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Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2015 8:39 am
by TheCatt
Malcolm wrote:The number of meetings you would be in, mandatory, would prohibit that where I work.
I used to be in meeting hell when I was manager/architect. Getting rid of the manager portion, and just being a lead/architect, has been dramatically better.
I typically have 2 meetings on Monday, 1 monthly meeting, and then a 5-10 minute stand-up 2 days a week.
Last week I had no meetings Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thurday.
Sometimes we'll have planning sessions, but that's every 3 months or 6 months.
Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2015 2:12 pm
by Malcolm
...a 5-10 minute stand-up 2 days a week.
I would kill for that. I have a 30-minute "stand up" where everyone sits down, 4 days a week. The psycho manager before made it five days a week.
1 90-minute planning meeting (which is badly organized and planned itself) plus a team meeting plus a retrospective every two weeks. Then there's the random assorted bullshit meetings. The retrospectives are my favourite. You sit around for 30 minutes, bitch about what went wrong the past two weeks, brainstorm about ways to fix the root causes of those problems, and then never follow up or do anything.
That's my schedule as a senior dev. Once I get promoted so much as one grade, it gets all kinds of worse. Like I'd have to go through culture training and listen to hippies wax poetic about the "mood elevator." One time all the leads had to take a fucking skills assessment test that made the one you took in junior high look sophisticated.
Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2015 5:09 pm
by TheCatt
Now I'm concerned as to why you haven't found a new job, particularly in this job market/
Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2015 6:46 pm
by Alhazad
Malcolm wrote:[...] I fucking hate interviewing.
Doesn't need any more reason than that.
Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2015 7:19 pm
by Malcolm
TheCatt wrote:Now I'm concerned as to why you haven't found a new job, particularly in this job market/
As Al mentioned, I hate interviewing. It's socially acceptable lying coupled with dress up. It's one step above an pretween's imaginary tea party.
I hate going through recruiting agencies. Fucking parasites. Most joints around here make it a pain not to go through them.
Me being willing to quit requires me having a bit of a financial cushion. I'm trying to do quick pays on my debts. Car's almost done. If I can refinance the remainder of my student loans at a reasonable rate, then life becomes easier.
Insignificant as this sounds, I like the dress code where I work. Straight up casual, no one cars about a t-shirt and cargo pants.
All the other review things aside, the entire process boils down to one rating -- roughly: check, check plus, check minus. All I need is a check. By the time the next one rolls around, I'll be in a financially better position to respond to them if they decide to be dicks.
Malcolm wrote:The manager above her isn't any better, except that one's a real coder. Her problem is she's too goddamn nice.
I think I found your problem.
The thought has occurred. The CPA dev's a chick and she's nowhere near as much of a pain in the ass as the other two because she hasn't drunk the SDLC/organizational koolaid.
Edited By Malcolm on 1439767262
Posted: Thu Aug 27, 2015 11:25 am
by Malcolm
Malcolm wrote:We're in the middle of redoing our entire DB-report function for our team's website product. No one really showed me much concrete code until a couple weeks ago. It was written by our new intro dev who's barely, if ever, used .Net.
Me: So, how'd you handle all the table joins?
Newbie: Exhaustively hardcoded them.
Me: We have around 1500 possibilities you'd need to deal with for this to work for everything we want. How many do you have so far?
Newbie: About 20.
Me: Well, you wasted that time, then, because we're doing it a sane way instead.
He also hardcoded all the table filters. He argues it makes things more readable. Nothing says "readability" like "95% repetition."
Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2015 5:17 pm
by Malcolm
Got most of the Entity Framework model done for the Oracle tables. The Oracle EF provider was coded so fucking badly, they make MS look like savants. Fragile as hell because even Oracle throws its hands up in the air when talking to an Oracle DB from a .Net app. Does its fucking best to hide every detail of every error from you.
Edited By Malcolm on 1441228712
Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2015 7:46 pm
by Malcolm
Fucking idiot boss and inexperienced junior programmer still aren't sure we need a fucking data access layer. They're going to check with the arch. FML.
Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2015 9:01 pm
by TPRJones
Are you sure you need a data access layer? Sounds like it might be a want.
Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2015 9:07 pm
by TheCatt
TPRJones wrote:Are you sure you need a data access layer? Sounds like it might be a want.
Time to hire Gordon as a consultant.
Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2015 9:22 pm
by GORDON
Sometimes the users need to be told what they want because they dont need it.
Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2015 9:27 pm
by Alhazad
GORDON wrote:Sometimes the users need to be told what they want because they dont need it.
Would you say, about 90% of the time?
Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2015 9:30 pm
by GORDON
Alhazad wrote:GORDON wrote:Sometimes the users need to be told what they want because they dont need it.
Would you say, about 90% of the time?
Safe guess.
Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2015 5:00 pm
by Malcolm
Time to polish the resume and test the waters.
Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2015 5:18 pm
by TheCatt
Malcolm wrote:Time to polish the resume and test the waters.
But... but.. you're too lazy to do that.
Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2015 5:29 pm
by Malcolm
TheCatt wrote:Malcolm wrote:Time to polish the resume and test the waters.
But... but.. you're too lazy to do that.
The stupidity has gotten so thick in that place that the intertia's giving way and making me at least look for another gig. I also told my manager today that she didn't know how to do her job properly.
Edited By Malcolm on 1442352629
Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2015 7:14 pm
by TPRJones
Yeah, speaking truth to power is a good way to get yourself into the next round of layoffs.
Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2015 8:16 pm
by Malcolm
TPRJones wrote:Yeah, speaking truth to power is a good way to get yourself into the next round of layoffs.
The manager's manager was in the chair next to her. I'm starting to lean more in the thib direction because I heard "cultural training" referenced more than once. As a former coworker of mine remarked one day, "Do you always try to put out fires by pouring more gasoline on them?"
"Enough to smother it."
Edited By Malcolm on 1442363953
Posted: Mon Sep 28, 2015 11:09 am
by Malcolm
SSD at work died today. Called the help desk, outsourced to IBM. After explaining my desktop won't boot up and the box is dead, the techie asks, "What does it say when Windows comes up," right before filing a ticket which forces me to call back and up the priority. Fucking hell, IBM, are you just handing out support scripts to dudes you paid to have smuggled across the ocean in cargo containers?
Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2015 12:03 pm
by Malcolm
Idiot programmer: Oops, I disabled the DB job that runs all our database workflows last Friday and forgot to turn it on before I left.
Me: ... just goddamnit.