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Famous Last Words by Bosses I've Had

• veyron 15y ago
  I'm impressed that there are places that have 432 projects ...
  • GFischer 15y ago
    None of which are ever finished, most likely. I've got 896 "urgent" tasks right now. I'm quitting in 3 months' time (If I manage to get my nest egg to a non-scared-to-quit amount by then).
  • clawrencewenham 15y ago
    One of them mentions a shutdown from Amazon because they ship too many orders late. That rang lots of bells for me, because it sounds like IT at an independent fulfillment company, which will usually have its own web store and sell through many other companies besides Amazon. 432 projects are a lot to you? Imagine your boss is someone who reacts to every business challenge and opportunity by creating a new project. Imagine that every vendor you ship for has re-invented EDI, without ever having heard of EDI, and it was designed by one of: A) Someone they found on Craigslist B) A kid they hired who doesn't comprehend how you can write a program without wrapping it between <% and %> and loading it in a browser C) A guy who thinks he's a programmer because he once wrote an Excel macro Their mechanisms can be so bizarre that you can't really support them by configuring an existing fetch-n-post, or Extract-Transform-Load system. You just have to fire up Visual Studio and write Project 433, AKA "Overstock.com Is Tripping On Acid And Now Requires That We Convey Order Status Via Modulated Carrier Pigeons". Some of the weirdest I've been asked to support: * Moving the order file between different subdirectories on their FTP server to convey status (ie: we log into their FTP site and issue a MOVE command on the file to put it in the /shipped folder). Did I mention that each file contains multiple orders? * We have to implement a SOAP API to _their_ spec and expose it on the public internet for them to call at-will to send orders and query for status. * CSV wrapped in XML, but it's CSV with a sub-delimiter because one of the columns has to be treated like an array to convey the status of each line-item. * Orders that come in an Excel file, but they never order or name the columns consistently from file-to-file. And that's just for fulfillment services.
    • billybob 15y ago
      Holy cow. Your weird support examples make me want to cry.
    • viraptor 15y ago
      Oh joy. Sounds like dealing with telco billing. On one side you get excel tariff files which change in random ways every month, on the other you get silly billing data. Can you imagine ITSP getting an itemised bill for a month of calls from upstream provider? I think it was 3 rather large boxes filled with printouts. Still not sure why that happened.
  • kokey 15y ago
    I once worked for a company where our tech chief made various hacks to FreeBSD to allow it to have very large number of groups and users could belong to a lot of groups. This allowed each project to have a gid, so that people working on a particular project could belong to that group and the file permissions can be set accordingly. The company would have hundreds of projects per year, and this was used for many years. This was fine until Linux and NetApp technologies were being introduced, it did not play very well with the hacks to groups.
• AznHisoka 15y ago
  At first I thought these were last words by bosses that died afterwards
• OoTheNigerian 15y ago
  Me: The server crashed. IT Services is working to bring it back up. Boss: Don't confuse me with all these technical details. I bet your boss among those deciding on SOPA.
  • OoTheNigerian 15y ago
    If my comment is not relevant, then why is this post at the top of HN? It is my understanding that the post depicts the irony that those who do not understand are put in charge. I should not be explaining my comment, but downvoting without a counter argument makes no sense to me. It is the equivalent of responding to an argument or statement with "I don't agree" Though not a big deal, annoying all the same.
    • recursive 15y ago
      #1. It's unlikely that the boss is deciding on SOPA. #2. Your comment does not contain any particular insight on SOPA or shitty bosses. It's just a repetition of the meme about SOPA. SOPA awareness is important, but you have not contributed to it. #3. As a joke, your comment is not particularly funny.
      • OoTheNigerian 15y ago
        "#1. It's unlikely that the boss is deciding on SOPA" It is sad people cannot sense humor except a lol or :) is appended to it. "#2. Your comment does not contain any particular insight on SOPA or shitty bosses. It's just a repetition of the meme about SOPA. SOPA awareness is important, but you have not contributed to it." I have previously commented on SOPA and it was actually the top comment. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3251471 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3251471 . So I fully understand the implications of SOPA. I did not read it as a take on "shitty bosses" but as someone reporting to who had no idea about what he was supposed to be in charge of. ". As a joke, your comment is not particularly funny." A very subjective statement. Thanks for taking time to reply. I still reiterate that downvotes in a discussion forum serves little purpose. If a statement is offensive, flag it. Don't downvote into oblivion and try to censor anything that goes contrary to "the official position".
• chrislomax 15y ago
  Do you really work at a place where everything is so impersonable that it is all referenced by project number or was that used to obfuscate your clients in this example? None of the comments surprise me to be honest, I find that managers have come from no background to instruct people on a technological level and are taken on for simply their management ability.
  • devs1010 15y ago
    Referencing things by number is pretty common, I think, a lot of places use a Jira system where each ticket has a number and its often used for all development related tasks.
    • chrislomax 15y ago
      Our projects do carry a reference, it is usually prefixed by the department handling it and a number but when we have production meetings they are all referenced by the client and the job in hand. I don't think I would like to work at a company where it was just a number, I like it being personal, it would feel more like a machine with just numbers or references
      • devs1010 15y ago
        yeah, I agree its a bit weird, at the company I work for people usually just resort to describing the issue when talking about it (when not in front of a computer), rather than reference the number, but jira ticket numbers are frequently passed back and worth to refer to specific tasks.
  • diego 15y ago
    You are working at the wrong company. Quit. EDIT: "I find that managers have come from no background to instruct people on a technological level and are taken on for simply their management ability." If true, that is a sign of a very unhealthy company.
    • metageek 15y ago
• RyanMcGreal 15y ago
  Are you sure you didn't just transcribe some back-issues of Dilbert?
  • pavel_lishin 15y ago
    I've read a few of Scott Adams' books, and he's mentioned that he has intentionally tried to put some absolutely ridiculous scenarios in his comics that could never happen... only to have readers e-mailing him and asking if he'd worked at Company X, because the exact thing had happened to them.
• chrisdroukas 15y ago
  Pretty funny list, but this seems like a case of poor management of expectations. It shouldn't be your job to explain why things matter (as in 'Boss: What difference does that make?'), but sometimes that's reality. Here's a set of slides on taking control of poor communication situations and learning to efficiently keep managers in the feedback loop. Sometimes it doesn't work out ('Boss: I haven't had time to get caught up on my email.'), though it's certainly a start. http://www.fs.cornell.edu/PMT/Communications/Managing%20Expectations.pdf http://www.fs.cornell.edu/PMT/Communications/Managing%20Expe...
• mattmanser 15y ago
  Hang on a sec. Not liking mornings or meetings. Or forgetting what you'd prioritized someone to do. Or being spam CCed by 'useful' emails. I think when you look at a lot of these from the boss perspective and change the words slightly, they're totally normal human responses.
  • lhnn 15y ago
    Well, of course, that would change the meaning. He can be so terse with words because many of us can fill in the blanks that these bosses have the wrong attitude about things.
  • epo 15y ago
    Except that these are normal aspects of their job. Not liking the sight of blood is a normal human response too, but shouldn't be if your career choice is butcher or surgeon.
    • mattmanser 15y ago
      I dislike parts of javascript and moan about it, doesn't mean I shouldn't be a programmer. I've been a manager before and didn't have constant meetings. Most decisions actually get made in hallways or between a couple of you casually chatting after everyone else has gone home in my experience. I avoided meetings when I feasibly could and tacitly approved of the same attitude in my team too.
      • thehigherlife 15y ago
        False equivocation. Not liking parts of javascript is a different concept than being a doctor or a nurse and not be able to be around blood.
        • mattmanser 15y ago
          He was talking about managers and meetings, not nurses and blood.
    • 15y ago
• georgemcbay 15y ago
  "Me: You've been invited to a meeting with 3 department heads to hash out their differences on Project 249. Boss: I hate meetings." A couple of the boss responses listed here are totally reasonable and their head-scratch-inducing inclusion weakens the piece. Meetings are a (sometimes) necessary evil, but I'm pretty skeptical of anyone who doesn't, at some level, hate them. I mean, fuck, who wouldn't hate the idea of going to a meeting of 3 department heads to hash out differences? Sounds DREADFUL.
  • raganwald 15y ago
    It’s perfectly rational to hate meetings. But if you hate meetings, you should not be a Boss. In our business, part of the Boss job is going to meetings in order to protect your team from insanity. If you hate something that is a core part of your job... This is a recipe for unhappiness. Now, I do not enjoy many of the meetings I attend. But I do enjoy some, and I get satisfaction out of doing the meeting part of my job well. All that being said, I’m pretty sure I’ve said those exact words myself: “I hate meetings.” So yeah, it’s reasonable for a Boss to say those words. But not to believe them 24/7/365.
    • georgemcbay 15y ago
      "But if you hate meetings, you should not be a Boss." I disagree. If you cannot tolerate meetings to the point where you avoid them, you shouldn't be a boss. But if you hate meetings -- be a boss. Be my boss. Because I want a boss that only calls me into meetings when it is absolultely necessary.
      • raganwald 15y ago
        Oh, I hate dragging you into meetings. That’s why I go, and that’s why I make sure that they are productive enough that we don’t need to have ridiculous conference calls with ten people on each side that range from grand visionary pronouncements to discussing individual tickets with developers :-)
        • 15y ago
• elliottcarlson 15y ago
  Boss: You did great this year. I'm giving you a 2% increase. Me: I hate you. I quit. Boss: Then I'll give you a 4% increase. Me: I still hate you. I still quit. Had the same situation years ago - fought tooth and nail to even get a review - by the time they gave me one I was accepting a position elsewhere and the 2% they offered was a joke.
  • memset 15y ago
    This is a tangent, but I have yet to work at a company where the review process had anything to do with performance, and even less to do with adjusting pay based on that review. And managers seem to love saying "Yeah, I thought you did really well, and I can give my input, but it's [VP three layers up the chain] who has the final say in these decisions." Thanks, boss.
    • Mikushi 15y ago
      Well as someone who has done a lot of reviews, i had my guidelines to follow for raises and bonuses, if a member of my team wanted more, they was nothing i was able to do other than bring it up the ladder and put a good word for the guy if i think he deserves it.
    • T-hawk 15y ago
      The answer to that sort of situation is to do some work awesome and splashy enough to get the attention of [VP three layers up the chain]. Of course, if you're capable and driven enough to do that, you may as well do it for your own company instead.
    • hullo 15y ago
      Most bosses would love to give you more money if you're really doing a good job. Which is in fact, most likely, the reason why they're not allowed to do so.
  • johngalt 15y ago
    It's exceedingly rare to get a huge raise just for doing the job you were hired for. The best place to demand dollars is in the interview. Inside a company your best bet is to clearly delinate role changes, and make your demands parallel to that change. Don't ever fall for the "do the higher level work now, get the raise later".
• jonnathanson 15y ago
  Oh man, these almost hit too close to home to be funny. True story below. Me: So, just to remind you, I'm going in for surgery on Saturday. They're removing a gland from the side of my neck, so the recovery time will probably be three or four days. Boss: Will you be back in the office on Monday? Me: Probably not. Like I said-- Boss: --When will you be back? Me: The recovery time is three or four days, so hopefully Tuesday or Wednesday. Boss: Will you be taking any meetings on Monday? Me: I will probably be bed-ridden, and I won't be able to speak. Boss: That's not what I asked.
  • DavidSJ 15y ago
    That reminds me of when I was 13: Me: I don't have my homework because I electrocuted myself last night and went to the hospital [true story]. Teacher: You should have planned that into your schedule [apparently serious].
    • recursive 15y ago
      You went to the hospital because you died?
      • AndyKelley 15y ago
        You're misinformed - electrocution does not imply death
        • recursive 15y ago
          jes5199's wiktionary link says that "Strictly correct usage is to reserve electrocute and electrocution for fatal electric shocks". Do you have a source?
          • alextgordon 15y ago
            > (informal) To inflict a severe electric shock, not necessarily fatally.
• orbitingpluto 15y ago
  Boss: How long will it take for you to make the program? We're running low on other work. Me: 30 seconds. Boss: That's too long. #### could have it done in... wait, what did you say? Me: Well that sheds some light on your style of management.
  • zem 15y ago
    i have to know - what was his reaction to being caught doing this?
    • orbitingpluto 15y ago
      There was a very long pause. He then found his words and asked how it was possible for me to finish a project (that would have normally taken 8 hours) in 30 seconds. I had approached a previous similar project with a heavy focus on re-usability. The skeleton just needed XML added to customize it. And that could be added quicker than workers could get to that section requiring it. After that he actually asked why I had done that without permission. Me: Because you wouldn't have been able to understand it. And because of that you would have said no. I have an innumerable number of examples from this guy. I could start my own PHB cartoon. He kept his job because loyalty is often more valued than competence. (And in his case loyalty meant routinely fudging timesheets and not paying the grunt workers their full pay.) I had transferred from a satellite branch to the main branch. I stayed a year under this doofus out of loyalty to the manager from the satellite branch who had recommended me. I quit at exactly 1 year. Contracted for them for 4 more months and oh was I glad to be gone. Several months after I left I made some friends who used to have the doofus in their social group. He was ostracized and no longer welcome because he had stolen money from coats and purses piled onto a bed at a get-together. I was also responsible for training my two replacements. I recommended that they not keep one of them. They did. After I had left this other guy managed to do a "rm -rf" on the primary SCO UNIX server that dispatched work to everyone. He also managed to improperly rebuild a RAID array on a W2k3 server and wipe everything. He also... Wait. I feel the PTSD kicking in. Needless to say, it was a very dysfunctional work environment.
      • 15y ago
• dawsdesign 15y ago
  A bunch of babies. Start your own company then.
  • pavel_lishin 15y ago
    "You had a bad experience with a doctor? Just go to med school and open your own practice."
• singular 15y ago
  "You're just doing X, how can that take Y days?!" Where X is something seemingly simple. What makes it more frustrating is that it is often very difficult to precisely describe why it is that X involves so much unintuitive complexity. Also "The users don't care about how it's developed" Except that code quality defines the readability, maintainability, and often-times performance (deeply coupled code can make optimisations very difficult, for example) of an application both during development and afterwards.
• edw519 15y ago
  OP here. I just threw this together to have a little fun on a Friday morning. I knew I wasn't alone, but it's still nice when you guys remind me how much I'm not. It seems like there are two worlds for programmers these days: never having enough time to crank out that which must be built and dealing with alternate human reality in some institution. These were just the tip of the iceberg. I'll probably have a bunch more next week. Some specific feedback: georgemcbay: When different stakeholders don't agree, I've learned 3 things: 1. You rarely make progress. 2. The only way to get them to agree is to put them in a room together and don't leave until they do agree (That's one time when you DO need a meeting). 3. My boss rarely understood (1) or (2). He was just worrying about his personal likes/dislikes. It's tough enough to convey this in a serious piece, but obviously a lot tougher in a light piece. Thanks for the feedback. RyanMcGreal: I enjoyed Dilbert until the stories started striking too close to home. They became too real to be funny. Sad but true. veyron: Actually, this company used 6 digit Ticket numbers. I shortened them for clarity. Remember it's a sequential numbering system, so that's the number of tickets since the beginning of time, not currently open tickets. Sadly, a typical meeting: Joe: How are we doing on 112182? Fred: I don't have that Ticket. Joe: Oh, maybe it should be 112128. Mary: No, that's in Ron's group. Fred: I must have written it down wrong. I mean the MJC Project. John: The MJC Project is on hold. Joe: Sorry, the MCJ Project. Mary: Who brought a laptop? Sue: I did. I'll search for MCJ. Fred: No, you'll get 500 tickets. Search for Joe Smith, open. Sue: OK, here it is. Ticket #118128. edw519: Kill me now. EDIT: I am NOT making this up. Five minutes ago: Customer: I called you 10 minutes ago but you didn't answer. Me: I was here. Sometimes the IP phone doesn't ring. Customer: Why? Is it raining there?
  • mcantor 15y ago
    By "last words", did you mean, "last words before they were fired/quit/'laid off'," or "last words before I, edw519, quit"?
    • Tomis 15y ago
      Last words before the company went down the drain.
    • 15y ago
• kephra 15y ago
  I wonder why 'famous last words': - Did someone fire the boss for those? - Did you quit your job and started a new one? imho, famous last words should sound like: "I will not leave it nor depart it until I am buried in the ground." (rough translation) Mubarak 10th of Feb on TV. PS: The most famous last word to quit a job in Germany is: "Ich habe fertig", you should note the wrong grammar here.
• jroseattle 15y ago
  Here's my favorite personal story. I was a consultant, brought in on a project on-site at a client's location. This is my first day, and I'm meeting the VP of Marketing. VP: We need to get these Cognos reports up and running. Me: Hmm, ok. What can you tell me about these reports? VP: Mostly that we need them up and running. Me: Who uses these reports? VP: Not sure. Ask so-and-so. Me: What information is on these reports? VP: Look, let's not get buried in details. We just need these reports up and running, mmm-kay?
  • xpose2000 15y ago
    heh, awesome.
  • vq 15y ago
    Reports with undefined intervals and the only "requirement" is the title? That's easy, shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes. Empty reports with just a title are really friendly for the author and reader both.
    • derefr 15y ago
      I like that: "Test-first requirements analysis." A bit like shooting a monkey into space in an uninsulated tin can to see if there are any problems with that.
    • LearnYouALisp 15y ago
      Work smarter, not harder!
• xpose2000 15y ago
  This was one of many reasons why I had to quit my last job: ME: According to the newsletter stats, more people have opted out than actually clicked on any links last week. BOSS: We need to increase subscribers to the newsletter.
  • wycats 15y ago
    Aren't there scenarios where this would be ok? Say 1,000 people are subscribing each week, 100 are opting out and 90 are clicking links. What matters is opt outs per subscriber, not opt outs per link clicked.
  • paulhauggis 15y ago
    At my last company (I quit a little over a year ago), we had a newsletter with a nice opt-in system setup (I set it up during my time there). 5000 active users I think and 30,000 users that had opted-out. Well, at one of my last meetings, my boss yelled at me and told me that we were "leaving money on the table" by not sending emails to the opt-out list. I explained to him exactly why it was a bad idea to email these people, but he didn't want to listen. Within a day we were permanently banned from our email provider. My boss wanted to sue the mail provider for "disrupting our service". I've had so many terrible bosses that don't know how to run a proper business, I wonder how they make any money in the first place.
    • rokhayakebe 15y ago
      Man, with a boss funny as this one, I would have never left the job.
• monochromatic 15y ago
  Boss (via email): Email me the results as soon as this thing is finished. Me (replying to email within less than a minute): It's already done. Here you go. [Hours pass.] Boss (via telephone): You're still not done with this? Me: I finished hours ago. I replied to your email right away. Boss: Oh, I didn't read your response. I thought the results would come via a separate email with a different subject line. Me: ...
  • spiffytech 15y ago
    Headdesk moments like these can be irritating, but if you pay attention when your boss says stuff like this and learn to communicate with them on their terms (e.g. communicating through subject lines where possible for this boss) you will see a world of difference in the ease and efficacy of interacting with them.
• ArbitraryLimits 15y ago
  Some of these are like Yogi Berra's sayings - they're both stupid and brilliant at the same time. Compare ""You give 100 percent in the first half of the game, and f that isn't enough in the second half you give what's left." with "No, I meant, 'How do we fix this with software?'"
• cafard 15y ago
  Cute. But unless a boss describes himself as technically capable, why should I expect him to understand about 3 SELECT statements inside a loop?
  • preview 15y ago
    A non-technical boss managing technical employees can lead to problems. It is rare to have a non-technical manager who 1) knows what they know/don't know, and 2) can effectively manage a technical team.
  • bartonfink 15y ago
    That's a fair point, but I'd still expect anyone to understand the part about how it ran fine under a test load, but now runs very slowly under a much larger load.
• hkarthik 15y ago
  Me: This vendor software you purchased is not going to scale well on EC2, it needs physical hardware to work well. Boss: Well, we don't have time to go purchase physical hardware and get it racked. That'll take 3 months. ...3 months later... Boss: This stuff isn't scaling, we need to all come in over the weekend to work out the kinks with the production servers. Me: Purchase some hardware and get it racked. EC2 just isn't working out. Boss: I can't. I already sold our executive team on the cloud and we don't have room in our budget for hardware. ...Another 3 months go by... Boss is gone.
  • joshhart 15y ago
    But you can get physical hardware on EC2 if you pay for the big instances...
    • hkarthik 15y ago
      They weren't available at the time, and because we were using Windows, they would still have been way out of budget.
  • PanMan 15y ago
    A lot of places rent out physical hardware, meaning you won't have to buy it. It might take more time if you have specific needs, but some providers can deploy hardware in minutes.
    • hkarthik 15y ago
      Agreed. I knew his 3 months excuse was a straw man argument but I wasn't in IT so I couldn't argue against it. The truth came out only after another 3 months of failed scaling when we found out that he'd oversold the benefits of cloud based scaling to the nontechnical leadership.
• ary 15y ago
  On 99% of the projects I've been involved with: Boss: So you can do <anything> in two weeks then? Me: No, what I just talked about is a multi-month endeavor. The reasoning behind this is probably formed from a multitude of influences. Executive desire, manager's attempts to look good, and a complete lack of comprehension of what building software is about all rank high on the list. The one I, for the life of me, cannot understand is why programmers insist on pushing the "I can hack that together in 48 hours" mythology. Surely it has had an effect on the management psyche and influenced the mental math used to conclude that the maximum time it should take any feature to be developed is fourteen days.
• bartonfink 15y ago
  "Foreign keys don't buy you anything - I leave them out. If we program right, we'll never have inconsistent data anyway." "Superclasses don't buy you anything - you should just copy the code everywhere that might need it." "Unit tests are nice, but we should be able to write code that works and not need to rely on tests to tell us that." No, I'm not there anymore.
  • highace 15y ago
    Exactly the same for me and unit tests. "They're nice, but we can do those once the product is finished". It didn't finish.
  • nickik 15y ago
    Well at least he got the thing with the Superclasses right (the first part)
  • MrFoof 15y ago
    I keep running into DBAs and data architects that keep trying the "we don't need foreign keys" argument. I always ensure they lose that argument (and stuff gets better, amazing!). Though in all seriousness, what alternate universe are these people crawling out of? That and the types who call their j-random database a "data warehouse".
    • bartonfink 15y ago
      This guy's experience was almost entirely with front-end technology (pretty much just JSP's actually), and it showed in almost every engineering decision he made. The sad thing is that, there is an argument to be made for denormalizing data and not using foreign keys. That argument is not "they don't buy you anything."
      • delinka 15y ago
        I worked in a bank for a minute or three. Big one. The production databases ran without foreign key constraints enabled for performance. In the development environment, however, all constraints were strictly enforced.
• drumdance 15y ago
  My favorite. Back in the mid-90s I consulted on a Lotus Notes project at a major company. We built a prototype and started showing it various VPs who would be using it. One of the VPs was really terribly with a mouse. The tutorial was as much about the basics of navigating a GUI as the application itself. Afterwards I asked the project manager "What does that guy do? He doesn't seem to know anything about computers." "He's the VP of Technology." (!)
• cosmez 15y ago
  "You're Fired" that one is pretty famous
• Periodic 15y ago
  This really happened to me in the last month. I was contracted with a company that has a contract to build a company for a bigger client with customers. PM: We need you to fix a bug. One of our client's customers couldn't complete the form. Me: What error did they get? PM: I don't know, but it's very important we fix this. Me: Do we have steps to reproduce it? PM: No, can't you just fix it? Me: Did they retry the submission process? PM: I don't know. Me: Does it happen often? PM: Just this one customer as far as we know. Me: Well, do we at least know when it happened so I can find it in the logs? PM: Sometime last week. Look, this is really important to the client, can you just make this top priority? We want it fixed ASAP. The "bug" has not been fixed because the devs still don't even know what the error is. We had another high-priority bug shortly before this because the client didn't understand that something wasn't allowed according to the access rules in the spec they (theoretically) helped write.
  • mcknz 15y ago
    Me: I bet you're pretty good with smartphones. PM: I guess so. Me holds out phone Me: Can you fix mine? PM: I can try, what's wrong with it?
  • davidhansen 15y ago
    I'm not calling you a liar, but I'm skeptical about stories like this. I can't even fathom any scenario in which someone more intelligent than a cucumber could behave in this manner. How does this PM manage to get and maintain any job at all, let alone one that requires the ability to understand software development process and constraints?
    • dugmartin 15y ago
      I've lived through many bug reports like this, mostly from very non-technical PM's who think that their power is derived from being the single point of communication between the client and the developers. Its a sad and bizarre game of telephone.
    • Natsu 15y ago
      It wasn't a PM or anyone technical, but I can confirm that people of "cucumber" intelligence do, in fact, exist in management and that I have personally met them and been ready to tear my hear out during exchanges like: "We had an error!" "What error?" "Who cares? Fix it!" In an unrelated note, I think I'm going to start calling such useless reports cucumbers.
• phzbOx 15y ago
  One month ago: me: Hey, everything is alright with project X? boss: Yep, perfect. Next monday, employee call me. employee: Can you walk me through the code. * me explains everything* employee: Ok, just to let you know you are fire. me: :-/ Why? employee: Boss will call you me: ok next day, boss don't call I write an e-mail No answer Another email 6-7 hours later Boss: Sorry, I'm really busy. Calling you tomorrow *Tomorrow* no call *next day, for a week* no call. I go to the office to talk to him. boss: I have a meeting, I have to run. I'll call you when I get back. And he still haven't call me back, and I have no idea why I got fired.
  • littlebird 15y ago
    Your name isn't Buttle is it?
    • phzbOx 15y ago
      I don't know if it was a joke I didn't understand, but no my name isn't Buttle..
      • eCa 15y ago
        It's from Brazil: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/
  • ScottBurson 15y ago
    Your ex-boss is a liar and a weasel who doesn't even have the guts to fire you himself.
  • LearnYouALisp 15y ago
    Maybe they decided they could pay someone less who could maintain the code after you explained it to them. :P
  • Create 15y ago
    As surprising as it may seem, this is far more common than you might think. Welcome to the club (ie. Real World)! Now, that you know how to spot a liar: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/pamela_meyer_how_to_spot_a_liar.html http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/pamela_meyer_how_to_spot_a_... and weasels: 1986 - Work is Hell from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_in_Hell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_in_Hell The best for you is to move on without any worries, and never look back! (Matt and the TED talks use the word walk away ...or run :)
• Zarathust 15y ago
  Monday : Ticket 453 is your top priority, fix it asap. Tuesday : Ticket 923 is your new top priority, fix it asap. Wenesday : Client xyz needs ticket 1921 to be resolved, this is your new top priority, fix it asap. Thursday : ... You get the pattern. Running around with duck tape makes awesome products in the long run
• dsolomon 15y ago
  You work for the government don't you?
• 16s 15y ago
  The best compliment I got from a boss once: "Normally, fuck-ups like this take three guys a week to fix. One guy fixed your fuck-up in two hours. You don't fuck-up as well as most."
  • rokhayakebe 15y ago
    "One smart man mistake, another smart man can fix. One idiot's mistake, 20 smart men cannot fix."
• zem 15y ago
  i can really empathise with the "start the year off right" commenter - my last boss (ceo of the company) once insisted on several long phone conferences during the christmas break, so we could "hit the ground running" when we returned. he was a firm believer in permanent-crisis mode.
• badclient 15y ago
  Boss: Do you know excel? I need to make this graph look better Me: Okay, what do you wanna change? Boss: Well I want them to show things going up, especially towards the end so it shows us really growing to the VCs Me: How is that possible? Boss: It's definitely possible. I just don't know Excel.
  • rufibarbatus 15y ago
    As a financial consultant, I get a lot of graphs with downright preposterous aspect ratios on a weekly basis.
• babebridou 15y ago
  This quote from the OP hit home. Me: The program was written with 3 SQL selects inside a loop. It ran OK when we had 500 parts. Now that we have 10,000 parts, it runs real slow. Boss: I don't understand. I could say "true story" here... with a twist. Saying "I don't understand" is basic social engineering & management 101. The boss actually understood every single word and implication in that statement, he just wants to buy some time to decide silently on the best answer. Saying "I don't understand" puts the pressure on the dev who is lead to believe it's his fault and needs to think of a better description, maybe less technical and more to the point to express the problem. While the dev reformulates, the boss has finished thinking of an answer and can give it instantly. In the end, the dev has managed to express a problem with "simple" words, and the boss has proved he has great skills at solving problems once they are reported in the correct form. I hated my boss when he did it to me, but I have to admit I used this in turn countless times when I became "the boss", to the point it's become a private joke in my former company, anyone saying "I don't understand", whatever their position, instantly got thrown balls or clips in their face.
  • calloc 15y ago
    Whenever people ask me questions I will throw back the "I don't understand", and mean it. Sometimes their questions are inane and I really don't have an answer for it, but many other times the biggest issue is that people aren't giving me a clear view of what they want when they are asking me. "What is it you are trying to accomplish?" is usually my second question after "I don't understand". Hopefully I can find out what exactly they are trying to accomplish and what they have now to help them.
  • scottyallen 15y ago
    I don't understand...
  • delinka 15y ago
    Boss: I don't understand Me: Call me when you do. /me walks out No, seriously-- I don't have time for this kind of bull. I'm not managing my boss, I'm working. And this gets in the way of working.
• clawrencewenham 15y ago
  Boss: "This new feature is similar to one that's already in another program, so you can just copy that code. You can do that in a couple of hours, right?" Me (coining a metaphor): "The fuel distributor in a Pratt & Whitney Turbojet engine will not work in a Norelco Electric Shaver, even though both can be used to cut grass." When you combine gross underestimation of effort with the re-prioritization cycle, you get a monster that probably destroys millions of hours of productivity every year around the world. As soon as it becomes clear that the project won't get done as early as expected, the boss re-assigns you to a new priority. What would have taken 4 weeks to do 3 projects now takes 4 months and only results in the completion of one.
• SeanLuke 15y ago
  Is it me or has this guy quit from an awful lot of jobs? I'm not sure I'd hire someone so transient.
• akg 15y ago
  Boss: We have too many customer support calls. Can you work on fixing the open tickets so that these issues go away. Me: Sure thing. Boss (2 hrs later): Why aren't you answering the phone for our customer support calls!?
• yuvipanda 15y ago
  You get to the point when you no longer believe a word of what they say. And then you quit.
• 16s 15y ago
  I had a boss once who thought IPv6 had something to do with car engines. I kid you not.
• Hominem 15y ago
  One Sunday I got a call from a help desk guy involving an application I had worked on. This was the first call I had ever gotten about this app. I am pretty sure I was last on the contact list PM calls me 10 minutes later and says we need to discuss my level of commitment, Says I have been shirking my duty and letting everyone else handle support. All I could say is that it was the first call I had ever gotten, maybe bump me up on the call list. He didn't know there was a call list they followed in sequence, still I should have been doing more. I made sure this guy never PMed me again.
• matwood 15y ago
  Recently... Mgmt: We need to replace this system ASAP! Me: What does it do? Mgmt: We don't know. Me: Who knows? Mgmt: Maybe this girl. Girl: I'm too busy to talk, but make sure nothing breaks. I did end up writing a replacement system. What I found out was all the people who were 'too busy' to talk or email me back with information suddenly responded when I took down their part of the system as I worked to replace it. I've never had to do a worse project and I'm happy it's over.
• doktrin 15y ago
  Humorous, however the following is actually a semi pet peeve of mine : Boss: I'm really upset that no one has updated me on Project 127. Me: I cc'd you on all 9 Project 127 emails I sent this week. Boss: I haven't had time to get caught up on my email. Depending on the scale and structure of the company / department, getting "caught up on emails" can range from "completely reasonable" to "fundamentally impossible". For example, at a previous job we received no less than 250 work emails daily and often more. Needless to say, simply being CC'd was not a guarantee the recipient would be up to speed on the contents of said email string.
  • damncabbage 15y ago
    But would you complain that no-one's given you an update? There are better ways to get status updates than pointing fingers.
• kellishaver 15y ago
  My own "never have I been so glad to leave a job" story: Me: I think it's time for me to move on. To be quite honest, I see no potential for advancement here and I'm being expected to work dozens of hours of unpaid overtime each month. As we've discussed previously, my hourly rate is already low compared to industry standards and my experience level, and you've told me that the funds simply aren't available to rectify that. I sympathize with your position, and I wish everyone here nothing but the best, but that still doesn't change the fact that this job simply isn't paying well enough to cover my expenses. Boss: I wish I could talk you out of it, but if that's really what you want to do, I can't stop you... but honestly, I don't think you're good enough to make it anywhere else.
  • Terretta 15y ago
    Noticed you both have to point out when you're being honest, as though the default is dishonesty. Must have been quite a culture of misrepresentation.
    • kellishaver 15y ago
      It was my first job out of college. I was, however, a fair bit older when I graduated and did have a few years of experience freelancing, but this was my first time working in a corporate environment. The whole company culture was one of distrust. We would be told in meetings, for example, that the we were to lie to the sales team about product details and were regularly encouraged to infringe on copyrights when doing design work. The ethics were a huge part of why I left the company as well, but it wasn't a battle I was going to win. I'd tried before and failed, so at that point, I just didn't bring it up.
• coenhyde 15y ago
  Here's one. I ended up hating this place. I stuck around way too long. Jim: We need to be first search result on Google by Monday. Me: It doesn't really work like that. We can buy ads on google though. Jim: No I don't want to spend any money. What do we need to do to get to the top of google by Monday? Me: Well we can implementing some of the SEO improvements we have been suggesting for the last year. But we won't get to the top of Google by Monday. Jim: We need to be first search result on Google by Monday. What do we have to do to be the first result on Google by Monday? .... Conversation repeats its self 3 times, while I patiently explain how google works. ... Me: You really have to stop asking that question, it doesn't work like that. Business Partner: NO! WE NEED TO BE AT THE TOP OF GOOGLE BY MONDAY! I was a partner at this place. I left after many repeats of similar discussions. Oh god this place gave me nose bleeds. I have to stop thinking about it now.