3 ms·

How did you find so many bad jobs (they sound horrendous)? More importantly, why did you take them, let alone keep them?

MrFoof 17y ago
Inexperience, and a tendency to be a "saver". I've since learned how to read between the lines, ask a lot of questions hiring managers aren't expecting to be asked, and to request interviews with team members if it isn't offered (and refusing the position if my request is refused). Additionally, you'll hear enough horror stories if you talk to those who work in IT departments in regular companies that aren't doing anything interesting because no one's been able to present a solid business case as to why IT can add value or affect the bottom line. Though sometimes the works is simply gummed up by political battles and everyone's afraid to go to HR or to make an attempt to knock down those walls in fear of losing their job. What you read about on HN is what you'll see at the right-end of the bell curve, and often isn't representative of your average company. Most of these issues were driven by politics. In a lot of situations (electronic hand-crafting, manual bug-tracking) I was able to drive change from within. Granted, they took months. However people were afraid of opposing the head of QA because A) she was a lifelong friend of the founder's life B) she was predisposed to think all developers were idiots C) they weren't equipped to traverse that delicate political minefield without at least losing a leg in the process. The scalability/performance issue one? This was at a private sales-oriented company with a billion dollars in annual revenue. Again, mired in politics. Their entire e-commerce system was built by guys who were completely green at the time, and they hacked it together. He was best buds with the CIO, and was... a pretty passionate guy, and very defensive. The average person with a spouse and kids to support didn't feel it was worth risking their job to improve the architecture if they couldn't present a decent argument and it came across as hurting his feelings. Me? I spent far too many lunches talking with developers, guys in network ops and analysts to come up with ways to cache data and partition functionality so the thing could handle the existing load and scale in the future. It took buy-in from stubborn developers who normally pointed the fingers at the database or the servers, network ops guys who pointed fingers at the developers, and a testy data architect who had a serious row with the development manager. I've learned a lot from those experiences, especially the social problems that can exist in team-based development, and how to present solutions where even the most stubborn-minded individual can "get it". I've also learned that these problems exist nearly everywhere, just more so in some environments than others, and when you can solve these problems and when it's instead best to learn and move on.
- erlanger 17y ago
  > "However people were afraid of opposing the head of QA because A) she was a lifelong friend of the founder's life" You had a biographer leading QA? Sorry, couldn't resist.
  - MrFoof 17y ago
    life = wife
    - erlanger 17y ago
      Man, that makes it even harder to affect change because she literally has the guy by the balls.
- DenisM 17y ago
  BTW, your profile lacks contact information despite you asking to be contacted. :-)
  - MrFoof 17y ago
    This should be corrected (thought I updated it a while back, info is certainly there). If not, send a tweet to @robgomes.
- derefr 17y ago
  It seems like the general solution to these problems is "teach the boss that their friend may just suck."

MrFoof 17y ago

Inexperience, and a tendency to be a "saver". I've since learned how to read between the lines, ask a lot of questions hiring managers aren't expecting to be asked, and to request interviews with team members if it isn't offered (and refusing the position if my request is refused). Additionally, you'll hear enough horror stories if you talk to those who work in IT departments in regular companies that aren't doing anything interesting because no one's been able to present a solid business case as to why IT can add value or affect the bottom line. Though sometimes the works is simply gummed up by political battles and everyone's afraid to go to HR or to make an attempt to knock down those walls in fear of losing their job. What you read about on HN is what you'll see at the right-end of the bell curve, and often isn't representative of your average company. Most of these issues were driven by politics. In a lot of situations (electronic hand-crafting, manual bug-tracking) I was able to drive change from within. Granted, they took months. However people were afraid of opposing the head of QA because A) she was a lifelong friend of the founder's life B) she was predisposed to think all developers were idiots C) they weren't equipped to traverse that delicate political minefield without at least losing a leg in the process. The scalability/performance issue one? This was at a private sales-oriented company with a billion dollars in annual revenue. Again, mired in politics. Their entire e-commerce system was built by guys who were completely green at the time, and they hacked it together. He was best buds with the CIO, and was... a pretty passionate guy, and very defensive. The average person with a spouse and kids to support didn't feel it was worth risking their job to improve the architecture if they couldn't present a decent argument and it came across as hurting his feelings. Me? I spent far too many lunches talking with developers, guys in network ops and analysts to come up with ways to cache data and partition functionality so the thing could handle the existing load and scale in the future. It took buy-in from stubborn developers who normally pointed the fingers at the database or the servers, network ops guys who pointed fingers at the developers, and a testy data architect who had a serious row with the development manager. I've learned a lot from those experiences, especially the social problems that can exist in team-based development, and how to present solutions where even the most stubborn-minded individual can "get it". I've also learned that these problems exist nearly everywhere, just more so in some environments than others, and when you can solve these problems and when it's instead best to learn and move on.

erlanger 17y ago
> "However people were afraid of opposing the head of QA because A) she was a lifelong friend of the founder's life" You had a biographer leading QA? Sorry, couldn't resist.
- MrFoof 17y ago
  life = wife
  - erlanger 17y ago
    Man, that makes it even harder to affect change because she literally has the guy by the balls.
DenisM 17y ago
BTW, your profile lacks contact information despite you asking to be contacted. :-)
- MrFoof 17y ago
  This should be corrected (thought I updated it a while back, info is certainly there). If not, send a tweet to @robgomes.
derefr 17y ago
It seems like the general solution to these problems is "teach the boss that their friend may just suck."