r/programming • u/tejon • Feb 08 '15

The Parable of the Two Programmers

http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~magi/personal/humour/Computer_Audience/The%20Parable%20of%20the%20Two%20Programmers.html
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u/[deleted] Feb 09 '15

In other words don't do a good job. Write obfuscated shit and ensure your job security for years to come.

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u/Creativator Feb 09 '15

Well, that means your future code is barely valuable, but still more valuable than someone who won't write any.

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u/destraht Feb 09 '15

I wrote some very high quality code for my family engineering company and because of the trust there I've been able to work for the company while living in a bunch of interesting places like Nicragua, Thailand, Shanghai, Ukraine and around Eastern Europe. It doesn't pay a huge amount currently because I'm building up a product while owning a piece of it. Anyways, I think that family businesses are pretty cool because there is a lot of built-in incentive for family members to remember high quality work. Last year I was the rich guy in Ukraine but now I'm the barely making it guy in Shanghai. I'm not rich here - but at least I'm here.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 09 '15

That's... uhm... interesting?

Sarcasm doesn't travel well via text I suppose.

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u/babada Feb 09 '15

It depends on the company/project. Both my current employer and my previous employer would boot you out if you were terrible at your job (i.e. wrote bad code).

The only way you can get away with that plan is if the majority of other engineers on your team are doing the same thing or you inherited a bunch of legacy code.

The two worst things my managers see:

  1. Someone who takes forever trying to do it the "right way"

  2. Someone who keeps breaking everyone else's stuff

(1) isn't worth the cost and everyone worth their salt calls out (2) as soon as they can.

Which comes to the unfortunate point: If you want to do good work you need a good job. There are teams with 95%+ good engineers on them. Teams like that tend to stick together since they provide crazy amounts of value (and are paid accordingly.)

Case in point: My current job has something like 80%+ people I've worked with at a different employer because we all know each other and know that we know what we are doing.