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There was a place that hired a consultant for a project a friend worked on, and she was... I don't think she could write code at all. Like, had trouble manually

There was a place that hired a consultant for a project a friend worked on, and she was... I don't think she could write code at all. Like, had trouble manually inserting fragments into an XML file despite fragments with the same structure already being in the file. Her productivity skyrocketed at night however, and she generally had working code in the morning, which lead to rumors that her husband or someone in her home country was doing the work (would have been daytime over there). Nobody really complained. She wore a hijab and the company had just hired it’s first “diversity officer” so maybe that’s why. Thankfully they stopped using that vendor not long after. It's a story a friend told me a long time ago. I didn’t and couldn’t fact-check it. The husband’s theory came from the fact she apparently mentioned her husband was also a software consultant.

rvnx 4y ago
That's fine if people helped her after work, it means she is struggling a bit technically and she has to work after-hours to learn. It's ok. It means she is dedicated to her job but lacks some skills and is trying to learn. The result is also the most important.
- Ancapistani 4y ago
  > That's fine if people helped her after work Depending on the industry, it's definitely not fine. I work in healthcare. If one of our employees was giving a foreign national access to our internal systems, that would be a Very Big Deal.
  - Dan_Sylveste 4y ago
    I don't think any company would be even slightly 'fine' with unvetted random people having access to any of their systems, and it's almost certainly a breach of contract by the employee to give anyone else that access, whether that involves letting them login and poke around or having them look over your shoulder.
    - rvnx 4y ago
      Your experience may vary but for many it's an open secret in IT that developers and sysadmin help each other (at any level). In practice, when you are a developer you get to know lot of infrastructure and even sometimes customer secrets from Facebook, Apple, Google, PayPal, etc. This is because the tech people actually speak together, ask feedback and share information. When a doctor doesn't know, he asks the other doctors for opinion. There are even websites for that (StackOverflow, GitHub, etc). It's fine. I trust my employees to use their best judgement when making such choices. It doesn't mean these 3rd-party guys will get access to your systems. Even the NSA asks for help, you can see them in the reverse-engineering forums, in MediaWiki conferences, etc. Experienced developers are not teenagers and act rationally, they don't do 10 years of career to suddenly risk losing all their trust/friends and reputation, all that for 5-minute fame on Twitter for a leak that is likely non-strategic to the outsiders.
abirch 4y ago
Atari loved that Steve Jobs worked at night because they suspected Woz who was a better engineer would help him. As long as the work gets done...

rvnx 4y ago

That's fine if people helped her after work, it means she is struggling a bit technically and she has to work after-hours to learn. It's ok. It means she is dedicated to her job but lacks some skills and is trying to learn. The result is also the most important.

Ancapistani 4y ago
> That's fine if people helped her after work Depending on the industry, it's definitely not fine. I work in healthcare. If one of our employees was giving a foreign national access to our internal systems, that would be a Very Big Deal.
- Dan_Sylveste 4y ago
  I don't think any company would be even slightly 'fine' with unvetted random people having access to any of their systems, and it's almost certainly a breach of contract by the employee to give anyone else that access, whether that involves letting them login and poke around or having them look over your shoulder.
  - rvnx 4y ago
    Your experience may vary but for many it's an open secret in IT that developers and sysadmin help each other (at any level). In practice, when you are a developer you get to know lot of infrastructure and even sometimes customer secrets from Facebook, Apple, Google, PayPal, etc. This is because the tech people actually speak together, ask feedback and share information. When a doctor doesn't know, he asks the other doctors for opinion. There are even websites for that (StackOverflow, GitHub, etc). It's fine. I trust my employees to use their best judgement when making such choices. It doesn't mean these 3rd-party guys will get access to your systems. Even the NSA asks for help, you can see them in the reverse-engineering forums, in MediaWiki conferences, etc. Experienced developers are not teenagers and act rationally, they don't do 10 years of career to suddenly risk losing all their trust/friends and reputation, all that for 5-minute fame on Twitter for a leak that is likely non-strategic to the outsiders.

abirch 4y ago

Atari loved that Steve Jobs worked at night because they suspected Woz who was a better engineer would help him. As long as the work gets done...