I'm a programmer, not a salesman, not a liar, and I have some
principles. I believe that the business world lives in hell, or is
heading there and it's taking the rest of the planet with it.
I work for a company that writes big, expensive software and sells it
all over the world. We have a client in Italy that is pretty big on our
list "important" customers. There's some guy, who's sort-of a
friend of mine in this company and he's currently working in
the Italy client's office doing stuff. Ages ago he wrote a 3000
line PERL script to do something that is kinda neat. Well, the sales
guys have decided to "sell" this PERL script to the client... for 2,000,000
Euros! That's great!
Now, of course there's a catch. He needs my help. "How do I make a
3000 line PERL script look like huge application written in C?", he asks.
Now I have a problem. As a programmer that works for a company that you
believe may be doing some shady business with your code after it leaves
your hands, you kinda have to shrug your shoulders and say "My job is to
write the best code I can, plain and simple". I've been doing that OK up
until now. I don't write code that has no computational purpose and whose
sole reason for being is to fuck someone over. Am I going to teach this,
obviously skill-lacking individual (I mean, this aint that hard) to do this
thing so that some sales guy can make a big commission on something that
aint worth squat!? I think not! This PERL script is not worth two million
euros! Hell, the client could hire a basic programmer, have him learn
PERL, learn our extremely complex product and code the thing himself for
far less than two million!
I had some respect for this guy. Now, I didn't have a ton of respect
for him... I mean, how much respect can you have for a guy that tells
people he's a devoted christian and at the same time screws around trying
to climb the corporate ladder, and has absolutely no quams about doing this
deed? I have now lost that little respect for him. What little respect I
have left for this company is totally gone now, I believe. On top of that,
I am extremely pissed off that they let their slimey world come to my desk.
Is this the straw? Do I now find a
new job? It just may finally happen. Is the market good out there yet?
Anyone want to hire a programmer who knows J2EE and Java and refuses to
code in them cuz they suck? :) Someone please find me a reputable
company (it doesn't exist, does it?) and bring me on in the
languages I love!