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I once made the mistake to work as contractor (Ruby) for a company that fits in the article's description. The customer was unable to deliver me input for serve
by rmoriz 16y ago
I once made the mistake to work as contractor (Ruby) for a company that fits in the article's description.
The customer was unable to deliver me input for serveral months but begged me to sit in their office all day. Just sit there and do some research (no kidding).
Then around 6 weeks prior the launch date (which was not communicated to me upfront) the hurry started and it was totally rediculous: No specs, no clue, no decision making.
I spent 4 weeks (including weekends) working ~10 hours (+1.5h commuting) per day to fix the sh*it as far as I could so that we had something to launch. Code quality was horrible of course.
I felt totally burned out after the launch and there was not even a big financial neither emotional reward in doing this exhausting mess to save my customer's back from his angry client.
Three days before my contract ended, the general manager had a conversation with me in his shiny office. He told me, that they wanted to extend the contract for 6 months (~60.000€).
I answered: Thank you, but not under this circumstances.
Best decision for my physical and mental health in the last 5 years. If you've a choice: DONT DO IT.
Life is simply too short do work for such types of (in the end) losing companies and ruin yourself.
- eru 16y agoDid you give the general manager a feedback like this in the end, or did you think it more prudent to keep your cards closer to your chest?
- rmoriz 16y agoI gave (naive) feedback how they should improve their work with their customers, improve hiring people, make sure employees are motivated and whatever. The general manager even told me that most things I said were true but he's not able to change it. As the company is inside a large publishing group and they've some large portal sites running, they're quite job-save for the next 5 years I guess.
- gaustin 16y agoI had a full time job like this (but Ruby on Rails). I lasted about three months before I gave up. I fled when I realized I would never be able to change the way they did things.
- rmoriz 16y agosame thing here. I'm probably caring too much telling Z-Players how to improve rather to improve myself to get a A+ player. As I love programming and this is my biggest "hobby" since school I can't really do mediocre work for a longer period. Well, 3months is okay but everything that takes longer makes me emotional sad. The only option I know is to leave for other work.