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the Infamous Brad ([identity profile] bradhicks.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] nancylebov 2010-08-20 03:18 pm (UTC)

Yep, you are beginning to discover the horror that is the computer industry as we now know it. Now let me fill in the last, missing, detail that makes the horror complete: at the end of the first month, the good programmer gets fired and the bad programmer gets promoted. Why? Because every time the manager walked past the good programmer's cube, the good programmer was staring into space or something equally unproductive, and he only wrote 10 to 12 lines of code a day. The bad programmer was visibly banging on the keyboard the whole time he was there, and (since the bad code that had to be removed counted towards his productivity stats) he was writing 80 to 100 lines of code a day or more.

When I went into computers, I assumed it would be the perfect field for me because the outcomes were binary and indisputable: either the (expletive) code works, or it doesn't. What ruined the industry for me was that managers lowered their expectations for what counted as "working code" and that my work was being judged, in general, by people who had no idea what the heck I did for a living. Now part of my general advice for kids thinking about a career is don't ever, ever, ever consider going into a line of work where your boss, and his boss, will have no idea what you do all day.

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