When I was a kid, my mother would never give money to a white bum. She'd take one look at him and say, "No reason for that." -Chris RockWhen I was 29, I was a bundle of nerves, having just made the worst move of my career up to that point (and since). Motivated as much by personality conflicts and enmity toward a certain individual as for any other reason, I left an otherwise OK position with a super big (but still involved in interesting and new technology, like the then-flashy Java) company for a position doing C++ for a small company with an application originally developed in COBOL for mainframes (gigantic red light warning sign I didn't see).
It didn't take too long to figure out the buffoonery and bumblefuckery was out of control at this place. Shitty as all-get-out code slapped together by long-gone contractors, co-workers who couldn't spell C++ in some cases, and in other cases were competent but so bitter and painful to be around it was like being in some program length anti-depressant commercial - the place was a real disaster.
A colleague's buddy gave some helpful third-party perspective: we were a bunch of losers on the bullet train to career oblivion. We had to get out of there or we were fucked, if we weren't already fucked. We needed to learn to drive trucks or bartending or something (both are perfectly fine, respectable occupations. The point is, the software thing was OVER).
As it turns out, we had nothing to worry about! I ended up finding a job somewhere else, and things have been fine ever since. And now thanks to LinkedIn, I know everybody else landed on their feet too, unhindered by incompetence or general cluelessness. The company itself went down the toilet for all I know. I bailed out long before the last circle of the drain.
To protect the identities of these individuals so they can continue milking the corporate gravy train, and because I love the now-over MethMinute39, I've changed their names to names of the Wang Warriors. I changed the name of the company where we all worked to Smegmatix.
Spicy
Who he was:
A QA guy with no formal education. He sometimes tried to show people his novel he'd written. He was buddies with Hammer U, the Al Capone/shark hybrid QA manager, and thanks to this connection Spicy was given a job as lead developer. He was not particularly good at it, and after following Hammer U to another job, he washed out in a few months.
Where is he now:
Development Lead at REDACTED
Did he list Smegmatix in his profile:
No
Shokai the Dentist
Who he was:
Sad sack programmer who was pretty sure the company was going down the tubes in a hurry. He was right, but was hard to be around since he never had anything good to say about anything or anyone. Prone to long meandering gripes about why do people get to be on welfare when my life is so horrible.
Where is he now:
Systems Analyst at REDACTED
Did he list Smegmatix in his LinkedIn profile?
No
Li'l Shizz
Who he was:
Contractor famous for 'cranking out code fast'. It showed, as his code was full of some of the sloppiest half-assed moves imaginable, with no discernable logic or structure evident. I mean doing things like having variables named Store1, Store2, Store3 instead of using arrays or lists - lame-itude of that magnitude. I never met him, but I really hated his guts. I only found out who he was by asking around. He didn't put his name in the comments for some reason.
Where he is now:
SW Developer at REDACTED
Did he list Smegmatix in his profile?
No
Soil O' Boyle
Who he was:
Another contractor. Wrote a true abomination of a 'Calculation Engine', which was a sort of interpreter for a proprietary language for the app. It was an example of how you'd write such a thing if, instead of spending maybe at the very least an afternoon researching how other such engines had been put together, you just sat down and started writing code to see what happened. He was the source of much of Shokai the Dentist's misery, because Shokai inherited his crapware. Often Shokai would be unable to fix a problem a customer was screaming very loudly about, and so Soil would be brought back in for a couple of days at $200/hr, and he'd fail to fix the problem, too.
Where Is he now:
Information Systems Manager at (Government Entity)
Does he list Smegmatix in his profile?
No
Li'l Man Tate
Who he was:
Manager of the developers. Kind of looked like a turtle, and kind of acted like one, too, hiding in his office all the time. We wrote weekly status reports for him. After a couple of weeks it was clear he never read them, so I'd write about the cartoon characters I'd collaborated with. Mr. Peabody was worth his weight in gold and a real team player.
Where is he now:
Business Analyst at REDACTED
Does he list Smegmatix in his profile?
No
FAQ:
Q: When did you work there?
A: Approximately 10 years ago. So these white dudes have a whole decade of coasting here.
Q: Are you white?
A: Yes, I add support to Mrs. Rock's hypothesis.
Q: Did you, SDC, list Smegmatix in your profile?
A: No.
Q: What's your Wang Warrior name?
A: General Tso
3 comments:
"It didn't take too long to figure out the buffoonery and bumblefuckery was out of control at this place. Shitty as all-get-out code slapped together by long-gone contractors, co-workers who couldn't spell C++ in some cases, and in other cases were competent but so bitter and painful to be around it was like being in some program length anti-depressant commercial - the place was a real disaster."
This is vivid, cynical, and wholly in the joyously dour spirit of Jim Kunstler's excellent "Clusterfuck Nation." Unfortunately, Kunstler's characterizations apply to the entire country and the collapse of its way of life, not just to a single company run by sloppy, fucked-up nerds, and is eminently believable.
I checked out 'Clusterfuck Nation' and am a subscriber now. Thanks for the tip.
I did suspect in some ways the company just reflected what was going on in the country as a whole.
My suspicions were confirmed when the ultimate buffoonish bumblefuck ascended to the Presidency in December of 2000.
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