$200 million dollar big bank project: one water cooler, no breakroom, no Internet access



  • Finally I fugured it out how to write a post on a mobile device.

    I have to be quick so here it goes.

    $200 million dollar project from a big big bank.
    It's not a user friendly web application but it's a batch programme that inserts data which is written in a file with delimiters or fixed length rules, into the database.

    There are about 12-15 sources of data, each source has several different formats.

    In this gigantic office, there is one water cooler with no cofffe machine. No break room.

    I'm not allowed to bring a laptop.
    There is no internet access. So no SO or googling.

    No data sharing from your cellphone either. They say it's for network security.

    Funny part is, I'm sharing a desk with a manager and the computer is just a terminal connected to their cloud work environment.

    And the password to access my remote workstation is on a piece of paper on the monitor. :)

    Have fun!

    Ciao.



  • $200 million for some fetch-transform-insert work?Damn.



  • I just roughly counted how many are working on this floor.

    There are 16 rows of desks. Each row has about 5 people sitting.
    So 80 - 100 people are working( some rows are longer and have more people sitting).

    @AlexMedia The batch programme is only part of the project, I think.

    I have a junior programmer to help me(wait, I thought I was a junior?), and two months to go.

    They use a very special tool. Well, maybe not special, just I"m not used to.

    I have to register what parameters my Java executable needs to their central system.
    The central system then creates a set of Java and some weird files in the SVN repository, then I update from it.

    There seems to be predefined methods with an empty method body in the code already.
    I just need to fill it in.



  • Do they have manuals for the programming language and environment you ate using?

    When I started programming there was no Google or Internet, but we still managed to write code.



  • You can safely ignore all those "$200M" claims if you never ever see a significant portion of that in your pocket. Nah kid, you're going to have $7/hr and we're gonna make you feel miserable.



  • @RevCurtisP said:

    When I started programming there was no Google or Internet, but we still managed to write code.

    I've heard rumors demons in hell now use to read it aloud to souls that were bad programmers. Works better than the old stuff with eternal roasting and select avant garde jazz pieces.



  • Hmm... some kind of hash checking, or do they just expect really bad programmers.

    Do you have to rerun some process once you're done coding?



  • They simply employ 28571428.6 people.



  • Ok, so they seem to use Spring batch.
    They use a custom centralised job register system which you have to provide the input and output parameters.

    In my case, I have about 630 types of formats to parse-process-insert.

    So the senior dev who is teaching us is saying we need to register 630 different jobs, input"output parameters(classes)



  • Oh I forgot to mention, there is no trunk, branch or tag in the svn repository.
    There is only one repository and 100 people work on it.
    Each team uses a few sub directories so there are a lot of sub directories which are used as if separate repositories.



  • Agreed. Even the total cluster fuck that was SAIC's Y2K project for Kaiser Permanente had better VC than that, and that was almost 20 years ago.

    And the network policy was saner, too, even from inside the $18M secure lab.Yeah, they didn't allow you to bring your own floppy disks or cellphones in, but who was carrying a cellphone around in 1998?



  • This all just sounds like another day at the office to me.



  • This place is BYO coffee.

    I'm not allowed to bring a laptop or even an android tablet. I asked a manager here if I can use my Kindle then. He said the security team patrols at some regular interval and wouldn't like it.

    Btw, one of the modules they use is named P.M.S.
    I find it difficult to keep a straight face whenever a guy mentions it at a meeting.



  • We know that upper managements can get a deep cut from projects, so it wouldn't really surprise me if they only get $7/hr as @wft mentioned.


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