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New Job with Shitty Software
Legionnaired
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Started a job with a .com.
They're a software firm, and their software is crap.
We're talking 9000 line files with a bunch of subroutines scattered throughout and no test cases crap.
It took me 8 hours to get it set up on my local machine for development.
... I guess I grit my teeth and get through this - but I got the impression from hearing people talk over the course of the first couple of days that this place goes through people pretty quick. Maybe it's the code base, maybe it's the company culture of "perform or GTFO."
I don't want to walk into the bosses office tomorrow and suggest a re-write, but I don't want to get canned after 90 days because I can't navigate monolithic shit either....
Advice, or generally encouraging anecdotes?
They're a software firm, and their software is crap.
We're talking 9000 line files with a bunch of subroutines scattered throughout and no test cases crap.
It took me 8 hours to get it set up on my local machine for development.
... I guess I grit my teeth and get through this - but I got the impression from hearing people talk over the course of the first couple of days that this place goes through people pretty quick. Maybe it's the code base, maybe it's the company culture of "perform or GTFO."
I don't want to walk into the bosses office tomorrow and suggest a re-write, but I don't want to get canned after 90 days because I can't navigate monolithic shit either....
Advice, or generally encouraging anecdotes?
Legionnaired on
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Posts
Electronic composer for hire.
I worked on my credibility early on, working hard, doing my job, and doing it well. Then once I had that rapport with my boss, I went to him with my concerns and had real examples and the consequences of the inefficiencies. Lastly, I had some recommendations.
It went down really well.
Deal with it and keep handing out resumes.
Also, 8 hours ain't nothin, foo. I spent 2 days setting up untold amounts of Java middleware on a 400 dollar laptop.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
I've been where you are, twice. Mind you, I'm a QA guy and not a developer, but the general experience of starting, loading up the dev environment, getting my hands on the product, and realizing that I'm on a project that has already entered its death spiral is pretty much the same thing.
The first time, I lasted about two months, told my recruiter that she needed to start shopping my resume around NOW, and waved goodbye to the job a month after that. Funny thing is that I actually stayed good friends with my manager; we met up for lunch a few times after that and got to hear all the stories about the product finally "shipping" in no better shape than when I went in.
Mind you, this was with Sony Pictures and one of the perks of the job was having full backlot access; I couldn't go on to any sound stages that had "now filming" lights on but I could otherwise wander the entire studio grounds, which is hands-down the coolest perk I've ever had in a position; that's the only thing that kept me there two months.
The second time, I thought to myself: Well, the economy is in the toilet (This was 2002-ish), I was out of work for three months before I got this job, I need to buckle down and make the best of it.
I lasted about a year and finally quit with no job lined up and no interviews, utterly burned out. I went to work for a call center and did customer support for two months at minimum wage; I came home every night grinning like a maniac because, even if I'd spent all day talking to computer illiterates and helping them install Adobe Reader, nobody asked me to fake caring.
I guess I'm trying to say: When you're alone in an abandoned house and blood starts dripping down the walls, you should be on your way to the front door before you even hear the disembodied voices telling you to GET OUT.
That's helpful -
Funny thing though, this company is actually doing pretty well - out for 6 years with upwards of 11 million a year in revenue. The software is definitely holding them back though.
I'll keep my resume out there as I start doing some more test-driven development with all of my changes... I'm hoping that maybe it'll get more manageable once I actually start getting into it...
But TDD won't help the DEVELOPMENT CONFIGURATION OPTIONS embedded into some of these 9000 line scripts... *sigh*
Start collecting stories for this blog.
Don't come out and say it, but poke around a bit with "So... have you seen or ever worked on the XYZ code base? Yea, I just got assigned to that...what do you think of it?"
That isn't really saying nothing negative about it (in case he's the guy that wrote it!); but gives enough that if he's a decent guy he'll probably let you in on how things are run/managed there.
Also how long do you have this project? Are you just suppose to add a feature or fix a few bugs or is this your "baby" now? If the former, then just tough it out and then try and get on a good project. If your are stuck with it, yea... talk to your boss about "re-factoring" and "reorganizing" for "optimal long-term maintainable and maintenance cost reduction". ie. lay on the buzzwords if he is one of "those" type of managers... which probably is considering the shit code his team came up with.
(had to, sorry!)
I'm highly curious as to what .com this is, though I'm sure it won't be said.
Get used to using some form of search in directory structure with regular expressions. It depends on the language but most major IDE will also be able to show you where variables are constructed.