CodeProject Latest postings for Work Issues

Work-Life Balance

Member 15731919 — Fri, 02 Sep 2022 08:47:00 GMT

Hi All. I run a few businesses and I have a question about time management and work-life balance.
How do those of you that are single manage to work long hours but still find time to go out on dates and catch up with friends?

Team mates lazy and making me do all the work

Gopika Ravikumar — Thu, 16 Jun 2022 16:50:00 GMT

So basically i am working on this college project and my teammates are just lazy and not at all helping. They are making me do all the work and now I am under a lot of stress and I do not know what to do.
I keep getting stuck and burnt do but there is no one to ask for help...If I am not able to complete the project I might fail for the subject

so 5th boss in 18 months

rnbergren — Tue, 01 Mar 2022 15:46:00 GMT

First boss lasted one whole week.
Second and Third bosses (dual reporting) were awesome for the next 9 months. First time a dual reporting relationship that actually worked and worked very well. Two great individuals who communicated both with each other and with me.
4th boss is a jerk. Oh well. So 4th boss wanted another layer of management between himself and his minions. Brings on an new manager between us. Without any interview process without any warning. New mid-level boss started today.

Like/Love the job and the co-workers and greatly believe in the product. BUTTTTTTTTT........

Feeling a little jerked around right now.

Advice thoughts?

To err is human to really elephant it up you need a computer

Because I am Asian, should I be fired?

magdalenatristan — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 20:18:00 GMT

I have worked at Amazon for two years. My boss Tom has been bullying me since the outbreak of the epidemic. Do Americans have the ability to think seriously about things? Do you really believe in some crooks? Even if I am Asian, I am still a loyal subordinate, which is really bad!

As a programmer, what should you do when a programmer in your team keeps pushing bad code (that works)? Should you complain to the manager (who is not tech savvy)

rnbergren — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 15:18:00 GMT

This question was actually asked on a Quora and I wrote the following answer. I thought this would be a better place to put the answer so I am copying and pasting here.

Ahhh Lucy code. I worked on a team of three programmers once. It was almost a former lifetime. Two of us wrote fairly decent code. 1. Named Lucy did not. She used Goto statements. She named her variables name1, name2, name3, textbox1, textbox2 etc… It was horrible.

The manager loved her however. 1. She was a girl on the team so that helped the powers that be say we are diverse. (whatever. Bad work is bad work). and she could very quickly get a first draft into a persons hands to react to on screens and other things. She was very good at getting a project started. without thinking about the end goal.

Buttttttt and it is a huge one. She would have trouble finishing or modifing anything she worked on. And Brad and I would flat refuse to even look at her code. IF when we were forced too. We informed our manager that it would take a week of clean up before we were ready to even start on the actual changes for improvements. Also, she could not update her own code. She would spend days just trying to figure out what name77 did and what kind of variable it actually was.

It took a very long time. Like a year or more. But eventually the manager started seeing that Brad and I could update each others code easily. and that we could jump into any project either of us had done and keep going when the other was out. Lucy on the other hand could not even with her own code. Eventually we started pushing for code reviews infront of the manager and pointed out the variable naming and the spaghetti like structure of her code. And then we would ask the dreaded question. How long will it take for you to update this if the customer decides that the zip code should not be an integer and now should be alpha for overseas deliveries? How long will it take you to find the various textbox1’s on all the screens and actually know which one houses which database information fields?

about 2 months of that and Lucy got mad and quit our team.

PS Let me be very clear before anyone goes off on me picking on a woman. I have worked with a ton of wonderful lady programmers. They have been awesome. I have worked with some bass Akwards male programmers. Lucy just happens to be the worst of the worst for programmers that I have encountered,.

To err is human to really elephant it up you need a computer

Has anyone gotten an invite to BugUFO (place where you can get paid to debug)? If so what do you think?

marie huet — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 12:15:00 GMT

Hi, I recently came across this site on hacker news: BugUFO: Get paid to debug code[^]

And applied for an invite but wanted to ask if anyone has gotten in before and if so, what are your thoughts are about them?

Red Flags in a new Job. Excellently written. Reposting with Permission.

rnbergren — Fri, 30 Aug 2019 12:59:00 GMT

What were some “red flags” new hires shouldn't ignore when starting a new job?
All Credit to
Don Sevcik, President of MathCelebrity and Author of 2 books
Updated Jul 4

Let’s discuss 10 red flags to watch for within the first 3 months of your job. 3 months gives you ample time to find. My credentials for this answer: 20+ years in the corporate America cube farm. Fortune 500, mid-level, and start-ups. Ready…Let’s go get it.

1.Has your job, in the first few weeks, suddenly morphed into something different from the job role on your employment contract? And, if you call management out on it, and they use silly phrases like not “being flexible”. Congratulations, you’ve found your first red flag
a.Aside: If you learn nothing else from this post, read this: “Flexible” and “Team Player” mean do more work, but not get paid for it. Learn this quickly. Because the most important thing every morning is waking up, looking in the mirror, and being able to respect yourself.

2.If you work in a job as a “doer”, such as developer, builder of things, etc., do you find yourself booked up in many meetings? Then congratulations, you’ve discovered a red flag. “Doers” should not be in too many meetings. Because gasp…they need time to actually do stuff. If management cannot squash this early so you can do what you do best, you’ve found yourself at a mismanaged company.

3.In the first few weeks of joining a company, do you notice lots of “cliques” and keep running into “unexpected, unspoken rules?” If so, you’ve dug up another red flag.
a.I remember working at a company years back, doing development. In my interview, I was crystal clear…”I don’t like filling out a lot of paperwork to push code. I just want to code, test quickly, and push it out there.” Alas, 3 weeks after getting hired, management “revealed” that every code push needs a 3 page document filled out, a web form filled out, 3 layers of approval, just to get a change in. It’s ridiculous. The more red tape, the bigger the red flag.

4.Does your company push “social-time” off hours and unnecessary get-togethers? Do they push, and I mean push charities, social justice groups, and other hootenanny garbage? Congratulations, you’ve found another red flag. Nowhere in any standard employment contract anywhere, does it state you must be active with charity, social justice causes, and any of that other garbage. Nor should it, because none of that has one iota to do with your job and the company making money. Not one iota. So if it’s pushed on you, run for the hills.

5.Does your company value “in-office” time more than they do accomplishments during your work hours? If so, you’ve found another archaic, and detrimental red-flag. If I get 8 hours of work done in 2 hours, then what I do after that shouldn’t matter. Because, it’s not like corporate will pay you more for additional effort. Great bosses will let you leave early and give flex time when you pump out work quickly.

6.Do scheduled meetings always run over time, or start late, or both? Congratulations, you’ve found another red-flag. Time wasters. Also, meetings, especially corporate meetings, are notorious for posturing and politics. And if you aren't a fan of meetings like me, then this is a HUGE red flag. Meetings should have an agenda, allow no rambling, and get to the point quick. As in, who is doing what, who needs help, and when can we expect things to get done. That’s it. No more.

7.Are you having a hard time finding a document about annual raises and bonuses? As in, you do “x” and “y”, and this is how you advance. And when you ask about it, does your manager hem and haw or avoid the subject. Congratulations, you’ve found another red flag found at 90% or more of corporate jobs.

8.Does the majority of people at or above your level use unnecessary buzz words to describe something? As in, can you find a word from grade 5 to grade 7 on the Flesch-Kincaid reading level to replace their silly buzzword, and not only keep the meaning of what they were trying to say, but enhance it? Congratulations, you’ve found another red flag. The key to communication is simplicity and clarity. And buzzwords violate both those rules. And if we can’t have a simple conversation about “my contract” and not “annual incentive protocol”, then we have a red flag on our hands.

9.Do the dumbest people get promoted, and the superstars get passed over or marginalized? Congratulations young padawan, you’ve uncorked another red flag. And this, like #7, happens at 90% or more of corporate companies. It’s red flag football, and you never score a touchdown.

10.Does your new company change “direction” every 2–4 weeks? Pat yourself on the back detective, you’ve found another red flag. If management cannot figure out what to do, and they get paid large coin to do one job, then you’ve found yourself at an insane asylum. Best to pull the cord and exit stage left.

Heed these 10 rules my friends, they just might save your life down the road.

Quote:
Don's linked in Account

[^]

To err is human to really mess up you need a computer

Culture Change - Advice Sought

Worried Brown Eyes — Thu, 27 Jun 2019 20:42:00 GMT

Hi
Apologies for the long post, but there is a more directed question at the end of the slightly rambling background.

In September, I started working for an offshoot of another company, but since then, our IT departments are merging, and the cultures are completely different. In our office, established for just over a year there's me with bags of commercial IT experience, plus a guy with a PhD in aeronautical engineering, excellent dev & very quick on the uptake working with C# & SQL where possible.

In the other office they have been established over 10 years and the IT is doing the job the company needs, but there are no good practices.

Some examples :-

Virtually all development is in Python, which is run as a mass of scheduled tasks. There is one particular task that runs around lunchtime to pick up all the submissions from the previous day, and another to pick up the same class of thing to mop up what has come in today runs at around 5pm. Each is a separate python script with a couple of classes declared at the top (which are declared in virtually every script I have seen), followed by around 1000 lines of code mixing in database access, processing logic & composition of output XML in a single block of code with nothing split out for readability. The two scripts differ in four lines - they don't appear to have heard of parameters.

Also, they don't appear to have heard of stored procedures; I have seen scripts where, to get nested information, they run an inline query to get a set of data, then walk the set in Python & fire a separate query to get related information for each row.

Did I mention that they have no form of source control?

I really need to change the culture in the other office (I do have my boss's support in this). I started by going in there & demonstrating a bit of separation of concerns using classes in Python and unit testing, then leaving a copy of Clean Code with the guy who seems to be the main trusted developer who people look to for advice, but it sat on his desk unopened for 2 weeks.

On the plus side, a young guy (just 18, left school at 16, started in the warehouse & moved into development purely because he showed an interest in it) emailed me to say he hoped it was OK that he had taken the book home at the weekend to read, and is picking up C# with remote assistance from me. He's mega-keen & will probably make an excellent developer. There are other developers who also seem willing to learn, and they have all said that that the guru is very set in his ways.

So, any ideas on how I can start moving them towards learning sensible IT practices as a matter of course? I feel the main obstacle is the guru chap, but he has the trust of his non-technical superiors, so technical explanations may be wasted on them.

One possible light is that we will be examining the code of a product developed by a third party, written in VS Code C# - I'm hoping it will open their eyes to the possibilities, though I'm not looking forward to explaining <t> notation to Python devs, should it arise.

Regards & TIA

Career Dilemma - BIG DATA Vs SAP HANA-Pls help

spsv — Wed, 29 May 2019 10:58:00 GMT

My career journey is as : Started at 2006 in a reputed MNC as a fresher and have worked on C# .net for 2.5 years then gone for sabatical due to personal issues and then resigned the company after 2 years. Hence, worked for 2 yrs but have Service Certificate for almost 5 yrs. Then i have got job in another MNC and joined as .net developer , but the thing is i haven't enjoyed the dev lifecycle and much coding part. Hence, learned SAP BO and shifted career to SAP with certification in BO , but in new company was moved into support project where i was very comfortable for the last 7 years into data ware housing support project that involves very low level of SQL knowledge along with low level informatica knowledge along with Reporting. Now my total exp is around 12 years and i feel like an impostor with that many years of experience and no grip on any one technology. Since all current projects are moving to BIG DATA , started learning BIG Data (Hadoop exactly ) and identified that it requires either Java or Python programming knowledge and i feel like am not up to it or either data analytics statistics etc.,

while researching observed that SAP HANA also has interesting insights to it.Since, i dont want to go programming side , please let me know how good it is to consider HANA as next career path and will these open sources will SAP related technologies survive and will be in demand?

If any other technologies considering DWH , DB background that can be considered, pls share.

Thanks in advance.

Hello, I need some help!

Member 14210668 — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 06:38:00 GMT

<pre>My name is Macarena and I want to start with the programming it catches my attention, but I need a good notebook, since mine is very old and I do not know what kind of laptop I need, can you help me please?

System allocation best practice

Shireeshs — Tue, 15 Jan 2019 12:51:00 GMT

We are a setup of 2000 machines and dealing with challenges in Inventory, agent coverage and reports which are never consistent. Support team has to get manual inventory or manually install agents.

We have Symantec DLP agents and System center configuration manager (SCCM) agents deployed to all the client machines (PCs) through group policy.

We allocate machine to a user who roams along with user for his time with the company, when he changes his project or Team. Host name stays the same but IP address changes to his current projects VLAN. Which as per me has downsides –

1. Inventory records change. Machine IP address change that may cause agents to misbehave.

2. Machine has to physically be moved to other project.

3. Machine has to be rebuilt as per the allocated projects development environment which consumes time for both person waiting to get started for that project and support person who ensures system readiness.

4. Support members have to frequently do physical verification , install agents on machines that for reasons are not reachable or update them.

My query is what is the recommended practice widely followed by different enterprises. To allocate machine to user or allocate machine to project so that the machine stays with the same project which as per me has following advantages –

1. Inventory is mostly consistent as we always know hosts allocated to a project.

2. Developer environment is always as per the projects requirement.

3. A user allocated to the project can immediately continue with his work.

Our IT Management has long been following practice of allocating machine to users and not projects and these challenges are bothering us a lot. I am seeking opinion what is the practice followed by most enterprise setups and is recommended as preferred practice.

Please share your opinion.

Web developer employment

Member 13997495 — Tue, 25 Sep 2018 21:10:00 GMT

Hello,

I am considering doing a coding bootcamp and getting a job as a web developer after that. However, I am not sure I can commit to web development for a career. I may be pursuing something else 1.5 - 2 years after the coding bootcamp. Do you think it would still be possible to get a web development job even though I may not be able to commit to it as a career? Will employers ask about the future in interviews or is demand high enough that I can still secure something?

Thank you very much.

What is the best programming language for developing ERPs

Maria Okta — Thu, 26 Jul 2018 03:20:00 GMT

Hello, currently i tried to develope ERP software but i still confuse what programming languange i should use, is Java the best for ERP?

Launching Visual Studio From External Hard Drive

Keith@Stand — Sat, 21 Jul 2018 16:42:00 GMT

I had to download Visual Studio into my D: drive because not enough room on C:. Now I can't launch it. How do I launch Visual Studio from my D: drive?

Some things that are bothering me about file/data corruption

Thaana Paana — Wed, 27 Jun 2018 12:38:00 GMT

This might seem kinda off topic but I'm very concerned about this. I'm storing serialized objects in binary files as a data to load, there will be a lot of these files and I'm afraid that it might get corrupt because I want these files for a very looong time.

After reading this I have some more questions
Why, or How, do Files Become Corrupt? - Ask Leo![^]

1. There is no way I can prevent it?
2. If you don't use/interact a file there is a high chance of getting it corrupted?
3. Will the file get corrupted depending on its weight like if its 1 gb or more?
4. What is the best way to store/keep my data clean for long time usage?
5. I know there is a huge chance of files getting corrupted if a windows crash occurs while I'm saving it. But what about like after the file is saved and if a windows crash occurs? will the file still corrupt?

PS: My english sucks, hope you had a fun time reading it!

What is the business world like for a programmer?

Member 13882053 — Thu, 21 Jun 2018 21:02:00 GMT

Hello, I hope I'm posting in a place that is ok with discussion and not just question/answer. I know my question will receive some opinionated responses but not necessarily and regardless, it is something I really would like to ask people who are already working in the field.

I got into a developer's position a few years ago and it has been quite stressful for me. I feel I'm an intelligent person, I like technology, video games, programming etc. I have a passion for programming although sometimes I find it fading but I try to remain optimistic.

When I was interviewed for this position I made no effort to oversell myself. I was very upfront and honest about what I knew and didn't know. I provided code examples of what I had worked on and took a test that was assigned to me all before being hired. The position was supposed to be more of an entry level position.

At first I was really excited. So happy to finally be a developer. I wanted to learn as much as I could. I didn't necessarily want to stay with the company but I was happy to have got the position and wanted to learn all I could while I was here.

Problems soon arose and it's from these problems that I'm trying to get some insight into the industry to see what the job life is like for programmers outside of my little world/company.

The company I work for is a fortune 500 company, they are huge, all over the place, international, they're everywhere and you know them I promise, I prefer not to say though for privacy reasons. That being said, I was happy to get into this "entry level" programming position in this huge company cause I knew it would be a great learning experience.

I soon found out that I was being relied upon quite heavily and with very little guidance. My position, although I'm required to be in an office location, is virtual. Meaning, every programmer is at a different location, including my supervisors and management, and some (especially management) work from home.

One of my pet peeves is that, although I have a company laptop, and there's little to no collaboration taking place, I can't work from home myself, I have to carry my laptop with me and plug it in at the office I work at. While this irritates me alot, I can totally cope with this if the rest were ok.

My biggest gripe is the lack of collaboration, guidance, communication, and give a *@!$. I am given projects, with little to no background information, most the time via email, and that is it. I am told to ask questions if I have any. The majority of the time, my entire time spent here is one big question.

I'm trying to figure out, is this how it is where everyone works? Is it normal to hire entry level programmers, provide them with little to no guidance/training, and just assign them tasks to see if they'll still have their hair by the time it's all said and done?

This is something I'm really honestly curious about. I've been doing this for about 3 years now. I've learned things and manage to complete all of my projects on time but it's the process and the way things are managed that drive me nuts.

There are also long periods of time where I won't be assigned anything. I'm virtual so I come into an office that has nothing to do with me and sit. Sitting and waiting has been a large majority of my duties. My work life is a bit of a roller coaster. There's a very slow incline and then I'll get a project with no information or guidance and then it's a steep drop till I reach the end...

Half the time I feel it's just me, the rest I feel that it's just this place. That is why I'm on here to get an idea of what a programmer's daily job life is like.

Do you often find yourself with no resources or feel like you're kind of just there lol... I laugh but this has been the strangest and not so funny situation I have ever been in.

I also find patterns among people, ways of thinking among management. Things seem to be severely lacking. My idea is that the grass is greener on the other side but I'd like to hear from you all to see if that truly is the case or if I just need to suck it up and enjoy it somehow.

To give you an example, I was given a C# project recently, as I have many times in the past. I'm fine programming and figuring stuff out, I enjoy it, but there are times you just want to ask someone a question.

The person that was working on this C# project is no longer with us and I just found out I'm pretty much the only one that has any experience at all with C#... So me, an entry level programmer that had hoped this position would be a great learning experience is now more of a dreaded daily nightmare...

I do my best to accept and deal with the situations at hand and try not to panic but it can be hard at times. My thing is, why does it have to be like this and is it like this everywhere?

I'm not a dumb person, all I need half the time are some simple questions answered but I can't rely at all on the group I work for and it seems like they simply expect me to be Albert Einstein or something.

Then there's the guilt I feel for not knowing or feeling like I can't complete a task that gets assigned to me and fear of failure... It's just ridiculous.

Just to elaborate on the sitting and waiting. There are times I'll be assigned something, complete it, and I don't hear from anyone about anything for days or weeks. This feels like a giant waste of my time and I know it is.

Sometimes I won't be assigned anything at all so I'll email my supervisor and just say "Hey if I can help with anything let me know" and I may or may not hear back for who knows how long. I kind of stopped doing this though because now, I kind of enjoy not having anything to work on cause it tends to be stressful when I do.

My next steps are dealing with this a bit longer and spending my free time doing some coding of my own, brushing up my skills, and finding a new job. This is another reason why I ask this question because I want to hear what I may be getting myself into.

If you've read all of this thank you and if you have anything to share please do.

[Solved] Private/Public Key Pair, I'm unsure, please help to clarify

User 11060979 — Thu, 10 May 2018 15:27:00 GMT

I'm unsure if I understood everything correctly. Is the following correct:
1. A Text encrypted with PRIVATE_KEY can be decrypted only(?) with PUBLIC_KEY
2. A Text encrypted with PUBLIC_KEY can be decrypted only with PRIVATE_KEY

Thank you very much for help and sorry if the question is stupid...

It does not solve my Problem, but it answers my question

Getting negative votes from author without mentioning proper reason

Biswal Tanmaya — Sun, 10 Dec 2017 17:41:00 GMT

I got -50 points around for this article Improve-the-Way-of-Writing-Functions . But as per the code project documents when author gives down vote author should give proper reason. Please help me if I am wrong.

If a silver member gives a negative comment against a solved code

Laxmidhar tatwa technologies — Tue, 21 Nov 2017 06:05:00 GMT

If a solved code is correct is it reevaluated ?

Related point

Laxmidhar tatwa technologies — Tue, 21 Nov 2017 04:48:00 GMT

If a persion gives wrong statement against a good answer how can provide down points