217
You should be focused on a lifeboat for yourself
Someone promoted you to lead a project with just 5 days remaining which is an absolute disaster? With only 5 days, it seems that they should have chosen an interim leader from the team itself. Unless they informed you of all these problems ( mostly interns, Unity license issues, and the exceedingly high ...
171
Indeed this is a big red flag. By requiring you to join them and quit your current job first, your position to negotiate any terms in that offer letter is significantly compromised.
I would recommend refusing to join them before having a signed contract in hand.
119
They keep insisting that I give them my joining date with them.
The way I see it from your statement: They are not asking you explicitly to resign from your current organization, they are asking you to provide them with a tentative date of joining them, that they can use in the offer letter. It's not very uncommon thing.
Tell them you joining date will be (...
111
I do not see a problem here.
You found a bug, [100~105 case] reported it and provided the fix.
After some time, you found another bug [105~107 one] (and probably the way to fix it, too).
One can say, it should have been caught earlier, but nevertheless, you are the one who actually found this bug out and providing a solution. Until and unless you are ...
111
This guy should be your role model. Buy him lunch and pick his brain!
Seriously, though. There is no shame in learning from younger co-workers.
(most people start out as 1 year contracted temps)
Your company sounds pretty bad. It usually only takes 3 to 6 months to find out if someone is a good fit. Sometimes, it takes even less.
Don't blame the new ...
102
The normal situation here would be for you to work with colleagues and management to argue the benefits of rewriting it, get your co-workers on board, provide documentation, provide time estimates, divide work up and tackle it. That way you get the sign-off from managers first, discuss various problems as a team and form a plan to overcome them. Coworkers ...
94
@Tymoteusz Paul's answer is good and I agree with him. I'll try to offer a different perspective, though.
As a general rule of thumb, if you're a contractor, you need to supply your own tools (i.e. both hardware and software) to work. You're not your client's employee. You're providing them with a service for an agreed amount of money.
If you hire someone ...
82
I'll go for the contrary answer: this may actually be a (stupid) miscommunication and not actually be a red flag.
Don't get me wrong: if they're asking you to quit your current job and only then get an offer - yeah, that's a terrible idea.
But from your question, they're insisting on simply knowing your joining date - or when you'd be able to start. ...
76
You don't lose credibility by admitting your mistakes, you lose it by trying to hide them.
In your particular case, your calculator was conservative in calculating weight tolerance, which only increases the margin of safety, so as you said, no harm done.
The fact that you spotted the error yourself, and corrected your error is something to be proud of, ...
answered Jan 23 at 14:50
Richard Says Reinstate Monica
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64
You've got a couple of problems here related to your lack of communication skills. I don't know how good your code is or how bad the old code is, but let's look at what you've written here.
1. Don't belittle others or come from a place of arrogance
What I need to do is explain that I have significantly more experience and have done this kind of work in ...
answered Feb 5 at 14:46
520 says Reinstate Monica
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52
So, in your opinion, what would you do in this situation ? Tell the truth to the customer ? Let the projet ended bugged ?
I would go ASAP with my boss and expose to them the situation. Tell them that, as of this moment, you lack the resources to finish the project on time.
Call them, write them... whatever you have to do to contact them, as this is ...
34
Most companies have a lot of "work" which actually doesn't achieve anything.
Most meetings come to mind. I spent an hour and a half today in a big round table update meeting, where everyone else talked and the developers played on their phones or doodled on post-its. I logged an hour of Reddit and various chat apps there.
The day before I was in a ...
31
The customers and management don't care if something is coded well. They care about whether it works to an acceptable degree, they care about its cost, and they care about whether they get it on time.
The best way to justify your decisions is to explain then in terms of man hours and costs.
The time-saving measures should speak for themselves. If your ...
24
Restricting game room usage is definitely not something unreasonable. It seems that your team abused the privilege and is now paying for it.
Moving forward, team leads and even regular employees should have learned
to not overuse privileges
to show leadership by talking to interns about unprofessional behaviour, before it reaches management.
Show ...
23
I've been in a similar situation to yours more than once. What you seem to be missing is in code that old and messy, it's really difficult to tell what's a bug and what's functionality people depend on. It's also really difficult to see important corner cases that have been fixed. Your "troublemaker" is the one who holds most of that knowledge.
It's a ...
22
If the company is to survive, you can either become the scapegoat - or profile yourself in professionally handling a horrible situation.
You should concentrate on writing down and communicating the problems of this project.
As it sounds, 5 days may be too few for even this task, but try to get at least that one done.
Where are the issues of the project? ...
21
How do I ask for a budget without appearing greedy?
Be honest and explain your current situation. While you are a contractor, which means that you generally are responsible for your own tools, they are getting you on the cheap (from what your post says) and clearly like you, there may be some things to do. They could lend you one of their laptops, or extend ...
20
Tell them my expected salary upfront.
Do almost exactly that, but instead state your minimum salary. If you are not interested in accepting offers below that amount then that's the right way to go. And when some recruiter contacts you, one of the first things to confirm (within the first 5 minutes of conversation) is that they are aware of your minimum ...
18
As others have said, it seems like you've found a pre-existing bug and fixed it. I'd be delighted if a member of my team did this.
For extra credit, try to figure out how you can change your process to stop this type of thing from slipping through the net in the future:
Do you have unit tests? What are your code coverage stats like? Is there a test ...
14
For the company's benefit: There should be a discussion between you, your manager, and someone who can make decisions about multi-million projects.
Fact is that there will not be a bug-free product in five days time, that is a given. Fact, that must be communicated clearly to someone higher than your manager, is that there is nothing that you could do ...
12
As long as you have a good explanation for why you weren't working for that period (which you do) there shouldn't be an issue.
It's 3/4 months - really not that much in the grand scheme of things, but do something constructive in that time period, don't waste the time off. Companies will like to see you've been proactive.
12
It sounds like your new colleague is an ass, and the entire company leadership is loving it. I'll leave it to you to figure out what that says about your company's leadership.
But it appears your colleague figured out how to be successful at your company a lot faster than you did. You could try to learn a few things from him to be more successful yourself. ...
11
Speaking as a software developer with over 7 years of professional experience, +25 years total programming experience, and several years in college learning situations, making errors is common and generally don't reduce your reputation.
Every software developer in the world has made mistakes. Linus Torvalds, the originator of Linux, makes mistakes. ...
10
Crisis management is sometimes about shaking things up, flipping over the tables (metaphorically), "dropping your tools" and getting out of a rut. You have demotivated staff and an impossible project. Keeping quiet and letting it fail isn't an option; neither is whining about it or ignoring it. You need to take charge of the situation and show the path ...
10
If you genuinely are a contractor, then you have to buy your own equipment. In the USA at least, if they provide equipment for you, you might be seen as a "statutory employee" which can get both you and them in a lot of trouble, with deliberately-punitive tax penalties.
In the USA, however, that computer can be "fully depreciated in one year" under Section ...
9
Say something like "Remember that bug that I fixed x months ago? Well, I discovered a similar bug in other parts of our code base. This bug was working in our favor, so no one has been hurt by it. However, a bug is a bug, so I'll be rolling out a fix shortly."
9
How should I handle this as a co-worker?
You should thank him for the great example, and emulate his behavior. Clearly, he is doing the things that are valued by the company, and is reaping the rewards.
Now, if you were management instead of just a co-worker, there are other things you could do (such as valuing and rewarding different behaviors).
But as a ...
8
So, you are finding and correcting mistakes in code that was written 10 years ago, ie 8 years prior to you joining the company.
These are not your fault.
So, just report the corrections so that all can be aware of them. One point does come to mind - there could be other parts of the code that now report incorrect values as the "tolerance" from those errors ...
8
If both positions are open now, fill them now.
You don't know how long it will take to fill each position.
The sooner you hire, the sooner the ramp up period will be complete and the new devs can really contribute to your workload.
Where there are common ramp-up, you can get a 2-for-1. When you have something to show 1 dev, you can call the other over ...
8
If you're asking about this looking bad in the eyes of a future potential employer, it seems totally reasonable to be out of work for a few months while you move to a totally different country. I wouldn't expect anyone to hold this against you or consider it negative. If or when you start looking for work in your new location, your employment history on your ...
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