Developer Stigma After a Bad Or Catastrophic Release? 223
An anonymous reader writes "We hear in the news all the time about how executives can drive a company into the ground and yet somehow become more desirable to other big companies. What we don't hear about are the grunts who implemented those decisions, and whether or not they end up resume-stained or blacklisted. Since we've got so many developers with lots of time in the trenches, I thought I would appeal to their experience. When disaster looms and sales starts pushing for development that has little chance but to end in disaster, what happens to the programmer who decides he needs his job enough to follow orders? Have they ever become unhireable?"
Re:Don't Worry! (Score:5, Informative)
In the W3Schools stats the Win 7 RC has half the desktop share of Linux.
Re:In my experience, no. (Score:5, Informative)
Sseriously, even in the worst of times there are businesses that are growing. Those that do are well aware of the situation and know that in this market they can hire high quality workers at reasonable prices, even the kind of employees no sane employer would normally lay off that they'd normally have to headhunt with huge paychecks. So yeah, many people are in the "nod, smile and say yes if offered a job" mode you shouldn't assume it's that way for everyone.
Not a problem (Score:3, Informative)
You can always lie on your resume and explain the last couple of years as having served time in the state penitentiary.
But seriously: I went into private practice as an engineer because of this. Not due to a single project. All of mine were quite successful, making them oddities at my old company. But the stink of that employer's reputation just won't come off a CV.
Re:A solution (Score:1, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirm_Project
Re:Lame Project Survival Kit (Score:2, Informative)
This is great advice, IMHO, #1 especially. As a senior developer who has both switched companies a few times, and been responsible for trying to find other developers to hire, I have pulled in friends and colleges on many occasions, and I could get a good developer I knew from a previous company a job pretty easily (even today). The problem for people with other good developer friends is usually more that they don't live in the right place, and/or are already happily employed, and/or don't want to work at the particular company.