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#11. Make friends at your current job-- as many as possible, preferably with some being "diagonal-up" (e.g. not your boss, but at a higher level). Bonus points

#11. Make friends at your current job-- as many as possible, preferably with some being "diagonal-up" (e.g. not your boss, but at a higher level). Bonus points if they are unlikely to be cut. You will need them as references if your boss gives you a bad one (which you should check 3-5 weeks after being laid off, using a professional ref-checking service). Friends from the old company are not just potential references, but also possible co-founders or recruits at the new job. #12. Move all your side projects onto off-work computers, and try to make sure that they're deleted from your work machines nightly and automatically. (Of course, this is not the time to do something moronic, so only delete true side projects, e.g. things that the company doesn't know or care about but that you still need to unambiguously own for future purposes.) #13. This one applies mainly to large companies. In good economic times, you want to make yourself as replaceable and obsolete as possible (write well-documented, easy-to-follow code) so you can move on to more interesting projects and, if laid off, leave on good terms to a better job. In bad economic times, try to make yourself irreplaceable, even if that means making your code difficult to use. If you feel the need to be unethical, you can hide time-delay bugs. At worst, you'll be asked to train someone else in the technology and offered a severance package in order to do it, which is better than being let go cold.

gruseom 18y ago
In bad economic times, try to make yourself irreplaceable, even if that means making your code difficult to use. If you feel the need to be unethical, you can hide time-delay bugs. Wow. What this sort of thing does to your soul is far worse than being laid off. Anyone who believes that they need a job more than they need integrity or self-respect has some work to do, and some fears to face. And making code obscure on purpose is unethical, and ethics that fluctuate with economic conditions aren't ethics to begin with. Edit: For a different perspective, I ran this by a couple of guys where I'm working. One of them offered a more succinct response: "Maybe if you did a good job, they'd keep you, [expletive deleted]."
- time_management 18y ago
  I made an error in using the phrase "in bad economic times". Economic conditions are actually fairly irrelevant, because one can be in a positive career situation despite a terrible economy, and vice versa. I meant to say "in a bad career situation" and, specifically, a truly terrible one. I know people who've been put in the humiliating position of being outsourced, while being expected to train the cheaply-hired replacements. That's the sort of situation in which obfuscation, in the hope of having, at least, the option to come on later as a consultant, may be an appropriate strategy. Why is it unethical? It's not nice, but it's not nice either (though not unethical) for the company to fire all the American staff and replace them with overseas workers at 1/3 of the cost. So I'll back down from "in bad economic times" because, really, obfuscation only makes sense in rare and outright terrible situations. I've never needed to do it, never done it, and I don't even know how often it works. What I'll say is this: I've known people who've been laid off recently, and one of the warning signs is when they are asked to suddenly place a high priority on clarifying previous work, and it's definitely not in their interest to do so.
  - allenbrunson 18y ago
    perhaps you've heard that two wrongs don't make a right? if a company screws you over, you don't try to screw them back. that makes you just as bad as they are. the right thing to do is walk away, think about the warning signs that were almost certainly there from day one, and don't get into a situation like that again.
    - time_management 18y ago
      I'm not arguing that anyone should be screwing anyone over. Taking revenge for the sake of revenge is a monumental waste of time and energy, and can lead to disastrous career and legal consequences. In the situation I outlined-- of a person being outsourced, and told to train his cheap-hire replacements before being let go-- the reason he does a poor job of training them is not revenge. It's not an emotional decision, but a rational one: he wants leverage for the negotiation of severance and references, e.g. "Sure, I'll train my replacement, in exchange for [X]." It's neither ethical nor unethical; just business the way it's been done for centuries.
nostrademons 18y ago
I was all set to upvote this after the first point, and then I read the next two. Really, it's a job. There're things more important than a steady paycheck, and IMHO keeping your integrity and doing work you can feel proud of are among them.
- time_management 18y ago
  #12: This seems a bit vicious, but that's probably because you're spoiled by startups and tech companies, where there's a lot of work to be done, and a high proportion of it's actually interesting. At some of the big-box companies, neither of these is true. Some of the BDCs have beginning programmers doing office work during the first year to "pay dues". The saving grace is that 25% utilization is the norm for BDCs, leaving the underutilized hackers time for side projects. Unethical? It's not more unethical for the hacker to work on side projects than it is for the guys in marketing to spend 6 hours per day on Break.com. #13: I discussed this in my reply to the other poster. As I said, it would only make sense in an extremely negative career situation. I was utterly wrong to imply that obfuscation would make sense in poor economic times without other extreme circumstances.
  - nostrademons 18y ago
    #12 - my issue isn't with the side projects done on company time. It's in doing the side projects on company time and then trying to unambiguously own them. Didn't you sign something to the effect of saying you wouldn't do this? Back when Diffle was a part-time project for me, I did bugfixes and stuff while I was at work. After all, I was often blocked waiting for another team member, and coding on some other project is a better way to keep skills sharp than surfing Reddit. But I threw away the code and started fresh when I left my day job and turned it into a full-time startup. Granted, part of this was for technical reasons (I found the code I'd done on nights & weekends basically sucked), but part was because the best way to unambiguously own the software was to not have written it on somebody else's dime. #13: For me, the appeal of programming is in having my code get used. Making it incomprehensible seems a good way of ensuring it won't be used in the future. In both of my last two employers, I put a premium on readability and documentation, even staying about a month longer than I'd hoped to at my last employer so that everything was documented, all known bugs were worked out, and all unit tests passed.

gruseom 18y ago

In bad economic times, try to make yourself irreplaceable, even if that means making your code difficult to use. If you feel the need to be unethical, you can hide time-delay bugs. Wow. What this sort of thing does to your soul is far worse than being laid off. Anyone who believes that they need a job more than they need integrity or self-respect has some work to do, and some fears to face. And making code obscure on purpose is unethical, and ethics that fluctuate with economic conditions aren't ethics to begin with. Edit: For a different perspective, I ran this by a couple of guys where I'm working. One of them offered a more succinct response: "Maybe if you did a good job, they'd keep you, [expletive deleted]."

time_management 18y ago
I made an error in using the phrase "in bad economic times". Economic conditions are actually fairly irrelevant, because one can be in a positive career situation despite a terrible economy, and vice versa. I meant to say "in a bad career situation" and, specifically, a truly terrible one. I know people who've been put in the humiliating position of being outsourced, while being expected to train the cheaply-hired replacements. That's the sort of situation in which obfuscation, in the hope of having, at least, the option to come on later as a consultant, may be an appropriate strategy. Why is it unethical? It's not nice, but it's not nice either (though not unethical) for the company to fire all the American staff and replace them with overseas workers at 1/3 of the cost. So I'll back down from "in bad economic times" because, really, obfuscation only makes sense in rare and outright terrible situations. I've never needed to do it, never done it, and I don't even know how often it works. What I'll say is this: I've known people who've been laid off recently, and one of the warning signs is when they are asked to suddenly place a high priority on clarifying previous work, and it's definitely not in their interest to do so.
- allenbrunson 18y ago
  perhaps you've heard that two wrongs don't make a right? if a company screws you over, you don't try to screw them back. that makes you just as bad as they are. the right thing to do is walk away, think about the warning signs that were almost certainly there from day one, and don't get into a situation like that again.
  - time_management 18y ago
    I'm not arguing that anyone should be screwing anyone over. Taking revenge for the sake of revenge is a monumental waste of time and energy, and can lead to disastrous career and legal consequences. In the situation I outlined-- of a person being outsourced, and told to train his cheap-hire replacements before being let go-- the reason he does a poor job of training them is not revenge. It's not an emotional decision, but a rational one: he wants leverage for the negotiation of severance and references, e.g. "Sure, I'll train my replacement, in exchange for [X]." It's neither ethical nor unethical; just business the way it's been done for centuries.

nostrademons 18y ago

I was all set to upvote this after the first point, and then I read the next two. Really, it's a job. There're things more important than a steady paycheck, and IMHO keeping your integrity and doing work you can feel proud of are among them.

time_management 18y ago
#12: This seems a bit vicious, but that's probably because you're spoiled by startups and tech companies, where there's a lot of work to be done, and a high proportion of it's actually interesting. At some of the big-box companies, neither of these is true. Some of the BDCs have beginning programmers doing office work during the first year to "pay dues". The saving grace is that 25% utilization is the norm for BDCs, leaving the underutilized hackers time for side projects. Unethical? It's not more unethical for the hacker to work on side projects than it is for the guys in marketing to spend 6 hours per day on Break.com. #13: I discussed this in my reply to the other poster. As I said, it would only make sense in an extremely negative career situation. I was utterly wrong to imply that obfuscation would make sense in poor economic times without other extreme circumstances.
- nostrademons 18y ago
  #12 - my issue isn't with the side projects done on company time. It's in doing the side projects on company time and then trying to unambiguously own them. Didn't you sign something to the effect of saying you wouldn't do this? Back when Diffle was a part-time project for me, I did bugfixes and stuff while I was at work. After all, I was often blocked waiting for another team member, and coding on some other project is a better way to keep skills sharp than surfing Reddit. But I threw away the code and started fresh when I left my day job and turned it into a full-time startup. Granted, part of this was for technical reasons (I found the code I'd done on nights & weekends basically sucked), but part was because the best way to unambiguously own the software was to not have written it on somebody else's dime. #13: For me, the appeal of programming is in having my code get used. Making it incomprehensible seems a good way of ensuring it won't be used in the future. In both of my last two employers, I put a premium on readability and documentation, even staying about a month longer than I'd hoped to at my last employer so that everything was documented, all known bugs were worked out, and all unit tests passed.