5 ms·

Tales from the WTF company, part II

47 points by drm237 19y ago

budu3 19y ago
Why was he fired? Because he didn't stay overnight?
- mechanical_fish 19y ago
  Never attribute to logic that which can be adequately explained by entropy.
- mynameishere 19y ago
  More likely: He questioned everybody's practices within a few hours of starting. Right or wrong, it's bad politics.
  - icky 19y ago
    No, it's an excellent way of filtering out bad companies early.
- huhtenberg 19y ago
  No, because he didn't fit into the team. It might've been the suckiest team on Earth, but the bottom line is that they were not comfortable working with him. He should've quit on a third day. Since he was not comfortable working there either, I don't really understand what he was hoping to achieve by staying. Improve the code and demonstrate that everyone else there is an imbecile ? That would've never worked, and that's exactly where he was doing. I suspect that he just didn't have any experience with this sort of a situation, which is not that uncommon. The good thing is that now he does have this experience :)
- radu_floricica 19y ago
  I'd blame the direct manager, Jola (and not just because something like that happened to me once). The guy from Germany made the big mistake of not hiring the right people in the first place, so he's completely responsible for the mess, but as far as the firing goes, it's her decision. His job was to bring experience, fresh air and make waves - and he was brought in for this purpose by Johann. At the very least Jola should have held a big long exit interview with him, since she knew already that the company was in trouble.
  - radu_floricica 19y ago
    And another comment: I'm from Romania, and I saw several startups just like this one, funded by somebody abroad and managed by a local not in IT. They all were pretty much like the one in the article. I always wondered why they were such big failures. Obviously, the incompetent local manager, but they failed too spectacularly for this to be the only reason. Now I start to think this kind of culture actively rejects competent people. Even if they stay with the company for a while, they're never promoted to a position where they can use their skill.
kajecounterhack 19y ago
I wouldn't want to work there either.
phaedrus 19y ago
This poses an interesting question: if you find yourself in such a position, working at a company that is doing so many things wrong, what do you do? I can think of several different things, but which is right? 1. Easy way out - go with the flow and add your own WTFery to the mix, and try not to let it destroy your soul. 2. Fight for what's right at every turn, and stand up to the status quo. 3. Pay lip service to the status quo, but subtly and sneakily introduce best practices one at a time. It would be an uphill battle, and hard to fight backsliding without blowing the undercover nature of your cleanup operation. In order to do this, you'd have to find the coworkers who still have a bit of a soul that hasn't been crushed, and get them on your side to help you.
- pc 19y ago
  "This poses an interesting question: if you find yourself in such a position, working at a company that is doing so many things wrong, what do you do?" Leave.
- babo 19y ago
  Look for another job right from day two. In such a situation quit is the correct answer.
  - stcredzero 19y ago
    Back in the day, we used to call this the [JustQuit Pattern](http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?QuitSuddenly http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?QuitSuddenly)
- trevelyan 19y ago
  The same thing can happen at good companies which make bad decisions with tech staffing and development for whatever reason. You have to try and build non-confrontational coalitions that want what you want and don't stress out other people. Sometimes you have to take stands on major architectural decisions. But if you're creating battles on day three as an incoming programmer you deserve to be fired.
- makecheck 19y ago
  If you aren't in a high position, you really won't be able to swing the ship directly. All you can do at lower levels is drop strong hints. This can be done whether or not you quit (e.g. at an exit interview, assuming there even is one).
deleted 19y ago
[deleted]
dustineichler 19y ago
It's never a good idea to be the new guy to change everything. That's bad tact especially when you're not sure how things work their. Still, that place sounded real bad. I'm glad you got outta there. "fck you, fck you, f*ck you, your cool! i'm out!"
agentbleu 19y ago
I am interested in this "It was really easy, though, because this class stored the data internally in a dictionary but the lookups on it were done by sequentially iterating through all the keys to find matching one. All I did was replacing the iteration with normal dictionary lookup." can someone explain how to do a normal dictionary lookup? what is that? and is there something similar in PHP?
- fendale 19y ago
  Probably by storing the keys in a hash table structure instead of an array.
- LogicHoleFlaw 19y ago
  A Python dictionary is a hashtable structure. It's kind of perverse to iterate over the keys to find the value when you can just do the hash lookup directly. A PHP array() is also a hashtable structure. The PHP equivalent of the described code would be to do a foreach() over the array rather than doing an array[key] lookup.

47 points by drm237 19y ago

budu3 19y ago

Why was he fired? Because he didn't stay overnight?

mechanical_fish 19y ago
Never attribute to logic that which can be adequately explained by entropy.
mynameishere 19y ago
More likely: He questioned everybody's practices within a few hours of starting. Right or wrong, it's bad politics.
- icky 19y ago
  No, it's an excellent way of filtering out bad companies early.
huhtenberg 19y ago
No, because he didn't fit into the team. It might've been the suckiest team on Earth, but the bottom line is that they were not comfortable working with him. He should've quit on a third day. Since he was not comfortable working there either, I don't really understand what he was hoping to achieve by staying. Improve the code and demonstrate that everyone else there is an imbecile ? That would've never worked, and that's exactly where he was doing. I suspect that he just didn't have any experience with this sort of a situation, which is not that uncommon. The good thing is that now he does have this experience :)
radu_floricica 19y ago
I'd blame the direct manager, Jola (and not just because something like that happened to me once). The guy from Germany made the big mistake of not hiring the right people in the first place, so he's completely responsible for the mess, but as far as the firing goes, it's her decision. His job was to bring experience, fresh air and make waves - and he was brought in for this purpose by Johann. At the very least Jola should have held a big long exit interview with him, since she knew already that the company was in trouble.
- radu_floricica 19y ago
  And another comment: I'm from Romania, and I saw several startups just like this one, funded by somebody abroad and managed by a local not in IT. They all were pretty much like the one in the article. I always wondered why they were such big failures. Obviously, the incompetent local manager, but they failed too spectacularly for this to be the only reason. Now I start to think this kind of culture actively rejects competent people. Even if they stay with the company for a while, they're never promoted to a position where they can use their skill.

kajecounterhack 19y ago

I wouldn't want to work there either.

phaedrus 19y ago

This poses an interesting question: if you find yourself in such a position, working at a company that is doing so many things wrong, what do you do? I can think of several different things, but which is right? 1. Easy way out - go with the flow and add your own WTFery to the mix, and try not to let it destroy your soul. 2. Fight for what's right at every turn, and stand up to the status quo. 3. Pay lip service to the status quo, but subtly and sneakily introduce best practices one at a time. It would be an uphill battle, and hard to fight backsliding without blowing the undercover nature of your cleanup operation. In order to do this, you'd have to find the coworkers who still have a bit of a soul that hasn't been crushed, and get them on your side to help you.

pc 19y ago
"This poses an interesting question: if you find yourself in such a position, working at a company that is doing so many things wrong, what do you do?" Leave.
babo 19y ago
Look for another job right from day two. In such a situation quit is the correct answer.
- stcredzero 19y ago
  Back in the day, we used to call this the [JustQuit Pattern](http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?QuitSuddenly http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?QuitSuddenly)
trevelyan 19y ago
The same thing can happen at good companies which make bad decisions with tech staffing and development for whatever reason. You have to try and build non-confrontational coalitions that want what you want and don't stress out other people. Sometimes you have to take stands on major architectural decisions. But if you're creating battles on day three as an incoming programmer you deserve to be fired.
makecheck 19y ago
If you aren't in a high position, you really won't be able to swing the ship directly. All you can do at lower levels is drop strong hints. This can be done whether or not you quit (e.g. at an exit interview, assuming there even is one).

deleted 19y ago

[deleted]

dustineichler 19y ago

It's never a good idea to be the new guy to change everything. That's bad tact especially when you're not sure how things work their. Still, that place sounded real bad. I'm glad you got outta there. "fck you, fck you, f*ck you, your cool! i'm out!"

agentbleu 19y ago

I am interested in this "It was really easy, though, because this class stored the data internally in a dictionary but the lookups on it were done by sequentially iterating through all the keys to find matching one. All I did was replacing the iteration with normal dictionary lookup." can someone explain how to do a normal dictionary lookup? what is that? and is there something similar in PHP?

fendale 19y ago
Probably by storing the keys in a hash table structure instead of an array.
LogicHoleFlaw 19y ago
A Python dictionary is a hashtable structure. It's kind of perverse to iterate over the keys to find the value when you can just do the hash lookup directly. A PHP array() is also a hashtable structure. The PHP equivalent of the described code would be to do a foreach() over the array rather than doing an array[key] lookup.