying something like this. I don't think it would be hard to spot his arrogance, racism, etc. after talking to him for 30 min., would it? Just ask him about his previous job...



  • @viraptor said:

    RE: foreign developers. I really don't see the problem. If you're outsourcing then you should evaluate the company in the first place. When you're hiring someone, you test him, check his experience and history. You don't take first random guy you find on the street. If you end up with someone who is not responsible, it's most probably problem with your recruiting staff. If you want to outsource - check the company first.

    Same thing applies when you hire someone from outside your country. Don't blame him for lack of skills, if you didn't ensure (s)he has them before hiring...

    "resumes of incompetent "developers" are often overinflated" - serious companies would use resume only to screen people for interview...

    That's the thing though.  The choice to outsource is driven by a choice to find programmers based on their low billing rate, not their ability.

    At my last job, management was unwilling to pay for qualified developers (they were trying to hire for about 50% of the median wage for programmers).  Naturally, they didn't find anyone even remotely competent locally, so they decided to look overseas.  They found a programmer in India who'd work 60/hrs/week for $24k/year.  I went into the deal thinking like you: I'll expect everything of this guy I'd expect of a new hire here.  I'll make sure his code doesn't have XSS/SQL injection holes, that he doesn't duplicate code all over the place unnecessarily, etc.

     
    The guy couldn't even follow basic instructions, like setting his editor to use Unix line terminators.  He was supposedly an experienced web developer, but he'd never heard of XSS, and left javascript injection holes all over the place.  Management's solution?  Lower standards.  Let him write his crappy code.  "We don't *really* need our application to be secure, it only has a few hundred users, and most of them aren't technically proficient enough to exploit security holes".

    You see, when they decided to outsource, they'd decided that they didn't *care* about their programmers' ability.  They just wanted someone they could call a "programmer" for under $30k a year, even if it took him 10 times as long to produce bug free code.

    I updated my resume left within a month.



  • I note that his site is no longer there.  When you go to the page you just see:

    Looking For Me?

    Try Google or WTF

    Go figure.

    -cw



  • @CodeWhisperer said:

    I note that his site is no longer there.  When you go to the page you just see:

    Looking For Me?

    Try Google or WTF

    Go figure.

    Well, aren't you just looking at the second of the mentioned locations?


  • He switched domains to itgrunt.com. But don't worry, he apparently ran out of material anyway.



  • Isn't this TunnelRat's blog? Or was that a different one?



  • This, as in TDWTF?

    Am I the only person that thinks that TDWTF is not a blog?
     



  • @Sunstorm said:

    He switched domains to itgrunt.com. But don't worry, he apparently ran out of material anyway.

    Na, I've got plenty of material, but for someone who is supposedly unemployed and unemployable, I have a boat-load of work.  Not exactly a sh*t-load, but a lot.  Thusly, I don't have time to blog as much.    

    But don't worry, I have 15 years of experience in the trenches of I.T. to mine for good material.  And I switched domains for branding purposes.

    Man, it's f-ing amazing how this thread is still alive.  With all the H-1B horror stories out there, I am sure it will live on for years.  Please keep 'em coming.  And for you H-1B fanboys out their, one word:  STFU.

    Stay tuned...

     


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