

The Speed of Code - billpg
http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Speed-of-Code.aspx

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JonnieCache
I'm _sure_ some of the stuff on that website is made up. They claim to verify
it all, but when you're dealing with programmers the compulsion to game
systems in elaborate ways is just too strong.

At the end of the day I have to believe some of it is made up or I would
quickly lose the will to live.

~~~
Pyrodogg
Even if things are verified there is sure to be a little bit of padding to
stories you get from someone who experience an emotional or bizarre situation.
However, they also say reality is stranger than fiction.

~~~
billswift
>they also say reality is stranger than fiction.

It has always struck me as suspicious that the first dozen "theys" I heard
this from were _all_ science fiction writers.

~~~
MaysonL
To quote a graffito I first ran into back in the '70s in the loo at _Change of
Hobbit_ (a late lamented LA SF bookstore):

"Reality is a crutch for those who can't handle science fiction".

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kenjackson
There is no Visual Studio 2000.

The story seems fake to me.

~~~
userulluipeste
I think after "Vision Studios", it was pretty clear what is there and the
Jaimy's Visual studio 2000 had to be a rhetorical bitter joke ...that was then
completed with "better" one like putting the cherry on the top of cake.

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yahelc
This made me profoundly sad.

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graceyang
I find it hard to believe that someone could go from not knowing anything
about coding to creating stuff quickly that works well enough to be used.
Isn't that what we're all trying to do? Maybe this Alicia was just lean
programming her way to the top?

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Tycho
one of the comments made me laugh:

 _I was hired for a job for which I feel vastly underqualified about 9 months
ago. I think they were desperate. Having seen the calibre of the developers
I've come to realise I could never be a real developer. I'm not that smart. I
was shit-hot at all my previous jobs but now I feel like an idiot.

Luckily, I tell everybody that asks me to do something that I can't, I don't
have a clue how to, I've no idea what my job is and I don't understand how I
got through the interview. They laugh and go and ask someone else. I figure,
when the shit eventually comes down and they rumble me, I can point to the
fact that I've been completely honest all along._

Maybe some of these companies are like 'fronts' for illegal money laundering
or fraudulent hedge funds, so the more clueless the employees are, the better.
From an employment angle that's not too far fetched -

me, age 9, after typing in a ZX Spectrum animation/macro:

    
    
        I know BASIC.
    

me, age 22, after writing a few scripts for Office software:

    
    
        I'm proficient in Visual Basic.
    

And in neither case did I really know how wrong I was... You could definitely
hire a lot of 'computer users' who have no real understanding of programming
abstractions, and have never met a real developer.

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HeyLaughingBoy
The comment you refer to isn't that surprising. I have a friend who was hired
into a software development job a large corp, barely knowing how to program.
She admitted as such during the interview, and again when she was given work.
Her manager's reply was "that's OK, you'll learn."

Most of her work entailed struggling to understand a bit of code and making
trivial changes to it. She would confide to me over dinner that she would have
no idea how to write a program from scratch, but she could generally figure
out what others had done and cut & paste until she got something to work. They
paid her a ton of money (after her contract agency's cut, she got $45/hour. A
lot for someone who made $25k max in previous jobs) for about 6 months until
the contract ran out. At no time did she attempt to deceive them about her
ability, and neither she nor I could understand how she got the job in the
first place, but the money was just too good to pass up!

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Tycho
Was she a physics graduate? I've heard the big corps like to fast-track people
like that through the interview process and just assume they'll be smart
enough to learn what they need (after all, they studied quantum mechanics). In
fact I understand those sorts of degrees just require students to learn a bit
of programming in their final year to get their assignments done, with no
extra help thrown in.

Maybe companies want 'normal, intelligent and proven hard worker' rather than
'uber nerd who can complete all the work while spending most of the day
playing Unreal Tournament and despising management.' who knows.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
No, she had a BA in "Business Administration." I think the company was just
having trouble hiring real programmers so any warm body having passing
familiarity with their technology had to do.

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groby_b
And of _course_ it had to have gender mixed into the story...

~~~
Ysx
Is that a criticism? TheDailyWTF is a big site - some stories feature
incompetent women, while most have incompetent men. Big whoop.

