With this job, I saw myself doing the same thing I was doing on the first day I started:
- 30 minutes: Being told about a line of code they want added
- 10 minutes: Adding that line of code and recompiling.
-360 minutes: testing that line of code
- 25 minutes: documenting it that line of code, in the code (5 lines), in a document, a time sheets and a task list.
- 60 minutes: talking about that line of code, if I did anything other than exactly what I was told to do.
From the times above you can see that one programmer who just coded could replace all of the other programmers.
But, that's what maintenance programmers do, I guess. They don't code, they test and document. Thats messed up.
Development programmers use their time as follows:
- Designing and programming are interactive with the user and takes up about 90% of the time.
- The users are almost always happy to create the documentation. The design specs change in the development cycle.
- It's typical to write several hundred lines of code each day.
I can honestly say I didn't learn anything new in the last month.
If I stayed, I would have learned how to mindlessly write sloppy code. I can't do that. I care about the quality of my work.
The worst thing I saw about this job was: myself slowly going broke with no reputation to show for it.
In programming, if you don't gain new skills, you are almost worthless.
The only way to keep a job without learning new things is to lock yourself in. You can do that working for the government, or some big corporation where noone knows what or how you do what you do.
Usually, the people who have seniority in a programming shop, are the people with the fewest skills.
They haven't learned other ways of doing things, and they usually think their way is the only way.
They almost always say, "Thats not the way we do it here".
Any programmer who reads this, should realize it is the truth.
Bad coders get promoted, while the good coders move on.
About job recruiters. They're great for when you don't know anyone, and you haven't established a reputation.
However, once you've been at a place for awhile, if you do exceptional work, people will talk about what you've done. When you leave a job, people will call you wanting to hire you. If they don't, then you have either a bad reputation or none.
We all sell ourselves by what we do. If we don't care about what we do, others will see that.
And there was no way I was going to get a good reputation at a place that controlled every thing I did.