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?"
I've been part of two large, high-profile projects that cratered spectacularly (as I knew they would) and I consider it some of the most valuable experience of my career as a software developer. I've told that to interviewers a number of times. If they don't get it, then I don't want to work for them.
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.
Agreed. The company I'm working for is doing better than ever. In bad economic times, any company that sells products which will save the customer money in the long run is going to do well. People will spend a lot of money if it will help them save more in the long run.
Management quickly realized that crisis is coming (.Com buble) to our niche market. And their decision was questionable (and actually job threatening to me) but in the end saved the company: they pumped production of cheap offering (making it even cheaper), expecting that manageable higher-end expensive systems wouldn't sell at all (for which I was writing control software). And there was period of 13 month when no higher-end systems were sold. Yet, company managed t
I've been part of two large, high-profile projects that cratered spectacularly (as I knew they would) and I consider it some of the most valuable experience of my career as a software developer.
Yep, and the same thing applies to the executives the questioner slams.
Not really. If a project is a catastrophe, then that's usually attributable to executive decisions. If the output of the developers caused the catastrophe, then it's usually because the project was mismanaged - not assigning any resources to QA, ignoring risks, handling change requests badly, allowing feature creep, setting unrealistic deadlines, and so on. It's rare that developers are actually to blame for a project going pear-shaped, and when they are, management are often complicit because they know
It's rare that developers are actually to blame for a project going pear-shaped, and when they are, management are often complicit because they knowingly hired cheap developers without experience. The developers are there to write code, it's the managers' jobs to ensure that the project succeeds.
You assume that most developers write good code, which isn't nearly always the case. I have seen projects run into major problems necessitating extensive rewrites because of fundamental mistakes in low level programming and design decisions that were taken by developers, not a bunch of weaselly managers and marketing creeps. You can completely screw up a project by taking the ad-hoc approach to designing an API or a protocol in a way that can be very expensive to fix. I agree that management (or marketing for that matter) usually makes it's contributions to such disasters as well but you can't just absolve the coders, especially the senior techies that do the design work. In the end coders must also live up to a minimal level of competence.
> I have seen projects run into major problems necessitating extensive rewrites because of > fundamental mistakes in low level programming and design decisions that were taken by > developers, not a bunch of weaselly managers and marketing creeps.
An executive who doesn't notice until too late that his developers are screwing up is screwing up.
I have seen projects run into major problems necessitating extensive rewrites because of fundamental mistakes in low level programming and design decisions that were taken by developers, not a bunch of weaselly managers and marketing creeps.
But the question is how did the project manage to get into such a state without anybody stopping this? Is there no oversight? That's a managerial problem. Is there nobody competent to speak up? That's a managerial problem. Are the competent people not listened to? That's a managerial problem. Are the competent people so overworked that they aren't aware of what the rest of the team is doing? That's a managerial problem.
When developers screw up, the fault lies with the developers. When developers are allowed to screw up over the entire course of a project, irrevocably damaging the project, the fault lies with the managers.
In the end coders must also live up to a minimal level of competence.
Agreed, but my point is that if an organisation has no such competence in its development team, this is not a problem any developer can take responsibility for; it's a problem with how the organisation is run.
I very much doubt that. Because other than for us, they do not get punished for it. They usually get large compensations, and leave with a nice reference, shortly before everything crashes. Usually, all the blame then goes to the "end game" manager, who "ran this successful business down so quickly". That "end game" manager usually is a promoted straw-man from a lower level.
So they learn the opposite of what we developers learn. They learn that you can make good money with it, and apply for an even bigger j
I very much doubt that. Because other than for us, they do not get punished for it. They usually get large compensations
They, they, they. It all sounds very black-and-white.
I've seen a project go wrong. The project manager clamored for support but not in the right way. She also did not get it due to an inexperienced division manager. Whatever the reasons, the combination turned out bad. She saw the problems coming, felt she didn't get support and asked to be moved elsewhere. Someone else took over.
Some time later, she told me a potential career movement had been obstructed because someone in the management team remembered he
I've been part of two large, high-profile projects that cratered spectacularly (as I knew they would) and I consider it some of the most valuable experience of my career as a software developer. I've told that to interviewers a number of times. If they don't get it, then I don't want to work for them.
Developers blame the project management and architects, architects blame the project management and developers, project management blames the architects and developers and everyone blames politics. All the posts about how much you learned or how valuable the experience was is nice but the truth of the matter is that very few individuals have the introspection skills necessary or the broad view to see what true convergence of horrific behaviors and decisions led to the smoking crater that is the massive sof
Bad programmers move on to do other things. A guy may suck at programming and be perfectly fine in IT doing maintenance, or in an over priced big box electronics store selling some new electronic pieces of shit.
Big box electronics store don't want anyone who has technical knowledge on the sales floor. They want people with used car salesman skills to shovel their rip-off extended warranties to rubes. Being able to spout techobabble bingo may help, but only as a smokescreen. An actual techie might tell customers the truth. That would be entirely unacceptable.
They want people with used car salesman skills to shovel their rip-off extended warranties to rubes. Being able to spout techobabble bingo may help, but only as a smokescreen. An actual techie might tell customers the truth. That would be entirely unacceptable.
Obligatory: You know the difference between a used car salesman and a computer salesman? A car salesman knows when he's lying.
A good friend of mine spent a couple of years on the Confirm project, which ended in a total mess almost 20 years ago. He claims that he simply put "2 years, federal prison" on his resume so that he'd have a better chance of being hired.
For those that don't know the Confirm project, they spent about $180M and about 6 weeks from the end date realized they were at least 18 months late. You can look up the rest of the details.:-)
> For those that don't know the Confirm project, they spent about $180M and about 6 weeks > from the end date realized they were at least 18 months late.
Yes, but how did it differ from the average project?
While I work in a different industry it's also project based and the quality of the project will to some degree determine your next opportunities. What I've found both as a a worker bee and later on in management is that even though the results of the project can have some influence over getting your next contract (I work in film vfx, so if the film looked bad it's harder to find something good to show other companies) not completing the project is much, much worse. Companies want to know that you will st
It's certainly possible that for some employers they'd hear you worked on Project X which failed spectacularly, and so they'd want to avoid hiring you. But I'd wager for most employers this isn't a black mark against you unless for some reason you have demonstrably substantial culpability in its failure. Maybe if you had 3 or 4 big failures I'd start to wonder if there was a pattern. But even then I'd ask you why those projects failed, and depending on your answer, this might actually make me more likely to hire you. For example, if you could give me a thoughtful analysis of what went wrong in each case, and could give good thoughts on things which might be done to avoid those mistakes in the future, maybe you have the insights necessary to help my team avoid a similar mistake in the future.
The only things I can think of that would make me not want to hire you (based on association with a specific project) is if you put on your resume that you were the lead developer, project leader, etc... or if the project failed for a very specific reason and I knew you were the cause (such as if you were successfully prosecuted for coding a back door into the project, etc).
There were a lot of excellent crew on the Titanic; the crew of the Challenger disaster were not responsible for its failure. Just because you're associated with a catastrophe doesn't mean you did anything wrong.
Keep in mind that when it comes to actual businesses, it's often better for a project to fail catastrophically in two months.
A project that is started, realized, and dead in two months costs two months of resources. Compare that with the following:
- a project that takes a year of work to get off the ground, and then eventualyl fails after repeated attempts to make it profitable over another two years.
- a project that takes three years to become profitable
The former is not only a waste of money, it's a waste of time too. The latter is profitable, but when considering the opportunity cost, many businesses look for faster, simpler, and lower resource-intensive projects.
The reason business-level executives can be rewarded for a failed project is because a smooth fast failure is a good thing is high-risk projects.
Realizing failure is just as important as realizing success -- when you've got other work to do too.
As for developers knowing earlier, I call zombie bullshit. Developers know when the product isn't great. Business has always made successful projects from crummy products.
Also compare spending $N on a project over a year, versus spending the same $N on the same project over only a month. In business, the latter is better -- why waste time.
But hey, we're all science-lovers here. Look at business the way we look an scientific research. If your experiment can be done faster, at the same or even a moderately increased cost, you get to results faster, and you get to do more experiments, and you get to move through more potential filliments before finally being able to invent that working lightbulb.
Checking it off as failure and moving on can be good.... if it saves resources. But the bean counter logic states that $N is $N regardless of whether you burned it fast and moved on or slowly and tied up assets. Your time all goes on the books the same way.
What it really boils down to is: How will the project cancellation be handed on the books? Will it appear as a charge on the annual reports? Did it reach some threshold where it must be revealed as material information to the stockholders?
I've been in this position a few times because in game development, there are lots of bad games out there that are rushed to completion to sync them up with the release of a film, for example, or to hit Christmas, or because a publisher is trying to make its quarter or because a developer is running out of money.
Here's your lame project survival kit:
1. Stick close to the most talented folks on the team, and treat them as your real boss. Pretty soon, they're going to leave. Make sure they have fond memories of you, so that they can recommend you where they end up, and make sure you get their personal email addresses. Everybody loves a good, helpful coder. This is by far and away the most useful thing you can do for both your soul and the long-term health of your career.
2. Drop the project from your resume. Mention the company but explain that you worked on various projects there.
3. Take responsibility for turning the project around, find a scapegoat in sales, gather evidence, and pin it on him (never in writing) when it goes down in flames. This will make you part evil and is a big part of how people fail upwards, but lots of folks have had made lucrative careers using this approach.
4. Lame projects typically have poor direction and allow people to get away with doing whatever they want without being fired, as long as they look busy. So invent a task that or sub-project that results in a short, flashy demo or video that makes you look good to your next employer.
5. Flatter the slimiest, most inept manager in the group. They typically crave this because no one recognizes their true "genius". They also often pick option 3. and end up attached to some new project to fuck up, which can buy time while you're looking for a new job. They work hard to surround themselves with loyal useful people who say nice things about them.
6. Start humbly asking to buy the CEO lunch and start picking his brain on executive management or anything he knows lots about and seems to be passionate about discussing. Never let him pay for lunch, because you consider it too educational. You may or may not be interested in what he has to say, but the key thing is face time. When things go to poo, it'll be harder for him to fire you.
7. Stop being lazy about your future. Look hard for another job. Put 1-2 hours into it every day after you come home from work. Lame projects blacken and destroy souls.
Well I make my career by joining late projects and doing everything to fix them. Whenever I see that the project will fail in any case, I quote the project as a project where I have learned "How NOT to do things".
And I can't complain about my career.
On the positive side, the late projects have actually relaxed their rules to get the project completed. So I get into an environment that needs results fast and I can push through more innovative ideas through. Whereas, on a "on schedule" project, there is lit
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.
You could have made every mistake you can make on that job or project, but as long as you learned from it and can avoid making the same mistakes, you become a better person for it. That is because human beings learn by mistakes.
When a software project is costing more in expenses to support than revenue it brings in, it is usually because of a quality control problem. I know this from experience and I am usually the programmer taking over "legacy projects" and "legacy software" by debugging them so the quality is better and it runs faster and hardly ever crashes due to the higher quality and quality management process I go through. When I went to college and studied programming I was a student worker in a computer lab, and they had a full time debugger to help the students, when she couldn't help the students because the program was a mess or was for a computer language she didn't know they sent it to me to debug. It was one of my many jobs as I tried to learn as many computer languages as I could while in college. I applied that debugging skill to my career and I helped countless coworkers with debugging issues. How did I get to be so good at debugging? I learned from my own mistakes while writing programs for class, and then I learned from other students' mistakes doing debugging for them, and then from coworkers' mistakes in debugging their programs.
Now while I tried to teach coworkers to learn from their mistakes, they often took it the wrong way, and refused to learn from them, leaving me to always having to debug their programs. The few coworkers that did take my advice and learn from their mistakes went on to other jobs later to be promoted to high paying jobs and careers in writing quality code with quality built into the design. Those that didn't, work the same job, for almost the same pay, and keep making the same mistakes until they are fired or laid off, and then work another job making the same mistakes. I hear from them via email, asking me to help them out like I did when I was working for them, but I cannot as their employers would not want me to see the source code they are working on, so for legal reasons I have to turn them down, and then give them a few web links to debugging books or web sites that might be able to help them out.
Over the years, I have worked on hundreds of IT projects. I encountered many flawed processes.
I worked for a company that had just decided to use UML and so we were forced to spend months constructing UML diagrams that mostly were a waste of time. Eventually, we made our business folks master the verbal-only [no stick men] use case model and that worked.
I worked on another project where the business people were so involved they made technology decisons and were even standing over the backs of developers ordering 'for' or 'while' loops. (Not to me, thankfully).
I've also worked on perfectly tuned agile teams that had a tight PM daily accountability in standups, and that was stressful but also tremendously productive.
Let The Punishment Fit the Crime
Project fails because business interfered? Hold the head of the business team responsible.
Project fails because the software is buggy? Hold the head of QA accountable. Also maybe the architect or lead developer, who of course will be only too glad to point out the sloppy developer who did the work.
Project fails because the design is stupid or flawed in some other way? Hold the designers accountable.
So, I hope you see my point: if you were part of a project or product that became infamous--your punishment should fit your crime. If you were only a grunt developer implementing a design blessed by the architect and tech lead and designed by the business folks--then hell no, you should not also be accountable. You were doing your job. The junior developer can honestly say that but only if that developer's superiors are being held accountable.
So, if you're the original developer of AIG's Credit-Default Swap software, I would not hold you accountable for the damage done by those "financial instruments" (another name for a stick you would use to dig peanuts out of shit). The architects of this software and the business folks who designed it should be held accountable.)
by Anonymous Coward
on Saturday July 11, @11:45AM (#28661077)
Wow. That's horrible advice.
Burning bridges is stupid. You may very well need a job at that same company some time down the road and the same "clueless" manager is going to be the one hiring you back. A much more pragmatic approach is to simply say that you have opportunities elsewhere and wish them luck on their current project. Being positive, even as you're leaving, is always the correct strategy.
I agree - definitely jump ship before the the shit-fan interface, but don't burn your bridges. Just tell them you 'need a change' or that you're seeking new challenges. People understand; it might even make you look smarter in their eyes because you saw the writing on the wall early.
Guess what. I burned the bridges in my last company too. In a way that let a 500 people company still talk about it one year later! And one year after that, I got a job offering from them. Begging for me to come back. I said no thanks, and that I will buy them for an apple and an egg. (Is it really "for a song" in english? Sounds strange.) Two years later, they closed the whole shop. Trying to sell the business shortly before it. For that apple and that egg (or that song if you want).:)
I'm not going to play that crooky lie of "ok, everything is ok". Because I will rather die than come back, begging for anything.
Sadly, lack of pride is a big problem nowadays. Which creates many slavery-like jobs for many people in the first place.
After all, managers *learn* that everything is ok with what they did.
Just like in a relationship with someone. *Actually talk to them and state the problem*.:)
You raise an interesting point - do managers 'learn' that spineless people will just smile and nod to keep their jobs, or is it the attitude of people who get into that line of work? I wonder if things would really be any different if people were more proactive about job mobility.
Well, it's very interesting, how things were in Luxemburg some years ago. Luxemburg is a tiny country. With 480,000 people living there. And over 30% are foreigners. The country is so rich, that people do not want or have to work. So we had the apparently rare situation, that there were much more job offerings than actual people wanting to work.
So people did not have to fight for jobs, but companies had to fight for employees. This meaned that potential employees could make demands, just like bosses do "usuall
Burning bridges is always a bad idea. I'm just turning 50, and it has surprised me the people that I used to know that pop up. In fact, past antagonists gained new respect from me in later jobs as they learned from their mistakes and matured.
That doesn't mean one can't offer advice, one just needs to word it diplomatically instead of calling everyone dumb shits.
How is being able to tell your interviewer "I quit in the middle of projects I don't think will succeed, because it's good for my career" good for your career?
How is being able to tell your interviewer "I quit in the middle of projects I don't think will succeed, because it's good for my career" good for your career?
Well, you are taking advice from a guy with the nick "ILuvRamen" - maybe there's a connection?
How is being able to tell your interviewer "I quit in the middle of projects I don't think will succeed, because it's good for my career" good for your career?
"I wanted to work on a project that was going to be successful, and I left when I became convinced that I couldn't contribute effectively given the current set up."
Showing you know the difference between a good project and bad project, especially ahead of time, is a plus in an interview. Showing you care enough about the end result, and not just a paycheck, is a plus. You should be able to communicate both of these things pretty convincingly if you left a high-profile disaster ahead of time. Make sure you're professional enough to talk about these things without badmouthing co-workers or sounding like a legend-in-your-own-mind, but other than that you're fine
Even if a project was successful, interviewees should be able to explain what they learned from the things that didn't work well. If it was unsuccessful, they should have a long list of mistakes that they now recognize first hand--and if you're going to claim you recognized all these things at the time they were happening, why did you stay?
I'd be just as interested in hearing the answer to that question. It's not like either situation would make you start with a presumptive strike against you--both should be pretty easy to explain. But there should be some level of awareness demonstrated, shouldn't there? If someone's attitude is "I did what I was told, my section worked fine," you know (at best) you're dealing with someone who has a pure grunt mentality and will never take responsibility for the overall product quality. I'd find working on a project like that very frustrating, and would be suspicious people who didn't.
"I wanted to work on a project that was going to be successful, and I left when I became convinced that I couldn't contribute effectively given the current set up."
Make sure you're professional enough to talk about these things without badmouthing co-workers or sounding like a legend-in-your-own-mind, but other than that you're fine
I thought about what is different between the message you're giving and the GP his version of the message. Both basically say the same, but your version is better.
GP says: "They did such-and-such, which I suggested they fix. But they just kept doing it. So I threatened with this-and-that, then took off before they could blame me." Lots of THEY in that sentence, says basically: blames other people, not in control.
Then I realized your version is better because it is said from the first-person. In other words:
On what planet? In the interviewer's mind, that translates into: "Given the doomed projects coming up, this guy is going to quit within three months. No Hire."
You may need to work on your interviewer mind melding skills.
Just ask yourself it that's what you'd think as a manager interviewing an employee. "I have two candidates, one who will understand what's going on in the workplace around him, and one who won't. I obviously need to hire the clueless one, since the smart one will recognize that I am an incompetent who will do nothing but feed him projects are destined to fail." I imagine probably not? Then why do you think anyone else would think that way?
The answer depends a lot on how much adversity you intend to dump on them.
Sitch1: tiny amounts of adversity. Those who can't handle it in small, necessary amounts clearly have problems with their own sense of entitlement, and should be avoided.
Sitch2: moderate amounts of adversity. Different people will have different tolerances. Some will thrive under pressure, others will just muddle through, and some will fall by the wayside.
Sitch3: crank the pain up to 11 and rip off the knob. At this point, all tha
tell the higher ups that you refuse to work on a project that pointless and wrong because of what it'll do to your career
I guarantee that if you go into your boss and refuse to do work you'll get fired for insubordination. In addition, bringing up your "career" is bound to send a pretty strong signal to your boss that you don't plan on working there very far into the future. If the place sucks to work at, polish your resume/CV and start making yourself known to other companies. Don't sabotage yourself by pissing off your boss, thus ensuring a negative reference from your previous employer.
You are a professional. When a project is truly doomed (i.e. the goal is pointless or no software could solve the problem,) just leave.
You're obviously a Highly Paid Consultant who could care less what happens to the project or what the client thinks. It's people like you who give developers (and consultants in particular) a bad rap.
Collecting a paycheck to support a losing project is sign you are a loser.
Or they at least have the balls to stick it out until the bitter end, which (if your post is at all accurate) can't be said for you.
I'm happy to hire people who have been on doomed projects, I avoid those who collected a pay-check until the final meltdown.
Please, what company do you work for so I know who to avoid?
A programmer who quits a clusterfuck is an asset
Or a quitter, i.e. someone I wouldn't care to work with.
It sounds like you're confusing loyalty and professionalism with laziness. Personally if I'm hired to do a job I stick it out until the job is finished. Even if the project ends in spectacular failure, as long as I did my absolute best I stay until the job is done and I expect those I work with to do the same. Everyone works, no one quits.
It sounds like you're confusing loyalty and professionalism with laziness. Personally if I'm hired to do a job I stick it out until the job is finished. Even if the project ends in spectacular failure, as long as I did my absolute best I stay until the job is done and I expect those I work with to do the same. Everyone works, no one quits.
For me you sound like two extremes on a scale and I think you're both wrong. Yes, if you quit the first time a project you're in is in trouble then you're a quitter. But if it's a huge project or it's a repeated problem, why do you want to inflict a death march project of on yourself? You know the kind where you know the project will be a failure even if your part is flawless. That kind of thing is just a soul-destroyer of morale, making you feel like you live in a Dilbert strip. If the company is just too stupid to cut their losses, are you supposed to loyally and blindly follow their stupidity? Draining every last paycheck before the project burns isn't exactly building confidence in the consultants that either, then you're just blamed for bleeding them dry and leaving them with crap. In fact, I'm quite sure I've heard more accusations of that than the opposite. Of all the reaosns a project fails, "horrible internal project mismanagement" is always the very last option if you got noone else to blame. Try to guide them through the rough waters, but if they insist on heading full speed like Titanic against the ice berg, then I say abandon ship. The honor of going down with the ship may gladly be left to the captain, not the crew.
Is this the spiel you give your developers? "We will pile on the stupid and expect you to turn it into gold?"
Your admonitions won't improve anyone's geek-fu. Quite the contrary, it gets them into a mindset where, if it compiles, it's good, and if it runs, it's perfect.
It also teaches them that 90 hour work weeks are not just to be expected, but are in fact a gift from the coding gods, an opportunity to temper your skills on the field of battle. Which may work for a while. Until their marriage fails, or until they realize that they hate working "Jedi hours" for a lousy fifty grand a year. Then, because they've swallowed your Kool-aid, and convinced themselves that "real coders" are supposed to thrive under constant stress and hammer out six impossible algorithms before breakfast, they start looking not for a more laid back coding job, but for a shift at Best Buy.
There is only one use for the crap you're peddling: to get a horde of young coders working long hours at substandard wages. As you mentioned that you're the CEO of your company, this fact doesn't surprise me in the least.
I'd say you're the troll, or you're well on your way to failure already.
What turd sandwich is this you're allegedly running? You're not proud enough of it to put it in your profile or anything. How many employees does it have, and how many belong to the order Rodentia and work for cheese?
In my experience, no. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been part of two large, high-profile projects that cratered spectacularly (as I knew they would) and I consider it some of the most valuable experience of my career as a software developer. I've told that to interviewers a number of times. If they don't get it, then I don't want to work for them.
Re:In my experience, no. (Score:5, Funny)
Must be nice to be 5 years ago.
Parent
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.
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Re:In my experience, no. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Only if they have money to spend.
Hey! I've in the situation like that.
Management quickly realized that crisis is coming (.Com buble) to our niche market. And their decision was questionable (and actually job threatening to me) but in the end saved the company: they pumped production of cheap offering (making it even cheaper), expecting that manageable higher-end expensive systems wouldn't sell at all (for which I was writing control software). And there was period of 13 month when no higher-end systems were sold. Yet, company managed t
Re:In my experience, no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, and the same thing applies to the executives the questioner slams.
Parent
Re:In my experience, no. (Score:5, Funny)
Class warfare is pretty much the only way the Slashdot team can bring any class to this site.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not really. If a project is a catastrophe, then that's usually attributable to executive decisions. If the output of the developers caused the catastrophe, then it's usually because the project was mismanaged - not assigning any resources to QA, ignoring risks, handling change requests badly, allowing feature creep, setting unrealistic deadlines, and so on. It's rare that developers are actually to blame for a project going pear-shaped, and when they are, management are often complicit because they know
Re:In my experience, no. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's rare that developers are actually to blame for a project going pear-shaped, and when they are, management are often complicit because they knowingly hired cheap developers without experience. The developers are there to write code, it's the managers' jobs to ensure that the project succeeds.
You assume that most developers write good code, which isn't nearly always the case. I have seen projects run into major problems necessitating extensive rewrites because of fundamental mistakes in low level programming and design decisions that were taken by developers, not a bunch of weaselly managers and marketing creeps. You can completely screw up a project by taking the ad-hoc approach to designing an API or a protocol in a way that can be very expensive to fix. I agree that management (or marketing for that matter) usually makes it's contributions to such disasters as well but you can't just absolve the coders, especially the senior techies that do the design work. In the end coders must also live up to a minimal level of competence.
Parent
Re:In my experience, no. (Score:5, Insightful)
> I have seen projects run into major problems necessitating extensive rewrites because of
> fundamental mistakes in low level programming and design decisions that were taken by
> developers, not a bunch of weaselly managers and marketing creeps.
An executive who doesn't notice until too late that his developers are screwing up is screwing up.
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Re:In my experience, no. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I don't.
But the question is how did the project manage to get into such a state without anybody stopping this? Is there no oversight? That's a managerial problem. Is there nobody competent to speak up? That's a managerial problem. Are the competent people not listened to? That's a managerial problem. Are the competent people so overworked that they aren't aware of what the rest of the team is doing? That's a managerial problem.
When developers screw up, the fault lies with the developers. When developers are allowed to screw up over the entire course of a project, irrevocably damaging the project, the fault lies with the managers.
Agreed, but my point is that if an organisation has no such competence in its development team, this is not a problem any developer can take responsibility for; it's a problem with how the organisation is run.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I very much doubt that. Because other than for us, they do not get punished for it. They usually get large compensations, and leave with a nice reference, shortly before everything crashes. Usually, all the blame then goes to the "end game" manager, who "ran this successful business down so quickly". That "end game" manager usually is a promoted straw-man from a lower level.
So they learn the opposite of what we developers learn. They learn that you can make good money with it, and apply for an even bigger j
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I very much doubt that. Because other than for us, they do not get punished for it. They usually get large compensations
They, they, they. It all sounds very black-and-white.
I've seen a project go wrong. The project manager clamored for support but not in the right way. She also did not get it due to an inexperienced division manager. Whatever the reasons, the combination turned out bad. She saw the problems coming, felt she didn't get support and asked to be moved elsewhere. Someone else took over.
Some time later, she told me a potential career movement had been obstructed because someone in the management team remembered he
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been part of two large, high-profile projects that cratered spectacularly (as I knew they would) and I consider it some of the most valuable experience of my career as a software developer. I've told that to interviewers a number of times. If they don't get it, then I don't want to work for them.
Developers blame the project management and architects, architects blame the project management and developers, project management blames the architects and developers and everyone blames politics. All the posts about how much you learned or how valuable the experience was is nice but the truth of the matter is that very few individuals have the introspection skills necessary or the broad view to see what true convergence of horrific behaviors and decisions led to the smoking crater that is the massive sof
Don't Worry! (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sure Windows 7 developers will still be employable after the October release.
Re:Don't Worry! (Score:5, Informative)
In the W3Schools stats the Win 7 RC has half the desktop share of Linux.
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Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure Windows 7 developers will still be employable after the October release.
I don't know, can we have a show of hands for Windows ME developers that are still employed in IT?
People change jobs all the time (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:People change jobs all the time (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:People change jobs all the time (Score:5, Funny)
They want people with used car salesman skills to shovel their rip-off extended warranties to rubes. Being able to spout techobabble bingo may help, but only as a smokescreen. An actual techie might tell customers the truth. That would be entirely unacceptable.
Obligatory: You know the difference between a used car salesman and a computer salesman? A car salesman knows when he's lying.
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I cant imagine Windows ME is a great career boost (Score:3)
However, learning from the mistakes of failed projects can actually increase your value, especially if the employer wants you to speak up.
Secretly an SCO thread! (Score:2)
A solution (Score:5, Funny)
A good friend of mine spent a couple of years on the Confirm project, which ended in a total mess almost 20 years ago. He claims that he simply put "2 years, federal prison" on his resume so that he'd have a better chance of being hired.
For those that don't know the Confirm project, they spent about $180M and about 6 weeks from the end date realized they were at least 18 months late. You can look up the rest of the details. :-)
Re:A solution (Score:5, Funny)
> For those that don't know the Confirm project, they spent about $180M and about 6 weeks
> from the end date realized they were at least 18 months late.
Yes, but how did it differ from the average project?
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Quitting is often worse than completing (Score:2, Interesting)
While I work in a different industry it's also project based and the quality of the project will to some degree determine your next opportunities. What I've found both as a a worker bee and later on in management is that even though the results of the project can have some influence over getting your next contract (I work in film vfx, so if the film looked bad it's harder to find something good to show other companies) not completing the project is much, much worse. Companies want to know that you will st
Maybe for some employers but probably not for most (Score:4, Insightful)
It's certainly possible that for some employers they'd hear you worked on Project X which failed spectacularly, and so they'd want to avoid hiring you. But I'd wager for most employers this isn't a black mark against you unless for some reason you have demonstrably substantial culpability in its failure. Maybe if you had 3 or 4 big failures I'd start to wonder if there was a pattern. But even then I'd ask you why those projects failed, and depending on your answer, this might actually make me more likely to hire you. For example, if you could give me a thoughtful analysis of what went wrong in each case, and could give good thoughts on things which might be done to avoid those mistakes in the future, maybe you have the insights necessary to help my team avoid a similar mistake in the future.
The only things I can think of that would make me not want to hire you (based on association with a specific project) is if you put on your resume that you were the lead developer, project leader, etc... or if the project failed for a very specific reason and I knew you were the cause (such as if you were successfully prosecuted for coding a back door into the project, etc).
There were a lot of excellent crew on the Titanic; the crew of the Challenger disaster were not responsible for its failure. Just because you're associated with a catastrophe doesn't mean you did anything wrong.
Project failure is not business failure (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep in mind that when it comes to actual businesses, it's often better for a project to fail catastrophically in two months.
A project that is started, realized, and dead in two months costs two months of resources. Compare that with the following:
- a project that takes a year of work to get off the ground, and then eventualyl fails after repeated attempts to make it profitable over another two years.
- a project that takes three years to become profitable
The former is not only a waste of money, it's a waste of time too.
The latter is profitable, but when considering the opportunity cost, many businesses look for faster, simpler, and lower resource-intensive projects.
The reason business-level executives can be rewarded for a failed project is because a smooth fast failure is a good thing is high-risk projects.
Realizing failure is just as important as realizing success -- when you've got other work to do too.
As for developers knowing earlier, I call zombie bullshit. Developers know when the product isn't great. Business has always made successful projects from crummy products.
Also compare spending $N on a project over a year, versus spending the same $N on the same project over only a month. In business, the latter is better -- why waste time.
But hey, we're all science-lovers here. Look at business the way we look an scientific research. If your experiment can be done faster, at the same or even a moderately increased cost, you get to results faster, and you get to do more experiments, and you get to move through more potential filliments before finally being able to invent that working lightbulb.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Checking it off as failure and moving on can be good .... if it saves resources. But the bean counter logic states that $N is $N regardless of whether you burned it fast and moved on or slowly and tied up assets. Your time all goes on the books the same way.
What it really boils down to is: How will the project cancellation be handed on the books? Will it appear as a charge on the annual reports? Did it reach some threshold where it must be revealed as material information to the stockholders?
I worked on a
Lame Project Survival Kit (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been in this position a few times because in game development, there are lots of bad games out there that are rushed to completion to sync them up with the release of a film, for example, or to hit Christmas, or because a publisher is trying to make its quarter or because a developer is running out of money.
Here's your lame project survival kit:
1. Stick close to the most talented folks on the team, and treat them as your real boss. Pretty soon, they're going to leave. Make sure they have fond memories of you, so that they can recommend you where they end up, and make sure you get their personal email addresses. Everybody loves a good, helpful coder. This is by far and away the most useful thing you can do for both your soul and the long-term health of your career.
2. Drop the project from your resume. Mention the company but explain that you worked on various projects there.
3. Take responsibility for turning the project around, find a scapegoat in sales, gather evidence, and pin it on him (never in writing) when it goes down in flames. This will make you part evil and is a big part of how people fail upwards, but lots of folks have had made lucrative careers using this approach.
4. Lame projects typically have poor direction and allow people to get away with doing whatever they want without being fired, as long as they look busy. So invent a task that or sub-project that results in a short, flashy demo or video that makes you look good to your next employer.
5. Flatter the slimiest, most inept manager in the group. They typically crave this because no one recognizes their true "genius". They also often pick option 3. and end up attached to some new project to fuck up, which can buy time while you're looking for a new job. They work hard to surround themselves with loyal useful people who say nice things about them.
6. Start humbly asking to buy the CEO lunch and start picking his brain on executive management or anything he knows lots about and seems to be passionate about discussing. Never let him pay for lunch, because you consider it too educational. You may or may not be interested in what he has to say, but the key thing is face time. When things go to poo, it'll be harder for him to fire you.
7. Stop being lazy about your future. Look hard for another job. Put 1-2 hours into it every day after you come home from work. Lame projects blacken and destroy souls.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Whenever I see that the project will fail in any case, I quote the project as a project where I have learned "How NOT to do things".
And I can't complain about my career.
On the positive side, the late projects have actually relaxed their rules to get the project completed. So I get into an environment that needs results fast and I can push through more innovative ideas through. Whereas, on a "on schedule" project, there is lit
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.
Learn how to turn a weakness into a stength (Score:4, Insightful)
and a negative into a positive.
You could have made every mistake you can make on that job or project, but as long as you learned from it and can avoid making the same mistakes, you become a better person for it. That is because human beings learn by mistakes.
When a software project is costing more in expenses to support than revenue it brings in, it is usually because of a quality control problem. I know this from experience and I am usually the programmer taking over "legacy projects" and "legacy software" by debugging them so the quality is better and it runs faster and hardly ever crashes due to the higher quality and quality management process I go through. When I went to college and studied programming I was a student worker in a computer lab, and they had a full time debugger to help the students, when she couldn't help the students because the program was a mess or was for a computer language she didn't know they sent it to me to debug. It was one of my many jobs as I tried to learn as many computer languages as I could while in college. I applied that debugging skill to my career and I helped countless coworkers with debugging issues. How did I get to be so good at debugging? I learned from my own mistakes while writing programs for class, and then I learned from other students' mistakes doing debugging for them, and then from coworkers' mistakes in debugging their programs.
Now while I tried to teach coworkers to learn from their mistakes, they often took it the wrong way, and refused to learn from them, leaving me to always having to debug their programs. The few coworkers that did take my advice and learn from their mistakes went on to other jobs later to be promoted to high paying jobs and careers in writing quality code with quality built into the design. Those that didn't, work the same job, for almost the same pay, and keep making the same mistakes until they are fired or laid off, and then work another job making the same mistakes. I hear from them via email, asking me to help them out like I did when I was working for them, but I cannot as their employers would not want me to see the source code they are working on, so for legal reasons I have to turn them down, and then give them a few web links to debugging books or web sites that might be able to help them out.
The Punishment Should Fit the Crime (Score:3, Interesting)
Over the years, I have worked on hundreds of IT projects. I encountered many flawed processes.
I worked for a company that had just decided to use UML and so we were forced to spend months constructing UML diagrams that mostly were a waste of time. Eventually, we made our business folks master the verbal-only [no stick men] use case model and that worked.
I worked on another project where the business people were so involved they made technology decisons and were even standing over the backs of developers ordering 'for' or 'while' loops. (Not to me, thankfully).
I've also worked on perfectly tuned agile teams that had a tight PM daily accountability in standups, and that was stressful but also tremendously productive.
Let The Punishment Fit the Crime
Project fails because business interfered? Hold the head of the business team responsible.
Project fails because the software is buggy? Hold the head of QA accountable. Also maybe the architect or lead developer, who of course will be only too glad to point out the sloppy developer who did the work.
Project fails because the design is stupid or flawed in some other way? Hold the designers accountable.
So, I hope you see my point: if you were part of a project or product that became infamous--your punishment should fit your crime. If you were only a grunt developer implementing a design blessed by the architect and tech lead and designed by the business folks--then hell no, you should not also be accountable. You were doing your job. The junior developer can honestly say that but only if that developer's superiors are being held accountable.
So, if you're the original developer of AIG's Credit-Default Swap software, I would not hold you accountable for the damage done by those "financial instruments" (another name for a stick you would use to dig peanuts out of shit). The architects of this software and the business folks who designed it should be held accountable.)
Re:What I'd do (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow. That's horrible advice.
Burning bridges is stupid. You may very well need a job at that same company some time down the road and the same "clueless" manager is going to be the one hiring you back. A much more pragmatic approach is to simply say that you have opportunities elsewhere and wish them luck on their current project. Being positive, even as you're leaving, is always the correct strategy.
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Re:What I'd do (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:What I'd do (Score:4, Insightful)
Guess what. I burned the bridges in my last company too. In a way that let a 500 people company still talk about it one year later! :)
And one year after that, I got a job offering from them. Begging for me to come back. I said no thanks, and that I will buy them for an apple and an egg. (Is it really "for a song" in english? Sounds strange.)
Two years later, they closed the whole shop. Trying to sell the business shortly before it. For that apple and that egg (or that song if you want).
I'm not going to play that crooky lie of "ok, everything is ok". Because I will rather die than come back, begging for anything.
Sadly, lack of pride is a big problem nowadays. Which creates many slavery-like jobs for many people in the first place.
After all, managers *learn* that everything is ok with what they did.
Just like in a relationship with someone. *Actually talk to them and state the problem*. :)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, it's very interesting, how things were in Luxemburg some years ago.
Luxemburg is a tiny country. With 480,000 people living there. And over 30% are foreigners.
The country is so rich, that people do not want or have to work. So we had the apparently rare situation, that there were much more job offerings than actual people wanting to work.
So people did not have to fight for jobs, but companies had to fight for employees.
This meaned that potential employees could make demands, just like bosses do "usuall
Re:What I'd do (Score:4, Insightful)
That doesn't mean one can't offer advice, one just needs to word it diplomatically instead of calling everyone dumb shits.
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Re:What I'd do (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:What I'd do (Score:5, Funny)
How is being able to tell your interviewer "I quit in the middle of projects I don't think will succeed, because it's good for my career" good for your career?
Well, you are taking advice from a guy with the nick "ILuvRamen" - maybe there's a connection?
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Re:What I'd do (Score:5, Insightful)
How is being able to tell your interviewer "I quit in the middle of projects I don't think will succeed, because it's good for my career" good for your career?
"I wanted to work on a project that was going to be successful, and I left when I became convinced that I couldn't contribute effectively given the current set up."
Showing you know the difference between a good project and bad project, especially ahead of time, is a plus in an interview. Showing you care enough about the end result, and not just a paycheck, is a plus. You should be able to communicate both of these things pretty convincingly if you left a high-profile disaster ahead of time. Make sure you're professional enough to talk about these things without badmouthing co-workers or sounding like a legend-in-your-own-mind, but other than that you're fine
Even if a project was successful, interviewees should be able to explain what they learned from the things that didn't work well. If it was unsuccessful, they should have a long list of mistakes that they now recognize first hand--and if you're going to claim you recognized all these things at the time they were happening, why did you stay?
I'd be just as interested in hearing the answer to that question. It's not like either situation would make you start with a presumptive strike against you--both should be pretty easy to explain. But there should be some level of awareness demonstrated, shouldn't there? If someone's attitude is "I did what I was told, my section worked fine," you know (at best) you're dealing with someone who has a pure grunt mentality and will never take responsibility for the overall product quality. I'd find working on a project like that very frustrating, and would be suspicious people who didn't.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"I wanted to work on a project that was going to be successful, and I left when I became convinced that I couldn't contribute effectively given the current set up."
Make sure you're professional enough to talk about these things without badmouthing co-workers or sounding like a legend-in-your-own-mind, but other than that you're fine
I thought about what is different between the message you're giving and the GP his version of the message. Both basically say the same, but your version is better.
GP says: "They did such-and-such, which I suggested they fix. But they just kept doing it. So I threatened with this-and-that, then took off before they could blame me." Lots of THEY in that sentence, says basically: blames other people, not in control.
Then I realized your version is better because it is said from the first-person. In other words:
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
On what planet? In the interviewer's mind, that translates into: "Given the doomed projects coming up, this guy is going to quit within three months. No Hire."
You may need to work on your interviewer mind melding skills.
Just ask yourself it that's what you'd think as a manager interviewing an employee. "I have two candidates, one who will understand what's going on in the workplace around him, and one who won't. I obviously need to hire the clueless one, since the smart one will recognize that I am an incompetent who will do nothing but feed him projects are destined to fail." I imagine probably not? Then why do you think anyone else would think that way?
You
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The answer depends a lot on how much adversity you intend to dump on them.
Sitch1: tiny amounts of adversity. Those who can't handle it in small, necessary amounts clearly have problems with their own sense of entitlement, and should be avoided.
Sitch2: moderate amounts of adversity. Different people will have different tolerances. Some will thrive under pressure, others will just muddle through, and some will fall by the wayside.
Sitch3: crank the pain up to 11 and rip off the knob. At this point, all tha
Re: (Score:2)
tell the higher ups that you refuse to work on a project that pointless and wrong because of what it'll do to your career
I guarantee that if you go into your boss and refuse to do work you'll get fired for insubordination. In addition, bringing up your "career" is bound to send a pretty strong signal to your boss that you don't plan on working there very far into the future. If the place sucks to work at, polish your resume/CV and start making yourself known to other companies. Don't sabotage yourself by pissing off your boss, thus ensuring a negative reference from your previous employer.
Re:Just quit (Score:4, Insightful)
You're obviously a Highly Paid Consultant who could care less what happens to the project or what the client thinks. It's people like you who give developers (and consultants in particular) a bad rap.
Or they at least have the balls to stick it out until the bitter end, which (if your post is at all accurate) can't be said for you.
Please, what company do you work for so I know who to avoid?
Or a quitter, i.e. someone I wouldn't care to work with.
It sounds like you're confusing loyalty and professionalism with laziness. Personally if I'm hired to do a job I stick it out until the job is finished. Even if the project ends in spectacular failure, as long as I did my absolute best I stay until the job is done and I expect those I work with to do the same. Everyone works, no one quits.
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Re:Just quit (Score:4, Insightful)
It sounds like you're confusing loyalty and professionalism with laziness. Personally if I'm hired to do a job I stick it out until the job is finished. Even if the project ends in spectacular failure, as long as I did my absolute best I stay until the job is done and I expect those I work with to do the same. Everyone works, no one quits.
For me you sound like two extremes on a scale and I think you're both wrong. Yes, if you quit the first time a project you're in is in trouble then you're a quitter. But if it's a huge project or it's a repeated problem, why do you want to inflict a death march project of on yourself? You know the kind where you know the project will be a failure even if your part is flawless. That kind of thing is just a soul-destroyer of morale, making you feel like you live in a Dilbert strip. If the company is just too stupid to cut their losses, are you supposed to loyally and blindly follow their stupidity? Draining every last paycheck before the project burns isn't exactly building confidence in the consultants that either, then you're just blamed for bleeding them dry and leaving them with crap. In fact, I'm quite sure I've heard more accusations of that than the opposite. Of all the reaosns a project fails, "horrible internal project mismanagement" is always the very last option if you got noone else to blame. Try to guide them through the rough waters, but if they insist on heading full speed like Titanic against the ice berg, then I say abandon ship. The honor of going down with the ship may gladly be left to the captain, not the crew.
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Re:Got Talent? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this the spiel you give your developers? "We will pile on the stupid and expect you to turn it into gold?"
Your admonitions won't improve anyone's geek-fu. Quite the contrary, it gets them into a mindset where, if it compiles, it's good, and if it runs, it's perfect.
It also teaches them that 90 hour work weeks are not just to be expected, but are in fact a gift from the coding gods, an opportunity to temper your skills on the field of battle. Which may work for a while. Until their marriage fails, or until they realize that they hate working "Jedi hours" for a lousy fifty grand a year. Then, because they've swallowed your Kool-aid, and convinced themselves that "real coders" are supposed to thrive under constant stress and hammer out six impossible algorithms before breakfast, they start looking not for a more laid back coding job, but for a shift at Best Buy.
There is only one use for the crap you're peddling: to get a horde of young coders working long hours at substandard wages. As you mentioned that you're the CEO of your company, this fact doesn't surprise me in the least.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd say you're the troll, or you're well on your way to failure already.
What turd sandwich is this you're allegedly running? You're not proud enough of it to put it in your profile or anything. How many employees does it have, and how many belong to the order Rodentia and work for cheese?