For me:
Sometimes it doesn’t matter how hard you work, your going to get laid off either way.
Just showing up can sometimes make the difference.
Your not paid to be a software developer. Your being paid to be a problem solver.
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Know the rulebook backwards and forward.
Because when you break a rule you can show that you tried to do it by the book, and it didn’t work.
You can get away with a LOT if you keep people up to date with what you’re doing
If only I’d think of that while doing it.
It’s usually a “This will take 20min or so” and turns into an “I know I am 3 hours into that but I know I am close to fixing it for good!”
But you can get away with the 3 hours on a 20 mins task, if you detail exactly what’s happening with a check-in every now and again, that’s what I mean.
If I would remember doing that! Yeah, sure.
*You’re. I’m sorry for being that guy, but you’ve made that mistake three times.
Anyways, it is never worth being the hard-working type. I’ve learned the lesson that once you prove to be reliable, management is going to gravitate towards you and work you to death. That means, they’ll want you always helping others, they want you in multiple departments, they want you doing extra tasks on top of everything you do.
So, don’t be reliable. Just do what you can and call it a day. Don’t over-achieve, especially if the company-related rewards aren’t worth it.
That’s a great question and there are so many good answers in this thread.
Don’t expect your superiors to ever back you up. I got burned so many times. I knew I was right, but they didn’t have a backbone and only thought about the budget, their reputation, and the work they’d have to put in for damage control. I wanted to shut restaurants for their filthiness, but “Oh noes, what will the community think”. Well, if someone dies, then it’s on your head. DOCUMENT EVERYTHING.
Even if a conversation or direction was made verbally, always follow up with an email to say “Just to confirm our conversation today, you have directed me to…” Even if it’s about holidays. My old boss was such a prick. Him and all upper management are the reason I am suspicious of everyone and everything.
99% of people don’t wash their hands properly.
I threatened to call the fire marshal on an employer once if they didn’t fix an emergency exit. It got fixed that night, but can’t say it ingratiated me with management.
But I had told them about the broken door for almost a month.
same here, so exhausting.
It’s why I ended up quitting that job. I couldn’t get ahead because documenting everything took up so much of my time. In the end, the entire chain up to CEO still sided with my shite in the rain of a manager because she sucked enough under the table 🙄
The number of times I’ve seen people get out of the shitter and just head back to work, is disgustingly too damn high. I used to bring sanitary wipes with to clean every door handle. Now I work from home thankfully.
Now, picture the same people in restaurants preparing your food. It’s exactly the same thing 💀
Re: lesson two
Long time ago, one of my teachers showed the class the data from a survey of managers. It asked them to prioritize a list of things that could lead to a firing. Number one was punctuality/attendance. Number four was theft. This suggested to him that you could be stealing from the company, but if you showed up every day on time you’d be less likely to be fired than if you were always MIA but not a thief. Years in the workplace has only served to confirm this for me.
Probably truth in that, but also possible the question was phrased in a way where the managers weren’t prioritizing the things that could lead to firing, but things they were most likely to die someone for, and theft certainly isn’t as common as or attendance.
Personally i always put a person’s attitude above being on time. Someone who regularly showed up late but was willing to help others who were struggling is better, in my opinion, than someone who was on time everyday but was just watching the clock. That said, it definitely depends on the job. If someone else is waiting for you to get there before they can leave, you are definitely on the block if you’re constantly that guy.
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Boss said, last year’s performance met expectations, so we are all not getting any bonus.
What?? Hold on. It’s a performance-based bonus. This directly translates to a bonus-based performance, effective immediately.
Fuck the company, I don’t work for peanuts.
Literally an hour ago my boss tells me he doesn’t think I’m working fast enough because things aren’t always getting finished. I tell him that six months ago the labour budget was reasonable and but now I have half as many hours to do the same amount of work.
He tells me it can’t be helped, the labour budget is what it is. I tell him that the work can’t be helped without more labour, because it is what it is.
Anyway, I guess what I learned on the job is if you use management’s own words against them you’ll get written up
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yup, did it some time ago, boss yelled in a meeting, wrote an email ‘for confirmation of understanding’ with word for word, he did NOT like it. and ofc I did not understand what all the yelling was about.
Don’t touch liquid nitrogen with your bare hands.
Don’t touch glowing metal with your bare hands.
Don’t touch exposed wire with your bare hands.
Thank you Six Finger.
Well I’M Homer Simpson! —Grimey
Stupid no fun allowed lessons, next you’re going to tell me I can’t feed the lions dressed in a zebra costume
So if I put a pair of nitrile gloves on, I should be able to touch those things with no problems? brb gonna go try it
Don’t forget to grab something out of the heavy machinery
Don’t put your dick in it either. :/
No that’s actually perfectly okay.
Can confirm, these are excellent lessons.
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Pff! Where’s the fun in that?
So you’re saying that as long as the bare wires are soaked in liquid nitrogen, they’re fine to touch!
I mean you would think…
Don’t touch the -80°C (-112°F) freezer with your bare wet hands (learned this today :D )
Being right doesn’t matter if you can’t convince others.
Also that the best way to convince others that your ideas should be done is to make them think it is their idea. Worrying about getting credit works against getting things done.
When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.
And then you get laid off. 🪿
Star Trek lied to us about the competency levels of our co-workers.
To be fair, the story is set a few years in the future.
Yeah, when they had flip phones.
And revolves around the best of the best. The enterprise is the flagship of the federation
Thats why I like Orville so much, because its just averagely normally competent workers doing space communism things
You’re not family
You’re not their friend
They don’t want anything to change.
Always take a long lunch. They are.
You’re not a problem solver, you’re a back massager.
You’re definitely going to get laid off these days, and it doesn’t matter what your performance was like.
Your one-up is probably not coming in to work at all, which is why their help isn’t ever helpful.
You should scrape all their data and source code to see if there’s anything useful you can sell when you get laid off.
Be sure to document everything and save it on your own device. Always check “use Gemini notes” for zoom calls. Screenshot chats where you ask direct questions and never get answers.
Get two jobs, do the minimum at both. Made double money, fuck them.
Validate your backups regularly.
Also, make backups.
Taking a day to actually test backups by doing a cold reset can save a business, thats for sure.
The horror of being a senior admin is realizing that the whole thing could live or die based solely on your actions and decisions. And that you will be blamed.
This is where you bring Chaos Monkey in and see where your weak points are.
I’ve always wanted to deploy Chaos Monkey for its actual purpose, but I’ve never been in charge of a big enough infra to make it worth the time. I have turned off databases just to see who files a ticket, which seems in the same spirit.
A shout test is what I call that.
If your backups are untested, you don’t have backups.
Years after the fact I could make the lead developer’s eye twitch just by mentioning the guy who was supposed to maintain the backups but we discovered after the fire that he actually hadn’t been doing it. That guy was fired, but it didn’t bring back the lost code.
Yes, the meeting might result in the same plan you made forever ago. But now everyone knows what, how, and why. The meeting wasn’t called because your idea was shit, it was to bring everyone up to speed.
Always cover your ass. Take notes of everything, send emails out with important details of who was supposed to do what. It’ll help you avoid trouble when something goes wrong and fingers start being pointed.
If you’re aloof in the office and your campus has several buildings to work at, you can work remote without anyone ever noticing.
It usually doesn’t need to be perfect, good enough is often good enough and can be a lot faster where trying for perfection might not get finished in time.
with the era of llms and vibe coding the bar for good enough got way too low.
“Good enough for these clowns.” is the key phrase. But I try to leave off the last three words if I say it out loud.
Don’t turn the work computers connected to the giant LCD screens outside in public on. They could display something not meant to be seen in public. That’s how I learned a co-worker looks at porn on his work computer. Co-worker chewed me out. He brought up the porn. I never went from angry/embarrassed to cracking up in my head so fast.
Same for screen sharing. Do not share your whole screen unless you’re ok with your coworkers seeing every open window, including the chat you have currently open.
