So you, therefore, wanted to be a programmer ...

    BY SCOTT C. REYNOLDS

    As far as you remember, computers and electronics attracted you. By the time you came of age, you were rightly on the path of a professional programmer. The first Internet gold rush was in full swing, and you, nerds, were everywhere called the heroes of the New Economy on the covers of Fast Company and Wired magazines, and nerds were rowing money with a shovel, doing what you like to do.

    You expelled from vocational school and started looking for work in a startup. Because dropping out of school and creating Something Great is what the great Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have been repeating about this as a spell. Companies recruited everyone who at least somehow understood Boolean logic and was eager to create, and PTU deductors were not averse to doing more, receiving less if they were given options for the salary [the right to receive part of the employer's shares for a nominal amount, when and if they will be in price in the market].

    So you got a job on an e-commerce site selling parts that you purchased from wholesalers and delivered to customers. You just fell into the thick of the Dotcom boom, working for a company that embodied everything that that era was:
    • Find a quasi-legal niche that may not exist
    • Exploit programmers who want to be on the cutting edge of progress
    • Income! however not for long (optional item)
    • To sell or somehow dissolve the office
    • Repeat as much as you want or until the state takes an interest in you

    Your first project was to create an algorithm for a site that generates a selling price based on a delivery method. This was your first hint that everything is not as healthy as it seems. The second hint would be a raid on the office of representatives of the authorities if you were at that time, and not at an interview in search of a better job.

    It turned out that your office did not actually ship the goods to customers. She sold goods on the website and took the money, but the corresponding order was not sent to the supplier, unless the buyer threatened with a court. For that time, it was an acceptable business model, well, you know, minus those things that are illegal.

    When you came to work the next day, the office was completely empty, only the head of the company was in the copier room, his sleeves were rolled up, and he fed an industrial paper shredder with the ease of a man who knew a lot about it.

    Your next job was developing medical software. It already seemed like a more legal business, and you were glad to work on a product that really has a real relationship with people. They told you that you will use the latest technology to create the next generation of electronic records of medical records. You came to work on the first day with trepidation from the opportunity to dive and already write code. Instead, your schedule looked like this:

    9:00 - 10:30 Meeting of the working group for current issues
    11:00 SCRUM midday meeting
    12:30 - 14:00 Meeting on product demonstration and architecture
    14:00 - 15:30 Halo 3 tournament
    16:00 - 18:00 Skype video chat with Hindu colleagues from Bangalore

    And every next day passed exactly the same. It was expected that the programmer in this startup would work hard at night, actually getting down to business in the late afternoon, and work until he was already visible behind a pile of bottles of soda and pizza bags. And you worked hard and worked hard, adding features for features, trying every day to surpass yourself for a demo product. On New Year's Eve, you opened a can of beer, raised a toast without speaking to anyone specifically, and again buried yourself in the monitor. You should have released a product. Everything was concluded in the release of the product. Nobody, in essence, determined what exactly was supposed to happen, but the hope was that if you come up with a bunch of features, then someone will be able to make a selling product out of this.

    Three years passed as one continuous day. Holidays and weekends, even nights, were artificial entities meaningful only to other people. You became 12 kg heavier and one girl lighter, and neither this nor that had any impact on your work. You took responsibility for the success of the company, your bunch of options moved you beyond the limits of the reasonable in self-giving. Future wealth and recognition are worth today's effort, at least as you told yourself.

    And then the day came when the product was officially launched, but something is not heard fanfare. No bonus. There is no feeling of satisfaction. It was just a silent launch with one beta user. You did not know what to do with yourself that day, you just sat and periodically ran a request to the base to see what they were doing there. Answer: almost nothing. And what they do, do wrong. They found glitches! They found ways to circumvent all your carefully crafted rules and validations. Not because they were cool hackers ... they were just dumb. They clicked on things they shouldn't have clicked on. They introduced things that should not have been introduced. They did not read simple instructions. They did not listen at the training. They personally insulted you by using your software so badly.

    In the field “Enter the number of analyzes:” they knocked “five analyzes”

    In the field “Insurance number:” they entered “he does not have it, because he was illegal ”

    Instead of clicking the“ Create a new patient record ”button, they changed the information in one single record in the database, constantly saving it.

    Then the calls from the sales department began, demanding to explain why the system is so crooked, and why it was written for so long that it clearly did not work.

    You had no choice but to answer a bug report and issue patches that added nothing to the system, but only led the user by your hand on your system. You wondered aloud how these people survived to this day without accidentally drinking whiteness. When new customers arrived, you hoped that the work that you had done for the previous ones would allow them to successfully use the system. But alas.

    One special case after another piled up in a pile, and your life soon became filled with even more specific and annoying changes to your beautiful program, until it took on such a form that you yourself stopped recognizing it. You hated your users, even though the money started to drip, and everyone began to see tangible results of several years of work. You wanted to quit to do something else instead, but you hit. The money was not very big, but better than you could get somewhere else. You would lose your options if you quit, and that would erase all your efforts, and you would no longer be able to flirt so hard with a pretty girl from the sales department with whom you have a secret love.

    So you stayed and supported your software, hating the users you already wanted to physically hack. A pretty girl from the sales department got engaged and left. Your options by this time began to cost you more than the company's shares on the market, and so it remains. Ten years later, you found yourself managing a team of programmers, unable to do the only thing you really wanted: to code. Your job began to take young programmers who love what they do, and squeeze the soul out of them, motivating them to follow your path. You hated yourself and your work every day, but decided that you were too old to do anything else. You got a taste for whiskey and started to seriously engage in your pension contribution, hoping that cirrhosis of the liver will come earlier,

    (original www.mcsweeneys.net/links/dreamjobs/dreamjobs5.html )

    Note: the author has a series about different professions. Well, everything ends badly everywhere.

    Also popular now: