[OT] Extra time spent

[Dejan Lekic via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 4 June 2014 at 17:57:16 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> On 6/4/2014 7:59 AM, Dejan Lekic wrote:
>>
>> I humbly believe programmer who does not spend spare time 
>> reading
>> literature related to his/her work is most likely going to 
>> lose the job
>> at some point, as people who DO spend time in their 
>> self-education will
>> take the place.
>>
>
> I know from direct observational experience that, depending on 
> the company, keeping one's job (or even getting one in the 
> first place) is not always dependent on one's ability to 
> actually do the job at all.
>
> (Heck, I've tutored CS 101 students, and even still: the worst 
> code I've ever seen by far was NOT beginners, but was 
> production code written by professionals whose jobs were 
> nowhere near the chopping block.)

Well, we both know that circumstances can be pretty chaotic in 
any company. I am not going to defend professionals who write bad 
code, but I am just saying that I can understand the stress, and 
all that goes together, especially if the person is senior.

A typical scenario is when (top-level) manager (M) want thing 
yesterday, and tell senior engineer (SE)

M: How long will it take?
SE: Well, we did not even analyse the requirements for this 
feature. Let's spend some time brainstorming this first, and then 
I will be able to do better estimation.
M: We have no time for that, and I think you already have all you 
need.
SE: OK, 3 days.
M: What??? We need this thing yesterday!
SE: Well, I could do a quick hack... It will take 1 day, but we 
will not have time to test, no time for code quality, etc.
M: DO IT!!!
(that "quick hack" code stays there because next week another 
urgent thing came, and SE never had time to make the code better)

Moral of the story: it is not SE whom we have to blame for bad 
code, it can easily be the management who made deliberate 
decision for that...

>
> That said, you're certainly right that continual self-education 
> is very important (even if one's job isn't on the line).