Ask Slashdot: What Do You Do If You're Given a Broken Project? 308
X10 writes "Suppose you're assigned to a project that someone else has created. It's an app, you'll work on it alone. You think 'how hard can it be,' you don't check out the source code before you accept the assignment. But then, it turns out the code is not robust. You create a small new feature, and the app breaks down in unexpected ways. You fix a bug, and new bugs pop up all over the place. The person who worked on the project before you is well respected in the company, and you are 'just a contractor,' hired a few months ago. The easy way out is to just quit, as there's plenty of jobs you can take. But that doesn't feel right. What else can you do?"
Re:You were not hired to finish the project (Score:2, Interesting)
Or, perhaps, you were hired to find a scapegoat. Honestly, who cares; they need the project to work, so make it work.
The project is yours. Guess a rewrite timeline, send it to your boss, and get to work. While they bicker on it, send them updates. If you are going to get fired, it was going to happen anyway; you can still do good work in the meantime.
Re:Short answer: Run. (Score:5, Interesting)
I was given a project that three (!!!) previous developers had worked on, but obviously none of them finished.
The code mostly looked okay. And it passed all the tests.
But that was misleading. The way the code was written, it was hard to read. AND it had sloppy formatting. Those are not necessarily signs of bad code, but they can be bad omens. I should have heeded them.
Turned out the tests were poorly written. And whenever I made even little changes, things broke all over. To top it off, rather than giving me time to refactor the old code, they kept me too busy making trivial visual changes.
THEN, the kicker: they suddenly hit me with a deadline of 3 days! I could hardly believe it. Even though with a lot of effort I had finally gotten it basically working, it was nowhere near ready for production. I told them this; they didn't listen.
So of course when it wasn't ready by the deadline, they blamed me. Which is just plain dumb. I didn't really care at that point... I was a contractor and I had seen what a rotten place it was to work. I was happy to bow out. Which I later found out was the same attitude as the three developers before me. They were happy to be out of there.
Re:Enjoy your Death March (Score:5, Interesting)
No shit. The person is employed as a coder. Would you judge a surgeon by his poetry?
We might do that in the first year of our career, or maybe six months into a new language, platform or type of app. If you're doing it regularly at a later stage you're an utter flid and should go and do something else.
I should respect someone because he knows the right butts to kiss? Don't think so. I've cleared up a fair few messes made by "well respected" people, and part of that process was resetting their reputations to something more aligned with reality.