IT/Software career thread: Invert binary trees for dollars.

I'm putting my devs through hell right now with a legacy database platform conversion which will be followed up with a move from a private MSP in a data center in Vegas to Azure. Totally non SOP for the group as my team are 95% programmers but they are all hands on deck kind of moves. I know they are ready for it to be over so we can get back to running pure dev sprints.

If you're bored/disenchanted, have an earnest conversation. I know that's what I'd expect out of my employees and I'd respect them for it, even if there was nothing I could do to help the situation.

Yet another update for my friend. It looks like even though they offered him a lot of money, HR hasn't officially approved his salary yet. As a result, he's in limbo. Working for his intern rate while waiting for the internship duration to expire.
It seems that his friend that also works at the company (And started 9 months prior), is putting a bug in management's ear that he shouldn't have a part time position. Programmers are cheap, so why pay him so much? In reality, it's because he isn't capable of doing the work on his own, so he's hoping this won't be discovered by his friend having a part time gig that would cause the talker to have to solve more problems, which he doesn't have the knowledge to perform.

So, he's skating on ice, looking to see what's going to happen next.
I'll let you know if I hear anything more.

Agreed. Who says programmers are cheap by the way? You see what guys at Facebook make?

a c i d.f l y said:

Texas. I've been primarily wfh for the last 7 years. I have zero dealings with hardware.

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MozyPro is offsite backup software.

So far on my plate today is clarification on a part number. Emailed a guy to tell me when he's in his office.

Ah exciting

Edit: ooooh and an ethics course

ToeMissile said:

You are in one of the pricier areas as well. How long is your commute? I live 30-40 min north and while also not cheap up here, it isn't ridiculous like down there. We're still no Silicon Valley/SF.

IE is awful, I'd rather move back to Vegas.

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About 20-25 minutes in the morning about 35 in the evening. I could have bought a place in Irvine to make it a 5-10 minute commute both ways but I really disliked Irvine. Irvine is hot, flat and beige.

Noodleface said:

Agreed. Who says programmers are cheap by the way? You see what guys at Facebook make?

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It was his friend/co-worker that's trying to validate his own job that said it. The company primarily uses outside programmers from India and China or something for the majority of their software needs. They pay them a whopping $12/hour to program from distant lands. My friend is the only true programmer/coder that works for the company. And he wasn't able to get paid with the title I mentioned before because the company only allocates a small portion of funds for programming as a direct result of this.

So he needs to be hired as something else entirely, even though that technically wouldn't be his job. It's strange corporate BS, but it works. The issue is his friend/co-worker has been employed at the company 9 months prior to my friend beginning his internship. So he has a little more seniority, thus feels he can say stupid shit to the boss while justifying his position. The guy in question is purely an artist, and not even a great one. He doesn't use angles for 3D models. Instead, he eyeballs everything, so they don't all line up. My friend actually programmed something that made that guy 300% more productive last week, and he's still hearing bullshit about how coders aren't worth it.

The art from this guy is largely repetitive. Imagine you're looking at an item with 2 flaps and a buckle. Animation 1 is opening the first flap. Animation 2 is opening the first flap and the buckle. Animation 3 is opening the first flap, the buckle, then the second flap.
My friend streamlined this by making it so that opening the first flap is one video. Opening the buckle is a separate video and opening the 2nd flap is yet another. Then he can have each video run one after another, that way you don't need a single video to do all 3 actions.

He should get out. Don't work at a place that outsources coding to India. They are the WORST programmers.

Having a BS Job title that alludes to different kinda work is fucking cancer for his resume.

"Yeah, I was titled Sanitation engineer, but I coded all day, PROMISE!"

Sorry, I meant the companies that farm out to Indian engineers at $12/hr. The ones we had that were in India but part of the company seemed good. Same with Chinese. Although their practices were weird.

I told him what you guys said about how it's detrimental to his resume to continue working for the company. He said that he still owns the software that he's written for himself personally that he can show to future employers. I don't know if that helps at all, but that's what he said anyway.

Titles don't mean shit and most people in this industry stopped paying attention to them decades ago when the large wave of next-next-finish system "admins" and "engineers" hit the scene. You should be able to tell pretty quickly if someone has the experience to succeed in any given role, so there is no reason to worry about what they were called at their last job.

Ya most companies if you used any of their hardware or did anything on company time they own the software. Some places are even like Lend says where if you do any work on the development while still employed at the company they own it. The latter is harder to enforce than the previous.

Not the software he made for the company. He does a lot of programs on his own, though.

Xarpolis said:

Not the software he made for the company. He does a lot of programs on his own, though.

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Hell need to check his contract. They may still own it