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@skylord
yeah. luckily, as i said, this was a boss one level higher.
the actual direct boss was a different kind of asshat:
1. after the interview, when he said i'm hired, he had a speech that "we all know at least 60% of programming is done in your head, so I don't really care when you come in or when you leave if the work is done"
(second main reason of me being fired was that I was coming in late)
2. he showed up in the office 2 or 3 days a week, usually for two or three hours, to show us some cool gadget he bought (once it was an RC helicopter, he dragged us out of the office to the parking lot to watch him playing with it)
3. therefore we didn't get a lot of tasks, therefore most of the time we did nothing.
i already had a rant about that: when BB occasionally popped in to ask "whatcha guys doin'? at first we scrambled to make something up. towards the end of the third month, when I knew I was gonna leave by myself... -
...i stopped giving a shit and next time BB did that, the SP scrambled to make up something, and I was just like:
"Nothing, since boss is not here, didn't give us any tasks for the past... two weeks? And there's no fires to put out."
She just left, shocked.
Next day boss came in and pulled me aside, and angrily explained that my trial period is nearing the end, and someone's gotta take responsibility for what's been happening, therefore I will be fired.
It was hard not to laugh.
Btw, that was my first job ever, right out of high school, I was 18.
Not a good start, but very informative. -
...i might as well finish the story completely, since it has kind of a schadenfreude happyend.
two months after that, the second programmer was fired.
a month after him, our boss was fired.
which finished the process of the company firing its whole "IT department" (yeah, it was our boss and two programmers)
the company's main business was running a classified advert website. (think ebay for second-hand stuff, it's always weird to me that those ads are apparently called "classifieds" in english) -
@aviophile i compressed three months into three posts in my current jaded tone, so i'm not surprised.
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@aviophile Not at all. Being in management doesn't give you the right to ask stupid, uninformed questions. Sorry.
If you hire someone as an expert in a field you're not familiar with, perhaps trust what they say a bit.
Being asked dumb questions day in and day out for years and years on end makes you go slightly crazy.
The attitude here was fine - it was a direct and clear answer giving the PM the information they really wanted - "is this possible?"
The fact the PM didn't understand how technology worked is not the developer's fault per se. If they want to understand something complicated they should understand the basics first. -
@junon one thing I would agree though was that it looked rude that I didn't even turn to look at her, so she was talking to my back, but in my defense, it was one of those very rare times when I was actually doing a task, and it was a pretty challenging one, so I was trying to not lose focus.
(also I was a showoff, "i can continue doing what I'm doing while also properly answering, so I'm gonna do that to show I'm that good" O:-) ) -
@Midnight-shcode They could have gotten the message and scheduled a meeting to discuss it. Or they could have messaged you on e.g. slack, where you could give it attention on your own time.
It's kind of rude to just come up to someone unexpectedly and expect them to give you their full undivided attention immediately, at the drop of a dime.
We have email, slack, calendars, etc. for a reason. -
@aviophile Hahahaha. Okay.
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For such a question, your tech lead/boss should have immediately stepped in. He is the intermediary between the devs in his team and the rest of the company... at least if he understands what he is being paid for. He should also shield his devs from any interruptions if possible.
Otherwise, people will sometimes interrupt you for some questions, which is perfectly fine as long as the questions cannot be found easily by doing a quick search or if the question has not already been asked. -
@junon this was 2008, btw.
@PepeTheFrog boss was at home probably building his at the time profitable local partying social network site =D
It wasn't exactly a meeting, just boss' boss coming into our office to ask about a feature. Went something like this (BB - boss' boss (or Big Bitch, whichever you prefer, Me, SP - second programmer) :
BB: Hey guys, I've got a question.
Me (without turning around since I was focused on whatever I was doing at the time) : Sure, go ahead.
BB: Could we do a country map where you would be able to click a region and get to a page with posts for that region?
Me (without pausing what I was doing) : Sure, easy. Html imagemap, or embedded flash if it's supposed to be fancy and animated.
BB: ...how would we do it?
Me (in exactly the same tone of voice, trying to mimic the same sound sample being played again) : Html imagemap, or embedded flash if it's supposed to be fancy and animated... Links leading to the same address as the filtering form for regions already goes. All that's needed is the map graphic.
BB: ...but how would we link to the correct results? Would we need to make new page for those?
Me: *sigh*
At this point SP stops doing whatever he was doing, proceeds to sit next to her by the whiteboard, and they proceed to talk about this for about 45 minutes, which to this day, I have no idea how they managed. I had no idea how they managed to stretch it for this long even as I was listening to them talking and drawing stuff on the whiteboard about it.
Afterwards, I've been reprimanded for not paying proper attention when important stuff was being solved, and a month later when I was being fired, I had been reprimanded for it once again.
Fuck that company. Fuck those people.
I have no idea how they managed to still not go bankrupt.
rant
wk238