Working in Development: Leaving sounds like a great decision.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Working in Development: Leaving sounds like a great decision.

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Phobeste: Apr 9, 2006; never, like, count out Touchdown Tom, man

Emacs for me is just what I'm used to and what my reflexes do and it doesn't hurt that it's very good. Also very easily extendable, all that jazz. At some point I should figure out how to get it more IDE-like though. I have to use eclipse for a couple boring reasons right now and boy does it suck goat rear end to use. The problem is it's all so goddamn mouse focused. And it's tough to do what leper khan said and build in emacs keys - you can get a pretty basic version though - but the thing with emacs is it's so extensible and so equally easy to invoke basic editing commands and more advanced things there's a ton of stuff I'm used to that I just won't get in an emacs plugin for eclipse. Registers. Rectangular selections. Magit, the only good git interface to ever exist. I think it's probably easier to turn something like emacs, which for me is very ergonomic and easy to use, into an IDE than try and customize every little corner of a complete pile of usability trash like eclipse.

# ? Jun 22, 2017 12:57

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# ? May 12, 2024 13:50

Keetron: Sep 26, 2008; Check out my enormous testicles in my TFLC log!

Curious but what do you need to do that you have to use eclipse for and not something else?

# ? Jun 22, 2017 13:22

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

Xerophyte posted:

There are people who prefer a style where they write things like
C++ code:
// Using " " for a space, "--->" for a tab:
namespace foo {
--->void bar() {
--->--->int                    parameter_number_0         = 2;
--->--->duration<milliseconds> yet_another_cool_parameter = fnord();
--->--->some_very_long_function_name(parameter_number_0,
--->--->                             yet_another_cool_parameter,
--->--->                             oh_dear_this_thing_takes_a_lot_parameters,
--->--->                             &this_one_is_an_output_for_some_reason);
--->}
}
The intent is to have indentation that's variable depending on the individual's tab width while keeping a fixed column alignment for parameters, declarations and whatever else they want to keep aligned. It's not something I'd do personally, but there's support for it in some formatting tools so whatever floats their boat, I suppose.

E: Okay, using "." for visible spaces was a bad idea in code tags, let's not do that.

Sorry for the slight necro, but what I meant was at a previous Unix shop we had various engineers with their .vimrc file of either:
Set tabstop=4
Or
Set tabstop=2

And some that didn't give a gently caress. (Default 8.). At such a place a mix of tabs and space for formatting would mean absolutely dick all.

# ? Jun 22, 2017 14:38

necrobobsledder: Mar 21, 2005; Lay down your soul to the gods rock 'n roll; Nap Ghost

In situations like that, I thought that modelines like

code:

// vim: set ts=2

would take care of a lot of those problems. The hard part would be enforcing that in files, of course, but it'd be easier to just add that in there or do some messing around with git hooks to insert and remove it for every file in a repo matching a regex or something.

# ? Jun 22, 2017 14:44

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

necrobobsledder posted:

In situations like that, I thought that modelines like
code:
// vim: set ts=2
would take care of a lot of those problems. The hard part would be enforcing that in files, of course, but it'd be easier to just add that in there or do some messing around with git hooks to insert and remove it for every file in a repo matching a regex or something.

The people here were so bearded that there would be a revolt if you overwrote their bespoke settings. I'm not saying it was a good place at all but it was a place. It's why I think the whole drat debate it such a waste of energy when there are actual problems to solve.

# ? Jun 22, 2017 16:46

good jovi: Dec 11, 2000; 'm pro-dickgirl, and I VOTE!

The greatest innovation in modern programming is baking in a single correct indentation method to a language's culture from the get-go.

# ? Jun 22, 2017 16:57

Vulture Culture: Jul 14, 2003; I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

good jovi posted:

The greatest innovation in modern programming is baking in a single correct indentation method to a language's culture from the get-go.

literally one of the reasons I write Go

# ? Jun 22, 2017 21:44

necrobobsledder: Mar 21, 2005; Lay down your soul to the gods rock 'n roll; Nap Ghost

Yeah, as much as people hate Go the language, I think they're missing 90% of the point when people talk about stuff like missing generics instead of the non-language advantages that it has over other industry languages.

# ? Jun 23, 2017 01:13

My Rhythmic Crotch: Jan 13, 2011

You may remember me as the guy with the boss that everyone hated, part 1 and part 2. Well, he is no longer my boss. There was a shakeup and I now report to a lady who is very nice, but also horrible, in a completely different way. I'll just hit the high notes for now.

- The new boss lady is very big on cross-functional teams, so we have some teammates who are more like technicians or users of our tools. The problem is that instead of providing any valuable feedback, all they do is inject their business process baggage into my daily workflow. A 5 minute task turns into 2 hours of playing 20 Questions over contrived nonsense. It's really one guy that is the main offender here, so some improvements might be possible, but still. It just destroys my motivation.

- With the old boss and old team, I had made some headway in getting a somewhat sensible development process in place. I'd say we were like 50% there. On the new team, it's like starting from scratch. Everyone is doing their own thing, duplicating efforts, there are no requirements, no design, just chaos. The good thing about the new boss is that she doesn't care what's in our software stack, but she also doesn't seem to care about requirements or design or anything. I need mangement to commit and say "we're doing X, and building Y, and I can defend the decision to do that" but she's just like "I'm here to facilitate, you guys decide". So yeah, we are "agile" in the sense that we have standups, sprints, blah blah blah, but real actual progress feels extraordinarily slow.

- I have a pile of tickets in my backlog that have so much political baggage that I cannot close them, delete them, or work on them. They're in limbo. I'm sure this happens else where but I find it really annoying.

- So much of the new platform that I built has undocumented business logic from the legacy platform, and the people who initially requested that logic are long gone. So I find that I'm re-litigating the same few battles over and over again, and often times my final answer is "the reason why it's that way has been lost to the sands of time, sorry".

In short, this job is a lot less fun than it used to be, and I feel way less productive. And it really should not be like that... we have "unlimited" vacation, and a boss who doesn't give a drat about much of anything. I dunno.

# ? Jun 23, 2017 04:09

Mniot: May 22, 2003; Not the one you know

My Rhythmic Crotch posted:

There was a shakeup and I now report to a lady who is very nice, but also horrible, in a completely different way. I'll just hit the high notes for now.

An ideal boss would fix every problem before you even noticed it. Other than that, I'm not seeing how this boss is that bad?

I'm wondering if you've brought any of these issues up (like "you want me to do X. That should take me 5 minutes but if I work with Bill he's going to want to spend an entire day planning it out. I think we should only spend time planning tasks that are estimated to take more than a day. Do you think that's a rule we could try?")

Also, when you have 4 different complaints at once it's just too much. You have to pick one and spend a couple months pushing people to fix it. Or just quit and hope the next job is better.

quote:

- I have a pile of tickets in my backlog that have so much political baggage that I cannot close them, delete them, or work on them. They're in limbo. I'm sure this happens else where but I find it really annoying.

I mark these "needs more info" or "needs validation" and assign them to my boss. Handling political baggage is what he's there for.

# ? Jun 23, 2017 05:09

leper khan: Dec 28, 2010; Honest to god thinks Half Life 2 is a bad game. But at least he likes Monster Hunter.

Phobeste posted:

Emacs for me is just what I'm used to and what my reflexes do and it doesn't hurt that it's very good. Also very easily extendable, all that jazz. At some point I should figure out how to get it more IDE-like though. I have to use eclipse for a couple boring reasons right now and boy does it suck goat rear end to use. The problem is it's all so goddamn mouse focused. And it's tough to do what leper khan said and build in emacs keys - you can get a pretty basic version though - but the thing with emacs is it's so extensible and so equally easy to invoke basic editing commands and more advanced things there's a ton of stuff I'm used to that I just won't get in an emacs plugin for eclipse. Registers. Rectangular selections. Magit, the only good git interface to ever exist. I think it's probably easier to turn something like emacs, which for me is very ergonomic and easy to use, into an IDE than try and customize every little corner of a complete pile of usability trash like eclipse.

I think you misunderstood what I said. I would never recommend using eclipse the ide. Forwarding its language parsing features to some useful editor (e.g. via eclim) is cool and good though.

Pull eclipse into vim/emacs; not the other way.

# ? Jun 23, 2017 05:34

Bongo Bill: Jan 17, 2012

My Rhythmic Crotch posted:

- I have a pile of tickets in my backlog that have so much political baggage that I cannot close them, delete them, or work on them. They're in limbo. I'm sure this happens else where but I find it really annoying.

Have you got a "blocked" tag or something that you can apply to them?

# ? Jun 23, 2017 05:59

Keetron: Sep 26, 2008; Check out my enormous testicles in my TFLC log!

# ? Jun 23, 2017 10:24

Skandranon: Sep 6, 2008; fucking stupid, dont listen to me

My Rhythmic Crotch posted:

You may remember me as the guy with the boss that everyone hated, part 1 and part 2. Well, he is no longer my boss. There was a shakeup and I now report to a lady who is very nice, but also horrible, in a completely different way. I'll just hit the high notes for now.

- The new boss lady is very big on cross-functional teams, so we have some teammates who are more like technicians or users of our tools. The problem is that instead of providing any valuable feedback, all they do is inject their business process baggage into my daily workflow. A 5 minute task turns into 2 hours of playing 20 Questions over contrived nonsense. It's really one guy that is the main offender here, so some improvements might be possible, but still. It just destroys my motivation.

- With the old boss and old team, I had made some headway in getting a somewhat sensible development process in place. I'd say we were like 50% there. On the new team, it's like starting from scratch. Everyone is doing their own thing, duplicating efforts, there are no requirements, no design, just chaos. The good thing about the new boss is that she doesn't care what's in our software stack, but she also doesn't seem to care about requirements or design or anything. I need mangement to commit and say "we're doing X, and building Y, and I can defend the decision to do that" but she's just like "I'm here to facilitate, you guys decide". So yeah, we are "agile" in the sense that we have standups, sprints, blah blah blah, but real actual progress feels extraordinarily slow.

- I have a pile of tickets in my backlog that have so much political baggage that I cannot close them, delete them, or work on them. They're in limbo. I'm sure this happens else where but I find it really annoying.

- So much of the new platform that I built has undocumented business logic from the legacy platform, and the people who initially requested that logic are long gone. So I find that I'm re-litigating the same few battles over and over again, and often times my final answer is "the reason why it's that way has been lost to the sands of time, sorry".

In short, this job is a lot less fun than it used to be, and I feel way less productive. And it really should not be like that... we have "unlimited" vacation, and a boss who doesn't give a drat about much of anything. I dunno.

To quote Littlefinger, "Chaos is a ladder". If she's honest about the "facilitating, you decide" part, now is your chance to grab a bunch of authority. Make a strong case for proper requirements gathering, limiting scope, setting expectations, etc. If she doesn't know how to do these things, she will probably be relieved to find you are willing to shoulder the burden and handle it for her.

Also, if you DON'T do this, someone else will and they will suck and make you even more upset, so really you should do this.

# ? Jun 23, 2017 17:45

ChickenWing: Jul 22, 2010

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNG1a--SIlk

Good video about good code review

# ? Jun 23, 2017 17:59

a foolish pianist: May 6, 2007; (bi)cyclic mutation

I love Prolog so much. Did a bunch of my masters NLP work with it. It's such a shame no one in industry uses it or even cares that it exists.

# ? Jun 23, 2017 19:17

Edison was a dick: Apr 3, 2010; direct current only

a foolish pianist posted:

I love Prolog so much. Did a bunch of my masters NLP work with it. It's such a shame no one in industry uses it or even cares that it exists.

I've heard from someone that works there that Planixs use Prolog. Can't say I'd recommend working with them though.

# ? Jun 23, 2017 19:22

sarehu: Apr 20, 2007; (call/cc call/cc)

a foolish pianist posted:

I love Prolog so much. Did a bunch of my masters NLP work with it. It's such a shame no one in industry uses it or even cares that it exists.

What would they use it for?

# ? Jun 24, 2017 01:02

My Rhythmic Crotch: Jan 13, 2011

Skandranon posted:

To quote Littlefinger, "Chaos is a ladder". If she's honest about the "facilitating, you decide" part, now is your chance to grab a bunch of authority. Make a strong case for proper requirements gathering, limiting scope, setting expectations, etc. If she doesn't know how to do these things, she will probably be relieved to find you are willing to shoulder the burden and handle it for her.

Also, if you DON'T do this, someone else will and they will suck and make you even more upset, so really you should do this.

I agree with all of this. The trouble is motivation. I'm not sure I have sufficient shits to give to actually attempt herding all these cats.

# ? Jun 24, 2017 02:51

Skandranon: Sep 6, 2008; fucking stupid, dont listen to me

My Rhythmic Crotch posted:

I agree with all of this. The trouble is motivation. I'm not sure I have sufficient shits to give to actually attempt herding all these cats.

Well, then, you should find another job where you will have some motivation. Otherwise you face a slow death at your current job, and THEN finding another job, probably a crappier one than if you started earlier, because you'll have less of a time horizon to get it.

# ? Jun 24, 2017 03:01

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Hey guys I'm a year and a half in the field now and I got a stable job, but I'm kinda looking around now if there's more interesting stuff, and more to learn in an IT company instead of in a big corporate that happens to have a decent IT department. If I don't find anything interesting I'm also fine with staying where I am.

What percentage of salary increase could I feasibly aim for if switching jobs?

# ? Jun 24, 2017 09:51

B-Nasty: May 25, 2005

Carbon dioxide posted:

What percentage of salary increase could I feasibly aim for if switching jobs?

There are a million variables that go into this calculation, but usually it will come down to what you're making now vs. what your market's average for the type of position.

It's not unheard of for guys with a few years of experience jumping 20-30% between jobs, usually rapidly falling off once you cross the low-6-figgie mark. Outside of super-hot markets (e.g. SV, SF, NYC), it's pretty unlikely that a company is going to bump your pay from, say, $100K to $130K in one jump unless you have a highly desirable skill set.

You need to do some research, and be hopeful but realistic. I've definitely seen people rejected for asking way too much compared to the market average.

# ? Jun 24, 2017 15:13

fantastic in plastic: Jun 15, 2007; The Socialist Workers Party's newspaper proved to be a tough sell to downtown businessmen.

Anecdotally I know people who've swung 60%+ by switching employers, but those changes also involved moving from a relative backwater to a tech hub and also from FTE to contracting.

If you're making less than your_city_average_market_value you can probably get at least that by switching employers and negotiating well.

# ? Jun 26, 2017 06:07

Gucci Loafers: May 20, 2006; Ask yourself, do you really want to talk to pair of really nice gaudy shoes?

fantastic in plastic posted:

Anecdotally I know people who've swung 60%+ by switching employers, but those changes also involved moving from a relative backwater to a tech hub and also from FTE to contracting.

If you're making less than your_city_average_market_value you can probably get at least that by switching employers and negotiating well.

Pretty much.

The best way to increase compensation move to a different company but older generations balk at this sort of action.

# ? Jun 26, 2017 08:38

leper khan: Dec 28, 2010; Honest to god thinks Half Life 2 is a bad game. But at least he likes Monster Hunter.

fantastic in plastic posted:

Anecdotally I know people who've swung 60%+ by switching employers, but those changes also involved moving from a relative backwater to a tech hub and also from FTE to contracting.

If you're making less than your_city_average_market_value you can probably get at least that by switching employers and negotiating well.

One of my coworkers jumped 100%+ total comp (~40-50% base) by jumping to big tech.

# ? Jun 26, 2017 13:31

Volmarias: Dec 31, 2002; EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

I managed a massive compensation increase by being hideously underpaid when I first started working in my field. The HR person actually laughed when I asked if they could do better than what I was making.

So, if you want that 100% jump, just makes sure you're being paid 40% of what you should be.

# ? Jun 26, 2017 13:42

necrobobsledder: Mar 21, 2005; Lay down your soul to the gods rock 'n roll; Nap Ghost

I think one of the engineers that moved from where I work now to Netflix went up 200%+ given he was paid mediocre for even the local market and Atlanta, while a large metro area, is not a tech employer hub at all.

My first job hop after I went from a junior engineer to "architect" (long story) was about a 85% comp jump and that was between Seattle and the Bay Area.

# ? Jun 26, 2017 13:44

lifg: Dec 4, 2000; <this tag left blank>; Muldoon

Volmarias posted:

I managed a massive compensation increase by being hideously underpaid when I first started working in my field. The HR person actually laughed when I asked if they could do better than what I was making.

So, if you want that 100% jump, just makes sure you're being paid 40% of what you should be.

Same.

My first job was at a small web dev company that specialized in hiring students right out of college who didn't know any better. No one lasted longer than two years. (And the code base reflected it.)

My second job was Bank of America.

# ? Jun 26, 2017 14:58

smackfu: Jun 7, 2004

Yeah it's not unusual for people at a company for a while to become underpaid over time. This year nobody get raises because of the economy, another year you don't get a raise because your department budget etc. Or you don't get promotions over time, and get stuck in the middle of the allowed salary band.

# ? Jun 26, 2017 15:00

Keetron: Sep 26, 2008; Check out my enormous testicles in my TFLC log!

Yeah, in effect I make about the same as I did in 2013 but admittedly I was overpaid for a while. Now with near-zero inflation it did not matter very much, but it does sting.
Let's stay away from the avg relative household income over the last 50 years, that is depressing poo poo for most Americans.

# ? Jun 26, 2017 15:27

necrobobsledder: Mar 21, 2005; Lay down your soul to the gods rock 'n roll; Nap Ghost

Personally, I make less than I did in 2013 because I moved to a different region and because I switched industry verticals away from rent-seeking companies.

Has anyone worked in a place where developers write tests for each others' code and there's very few QA staff? Just wondering how well it works for people to be part-time SDETs.

# ? Jun 26, 2017 19:39

fantastic in plastic: Jun 15, 2007; The Socialist Workers Party's newspaper proved to be a tough sell to downtown businessmen.

necrobobsledder posted:

Has anyone worked in a place where developers write tests for each others' code and there's very few QA staff? Just wondering how well it works for people to be part-time SDETs.

I've worked in a place where there was very few QA staff. We never wrote tests for each others' code because there were no QA people who knew about automated testing and very few devs who were at all proficient at testing. Occasionally engineers were asked to do manual QA, which was deadly poison for morale and caused senior devs to start quitting.

I imagine that writing tests for each other's code would do the same thing, plus cause vicious fighting between developers in the meantime.

# ? Jun 26, 2017 21:55

geeves: Sep 16, 2004

necrobobsledder posted:

Has anyone worked in a place where developers write tests for each others' code and there's very few QA staff? Just wondering how well it works for people to be part-time SDETs.

Yes.

Run.

# ? Jun 26, 2017 22:06

Pixelboy: Sep 13, 2005; Now, I know what you're thinking...

necrobobsledder posted:

Personally, I make less than I did in 2013 because I moved to a different region and because I switched industry verticals away from rent-seeking companies.

Has anyone worked in a place where developers write tests for each others' code and there's very few QA staff? Just wondering how well it works for people to be part-time SDETs.

Generally, here - engineers are responsible for writing their own test cases / unit tests. Pulls will generally be rejected if it appears there isn't sufficient test coverage.... which is all verifiable w/ tools. Engineers will commonly extend test cases when they modify someone else's code.

It's not... magic.

If someone is getting pissy about people editing "their code", there's probably something far more sinister at play.

# ? Jun 26, 2017 22:30

Iverron: May 13, 2012

I've jumped roughly 40% in the last year as a result of working at a terrible employer that panic raised me when another guy quit and then jumping 6 months later when I'd had enough as well.

Could have easily been making +40% a year or more ago if I was smart though.

necrobobsledder posted:

Has anyone worked in a place where developers write tests for each others' code and there's very few QA staff? Just wondering how well it works for people to be part-time SDETs.

I just left this and it was an awful couple of years. Top of my list when considering future employers.

Iverron fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Jun 27, 2017

# ? Jun 27, 2017 02:27

venutolo: Jun 4, 2003; Dinosaur Gum

Iverron posted:

I just left this and it was an awful couple of years. Top of my list when considering future employers.

Would you elaborate on this? What did it involve? I've previously not heard of this practice.

# ? Jun 27, 2017 02:54

New Yorp New Yorp: Jul 18, 2003; Only in Kenya.; Pillbug

venutolo posted:

Would you elaborate on this? What did it involve? I've previously not heard of this practice.

It's awful because testing shouldn't be an afterthought that you do for someone else's code, it should be an integral, ongoing part of the day-to-day development workflow that helps inform your design decisions and helps you catch problems early on and avoid costly rework late in the game.

Having someone else write tests for the code you just wrote means that there's going to be a ton of back-and-forth, "was this intentional, or did you miss something?" and missed corner cases because the person writing the tests is coming into a big mass of already-"done" code that's more resistant to refactoring for/because of tests.

# ? Jun 27, 2017 03:15

Che Delilas: Nov 23, 2009; FREE TIBET WEED

necrobobsledder posted:

Personally, I make less than I did in 2013 because I moved to a different region and because I switched industry verticals away from rent-seeking companies.

Has anyone worked in a place where developers write tests for each others' code and there's very few QA staff? Just wondering how well it works for people to be part-time SDETs.

We're expected to write unit tests for our own code at my company, not each other's, but we don't have any dedicated QA staff and we do functional testing for our own poo poo and sometimes each other's. It works out one of two ways.

1. Your team (all devs) writes enough tests and do enough code review and QA so that releases land fairly well, and people (sales/marketing/product management) complain you aren't getting enough done.
2. Your team skimps on testing and QA to get more features out the door, releases faceplant regularly, your customers become your QA department, and people (customers/customer support) complain you keep breaking their poo poo.

Whether 1 or 2 wins depends on the clout of the people involved, and how long it's been since you had a particularly bad #2 (HEH).

At my company we tend to lean toward 2 because we have a million features various people want at any given time. As devs we don't really get any direct flak for problems that stem from this way of operating. At most, our direct boss asks us how we can be better about the quality of our releases, and the answer the entire team gives him is always the same: We need to slow down, and we need QA from people who don't know the minute details of a feature's implementation, because we have an inherent, unavoidable bias and don't WANT to break our own code, as much as we realize it has to be done.

Even without blame, it's a source of constant, low level stress for most of us, myself included. I wouldn't recommend 'understaffed with no plans to change that any time soon" when looking for an employer, in general.

# ? Jun 27, 2017 03:23

Mniot: May 22, 2003; Not the one you know

necrobobsledder posted:

Has anyone worked in a place where developers write tests for each others' code and there's very few QA staff? Just wondering how well it works for people to be part-time SDETs.

Writing tests for someone else's code seems weird. Everywhere I've been, you write tests for your own code and include those with the change. If you skip the tests or write bad ones, that should be caught in review.

The QA people I worked with have two types of roles: more SDET-y is when they're writing higher-level automation. Like, I write some tests that shows that my new endpoint returns the correct result, but they're writing Selenium tests to simulate the end-user experience. Or they're using Tsung to stress test. Or they're correlating performance metrics with code changes.

Less SDET-y is when they're doing manual testing. Sometimes that's because of automation gaps or because it involves some hardware component or Apple not letting us simulate much. Other times they're just exploring because they've got a knack for breaking things.

I've run into more than a couple managers who talk about eliminating QA which seems like a bad idea to me because I don't see how they plan to fill the above roles.

# ? Jun 27, 2017 03:38

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# ? May 12, 2024 13:50

JewKiller 3000: Nov 28, 2006; by Lowtax

New Yorp New Yorp posted:

Having someone else write tests for the code you just wrote means that there's going to be a ton of back-and-forth, "was this intentional, or did you miss something?" and missed corner cases because the person writing the tests is coming into a big mass of already-"done" code that's more resistant to refactoring for/because of tests.

on the other hand, having yourself write the tests for the code you just wrote usually means you write the same code again, only backwards

i'm not saying you shouldn't write tests for your code, but it pays to have an outside perspective too, and the back-and-forth is precisely why

# ? Jun 27, 2017 04:10

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Working in Development: Leaving sounds like a great decision.

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