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My shittiest project was a hostile takeover from another development team. In the interview, the manager told me a bunch of BS that turned out to be completely

by vfc1 7y ago

My shittiest project was a hostile takeover from another development team. In the interview, the manager told me a bunch of BS that turned out to be completely false: that it was a new project, that lots of new development was expected, that there where performance challenges to be tackled. When I got there, I found out on day one that the goal of the project was to take over the code base from an existing development team, with which the customer had lost trust because among other things they refused to use their new shitty trouble ticket system (which was awful), and instead insisted in using JIRA. Also, they had a server running in Tomcat that they didn't want to migrate to Websphere. Turns out that we didn't even have access to the code, until we accidentally found that the SVN repo was listed in an infrastructure powerpoint, and we did have a VPN connection set up. We were at the taking over consulting firm offices and not at the customer, reverse engineering the existing 7-year-old codebase without any assistance from the development team, which didn't even know that they were getting replaced. After months of reverse engineering and producing useless documentation so that the client manager could say in some meeting that the system was well documented, we ended moving in and mostly doing production support instead of development. Our managers were afraid that we broke something, so they did everything to make sure that we didn't spend our time coding. After a few months, I just asked out because it was not development work and this type of work was actually harming my career and even had my consulting manager actually shout to me on the phone and tell me that he would blacklist me at his company. Software consulting is some of the shadiest businesses out there, beware. The amount of lies that gets told to candidates just to get them signed at the dotted line to contracts without exit clauses (which was the case with me), the use of outdated job descriptions, the lack of information that you have about the actual job even if you ask a lot of questions in interviews, you really never know what you are getting into until day one. Here is a tip from what I have learned: ask a ton of questions about what the job will actually be, if they answer evasively or strangely seem like they want to avoid the questions and move on to other aspects of the interview, that is a huge red flag.

itronitron 7y ago
>> Our managers were afraid that we broke something, so they did everything to make sure that we didn't spend our time coding. that's like hiring football players and not letting them on the field out of fear they'll score for the other team. please write a book!
- vfc1 7y ago
  Yes its insane LOL Managers were non-coders themselves, and they looked at developers with suspicion. This happens in a lot of projects, where developers are almost treated like children or assembly-line workers. I realized through small hints and queues over time that the goal was to take over the maintenance of the project and make sure that we could fix things if something broke, but not add any new features. They even had a management term for what we were doing. They called it KIR - Keep It Running! LOL
- teddyuk 7y ago
  yes but happens a lot - if you dont change it, it won't break (expept it will, every time because the reason you don't change it is because it is crap in the first place)
RhodesianHunter 7y ago
Or just avoid consulting. There are plenty of other opportunities in software that AFAICT have better hours and higher pay.
- vfc1 7y ago
  Higher pay than consulting its hard, a consulting job pays usually almost twice as much as a permanent job. I prefer it to permanent, because besides the monetary aspect you can also get into new projects just starting out more often, and that is were you learn more when compared to maintenaince projects. What type of opportunities would you recommend other than consulting?
  - tigershark 7y ago
    Contracting is different from consulting. As far as I understand when you are consulting you are a permanent employee of a consulting company that assigns you to various projects. When you are contracting you work for a temporary period of time exclusively for a client until your contract ends or you find better opportunities. The first case is paid double of the permanent to the consulting company, but the employee of the consulting company is lucky if he gets as much as a normal permanent. A contractor on the other hand gets paid much more than a permanent, especially counting the less taxes that he needs to pay. There is a 3rd option when you actually own the consulting company, but then it’s up to you to find clients and if needed additional resources to assign to the various projects, but in that case you may be paid even more than contracting if you have no down time between projects.
    - RhodesianHunter 7y ago
      Contractors have to pay more in taxes, not less, since they owe both sides of social security and Medicare.
      - tigershark 7y ago
        I guess it depends from the country and the type of contractor. In UK, with a limited company, you pay less taxes (at least until next April). If you are under an umbrella company you will pay more taxes because you’ll be paying all the taxes of a normal employee plus the taxes of the employer. No idea if it is different in US and other countries honestly...
em-bee 7y ago
could you elaborate on the negative effects on your career? were you a contractor or an employee? and why would someone blacklist you specifically? how was that consulting manager related to the project? i mean as an employee, if i get put in a hard position, sometimes the only choice is to quit, so, in that case, the CV would have an entry that you would not look back at to happily, but other than getting out as fast as you could why would being stuck in such a situation harm your career?
- vfc1 7y ago
  Yes sure, already after a few months doing production support and reverse engineering instead of coding, you start getting questions on interviews about why are you not coding lately anymore. This was a bad look, because hiring managers want active developers for coding positions. I ended up not even mentioning that the position did not involve much coding on later interviews, I left after 6 months. You are put in a tough position because you will have an entry of 3 to 6 months on your profile, which is generally a red flag for hiring managers as it's too short. An entry with a full year or more will not raise any eyebrows, but 3 months will. Also, because you leave against their will, they won't give you references to the next jobs. I did end up leaving it was a real nightware, and never looked back, but to this day I feel that I was flat out lied to on the interview about the job content. In other interviews at other places, I was left out critical details, like for example that the team is moving to another city in two months, and you are expected to go with them. So this why I say, you never know what you are getting into with software consulting, it's a shady business. With the high turnover rates and the difficulty to find developers, hiring managers are incentivized to embellish otherwise mundane positions in the interview process, leading to unmotivated staff and further turnover.
  - tomrod 7y ago
    Several 3 months stints are a problem. One, bookended by reasonable work, is a filter. If a company is overly concerned with one, they just want a skill hire, which may or may not be your target. You can describe the stint in several ways, such as "the strategic direction the consultancy took was away from software and into project management early in the project cycle. My personal strengths lie in..." or some such.
GordonS 7y ago
> they refused to use their new shitty trouble ticket system (which was awful), and instead insisted in using JIRA I can't even fathom how bad it must have been if using JIRA was preferable...
- alanlovestea 7y ago
  JIRA was quite nice until v4.0

by vfc1 7y ago

itronitron 7y ago

>> Our managers were afraid that we broke something, so they did everything to make sure that we didn't spend our time coding. that's like hiring football players and not letting them on the field out of fear they'll score for the other team. please write a book!

vfc1 7y ago
Yes its insane LOL Managers were non-coders themselves, and they looked at developers with suspicion. This happens in a lot of projects, where developers are almost treated like children or assembly-line workers. I realized through small hints and queues over time that the goal was to take over the maintenance of the project and make sure that we could fix things if something broke, but not add any new features. They even had a management term for what we were doing. They called it KIR - Keep It Running! LOL
teddyuk 7y ago
yes but happens a lot - if you dont change it, it won't break (expept it will, every time because the reason you don't change it is because it is crap in the first place)

RhodesianHunter 7y ago

Or just avoid consulting. There are plenty of other opportunities in software that AFAICT have better hours and higher pay.

vfc1 7y ago
Higher pay than consulting its hard, a consulting job pays usually almost twice as much as a permanent job. I prefer it to permanent, because besides the monetary aspect you can also get into new projects just starting out more often, and that is were you learn more when compared to maintenaince projects. What type of opportunities would you recommend other than consulting?
- tigershark 7y ago
  Contracting is different from consulting. As far as I understand when you are consulting you are a permanent employee of a consulting company that assigns you to various projects. When you are contracting you work for a temporary period of time exclusively for a client until your contract ends or you find better opportunities. The first case is paid double of the permanent to the consulting company, but the employee of the consulting company is lucky if he gets as much as a normal permanent. A contractor on the other hand gets paid much more than a permanent, especially counting the less taxes that he needs to pay. There is a 3rd option when you actually own the consulting company, but then it’s up to you to find clients and if needed additional resources to assign to the various projects, but in that case you may be paid even more than contracting if you have no down time between projects.
  - RhodesianHunter 7y ago
    Contractors have to pay more in taxes, not less, since they owe both sides of social security and Medicare.
    - tigershark 7y ago
      I guess it depends from the country and the type of contractor. In UK, with a limited company, you pay less taxes (at least until next April). If you are under an umbrella company you will pay more taxes because you’ll be paying all the taxes of a normal employee plus the taxes of the employer. No idea if it is different in US and other countries honestly...

em-bee 7y ago

could you elaborate on the negative effects on your career? were you a contractor or an employee? and why would someone blacklist you specifically? how was that consulting manager related to the project? i mean as an employee, if i get put in a hard position, sometimes the only choice is to quit, so, in that case, the CV would have an entry that you would not look back at to happily, but other than getting out as fast as you could why would being stuck in such a situation harm your career?

vfc1 7y ago
Yes sure, already after a few months doing production support and reverse engineering instead of coding, you start getting questions on interviews about why are you not coding lately anymore. This was a bad look, because hiring managers want active developers for coding positions. I ended up not even mentioning that the position did not involve much coding on later interviews, I left after 6 months. You are put in a tough position because you will have an entry of 3 to 6 months on your profile, which is generally a red flag for hiring managers as it's too short. An entry with a full year or more will not raise any eyebrows, but 3 months will. Also, because you leave against their will, they won't give you references to the next jobs. I did end up leaving it was a real nightware, and never looked back, but to this day I feel that I was flat out lied to on the interview about the job content. In other interviews at other places, I was left out critical details, like for example that the team is moving to another city in two months, and you are expected to go with them. So this why I say, you never know what you are getting into with software consulting, it's a shady business. With the high turnover rates and the difficulty to find developers, hiring managers are incentivized to embellish otherwise mundane positions in the interview process, leading to unmotivated staff and further turnover.
- tomrod 7y ago
  Several 3 months stints are a problem. One, bookended by reasonable work, is a filter. If a company is overly concerned with one, they just want a skill hire, which may or may not be your target. You can describe the stint in several ways, such as "the strategic direction the consultancy took was away from software and into project management early in the project cycle. My personal strengths lie in..." or some such.

GordonS 7y ago

> they refused to use their new shitty trouble ticket system (which was awful), and instead insisted in using JIRA I can't even fathom how bad it must have been if using JIRA was preferable...

alanlovestea 7y ago
JIRA was quite nice until v4.0