5 ms·

Ah, the sadness of seeing your code again after somebody else has had it for a couple years. I feel the author's pain. I had a company license the source code

Ah, the sadness of seeing your code again after somebody else has had it for a couple years. I feel the author's pain. I had a company license the source code from one of my old projects to use as the basis for a new site they were building. I built out the bits they needed on a consulting basis and got them launched. Then they started thinking about how expensive I was, and how much they would save if they moved the development overseas. Fair enough. My philosophy on such matters is that it's best to let a client learn this lesson through painful experience. All the best, guys. They made it about a year before the site stopped working completely. Reading this article reminded me of the first time I opened the source that came back. You just wouldn't believe that you could do that much damage in such a short time. I quoted them double my old bill rate and got them back up and running, with all the new functionality they had been wanting, and re-launched. They brought in a new guy to run things, and he started making comments about expenses, and how surely there must be a way to do this cheaper. He even found a local kid who knew some C# and would be willing to help out for a lot less than I was billing. No problem. All the best. I took a quick look at the codebase when they got back in touch a few months later and politely declined to come back on board.

sriram_sun 11y ago
Wasn't worth doubling rates again? :)
- ams6110 11y ago
  Some things just aren't worth any amount of money, and all the moreso if you have other options.
chrisabrams 11y ago
It's sad how often this scenario comes up :/ get what you pay for, plus another, larger bill later. The technical debt collector will find you.
- jxramos 11y ago
  yes he will find you and he holds a mighty ransom!
- ethbro 11y ago
  It's amazing how little oversight management puts in between contractors and production. Why not make code acceptance contractually dependent on a third party code review?
draw_down 11y ago
Don't get sad, charge double. (Or whatever multiple makes it okay.)
chris_wot 11y ago
Someone tell that to the CEO of the company I worked at last. There were a bunch of undocumented Qlikview reports I was landed with when the CEO decided to fire the IT team who looked after them. We are talking about 35 reports, each in a ridiculous state where you would need to literally modify some date variables and comment out some fields in a load statement, and ensure that the old data was loaded out of a QVD file, new data appended to the end and then the data reloaded into that same QVD file after clearing the file. In short, it worked but an utter disaster and virtually impossible to maintain. Luckily the CEO kept the lady who sort of knew the procedure for several months, but due to fire fighting dozens of different issues I never really got the chance to fully find a better solution. Luckily, I worked out enough to understand the general principle when this lady left. Fast forward to my old manager burning out after 4 weeks and me firefighting for several months while the lady the CEO kept around maintained the reports. A new manager, let's call him DW for short, comes in claiming expertise in Qlikview. He works on his reports whilst I work on other important issues. After 4 weeks a client services colleague asks when her Qliiview dashboards will be fixed. This is news to me, the old maintainer has apparently explained the process in detail to my new manager, and although I've offered DW my help to go through the process he waves me off telling me other work is more important. DW is in lengthy meetings that day, so I take a deep breath and open said horribly put together but working Qlikview report. Sure enough, data is wrong and virtually no graphs even display. I look at the load script, which sadly relies as part of the procedure an Excel spreadsheet lookup in the mapped drive, which we have standardised to S:. I notice it is now pointing to a mythical Z:. Then I look for the load scripts that work out pending work... gone. Sales data load script statements - gone. You name it, it has been changed. There is no documentation anywhere - not even to explain what Z: points to. I take a deep breath and wait for my new manager to return. I'm not looking forward to asking about this - he's already stated in front of my other colleagues that "Actiobs speak louder than words" when I explain what I'm working on, and when he asks for a technical explanation about a system issue I know about he tends to cut me off half way through the explanation. Turns out, he has been "tweaking" and "automating" the reports on live production. In the process he hasn't documented anything and the Z: maps to a Windows share on his laptop. In the process he has literally broken every single Qlikview dashboard through his changes, and he has neglected to even make backups. I have been working the last two weekends and evenings from home (often till 11pm and later) to fix another more specialised report for a multimillion dollar contract - mainly because day to day operational issues don't allow me any time to fix this complex report - and I'm pretty much at burnout stage. I tell said manager I can't do any more weekends with no break. DW has other ideas and on my third weekend in a row I arrive at 10:30am at the office, rebuild the first report (luckily the basic data schema for each report is similar) which I intend to use as a basis for the 15 other broken reports I've been told are critical to get working, tangle the black box that is the wield semi-pivoted row based data schema of the custom corporate app we use to gather the data, rebook up the dozens of graphs, tabular forms and other odd graphs driven by strange Qkiview expressions and leave at 4:30ammthe Subday morning. Exhausted, I fall asleep at 5:39am, then wake up at 10:45, serve into work, attempt to get the rest of the reports done, but instead get chewed out by my manager and a "project manager", who schedules in a meeting with himself and the CEO the heat day. Rather dumbstruck, I ask to get back to fixing the rest of the reports, they agree then when I leave the room I hear them jovially joking around. I go back to my desk in shock. I think about the situation for ten minutes, then close down all the Qlikview dashboards I'm working on, load up Word and draft a polite resignation letter which I email to the CEO, then print and out on the CEO's desk. The next day, to the horror of my two colleagues (not my new manager) the CEO pays me out 4 weeks and I leave, never to return. Fast forward 6 weeks - Mr Qliiview expert has made things worse, refused all offers of help, and eventually resign apparently largely blaming myself all the way. Now 6 months later the CEO has only 3 clients left and is haemorrhaging money. I smile and get on with my life.

sriram_sun 11y ago

Wasn't worth doubling rates again? :)

ams6110 11y ago
Some things just aren't worth any amount of money, and all the moreso if you have other options.

chrisabrams 11y ago

It's sad how often this scenario comes up :/ get what you pay for, plus another, larger bill later. The technical debt collector will find you.

jxramos 11y ago
yes he will find you and he holds a mighty ransom!
ethbro 11y ago
It's amazing how little oversight management puts in between contractors and production. Why not make code acceptance contractually dependent on a third party code review?

draw_down 11y ago

Don't get sad, charge double. (Or whatever multiple makes it okay.)

chris_wot 11y ago

Someone tell that to the CEO of the company I worked at last. There were a bunch of undocumented Qlikview reports I was landed with when the CEO decided to fire the IT team who looked after them. We are talking about 35 reports, each in a ridiculous state where you would need to literally modify some date variables and comment out some fields in a load statement, and ensure that the old data was loaded out of a QVD file, new data appended to the end and then the data reloaded into that same QVD file after clearing the file. In short, it worked but an utter disaster and virtually impossible to maintain. Luckily the CEO kept the lady who sort of knew the procedure for several months, but due to fire fighting dozens of different issues I never really got the chance to fully find a better solution. Luckily, I worked out enough to understand the general principle when this lady left. Fast forward to my old manager burning out after 4 weeks and me firefighting for several months while the lady the CEO kept around maintained the reports. A new manager, let's call him DW for short, comes in claiming expertise in Qlikview. He works on his reports whilst I work on other important issues. After 4 weeks a client services colleague asks when her Qliiview dashboards will be fixed. This is news to me, the old maintainer has apparently explained the process in detail to my new manager, and although I've offered DW my help to go through the process he waves me off telling me other work is more important. DW is in lengthy meetings that day, so I take a deep breath and open said horribly put together but working Qlikview report. Sure enough, data is wrong and virtually no graphs even display. I look at the load script, which sadly relies as part of the procedure an Excel spreadsheet lookup in the mapped drive, which we have standardised to S:. I notice it is now pointing to a mythical Z:. Then I look for the load scripts that work out pending work... gone. Sales data load script statements - gone. You name it, it has been changed. There is no documentation anywhere - not even to explain what Z: points to. I take a deep breath and wait for my new manager to return. I'm not looking forward to asking about this - he's already stated in front of my other colleagues that "Actiobs speak louder than words" when I explain what I'm working on, and when he asks for a technical explanation about a system issue I know about he tends to cut me off half way through the explanation. Turns out, he has been "tweaking" and "automating" the reports on live production. In the process he hasn't documented anything and the Z: maps to a Windows share on his laptop. In the process he has literally broken every single Qlikview dashboard through his changes, and he has neglected to even make backups. I have been working the last two weekends and evenings from home (often till 11pm and later) to fix another more specialised report for a multimillion dollar contract - mainly because day to day operational issues don't allow me any time to fix this complex report - and I'm pretty much at burnout stage. I tell said manager I can't do any more weekends with no break. DW has other ideas and on my third weekend in a row I arrive at 10:30am at the office, rebuild the first report (luckily the basic data schema for each report is similar) which I intend to use as a basis for the 15 other broken reports I've been told are critical to get working, tangle the black box that is the wield semi-pivoted row based data schema of the custom corporate app we use to gather the data, rebook up the dozens of graphs, tabular forms and other odd graphs driven by strange Qkiview expressions and leave at 4:30ammthe Subday morning. Exhausted, I fall asleep at 5:39am, then wake up at 10:45, serve into work, attempt to get the rest of the reports done, but instead get chewed out by my manager and a "project manager", who schedules in a meeting with himself and the CEO the heat day. Rather dumbstruck, I ask to get back to fixing the rest of the reports, they agree then when I leave the room I hear them jovially joking around. I go back to my desk in shock. I think about the situation for ten minutes, then close down all the Qlikview dashboards I'm working on, load up Word and draft a polite resignation letter which I email to the CEO, then print and out on the CEO's desk. The next day, to the horror of my two colleagues (not my new manager) the CEO pays me out 4 weeks and I leave, never to return. Fast forward 6 weeks - Mr Qliiview expert has made things worse, refused all offers of help, and eventually resign apparently largely blaming myself all the way. Now 6 months later the CEO has only 3 clients left and is haemorrhaging money. I smile and get on with my life.