
Down and out in the magic kingdom – A tale of software consulting in the midwest - kitanata
https://medium.com/@raymondchandler/down-and-out-in-the-magic-kingdom-92b0a715778f#.e4tktd8t9
======
tptacek
I spent 10+ years doing contract software work, and several of my friends work
for contracting firms, and I have seen this pathology a lot.

 _Don 't_ stay up until 2AM working on your contracting firm's projects. _Don
't_ personalize contract assignments. _Don 't_ act for your firm's clients
like you're their full-time employee: you aren't. _Don 't_ assume clients are
OK with you coming in super late because that's what programmers do: many
aren't OK with that.

There are some really great things about working for contracting firms: you
get a W2 and benefits and mostly all the downside risk protection of an
employee while getting exposed to all the random projects a consultancy gets.
You get to dip your toes into lots of different projects. And when you get
sick of a certain kind of project, often, you can easily no-harm no-foul
switch to other projects. Contracting firms can be great.

But if you try to treat a contracting firm the way you would a startup or tech
product company, things are going to suck for you. In particular: you _must_
force yourself to deliver a day's worth of work and then put things down. If
you're compulsive and need to work late into the night, _stop doing client
work_ , and switch to personal projects.

Contracting firms usually can't bill for your 2AM binge coding session.
Clients generally want to pay for work done during business hours on a well-
defined schedule. It does not matter that you believe that's not how software
is delivered; it's how software is bought. If you run yourself ragged
refactoring things until late in the evening, your contracting firm isn't
going to be impressed with you: they're going to see, from 1000 miles away,
that you're burning yourself out pointlessly in a manner that isn't going to
make them an extra penny, and they're going to get pissed.

~~~
smartician
It's interesting that the attorney's letter specifically says "termination of
your _employment_". Add that to the fact that he was "fired" initially because
he didn't show up for work, and it looks like he has a good case of arguing
that this was a de-facto employment situation, not a contracting gig. How and
if he could benefit from that, I don't know.

~~~
tptacek
You're missing a subtlety. He's a W2 employee of a contracting firm. Most of
the work he does is for clients, not his employer directly, and to those
clients he is a 1099, not an employee.

He was fired from the contracting firm, for which he was a W2. His status
doesn't really factor into this.

~~~
kitanata
Minor correction: I am a partner in the contracting firm. The contract was
cancelled by Pillar as a 1099. I'm still a partner in the contracting firm but
will be leaving in a couple of weeks when we shut it down for obvious reasons.

------
partisan
This is bad. It's a car-wreck at best and all it will do is have everyone hit
the breaks as they pass that particular stretch. Developers are not going to
rise up as brothers and sisters in arms based upon what you have written here.
Instead, they will distance themselves from you further because you are Drama.

Also, you named a whole bunch of people who are probably very unhappy to be
associated with this mess. I would hate to have someone search for my name and
have this turn up.

All in all, you come across as being reckless and it makes you a liability.
You can't acknowledge that your Facebook post was a lapse in judgement and
then double down with a novella on Medium.

Give some serious thought to re-establishing that separation between your
personal life and your work life. Stop with the social media. Focus on your
health and your sanity. Get a hobby outside of your job. Learn how to cook
healthy dishes. Exercise. These are things all of us probably need to do since
we love what we do and want to be the best we can be and give way too much to
do so.

~~~
mathattack
Yes. Poor form to drag others into this, especially naming people who have
asked not to be named. Also, it's a bit asymmetric as the company isn't in a
position to defend itself.

If a company lets you go, you shouldn't ever expect to go back unless you're
invited.

I do appreciate and respect the author's honesty about the personal issues he
encountered along the way. I hope that he gets his health in order, and finds
happiness in his next role.

------
gexla
> So, I was in! A 3 month contract was drafted that would run through
> Blueshift, so if anything went south, either of us could walk away, no harm,
> no foul.

You are a contractor. You can walk away. And so can they. Why create trouble?

> About a week into the project I began having bladder problems.

> So for the next 4 weeks I missed a ton of work for doctors appointments, and
> coaching, and fitness, and whatnot to get my life on track.

Right after the project starts, you become unreliable for them for 4 weeks out
of a 3 month project.

> This time I gave them 6 weeks of notice.

You have a solid week. Then you are in and out for 4 weeks. Then you put in
your notice after a week of solid work.

Then you don't show up.

With that timeline, you would have to expect to get fired. It happens. Move
on. Don't look back.

All the public posts makes for a nightmare to deal with. They hired you and
then they had to deal with you trashing the company on social media. And now
you are trashing them on another platform.

Another huge mistake is that you weren't taking care of yourself. Why show up
early and leave late while working as a contractor? Why take work home with
you? Just put the time in between start and finish and call it a day. If you
are going to put in extra hours, put that time into creating more leads and
building your image. Certainly you aren't going to do all that by trashing
your previous clients.

I don't think contract work is for you.

------
bbarn
I see a developer who's in and out of a company depending on his mood and
opinion of the company several times, then complaining when he gets fired for
not showing up at work.

He blames the all night coding session, but from the sound of it told no one
he was doing this, and operated in a bubble. Then he seems surprised when at
11:04 the next day (which is almost 9 hours after he's gone to bed) he's woken
up by a message asking if he's alive. The author, by his own admission, is
unreliable.

To the author - it sounds like there's a huge disconnect between your opinion
of your usefullness to the company and theirs. Perhaps instead of giant middle
fingers on blog posts, consider thinking about it from their perspective.

~~~
pigpaws
Careful; I got my tail ripped off last week here on HN for suggesting that
people "be adults", show up for work _on-time_.

~~~
nitrogen
Who decided, and when, that being an "adult" meant strict conformance to an
unnatural schedule? Cui bono?

~~~
noxToken
Pretty much anyone who decided to work for a company where the agreed upon
hours are from X to Y. You can complain about it being unnatural all you want,
but if those are the hours that you agreed to, then you're obligated to
conform to the schedule. If you don't like it, work remotely for a company
whose normal business hours fit your schedule.

Being an adult is not necessarily about conforming. It's more about sticking
to your obligations. Even if your word means nothing to you on a personal
level, others are probably depending on you to come through.

~~~
nitrogen
I totally agree with honoring commitments. I strongly disagree with the idea
that committing to 9-6 or 8-5 in a rush hour commute is the definition of
being an "adult".

------
throooowmeaway
Disclaimer: These are my views. Not my employer's.

I currently work for Pillar. I met Ray for the first time fairly recently. He
seemed like a smart, passionate developer and it breaks my heart to see him
having such a meltdown. I've had my own sleep issues and the last company I
worked for seemed to be talking out of both sides of their mouth. I understand
what that can feel like. It's a really hard thing to go through. I would also
say that when you're barely sleeping at night, you make poor decisions and
start to look at the world through a warped lens.

Yes, the company is goofy. The CEO can be a bit of a blowhard, the titles seem
kitschy and uninspired, and there's a lot of self-congratulatory aggrandizing
that goes on. It's a consulting firm. It's not surprising.

But the people are excellent. Imagine an oasis of nerds (okay, maybe don't)
that really care about software quality in the center of a market that needs a
lot of help. They're committed to education, community involvement, and each
other. It's really pretty great to work here.

That is, as long as you don't get it twisted. On time and under budget still
matters. Perceptions still matter. Politics, expectations, and realities are
all things that you're going to have to deal with no matter what. Your ability
to balance all of these things is part of what makes you effective at your
job.

I don't know the particulars of the circumstances that led to his termination.
I don't really want to know them. It would be irresponsible to postulate.
However, I can say that I'm disappointed with the way that he's chosen to move
on. It's good for no one. I see a thoughtful developer burning bridges in
public.

That can be cathartic, but at what cost?

~~~
kitanata
Against my better judgement, I feel it necessary to reply to this.

I tried very hard to end things on a positive note with Pillar. I called Don
repeatedly trying to connect with him, I called Jim repeatedly trying to
connect with him, and I tried having a civil and adult conversation with
Brandt.

What I got was silence, insults, and a legal demand letter for venting to
friends and family on Facebook, and a permanent ban from attending user groups
hosted at Pillar. User groups that I brought into Pillar.

Do I fault Pillar for firing me? No, of course not. I was a little upset, but
I get it. But what they did wasn't an appropriate response and after I learned
that they did this to other people as well, I had to act.

Talk to the other developers on my team, they will tell you that I was in good
spirits and wished them both well in the future when I got in touch with them.

I did my part to handle things professionally, I really did. Pillar escalated
this well out of proportion than it needed to be. Someone needs to speak up
and say something about the way Pillar treats people after they are done with
them and how they handle critics (these other people who, in some cases are
legally gagged against speaking up).

~~~
caseysoftware
Just stop talking.

Like any bad breakup, it's in _everyone 's_ best interest to just stay quiet,
not take sides, and hope this blows over.

You are digging the hole deeper and have been with every Facebook post, the
Medium post, and HN comment.

Stop talking. Take a long weekend. Take a week and go do something else.
You're only making it worse.

~~~
ta_donk_gt
Agreed. This is absolutely the advice to follow at this time. As others have
said, we all make mistakes, and should learn from them. The lesson on this one
is take the time necessary to cool down before responding in these situations.
If you are still feeling a sense of urgency and a need to set things right,
that should be a sign you haven't cooled down yet, so wait some more.

Naming names (and there were a _lot_ of names in that post, wow) is way over
the line of acceptable in this case. Showing up at a client's site to confront
your coworker(s) is borderline dangerous behavior. All of the actions
mentioned in the post (including the post itself) will only escalate the
situation and increase the sense of urgency of all parties. No good will come
of that. Cut your losses and move forward. The firing was completely
justifiable, and (OP) you know this, let it go.

Again, not trying to shame or judge, a lot of us have made similar mistakes
when we were young, but you do need to learn the lessons in mistakes or you
will never mature.

------
dvcc
I am going to preface this with the a small piece of information, I work in
corporate America.

From my perspective, I don't quite get a lot of the points. No unit-tests?
Most code bases don't have them. Cucumber tests? You're already ten giant
leaps ahead of most products out there.

Code in disarray? Used to it for every single project I have to come into.
Factories/viewers at least there is some semblance of structure!

False corporate goals? It's a company, I expect nothing else from them.

Weird North Korea chants? That's just weird as hell.

Again, I don't work in SF or NY so it's hard to know what exists within
startup culture, but to me all of this just sounds like the norm. There is
much less importance placed on decent code then there is on just getting
something out.

~~~
toomanythings2
At one time, I thought Medium carried articles of importance and repute. I no
longer think that about most of them.

Medium is just a place where anyone can throw anything up there and have a
potential of get linked to.

~~~
doctorcroc
Every popular website will go through Eternal September at some point:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September)

The challenge is how to enforce quality despite the surge in users.

~~~
chrisdbaldwin
A required lurking period, maybe?

~~~
mjevans
Unlikely to work. Required lurking means lack of participation and thus lack
of learning.

My counter suggestion is to encode the culture you desire in to the function
of the site.

------
jazzyb
I'm not a professional Python coder, so maybe I'm missing things, but I can't
tell if this is really subtle sarcasm or not:

> What they did have was a frightening-looking hodge-podge of cucumber-esque
> feature tests. I say cucumber-esque because A) It wasn’t cucumber, and B)
> The feature files weren’t even Gherkin compliant. It was Lettuce. The
> scourge of Python software testers everywhere!

So they had tests, but they weren't the tests you like?

> What followed was probably the most stressful week of attacks and counter-
> defense I’ve ever encountered in my career for a few hundred line code
> change.

A "few hundred line code change"? Could this refactor been split-up over more,
smaller changes perhaps? The last time I was forced to make a change of
_hundreds_ of lines, it took days to work-out the justification with all
involved. You'll find the effort much more efficient if you are able to split
up the code reviews.

I stopped there. I just can't tell if he's actually serious or not.

~~~
joshvm
As a professional Python coder I had to look up Cucumber and Gherkin. I wasn't
sure whether it was sarcasm either. And then I learned that Lettuce actually
exists as a free alternative to Cucumber.

Who named these things, Javascript devs? (I jest, but Python has pretty clear
naming usually)

EDIT: For those of you downvoting - consider the impression this gives to
someone who doesn't know what Cucumber is (particularly in a ranty blog): you
tell them "Oh no sorry, I was expecting to see Cucumber, but they were using
Lettuce which isn't Gherkin compatible". I think it's entirely reasonable to
think that those aren't real packages...

~~~
yareally
Cucumber and Gherkin originated in Ruby.

------
betageek
Don't do this. It conflates so many personal/professional things it fails to
give any idea whether this company is objectively good or bad and just ends up
making the author look massively unprofessional.

By all means call out a company, but don't write angry, keep it professional,
and most importantly don't be a dick.

~~~
ToPutItBluntly
I agree. I struggled with something recently and just decided there is no way
to write about it without sounding like a whiner. Best just to move on and let
it go. So that is what I'm doing. It sucks. Sometimes things just don't work
out. But that is life.

In the end, I often think these kinds of things, if channeled correctly, have
have a positive impact. But one has to be open to stepping back and being
honestly and thoughtfully critical of everyones actions including your own.

Although I'd really like to read some examples of companies being called out
without anger and with a professional tone (not doubting, just open to links
if you have them).

------
dfraser992
I think this is a perfect example of why one needs to learn to not get
emotionally involved with "the job". I've made that mistake, once, and it cost
me 5 years of my life (long, now boring story), but to blow up so publicly...
Not cool at all.

I can appreciate the OP's enthusiasm and idealism, but in the real world, one
needs to learn the limitations of that. And to be dealing with so many health
problems at the same time... Psychological stress is typically a factor in
"acting-out"; I've been there myself so I'm not entirely unsympathetic...
Being diabetic sucks, let me tell you. The stereotypical stuff associated with
IT (long hours, stress, free garbage food, diet soda galore, pizza..) are
counter-productive when you're diabetic.

I hope the OP takes a vacation and gets some perspective.

At the end of the day, it's only all about business. The people who control
the money do not care in the slightest about doing things 'the perfect way' if
it seems it would cost more money or impact profits. This is something
engineers have to learn (or they have to run their own company, which will
teach them some hard lessons in how business actually works). As others say, a
contractor who is obviously costing more overall than being productive is a
liability, so to expect a business to care about you as a "human being" is a
little naive. HR is never your friend.

------
codeisawesome
I sympathise with how you're feeling super wronged. I think it takes a special
level of "pissed" to post something like this out there with your name on it.

But my 2 cents if you're interested.

No one is going to care. The company that you're angry with, least of all.
They will just try to screw you with legal action. They will likely succeed
considering you are an individual and they likely have a big legal warchest to
punch you with. Developers will continue working for them, customers will
continue giving them money - but the same can't be said about you or your
small consulting firm until this blows over - if ever. Take the perspective of
the company and their clients, bitter as it may be. You just look like someone
who didn't deliver and are now making lots of excuses and raising a hullabaloo
on the internet. Try to make a settlement with them and get this thing buried
forever.

You have a very strong emotional connection to your work - you love writing
code! This is great. Just applied in the wrong place. Contracting isn't for
you my friend, it doesn't always engender itself to this kind of emotion and
you have to be able to live with that. Your options are:

1\. Become less attached to your _work_ code. Do what you are being _asked_ to
do, no more and not less - and never set the criteria yourself. Work on other
stuff.

2\. Go work for a startup (or start one) where your emotional connection to
doing high quality work (per your perception of quality - unit tests are no
guarantee) - is highly valued.

Most important of all, like everyone else is saying - please take a break.

~~~
smoyer
Actually ... there is someone who will care. They would have been his next
employer but found these posts during the background checks and decided to
forgo the drama and business interruption he would be likely to cause.

I know he's planning to work in his own startup, but can he get along with his
new partners in the long term? My guess is no but I'll wish him the best all
the same.

------
dreamling
Anyone else disappointed that this had nothing to do with The Doctorow book?
[http://craphound.com/category/down/](http://craphound.com/category/down/)

~~~
silveira
I read the whole thing expecting something a reference to Disney's hall of
presidents or some use of reputation as a currency.

~~~
drpentode
Well, he feels he was unjustly pushed out of something, and he did use up all
of his social currency.

------
georgefrick
I have some advice for the author.

Go back and edit this; remove the big middle finger image and tidy this up to
be more professional. It's ok to write it (kind of), but seriously you made a
"fuck you" logo?

Would not hire, or interview, or want to be associated with professionally.

~~~
kitanata
I agree. It muddles the message. I've updated the article and removed that
image. It was intended as a sort of defiance against their Cease and Desist
however, it was indeed, in bad taste.

~~~
vanattab
If I were you I would just delete this post. If I looked up your name as part
of an interview process and found this article I would not touch you with a
10ft pole.

------
brianwawok
My spidy sense is tingling, but I can't place my finger on it.

I had not heard of Pillar before, and really still have no opinion of them
now.

I think the author needs to take a few months off and get his life in check
before getting a new job, and perhaps remove himself from social media.

------
rubidium
I'd stay far away from hiring anyone who explodes like this as a consultant.

~~~
mcguire
He really shouldn't have included the FB rant. Up to that point, all you had
to go on was his side of things. After it, you have to reevaluate all of his
seemingly reasonable comments about his behavior and theirs.

------
caseysoftware
> I try driving up to the client site to remedy the situation, and I am
> rejected from entering the property. Brandt enters the hallway, puffs up his
> chest and proceeds to lay into me so hard I thought I was in the Marine
> Corps.

Yes because at that point, you're trespassing.

You have _NO_ legitimate reason to be on the customer's site. Further, you
probably signed something saying that you wouldn't contact (or maybe just
solicit) Pillar's customers for N months.

If you ever get fired by one of these groups, cut off all contact with the
customer _immediately_. You might still try to smooth things over with the
contracting company but even that is a bad idea _the day_ it happened.

~~~
caseysoftware
Btw, this is why I _never_ host regular meetups at my employer's office. If
something bad happens in either context, it _will_ spill into the other and
make life more difficult than it needs to be.

------
buckbova
Of course you're going to meet resistance as the new guy telling everyone else
how messed up a project is.

When starting at a company never try to change anything about it within the
first several months of working there. Learn what they do. Emulate what they
do.

After you've reached a trusted status then you can start suggesting
improvements.

Don't be that guy.

~~~
bpchaps
I tend to be "that guy", and I don't really see any major problem if things
are actually bad.

Last time I tried to "fix" something, it was four months into a job where the
scheduling server was put onto my shoulders to fix, among the other things I
was asked to fix, simultaneously somehow. I spent two weeks on it and digging
through terrible java logs filled with red herrings galore and a badly
designed Oracle schema. My boss helped out at the end, but at no point were
developers willing to spend a fraction of that time to fix their own code. I
mean, they said they would, but never did. What do you do when upper/mid
managers and developers aren't willing to fix a major issue that effects
prod's upstream and you're wasting 20 hours a week on something they can
easily fix? Continue flailing while affecting my reputation in the meantime
since I can't figure it out?

Every company I've ever worked at has told me, "You have a fresh eye, so if
you see anything wrong, we trust your expertise, so you should bring it up."
When trying to exercise that, though, it consistently ends with push back from
all sides. Every time, then, I bring up the initial mention of a fresh eye,
where they agree, apologize, and nothing comes from it.

My experience is my own, my learning methods are my own, and I was hired for
that reason. If someone's hired on trust and experience that they can do a
good job, then forcing "emulation" is a slap in the face. I'm not saying that
they shouldn't try to fit the workplace's work patterns, but trying to force
someone to do something that's orthogonal to their natural flow or experience
without listening, then of course there'll be resistance!

There's a point where resistance is good. There's a point where it's bad.
There's also a point where not listening to that resistance is worse than the
resistance itself.

------
danso
The notice of termination is dated April 28 (yesterday). The Medium post is
just 8 hours old and is long enough to take nearly 20 minutes to read.

It's rare to see a burn-the-bridges rant in which the author looks good...and
even then, you basically have to be Steve-Yegge-level to come out looking like
the better dev (not that Yegge's essays can be considered "rants"), But I can
say with certainty that I've never seen a ranting essay _delivered within a
24-hour period_ that was well-thought out or flattering to its author. That is
simply too short of a time after a long emotional battle to have the right
perspective on things, never mind the emotional health and energy to think
things clearly.

My advice is to kill the essay, take a week to simmer down, and reread it
after you've calmed down and got back to normal life. Repost it if you feel
you need to but hopefully you'll see that many of your complaints are rather
minor in the big scheme of things, certainly not worth raising such a wall of
bad blood for.

------
luso_brazilian
_> Pillar’s on-boarding processes includes watching a long series of training
videos on their “Step-It-Up” program talking about who Pillar is, and why they
do the things they do. They talk about things like Craftsmanship, Test-Driven-
Development and consulting skills._

 _(...)_

 _> Now, for a company that prides itself on Craftsmanship and TDD, surely
there should be unit-tests somewhere, right? To my surprise, the project they
landed me on had absolutely ZERO unit tests!_

 _(...)_

 _> So I did what any “Craftsman” at Pillar would do and I argued for us to
start writing better tests. Unfortunately to my complete surprise, not only
did I meet resistance with the client, I met resistance within Pillar itself!_

That is a good example of the dissonance between the idealism and jingoism of
the (internal) marketing and the reality in the field.

When the choice opposes

\- doing things right, at the first attempt and building to last

to

\- doing things fast and on the budget (undercut to catch up to the race to
the bottom)

it always ends up like this. People (and companies) that know the right way
but chooses the alternative.

------
yareally
> _In January 2015, I accepted a position as a Software Craftsman at Pillar
> Technology in Columbus, Ohio_

Software Craftsman?

~~~
ghamrick
when I was a kid I would tell people I was a 'Senior IT Consultant', now if
anyone asks I tell them I'm a computer guy

~~~
smoyer
For years my wife was a stay at home mom - if people asked what I did, I said
I was a "go to work dad". When pressed further, I often said techie, or nerd
or worked on computers and electronics.

I've been a CTO twice (at relatively small companies) but if I ever said that,
people might get the impression I'm one of those MBA guys (can't have that).

------
llamataboot
Now already a "correction" that casts light on everything else OP wrote:

"I mistakenly asserted that Sara was “driven out of the company”. After
talking with Sara she informed me that she left on her own accord and in-fact
has maintained a very good relationship with Pillar."

I don't see anything really wrong with the company here. Okay, they are
possibly a bit wrapped up in their own founding story and have a higher
opinion of their code writing skills in the abstract than in the concrete.
That's pretty...normal. Maybe they even suck as a company, who knows? But this
isn't some clearcut story about a company doing something terrible. No one is
going to read this and think, "I need to contact this terrible company." It
reads like a rant. OP, seriously delete this. I get that you are angry right
now over what you perceive as being terminated without cause but this will
hurt you more than it will hurt them. It comes off as more than a bit
immature, even now that you deleted the FU picture. It sounds like you are a
good coder with some health issues. Get your life back together, take some
freelance work, and figure out your next steps. That will all be a lot easier
without this coming up in google searches. I don't say that to be a jerk, just
from someone that has also been wrapped up in my own personal story a bit too
much at times.

------
chippy
In short, the message is at the end of the article.

The person gives 6 weeks notice of leaving the company. Before then he works
overnight on a bug, oversleeps and takes a duvet day to recover. Company fires
him.

~~~
koluft
That's great! Now he gets unemployment compensation until his next job.

~~~
ubercore
Not as a contractor he doesn't.

------
hga
Not about Disney, but about "Pillar Technology in Columbus, Ohio".

~~~
elthran
Yeah - I don't grasp where the magic kingdom came from in the title. That's a
phrase I straightaway associate with Disney, and it isn't even used in the
article.

------
mcguire
There are a lot of possible lessons here, but after reading the whole thing
the only point I can come up with is "Problem exists between chair and
keyboard."

------
antisthenes
Another developer with rose tinted glasses that expected too much from an
employer and got burned for it.

This is seen all the time, starting with expecting to have the interview
process tailored to their whims to expecting their feedback to be immediately
implemented and taken as near gospel.

This is a more tragic case of a person not versed in the specifics of contract
employment thinking he is owed more for providing more than was originally
asked.

------
thoughtsimple
Some advice. Don't air your dirty laundry about former employers in public. It
may help you feel better but nothing good will come of it. Simply move on.

------
gregorymichael
Regardless of what went down, there's a certain pragmatism to consider before
writing an article like this. Next time you apply for a job, they will Google
you, they will find this post, and they will weigh the value you offer against
the risk of a similar outburst should things go south (and there's a risk with
every new-hire that things will go south).

------
genmon
PSA: This isn't about Cory Doctorow's sci-fi novel of the same name

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robertcorey
The author burned himself out and then tried to shift the blame onto the
person he's contracting for. Taking care of your physical and mental health is
part of being a professional programmer too.

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mrbill
The main thing I get from reading this is that the author thinks very highly
of themselves.. Perhaps a bit too much, which is why they seemed surprised
when they got fired for not showing up.

I sympathize with the sleep apnea bit, though - that can turn your life into
living hell unless it's properly treated. Mine almost killed me - I did a
writeup that's archived at
[http://weblog.mrbill.net/archives/2014/01/13/falling-in-
love...](http://weblog.mrbill.net/archives/2014/01/13/falling-in-love-with-my-
wife-v2-1/)

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vadym909
If every employee at Pillar pulled out a bullet list of accomplishments from
their annual performance review- it would seem everyone from the admin to the
CEO saved the company from death multiple times. If everyone of these guys
flashed those every time they screwed something up- it would be very hard to
operate a company. There is give and take at work and its good to be aware of
that line is.

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joesmo
"I nearly killed myself for Pillar, and this is the result of that hard work
and dedication."

And hopefully now, he'll learn his lesson and never do it again as pretty much
everyone in the industry learns if they don't burn out before they do.
Employers don't give a shit about you. If you don't/can't understand that,
you're not a professional yet.

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nicolas_t
I'm playing a bit the devil's advocate here but there's two side to every
stories. I've known employees exploding like this, convinced in their mind
that they are right when in fact it is not so. Everyone is the hero of their
own stories and some people are very good at rationalizing their action after
the facts to convince themselves they are in the right.

It seems weird that he was fired just after putting an all nighter and resting
the next day but there must have been some reason for that. It'd be surprising
if there were no reason at all...

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danny_taco
This is a perfect example on how not to handle professional conflict. I would
point out all the mistakes you've made and that is just from your point of
view as described in the article but everyone else here have pointed those
out.

For your own sake I suggest you take this down, otherwise you may find it
difficult to find work later on. If you are ever in a similar position like
this again you need to learn to not take things personal and walk away while
you still have some dignity.

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mattnewton
I think this was a very bad way to react.

But also I don't agree with anyone else here that firing an employee on the
spot because they miss a day of work is to be expected. To other devs reading
this, you don't have to put up with that. Life happens. He should have sent an
email at 2:30am, but his company should have understood as long as he was
getting things done. You are truly better off not working for them.

~~~
sysreader2016
Consultants are not employees. Consultants are allowed to take off days
anytime. They're allowed to start work at anytime and end work at anytime.

~~~
sysreader2016
Legally speaking a consultant only must be paid 1 hour per pay period to bound
to their contractual agreements.

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exabrial
The article has little to do with the Midwest and a lot to do with poor
software development practices that are actively encouraged in the community
that is his language of choice. Granted, it can happen anywhere, but I got
bored after the first Java rant

------
tomohawk
Rule #1 about being a contractor: You can't care about the problem more than
the customer. If you do, it will not end well.

~~~
sysreader2016
Clients pay consultants to make use of what the client has to deliver the
solutions the client wants.

Give them what they're paying you for or get the f* out.

------
humbleMouse
I like his medium description:

>Board Game Designer, Programmer, Musician, Mathematician, Designer, Poet,
Lost Romantic, Tech Renaissance Man

