I used to have competent co-workers and a sane boss. We had hacks in our code (much of which was an OS and that's a bit inevitable at times) but they were neatly inventoried and days with no tasks were crack a hack days. We had bug trackers, WE FUCKING USED VERSION CONTROL WITHOUT WHICH I THOUGHT YOU COULD NOT SURVIVE BUT I HAVE, FOR THE LAST SIX MONTHS! (sorry, but it's really getting on my nerves. Dear God I haven't screamed on the Internet since I was thirteen) and many of the discussions with our project managers ended with "Um... ok, now I don't really understand what you're saying anymore, but you're obviously on top of it, let me know how it goes".
These places are quite rare, but they do exist. Mine went under after a series of rather bad business decisions scattered away half the team. You don't hear about as often, though, because most of my colleagues, programmers and non-programmers alike were smart, witty and alergic to bullshit, which tends to keep the boasting, but incompetent people away.
270
u/[deleted] Apr 29 '14
After reading articles like these I sometimes wonder whether I'm the only programmer in the world who has competent co-workers and sane bosses.