5 ms·

Finally fired after 6 years

41 points by silkodyssey 10y ago

kenperkins 10y ago
Instead of asking what else he can do, or provide more value or grow into more responsibility, he sat on his hands and played League all day? I'm disappointed it took them 6 years to act on it.
- MBCook 10y ago
  Well he was 22 at the time, so that makes a bit more sense. Honestly I've had times on one of my jobs where I just had to kill time all day and I hated it. It's one of the reason I later decided to leave.
  - kenperkins 10y ago
    We've all had times where we're not fully invested in our work. Sometimes even weeks, maybe months in extreme circumstances. 6 years is absurdly bad. I can't imagine the management getting off lightly here either.
    - MBCook 10y ago
      Either his manager needs some serious training (or a new job) or he just fell through the cracks and ended up in a position where no one was in charge of him and no one realized it.
smegel 10y ago
> doing Quality Assurance work So I am guessing if he was actually a developer to begin with his job would have been a bit harder to automate.
- minimaxir 10y ago
  Speaking as a QA Engineer myself, QA is as rigorous and important to the software lifecycle as development. The continual disrespect for QA engineers is somewhat frustrating.
  - smegel 10y ago
    The point I was making is you don't become a tennis player by kicking a football.
- geofft 10y ago
  From the Reddit post: > I got a job as a software developer working mostly on testing software, so mostly QA work. However I actually had to write some code as well. After around 8 months I had basically automated my own job by writing some programs to do it all for me. It certainly doesn't look like a manual QA job. The part that surprises me is that the tests didn't change for six years. Surely after 6 years something about a codebase changes (the build infrastructure changes, a new platform shows up, the API changes, etc.) that even black-box testing would have to adapt. Did the company not care that much about the accuracy of the tests?
  - MBCook 10y ago
    This sounds like a management issue more than anything else. The guy screwed up, but how did no one catch on for 6 years? How did he not have someone managing him making sure he had enough work? Seems like he 'fell through the cracks' of startup culture. The company grew so fast that he was just there and no one questioned it after a while and no one was in charge of him. Or someone was and they need retraining/firing.
minimaxir 10y ago
This is blogspam of a Reddit post. Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/4km3yc/finally_fired_after_6_years/ https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/4km3yc/f...
- dang 10y ago
  URL changed from http://www.payscale.com/career-news/2016/05/programmer-fired-after-6-years-realizes-he-doesnt-know-how-to-code http://www.payscale.com/career-news/2016/05/programmer-fired.... Thanks.
bryanrasmussen 10y ago
if he did nothing but play league of legends for 6 years how good is he at it? https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-ways-to-earn-money-playing-League-of-Legends https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-ways-to-earn-money-p...
- minimaxir 10y ago
  OP does actually answer that: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/4km3yc/finally_fired_after_6_years/d3g4pmi https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/4km3yc/f...
- ccvannorman 10y ago
  Does he play, or does he just write bots to play for him?
matt_wulfeck 10y ago
I feel mostly sorry, not jealous for this guy. Even though he plays it cool, I'm sure he lived in constant fear of being discovered for six years and being speechless any questioning.
- honua 10y ago
  Plus.. I actually enjoy coding. I wouldn't even want to automate my job. I know that in the past I've wanted ways to escape working, but now that I'm a developer I couldn't imagine finding ways not to work (I guess except for browsing HN)
_rrnv 10y ago
They fired the only guy who automated all his tasks, and did it so well nobody noticed for 6 years. They are idiots. They should have assigned him to automate the hell out of everybody else's tasks and gain tons of additional work-hours for free. This reminds me of that guy several years back who outsourced all his tasks to China and was employee of the month again and again. They also found out via IT dept, checking his strange VPN traffic. And again, fired the one guy who would be a perfect Outsource Lead. Oh well, the bots are coming, automation will rule them all, and those companies who are devoted to lines of code and employee keystrokes... Well, they will become obsolete.
- kenperkins 10y ago
  I think this is on the management as much as the employee. I'd hope employees look for more work to do as opposed to just taking a paycheck.
- Declanomous 10y ago
  I've heard that factories will rotate lazy people around the factory floor because the method that requires the least amount of effort to achieve the needed result. Then the company can teach the lazy person's method to their less lazy/less creative employees. Perhaps the story is apocryphal, but I think there is a grain of truth in the story. Managed properly, laziness can benefit the company. The problem you run in to is that lazy individuals are difficult to manage properly. A company isn't going to realize the benefits from a lazy individual if they aren't permitted to find their own solution to problems, and the shortcuts lazy individuals take can be dangerous depending on what shortcuts they are taking. I wouldn't want to work for a company that is willing to fire someone for not doing anything for six years because you wrote a script that did basically everything. It implies they value the effort pertaining to my work rather than the actual output, which is insane. That just reeks of terrible management. That being said, I don't want to imply that all lazy people make great employees. I've definitely worked with people who were just completely unwilling to do anything but the bare minimum, if they did any work at all. I don't think individuals who actively avoid all work without coming up with an alternative are of much use to any organization.
  - 10y ago
thrill 10y ago
"Now we had a chance to meet this young man, and boy that's just a straight shooter with upper management written all over him."
lordnacho 10y ago
Dude has 200k in the bank. If he's found motivation, he can just do a masters course. That will teach him a few things and get him back in the coding saddle, and give a plausible reason for why he's looking for work afterwards. What's scary is the people who actually have been coding for several years and still don't know how to do it. No version control, no idea what common patterns are, ridiculously complex spaghetti code. We all know them.
honua 10y ago
I guess the biggest question here is - does OP even want to be a programmer? Maybe they'd rather do something else in life.. but e.g. for me, it's been my goal of the past two years (which I'm finally s/realizing/achieving/)
mathattack 10y ago
I find it hard to be sympathetic. Why is he sad? 6 years of playing video games on someone else's dollar is fantastic. Be glad it lasted more than 3 months. People who slog away for 50-60 hours a week on drudge work still find time for self-improvement. If you want to get kudos for automating your job away, tell your boss and their boss. That's how you get promoted.
kilroy123 10y ago
Why the hell didn't he freelance or try to start a small business on the side. He could have made double or triple the money! Also, I wonder how IT eventually found out.
- ccvannorman 10y ago
  You may have missed the part about him being lazy.
samspenc 10y ago
I'm not sure if I should ask this - but any guesses on which company OP was working for? "I got a job at a company in the Bay Area, CA that was completely unknown 7 years ago but is now incredibly well known. It is actually quite hard to get a job here now, from what I hear." I'm not from the Bay Area, so I can't think of a company (other than Facebook) that fits that profile.
kup0 10y ago
If he can automate his work, milk it for the weekly paycheck, and do it well enough to stay around for six years, more power to him. He made his laziness pay off. Least amount of non-automated work for the most amount of pay off, I respect it.
xbmcuser 10y ago
I consider myself smart and lazy as well. Cut down the time required by predecessor to do the work from 8hrs to 2hrs. But was lucky my boss realized that as well gave me more responsibilities and a promotion few months into the job. Though we have regular arguments about me streamlining other peoples work as she does want to change herself.

41 points by silkodyssey 10y ago

Instead of asking what else he can do, or provide more value or grow into more responsibility, he sat on his hands and played League all day? I'm disappointed it took them 6 years to act on it.

MBCook 10y ago
Well he was 22 at the time, so that makes a bit more sense. Honestly I've had times on one of my jobs where I just had to kill time all day and I hated it. It's one of the reason I later decided to leave.
- kenperkins 10y ago
  We've all had times where we're not fully invested in our work. Sometimes even weeks, maybe months in extreme circumstances. 6 years is absurdly bad. I can't imagine the management getting off lightly here either.
  - MBCook 10y ago
    Either his manager needs some serious training (or a new job) or he just fell through the cracks and ended up in a position where no one was in charge of him and no one realized it.

smegel 10y ago

> doing Quality Assurance work So I am guessing if he was actually a developer to begin with his job would have been a bit harder to automate.

minimaxir 10y ago
Speaking as a QA Engineer myself, QA is as rigorous and important to the software lifecycle as development. The continual disrespect for QA engineers is somewhat frustrating.
- smegel 10y ago
  The point I was making is you don't become a tennis player by kicking a football.
geofft 10y ago
From the Reddit post: > I got a job as a software developer working mostly on testing software, so mostly QA work. However I actually had to write some code as well. After around 8 months I had basically automated my own job by writing some programs to do it all for me. It certainly doesn't look like a manual QA job. The part that surprises me is that the tests didn't change for six years. Surely after 6 years something about a codebase changes (the build infrastructure changes, a new platform shows up, the API changes, etc.) that even black-box testing would have to adapt. Did the company not care that much about the accuracy of the tests?
- MBCook 10y ago
  This sounds like a management issue more than anything else. The guy screwed up, but how did no one catch on for 6 years? How did he not have someone managing him making sure he had enough work? Seems like he 'fell through the cracks' of startup culture. The company grew so fast that he was just there and no one questioned it after a while and no one was in charge of him. Or someone was and they need retraining/firing.

minimaxir 10y ago

This is blogspam of a Reddit post. Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/4km3yc/finally_fired_after_6_years/ https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/4km3yc/f...

dang 10y ago
URL changed from http://www.payscale.com/career-news/2016/05/programmer-fired-after-6-years-realizes-he-doesnt-know-how-to-code http://www.payscale.com/career-news/2016/05/programmer-fired.... Thanks.

bryanrasmussen 10y ago

if he did nothing but play league of legends for 6 years how good is he at it? https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-ways-to-earn-money-playing-League-of-Legends https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-ways-to-earn-money-p...

minimaxir 10y ago
OP does actually answer that: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/4km3yc/finally_fired_after_6_years/d3g4pmi https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/4km3yc/f...
ccvannorman 10y ago
Does he play, or does he just write bots to play for him?

matt_wulfeck 10y ago

I feel mostly sorry, not jealous for this guy. Even though he plays it cool, I'm sure he lived in constant fear of being discovered for six years and being speechless any questioning.

honua 10y ago
Plus.. I actually enjoy coding. I wouldn't even want to automate my job. I know that in the past I've wanted ways to escape working, but now that I'm a developer I couldn't imagine finding ways not to work (I guess except for browsing HN)

_rrnv 10y ago

They fired the only guy who automated all his tasks, and did it so well nobody noticed for 6 years. They are idiots. They should have assigned him to automate the hell out of everybody else's tasks and gain tons of additional work-hours for free. This reminds me of that guy several years back who outsourced all his tasks to China and was employee of the month again and again. They also found out via IT dept, checking his strange VPN traffic. And again, fired the one guy who would be a perfect Outsource Lead. Oh well, the bots are coming, automation will rule them all, and those companies who are devoted to lines of code and employee keystrokes... Well, they will become obsolete.

kenperkins 10y ago
I think this is on the management as much as the employee. I'd hope employees look for more work to do as opposed to just taking a paycheck.
Declanomous 10y ago
I've heard that factories will rotate lazy people around the factory floor because the method that requires the least amount of effort to achieve the needed result. Then the company can teach the lazy person's method to their less lazy/less creative employees. Perhaps the story is apocryphal, but I think there is a grain of truth in the story. Managed properly, laziness can benefit the company. The problem you run in to is that lazy individuals are difficult to manage properly. A company isn't going to realize the benefits from a lazy individual if they aren't permitted to find their own solution to problems, and the shortcuts lazy individuals take can be dangerous depending on what shortcuts they are taking. I wouldn't want to work for a company that is willing to fire someone for not doing anything for six years because you wrote a script that did basically everything. It implies they value the effort pertaining to my work rather than the actual output, which is insane. That just reeks of terrible management. That being said, I don't want to imply that all lazy people make great employees. I've definitely worked with people who were just completely unwilling to do anything but the bare minimum, if they did any work at all. I don't think individuals who actively avoid all work without coming up with an alternative are of much use to any organization.
- 10y ago

thrill 10y ago

"Now we had a chance to meet this young man, and boy that's just a straight shooter with upper management written all over him."

lordnacho 10y ago

Dude has 200k in the bank. If he's found motivation, he can just do a masters course. That will teach him a few things and get him back in the coding saddle, and give a plausible reason for why he's looking for work afterwards. What's scary is the people who actually have been coding for several years and still don't know how to do it. No version control, no idea what common patterns are, ridiculously complex spaghetti code. We all know them.

honua 10y ago

I guess the biggest question here is - does OP even want to be a programmer? Maybe they'd rather do something else in life.. but e.g. for me, it's been my goal of the past two years (which I'm finally s/realizing/achieving/)

mathattack 10y ago

I find it hard to be sympathetic. Why is he sad? 6 years of playing video games on someone else's dollar is fantastic. Be glad it lasted more than 3 months. People who slog away for 50-60 hours a week on drudge work still find time for self-improvement. If you want to get kudos for automating your job away, tell your boss and their boss. That's how you get promoted.

kilroy123 10y ago

Why the hell didn't he freelance or try to start a small business on the side. He could have made double or triple the money! Also, I wonder how IT eventually found out.

ccvannorman 10y ago
You may have missed the part about him being lazy.

samspenc 10y ago

I'm not sure if I should ask this - but any guesses on which company OP was working for? "I got a job at a company in the Bay Area, CA that was completely unknown 7 years ago but is now incredibly well known. It is actually quite hard to get a job here now, from what I hear." I'm not from the Bay Area, so I can't think of a company (other than Facebook) that fits that profile.

kup0 10y ago

If he can automate his work, milk it for the weekly paycheck, and do it well enough to stay around for six years, more power to him. He made his laziness pay off. Least amount of non-automated work for the most amount of pay off, I respect it.

xbmcuser 10y ago

I consider myself smart and lazy as well. Cut down the time required by predecessor to do the work from 8hrs to 2hrs. But was lucky my boss realized that as well gave me more responsibilities and a promotion few months into the job. Though we have regular arguments about me streamlining other peoples work as she does want to change herself.