

Ask HN: If you want to send a programmer over the edge... - a5seo

What are some sure-fire ways to send a programmer over the edge?  Either specific or general.
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joezydeco
Schedule meetings every 2 hours, just so that the programmer never gets any
flow going. Then ask in the meetings why there isn't any progress.

~~~
orangethirty
_Better yet:_ Call every two hours (sometimes less), and try to get the
programmer to fix a very _small_ issue you are having. Then bitch about the
code not being done. Oh, and have the programmer admin the servers. Server
goes down? ick between getting shit about the server or shit about the code.
Thx Zeus I'm not there any more.

~~~
joezydeco
Oh, server admin. That's a good one. After all, how hard can that be? You set
it up and it just runs, right?

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noonespecial
From my time as a government contractor: show a programmer a problem that
causes significant waste, that he knows exactly how to fix and then forbid him
from fixing it for nebulous political reasons.

~~~
mikegagnon
When I worked over in the DoD world, waste used to send me over the edge.

Find zen by realizing that the political reasons for waste are not nebulous;
the whole Pentagon system is designed to stimulate the US economy (through
spending). Spending money is the point.

Politically, this waste is generally supported by legislators and their
constituents. Which is why the B-2 bomber was built in 46 states. See: * Pork
Barrels <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_barrel> * Spinney's "Defense Power
Games" <http://www.dnipogo.org/fcs/def_power_games_98.htm> * Chomsky's "The
Pentagon System"
[http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Chomsky/PentagonSystem_Cho...](http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Chomsky/PentagonSystem_Chom.html)

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frou_dh
Withold admin rights on their work computer.

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slinkyavenger
Force them to remote into a slow machine on a slow network connection running
Windows 98

Constantly change the requirements for a project.

Insist that they stop work on project A to work on B, C, D, then ask why they
haven't made good progress on A.

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codeonfire
Require a complex scrum planning process, approval from designers, principal
reviews, extensive project financial analysis. Then on day one of the sprint,
scrap all that for your personal pet project that has high VP visibility with
no justification.

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jacalata
Find out when they come in to work every day. Schedule a daily recurring
meeting an hour or 30 minutes before then. (also works if you schedule the
meeting right after they normally leave).

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jcla1
Don't pull their pull request when they've put a lot of work into them.

~~~
Smudge
To be fair, often when this happens it's due to a lack of communication on the
programmer's part. Giant pull requests out of nowhere (even well-crafted ones)
may not always be what the project maintainers want or need. This is why it's
useful to discuss (non-trivial) fixes or design ideas before attempting to
implement them.

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codemonkeymike
Only take on projects that involve modifying templates from obscure and
obsolete CMS's.

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ibudiallo
Ask a programmer what makes him go over the edge and send him over the edge.

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keenahn
Remap 1 to l, O to 0 and vice versa (but only one out of three times)

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jcla1
Keep them away from HN over a longer period of time.

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Avalaxy
Ask him to record everything he does ;)

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dear
Why do you want to do that?

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jcla1
Use windows.

~~~
jacalata
Not a very general answer, many programmers use Windows. More generally
applicable answer: hire programmers for a work environment on one OS. Announce
one day that the company is switching to $newOS and all developer machines
need to run $newOS as of next week. For bonus points, say that tools, etc,
that are not available on the new platform will be worked out as they come up
(and probably have no budget for replacing them).

