What did you learned by your former employer ?

It's ok to accidentally destroy customer's data. Immediately went to my boss when it happened. It creates a shitstorm, but it happens. Mistakes get made. As long as you come clean right away, you'll be fine.

That day I also learned that MS-DOS starts assigning drive letters to primary partitions first, then exteneded partitions. Yeah, I did format e: thinking the new partition I created on that new disk was E:, when in fact it had traded drive assignments. Thus formatting the customer's data that was in an extended partition on his original disk. :eek:
 
Once I received the first dual-processor computer in Belgium.
Directly from U.S. So i put power on it. It being 110V here being 220V, a plume of smoke went out of my cubic.
Lesson, look at the back.
 
Alain De Vos said:
Once I received the first dual-processor computer in Belgium.
Directly from U.S. So i put power on it. It being 110V here being 220V, a plume of smoke went out of my cubic.
Lesson, look at the back.
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I've had the opposite. Power supply set to 220, but wall is 110. PC would boot ok until you added in too many cards This was back when everything was an add in card disk controller card, graphics card etc. The power supply would do the conversion until you tried to draw too much current.
 
Alain De Vos said:
Sometimes life is a lesson. Did we learned it ?
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Not trying to convey that most things are possible with enough time & money because to most management positions this translates to "yes we can do it (in a week)".
This has gotten much worse in the past decade or so due to more accessible technology. Anybody can hack something together in a script language and then show how it's possible. Getting it done right is a whole other story.

SirDice said:
Don't take your work home. And by that I mean make sure you have a good work-life balance. Took me two burnouts to figure that one out.
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Also this. Just this. So much this.
I was of the opinion for way too long that separating professional & personal life is just a sign of weakness or bad (self) management. But oh boy have I been wrong. It too took me two full blown burnouts - A price not worth paying.
 
I was once accused of fraud by the bean counters, because I was the only person in the team who was a contractor, and also the only one consistently recording work when on-call. All of my team mates were, when on-call, turning off text messages on the "on-call" phone. Their attitude was that if things got bad enough somebody would make a phone call. So, technically, I was the only one not committing fraud, because they were actually paid a stipend to be on-call, and react to all alerts. As a contractor, I was (only) paid by the hour when actually working.

Happily my boss made enquiries, and checked the SMS logs, before mentioning the matter, prior to renewing my contract.

What I learned was that not all bosses are bad (and that being a good one generally requires experience and earnest application).
 
  • learned to talk high-level tech with loads of buzzwords with project managers who pretend to know what we are talking about
  • learned to relax when things do not work out as planned or errors happen because it usually is a management issue
  • learned to ignore insults from team members who have fear that I am stealing their position or show their leaders whats running wrong

basically, I have always been so calm that others who are screaming/heavily arguing really get even more mad at me BECAUSE I am calm - I have also learned to ignore that and always be prepared for my opponents heart attack.
 
In 1989, I was trying to use ADM (see attachment) on a working 40MB IBM hard drive. I tried adding a new partition and it wiped out all my hard drive data. Lesson: read the documentation first.
 

Attachments

What I've learned is that sometimes it is better to cancel a project, which increases costs a lot and is neverending, and going with something off the shelf instead of continuing the wrong way.

One of my previous employers was using a proprietary CRM system a lot, where he didn't have much confidence in the longevity of its producer. It was a small company, 5-10 people, also small customer base and big fluctuation in its personal.

So the plan was made to go for something opensource: a Java based CRM system, which could be started up in any browser and then works equally well under Windows, Linux, MacOS. And then it went downhill...

The goal was to migrate in about two years time, which included migration of the old CRM data to the new system, because this data contained about 1000+ customers and 100000+ articles, also invoices and such. Nobody wanted to re-input that data by hand obviously.

Two years after start there was still not even a working prototype on the horizon, every closed problem bore two new ones and the cost was way over the budget, which was around 50K, it doubled and still no end on sight.

The problem was on the one side inhouse project management, who worked too much on minor stuff instead of first getting the big chunks done, the other one that the OSS company behind the CRM totally underestimated the work needed to get the job done.

So at the end of the day one day the CEO cancelled that project, and they instead went with another, well established CRM out of the shelf, which the CEO also choose big a big, big company and moved all data over to that one. This of course again did cost time and money, but it was manageable suddenly and in the end successful.

I also realized that this here is so much true indeed:
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My last employer swept himself completely out off business from a new, nearly foolproof, exponential growing, very big, very promising market at best starting conditions in the first place, or as I call it: starved the cash-cow to death.
So I may a bit cynical.

- try to avoid joint-stock companies - their principles are not on this side of the event horizon
(forget all what you've learned, grown into, believed, or society wants to believe in)
  • it's not about industriousness
  • it's not about expertise
  • it's not about producing and selling something
  • it's not about work at all
  • it's all about appearances
  • responsibility is just empty verbiage until something goes wrong
  • much will go wrong
  • somebody must hang
  • crap always falls downwards
  • always ensure you have the prove others are responsible
  • most part of your wages is not for work but compensation for suffering
  • become thick-skinned or you'll end up in nuthouse
  • don't care. everybody else don't.
  • higher management wages and bonuses are sure. yours are not.
- work for money and for money only
- never ever work for recognition. you'll never get it. all you'll get is more work, disregard and probably burn out.
- clearly seperate work from life. being available all the time makes you being at work all the time.
- work goes to where work is done
- promotions and raises happen to other people, or in tv or movies for your hope. but it will never happen to you. not on this planet, not in this life.
- promotions are not given for competence and especially not for industriousness. industriousness is pure career poison.
- people who do the actual work are never promoted. they are needed on their posts to do the work.
- if you want a raise or be promoted, change the company.
- they'll promise you a lot, but they don't give you shit.

- don't try to explain or even teach anybody anything - they don't learn, they don't listen, they don't read, they don't care.
- you will not bring the slightest improvement. never ever.
- even if you're convinced your co-workers are stupid they are not. they just avoid work and responsibility.

- your most important - and only - task above all is your résumé, and your résumé only.
  • if work is left undone for it so be it
  • you either work yourself to an ugrateful death, or you can work on your résumé.
  • you'll always receive more work as you can handle
  • don't even bother about to get all work done. you have not a chance.
  • if you manage it, you will receive even more work, only - until you cannot handle any more.
  • nobody will thank you, and especially you'll receive no more money for it.
  • so don't even try to get all the work done in the first place.
  • don't try to impress your coworkers (bad idea) or even your boss. impress the bosses of your boss.
  • focus on what is recognized by those.
  • this just have to look good
  • anything else doesn't matter
  • gaps in your cv are deadly
- avoid hr. hr is not for to employ people but to inhibit employments.
- collect popular company- & project names, not knowledge and expertise.
- your last job is all what matters, and above all your last company. anything you've done and learned before doesn't matter.
- hr don't give a shit about what you know, or what you can do. hr cannot rate it. hr knows shit about it.
- try to get your application to engineers directly
- all advanced trainings your company sends you on to are good for paper, only, but else are a complete waste of money and time. You'll learn nothing new nor useful. It's a good time to relax or catch up left work.

- keep your waistcoat bullet proof, clean white and teflon-coated, always.
- always stay on guard, be very careful
- don't turn your back on nobody, ever. there never will be any frontal attacks. watch out for stabs in the back.
- never think a co-worker is a friend; at best they are workmates, but often enemies, only collecting stuff they can bring up against you
- it's nearly impossible to surely distinguish one another
- be very careful on company parties. you are still at work and under special surveillance. don't even get tipsy.
- never fuck your own company (don't start any love affair with co-workers. nothing good will come out from that. and if it's even you're "happily" married to a co-worker. all you do in your common free-time is talk about the work.

- never volunteer for anything, ever.
- if your bosses giving you conflicting orders (I call that "interrupt handling"), just always do, what the last one said and patiently stay the rocket you'll receive by the other then. keep the pain, play stupid, innocent and naive. but don't you never ever say anything about it. otherwise you are a querlant, non-team-oriented troublemaker having a problem with authority. this will stick to your résumé forever and you'll never get another job again.

- learn to read the signs when it's time to fire up your cv and start looking for a new job:
  • you're more then two years at the company (or stay there and your current position until the company is sold, going bankrupt, or, if you're lucky, you retire.)
  • your company is transformed into a joint-stock company
  • your company is sold
  • you get a new boss blathering something about flat hierarchies and playing the listening buddy
  • consultants spreading truisms, produce "team spirit", company profiles, mission statements or change corporated identity
  • if your team is unable to keep up with the work, but more projects/customers/work is still brought in RUN!
  • if problems and errors increasing but stay untouched RUN!
  • if you find yourself in pure interrupt-handling without getting any actual work done ("apparent power") RUN!
 
%pupil -sceptical said:
- hr don't give a shit about what you know, or what you can do. hr cannot rate it. hr knows shit about it.
- try to get your application to engineers directly
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^-- THIS. Somewhere here, there must be my story of an interview I had. Ended with the head of engineering laying hands on, and yelling at, a hr drone in front of dozens of witnesses.

Read Sun Tzu, and heed it. Customers are enemies. Coworkers can turn into enemies (been there, done that).

Another sign you need to look for better places: people get promoted because of $REASON, where REASON is not performance nor experience.
I should have left my first employer the moment they promoted a still-green fresh from university to project lead. Mates and me did not show up in business casual every day and we were XY, not XX. So, maybe it was due to 'performance' in the end...

Also, never dip your pen in company ink.
 
At work, never apoligise or use the word "sorry" because it attaches the error to you when in reality 99% of the time it is a result of many people's failures. Instead of demonstrating honesty and care, all it results in is subconciously people thinking less of you and incorrectly blaming you in future.

Instead just immediately bypass it with "in future, <thing> will be done to avoid this situation". This is all people want to hear anyway. They want solutions, not whining.

Luckily it works well for me. I never apologise because I am also a bit of an arrogant grump :)

Edit: This advice does *not* apply to your partner! I repeat. Don't try it haha.
 
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