3 ms·

The author has the audacity to lay 100% of the blame at the feet of his "genius". Sadly, the author will run continually into new sets of problems again and aga

by davmar 9y ago

The author has the audacity to lay 100% of the blame at the feet of his "genius". Sadly, the author will run continually into new sets of problems again and again at his company and each time find a new scapegoat. This is because 1) he cannot recognize that he is the problem and 2) attacks those who has scapegoated in public. Until the author matures, employees would be wise to run in the opposite direction. If they don't the next article will be about one of them.

cpncrunch 9y ago
Well, I think the "genius" deserves most of the blame. The company obviously shouldn't have allowed this guy to waste 2 years writing crap, but I don't think it's fair to say that the author of this article is "the problem". That's like blaming someone for hiring an incompetent builder to build their house.
- 6nf 9y ago
  The author is not to blame for the problem of course - since the problem existed before his arrival. The author made the problem worse by implementing the wrong solution. The company was lucky to survive this misstep, and poor Rick was forced to work insane hours just to end up being fired anyway. Not a good outcome for anyone. The company looks bad for mistreating a seriously committed employee. Rick looks bad because the author decided to slag him off in a public blog post The author looks bad because he's oblivious to what he's done and instead decided to shit on a really dedicated employee for the failures of the management team. It takes some serious lack of perspective to post something like this on your public blog. Ugh. I feel sick.
  - cpncrunch 9y ago
    >The author made the problem worse by implementing the wrong solution From what I can tell, the author thoroughly investigated the situation, then made the (correct) decision to rewrite the entire thing from scratch. It does seem as if Rick was severely burned out from the long hours, which probably made things a lot worse. I think he shares equal blame along with the company...nobody asked him to do that, and it seems to have been mostly caused by Rick himself. The company should have pulled the plug earlier, but they must have trusted him. I agree it's probably a bad idea to post it publically.
    - mdip 9y ago
      > I agree it's probably a bad idea to post it publicly. This. I completely agree with you here. I would take it a large step further and say it was a despicable idea, particularly in the manner it was published as "Best decision ever". Yes, letting the guy go was a good decision and a good correction to a big, expensive, problem. Best decision? Far from it. It was a correction to a massive failure that amounts to paying a few hundred grand, letting a problem fester too long and finally stepping in and "starting over". Worse, though, is that they've maligned someone in the process. Yes, "Rick" was anonymous ... except to Rick, Rick's family and friends, and probably prospective employers who will know where Rick last worked, who will know he was "let go" from his last job, and who will hit up Google, happen upon this post, bin his resume and pat themselves on the back for dodging a bullet. Never mind that they've presented exactly one side of a complicated story with all of the biases that come into that. Never mind that a large number of the comments here are from people who correctly suspect that maybe there's something about this organization that caused this massive failure to happen and that those things, whatever they are, might have contributed to Rick failing in his position. And never mind that Rick, now that he's had a bit of an opportunity to reflect, has (hopefully) figured out some of the things he should have done differently and has (hopefully) made positive life changes that will likely cause him to be a fine employee in the future. Or the fact that he might just have not been a terribly good fit there in the first place and could thrive very well elsewhere. The person landing on this post, using basic deductive skills to decide "Candidate X is Rick", will pat themselves on the back for avoiding hiring the developer equivalent of a BOFH. Of course, this company will inevitably lay some other male employee someone off in the future for reasons that are not the employee's fault, and now they might be assumed to be "Rick". There was a small benefit to the world-at-large for them having written this, but it came with huge downsides in the manner in which they've shared. They could have written the piece as an argument with hypothetical components strewn throughout in more of a philosophical manner including no anecdotal stories about former employees and provided the same benefits, but without the myriad of downsides. It might not have been as interesting of a read, or reached as large of an audience, but then is the conclusion they've drawn really all that mind-blowing? The story, summed up, amounts to "We spent a large amount of money on someone and after two years of continuing to spend that money, we realized that we would have been better off if we had just decided to not work on that project and had, instead, turned that money into cash and flushed it all down the toilet[0]. So we stopped spending that money. Best. Decision. Evar. /s" [0] Because every once in a while the toilet will plug, and some of that money will come back up.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - fellellor 9y ago
    This is what I was thinking about. The whole post just seems petty. You don't want indispensable employees unless you know how to manage them. Instead of acknowledging that mistake, just going on to pat yourself on the back for pisspoor management is just disgusting.
- mdip 9y ago
  > That's like blaming someone for hiring an incompetent builder to build their house. Well, kinda, but kinda not, too. When people hire builders they often know little/nothing about building a house and have a limited understanding of what quality building looks like. This company, hopefully, knew what habits a good programmer has (they must have because they eventually realized he didn't have them). Using your analogy, it'd be like a builder hiring a sub-contractor, relying on that sub-contractor to build the house in its entirety, allowing that sub-contractor to slip on the deadline by two years and when the builder went to check up on the sub-contractor, they discover the property has a kitchen, a foyer, a bunch of bedrooms but no roof or walls. Note that I'm not saying my analogy fits perfectly, nor that "Rick" was actually the negligent builder he's been painted out to be in this but it was as much a failure on the company's side especially when you consider that they've paid this individual for those years of work knowing that it's non-refundable, they're stuck with the house, and the only option they now have is to bulldoze the property and start over. A better approach would have been to step in much earlier and correct "Rick" or get rid of him before a two-year slip in a project could occur.
Clubber 9y ago
In all fairness, it sounds like the author took over the project after it was already 2 years late.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

by davmar 9y ago

cpncrunch 9y ago

Well, I think the "genius" deserves most of the blame. The company obviously shouldn't have allowed this guy to waste 2 years writing crap, but I don't think it's fair to say that the author of this article is "the problem". That's like blaming someone for hiring an incompetent builder to build their house.

6nf 9y ago
The author is not to blame for the problem of course - since the problem existed before his arrival. The author made the problem worse by implementing the wrong solution. The company was lucky to survive this misstep, and poor Rick was forced to work insane hours just to end up being fired anyway. Not a good outcome for anyone. The company looks bad for mistreating a seriously committed employee. Rick looks bad because the author decided to slag him off in a public blog post The author looks bad because he's oblivious to what he's done and instead decided to shit on a really dedicated employee for the failures of the management team. It takes some serious lack of perspective to post something like this on your public blog. Ugh. I feel sick.
- cpncrunch 9y ago
  >The author made the problem worse by implementing the wrong solution From what I can tell, the author thoroughly investigated the situation, then made the (correct) decision to rewrite the entire thing from scratch. It does seem as if Rick was severely burned out from the long hours, which probably made things a lot worse. I think he shares equal blame along with the company...nobody asked him to do that, and it seems to have been mostly caused by Rick himself. The company should have pulled the plug earlier, but they must have trusted him. I agree it's probably a bad idea to post it publically.
  - mdip 9y ago
    > I agree it's probably a bad idea to post it publicly. This. I completely agree with you here. I would take it a large step further and say it was a despicable idea, particularly in the manner it was published as "Best decision ever". Yes, letting the guy go was a good decision and a good correction to a big, expensive, problem. Best decision? Far from it. It was a correction to a massive failure that amounts to paying a few hundred grand, letting a problem fester too long and finally stepping in and "starting over". Worse, though, is that they've maligned someone in the process. Yes, "Rick" was anonymous ... except to Rick, Rick's family and friends, and probably prospective employers who will know where Rick last worked, who will know he was "let go" from his last job, and who will hit up Google, happen upon this post, bin his resume and pat themselves on the back for dodging a bullet. Never mind that they've presented exactly one side of a complicated story with all of the biases that come into that. Never mind that a large number of the comments here are from people who correctly suspect that maybe there's something about this organization that caused this massive failure to happen and that those things, whatever they are, might have contributed to Rick failing in his position. And never mind that Rick, now that he's had a bit of an opportunity to reflect, has (hopefully) figured out some of the things he should have done differently and has (hopefully) made positive life changes that will likely cause him to be a fine employee in the future. Or the fact that he might just have not been a terribly good fit there in the first place and could thrive very well elsewhere. The person landing on this post, using basic deductive skills to decide "Candidate X is Rick", will pat themselves on the back for avoiding hiring the developer equivalent of a BOFH. Of course, this company will inevitably lay some other male employee someone off in the future for reasons that are not the employee's fault, and now they might be assumed to be "Rick". There was a small benefit to the world-at-large for them having written this, but it came with huge downsides in the manner in which they've shared. They could have written the piece as an argument with hypothetical components strewn throughout in more of a philosophical manner including no anecdotal stories about former employees and provided the same benefits, but without the myriad of downsides. It might not have been as interesting of a read, or reached as large of an audience, but then is the conclusion they've drawn really all that mind-blowing? The story, summed up, amounts to "We spent a large amount of money on someone and after two years of continuing to spend that money, we realized that we would have been better off if we had just decided to not work on that project and had, instead, turned that money into cash and flushed it all down the toilet[0]. So we stopped spending that money. Best. Decision. Evar. /s" [0] Because every once in a while the toilet will plug, and some of that money will come back up.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- fellellor 9y ago
  This is what I was thinking about. The whole post just seems petty. You don't want indispensable employees unless you know how to manage them. Instead of acknowledging that mistake, just going on to pat yourself on the back for pisspoor management is just disgusting.
mdip 9y ago
> That's like blaming someone for hiring an incompetent builder to build their house. Well, kinda, but kinda not, too. When people hire builders they often know little/nothing about building a house and have a limited understanding of what quality building looks like. This company, hopefully, knew what habits a good programmer has (they must have because they eventually realized he didn't have them). Using your analogy, it'd be like a builder hiring a sub-contractor, relying on that sub-contractor to build the house in its entirety, allowing that sub-contractor to slip on the deadline by two years and when the builder went to check up on the sub-contractor, they discover the property has a kitchen, a foyer, a bunch of bedrooms but no roof or walls. Note that I'm not saying my analogy fits perfectly, nor that "Rick" was actually the negligent builder he's been painted out to be in this but it was as much a failure on the company's side especially when you consider that they've paid this individual for those years of work knowing that it's non-refundable, they're stuck with the house, and the only option they now have is to bulldoze the property and start over. A better approach would have been to step in much earlier and correct "Rick" or get rid of him before a two-year slip in a project could occur.

Clubber 9y ago

In all fairness, it sounds like the author took over the project after it was already 2 years late.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]