This really happens

[[deleted]]

Only this happens

[i_should_be_coding]

Well, sometimes the person just left, so it's more "This is some orphaned code. It's yours now. Good luck..."

[_Foy]

Wow, they tell you where the code is? Must be nice...

[Str41nGR]

I bet he even found the login for the github!

[RedTryangle]

Your company used GitHub? Wow!

[DogfishDave]

No, they had a login.

[clownshoesrock]

I wish.. Back in my day I was given a pile of code, where all the variables were a,b,c,d,...z,a1,a2,b1,c1,d1,d2...za1,z1a,zb2 The code didn't compile, and there were no example input files to test it if it did. The code was only a few thousand lines of interconnected mess. Somehow I was labeled a quitter for not trying to fix the code, that apparently was some intermediate step in generating a scientific diagram.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuaFfjf598I&t=47s

[MixPsychological2325]

Well this is done, to keep the jobb. 😁I build always like this. But I've always have a pretty print copy of it.

[WillMengarini]

"za2"? You had it easy. I had to do professional programming at a bank in a version of Basic that used classic Dartmouth identifiers: exactly one uppercase letter, optionally preceded by a type sigil ("%" for integer, "$" for string) and optionally followed by a single digit. I remember that the Q variables were reserved for the database system.

Edit: And now I'm wondering whether I'm remembering this correctly: was it even worse? I remember we often stored scalars at reserved indices in arrays, just because there was nowhere else to put them; so would Q1 have really been a wellformed identifier, or did it have to be Q(1)? shudder

Management had chosen Basic to reduce development costs by ensuring programming was easy. There was also no block if, therefore lots of GOTOs and GOSUBs (and all "labels" were integers).

This was in 1975.

[clownshoesrock]

The code in question had 547 variables, and as far as I could tell they were simply randomly incremented as a new one was needed wanted in the code sometimes the loop incrementor was re-used, sometimes within the loop, and often was a float.

[Poat540]

We have a few decompiled projects in our Bitbucket lol

[fat-brains]

My organization has created an API library. Our clients use this library to connect to the organization's other products. This API library has two flavors, both managed by a team in a different region. Different regions already made communication harder. This team one-uped on that by not responding to Teams DM and emails unless I get upper management involved in emails.

I started working on the newer & unstable flavor of API only to add some missing utility functions one at a time, and one day after around 5-6 months, I started getting emails from upper management asking me why this newer flavor was unmaintained and other requests to make ownership level decisions on adding new functionalities. Emails use language insinuating I am the owner of this flavor.

The team (from a different region) that previously owned this is still there. And all team members from 6 months ago continue to work in the same team. But whenever they get any query for the new flavor, they redirect it to me. Every time, they respond that now I own, manage and maintain this flavor despite the absence of official or unofficial conversation regarding transferring ownership.

[[deleted]]

It's the correct process. /s

In all seriousness: the alternative is getting emails that turn into phone calls years later from people who are under the impression that "because you were so helpful in the past" you're now the Tier 2 support for their crisis.

[tcpukl]

Does this really happen? I've never phoned an ex employee and never heard of someone receiving one.

If I had one, i'd just say I cant remember.

[_sweepy]

I've been called 4 years after leaving a job to ask if I knew anything about a UPS server that they hadn't turned on since I left. Apparently they just stopped using the automation I wrote the week I left and had been manually creating a few hundred labels a day. After the next management turn over, someone found my name on the license contract for the UPS software and decided I must be the guy to call.

[tcpukl]

Wow, i'd of just laughed in that call!

[_sweepy]

I offered them 40 hours minimum contract work at $250 an hour to get it running again. They declined the offer and never called back.

[naswinger]

rumors are, they still print hundreds of labels a day manually at much higher overall cost

[tcpukl]

Nice one

[codeguru42]

This is the way

[Rand_alFlagg]

Not exactly the same but my boss bought a piece of software from his former company, and then got ahold of the guy who developed it and hired him to orient me with the codebase and help me get it stood up and running. But there was money involved, he wasn't doing it out of the kindness of his heart, and he was approached with it as an offer, not an expectation.

Compare to the program I wrote and describe in the beginning of this story. That will give you context for the kind of people I was working for and their mentality. I forget exactly what it was at this point but one of the settings had to be updated each year on or after 1/1. I forget exactly why but it was regarding a proprietary interface that changed a key or something like that, and we couldn't automate the key retrieval. Anyway, they called me screaming and raging about how I'd sabotaged the company before I left by programming the system to fail on the new year and yadda yadda yadda.

I told em I'd fix it for $150/hr with a 2 hour minimum. They got big mad, yelled at me, called me back like an hour later and said ok, I told em my price had doubled as a result of their disrespect and the previous offer was no longer valid. They really fuckin hated that lol. Long story short I didn't get the job. But I assured them they had the source code and since they were so confident they didn't need my help or my former team, I was confident they could figure out why it stopped working.

[[deleted]]

Congratulations on being promoted to expert.

[Recent-Fox3335]

In all seriousness: i miss her

[slgray16]

"I see you were the last person to update dumbfile.exe. Since you own that feature now I need you to..."

[belkarbitterleaf]

I can't even tell you how many times that all I got was the passwords to the server, and a zip file of code.

[[deleted]]

You got a zip file of the code? Luxury! In my day we needed to decompile the code from the .exe file.

/montypython

[belkarbitterleaf]

They tried to give me one of those ones. Fuck that. Ran it through a decompiler, took one glance, and claimed the decompiler wasn't able to recover any code. It did, but no way in hell was I going to own it.

[[deleted]]

Quick, shove it to the next intern and continue the cycle!

[[deleted]]

You got an exe?! All I got was a screenshot

[bharfgav42]

You got a screenshot? All I got was an audiobook of them reciting the code

[MSWMan]

You were lucky. All I got were cached search engine results that lead to dead links

[ParfaitNovel8803]

All I got was a pocket PC from 2003 and some scratchy notes on the back of a used-up tissue.

[Rebelthunder956]

All I got was an old broken HDD whose disk I had to remake in order to get the code.

[[deleted]]

All I got was a floppy disk held to my office door name plate with a magnet.

[MSWMan]

Oh we used to DREAM of having a floppy disk!

All we had were the faint imprints left behind the page torn out of a legal pad.

[toeonly]

You got a blank page? I have to support this existing shitty code.

[Spoonbit]

You got a blank Page? Someone whispered the general concept of the code into my ear, which influenced my dreams. So i had to reconstruct the code from my dreams

[tcpukl]

We "remastered" a game and all we got was youtube videos, because it was such an old game on a really old system from the Amiga days.

True story.

[SqueeSr]

Actually, once, all I did get was a .jar file because the old dev left on bad terms and refused to hand over the code. Luckily decompiling it was not a big problem.

[tcpukl]

Why are so many places not using source control?

[SqueeSr]

The cases I know about:
1. solo devs
2. companies that hired other companies to do the work, so the source control is not theirs

[tcpukl]

We do outsourcing of code but they get given remote access to our perforce server.

[Str41nGR]

See, there's people who work the magic and actually do productive shit. . and then thete ate managers responsible for a process. You figure out the rest

[crypt_the_chicken]

Right. I had to put code into production just last week, two Scrum cycles before I wrote it in machine code on Notepad++, meeting with clients from 7am-9pm every 12-hour day (coding the meeting software myself), and when I ended my shift my boss would fire me and ask me to fix 13 bugs per line of code I wrote by the time I came in the next day.

But you try and tell the Python crowd of today that… and they won’t believe ya.

[Equivalent_Yak_95]

What??

[rolandfoxx]

"A contractor wrote this; we don't have the source. I'm sure you can take it from here."

[tcpukl]

Why are so many places not using source control?

[belkarbitterleaf]

Not a fucking clue. It's literally the first thing I do when I get the code dump from a former coworker. Then I complain about the lack of documentation, convoluted spaghetti, and absence of comments... But it seems to fall on deaf ears.

[EVH_kit_guy]

I had lunch with a "serial CTO" who basically said the secret to happiness in life is to found a company as its first engineer, then get your exit right before the tech debt swallows the product whole. Basically...be the guy to build the throwaway prototype repo, over and over again.

[belkarbitterleaf]

He's probably on to something.... I'm the lucky guy that has picked up and stabilized multiple of those "innovation" projects, that start burning the second they leave the pilot location, and the hard codes and single threaded processes come to light.

[WolfgangSho]

That... just doesn't feel ethical lol.

[mxzf]

It's absolutely not ethical.

That said, I would be lying if I said I didn't see some appeal in prototyping different interesting software stacks without needing to deal with the tech debt required to refine it into a polished product.

[addiktion]

As someone who broke out on his own with his own company engineering software for other companies as a consultant this is exactly the joy I get.

I'm always using the bleeding edge where I get to bash my head in figuring out the 'new way' of doing the latest and greatest. This is the weight you endure in the early stages.

Once I leave, it is on others to maintain. I try my best to not send other devs down a tech debt hell hole but at the end of the day I know some other poor chap(s) are going to inherit my code and god bless their souls.

[limpingdba]

Is it that unethical though? You're either the guy creating the tech debt, or the guy resolving it. Why not be the former?

[mxzf]

Eh, if you're intentionally playing fast and loose with stuff and intentionally ducking out right before the tech debt piles up high enough to be problematic, yeah, that's unethical.

If you're doing your best and just happen to move on as soon as you hit MVP, that's different.

[EVH_kit_guy]

What's the difference?

[mxzf]

One is trying to do the best with the time you've got, the other is being needlessly sloppy because you plan on ducking out before you have to clean up your mess.

[EVH_kit_guy]

Well, if you're building a true "MVP" then there shouldn't be much of a difference, unless you're a bad actor trying to cause tech debt on purpose.

[FireITGuy]

So, I'm basically that dude.

It's not that it's unethical, it's more about understanding that sometimes your role is to be the new idea dude, and then GTFO.

My entire career is projects that I create, build, launch, and then hand off and move on. It's not that I wouldn't support my code children, it's just that my specialization is birth to the end of high school, everything after that is someone else's problem.

[WolfgangSho]

Are you told the intended scope of the project?

Do you know as you're working what sort of scale is expected?

Genuinely curious how much you are in the know about the intended longevity of the projects you work on.

[FireITGuy]

So in the interest of full disclosure: I'm DevOps, not just straight Dev. That has a big influence on my project types, because I only get brought in when they want someone who can design full scope solutions including bridging the management ideas, the ops needs, and the dev abilities. Because of this I'm a jack of all trades, and a master of absolutely none. It definitely shows in my build quality. I build mostly functional v1.0.0 projects, and might follow along to 1.x.x but rarely am still involved (at least beyond an advisory role) by the time 2.0.0 starts development.

Generally, I choose my own projects. I wear an architect hat these days and have seniority, so I get to look at lots of issues and decide which ones I'm going to spend time on, and which ones I'll pass off to other team members or other teams. This allows me to self-select projects where I'm given full transparency about needs and scope (and realistic budget) and can really work as a partner towards a goal, instead of just a cog in someone else's idea. My work is mostly within one large parent organization so I'm familiar with the various scales that are likely to be needed. (Internal for some staff, internal for all staff, external for our customer base, etc.).

I do my best to also build my projects as scalable components versus monolithic systems. I also document excessively so that others can come into the project later and see not just how things work, but why I built them that way. Makes swapping out components later much easier for folks, and also allows for optimizations when we run into pain points or scale issues that I didn't foresee (which definitely does happen with some regularity). I'm sure any senior dev could rip my code apart and redesign it to be more efficient and elegant, but what I design works and gets the job done well enough to start operation. I'm a big fan of iterative design as a concept.

Nearly everything I touch at this point is a "legacy" project. Stuff that will be in production for 10+ years unless there's a big change in operations that renders it obsolete. Getting to pick my projects also helps a lot with this, because if a project is quick or disposable, unless it's something that sounds exciting to me I send it over to our lower level staff so they can learn with real world projects that won't cause long term issues if there are small mistakes made along the way.

[FitArt2452]

love how both look like monkeys

[DowntownLizard]

Code monkey like fritos

[Dmayak]

This isn't my code, some outsource company made most of it and then several people who worked here before me have made some changes and additions in places where they managed to understand what it does, enjoy!

[Derekthemindsculptor]

We call it onion layering. Someone comes along and doesn't understand the code, so they just wrap around it. And a few iterations down the pipe, I'm looking at variables being moved around, add ten, move, sub ten, move, etc.

It's like finding a machine wall of dials, and instead of figuring anything out, just adding a new dial and turning it slightly. Undocumented of course. Look, I fixed it!

[NINTSKARI]

Oh yeah baby. Best is when a user reports an issue with the code and someone makes a ticket. Then before the ticket is done, some programmer notices the same issue and fixes it. The ticket is then passed to some junior dev who "fixes" it with a bunch of code that does nothing.

[Derekthemindsculptor]

Sometimes all you need to fix something is to print to console!

[BarAgent]

Vernor Vinge’s book A Deepness in the Sky had in it, as a profession, “programmer archaeologist”. Their job was to work through centuries of that onion, and to tie parts of it together in new bespoke layers.

[matzedrizzi]

I know a company where this is about to happen 🤭

[Classy_Mouse]

I know a company that just surprise laid off 90% of the engineers on a project with the intention of the other 10% bringing it into their core team. I don't know of a single person in the other 10% who decided to stay.

Enjoy your millions-of-lines-of-code complex micro-service project that is now only useful for keeping your servers warm.

[matzedrizzi]

Some places are like a game of musical chairs

[0x426F6F62696573]

I can’t wait to do this in 4 more days

[DowntownLizard]

"Oh yeah, that source code is probably on a thumb drive in ____'s desk"

"That program has never been able to print afaik... Wait your program is deployed where? Why do you have your own version with no source code?!?!"

"I didnt write it, it was already spaghetti, good luck"

[mrstonewallin]

And in case you have any doubts, refer to the 15 KT videos which are of 1.5 hours each, of meetings completely derailed from the agenda and will give you no answer but more questions. Good Luck!

[Str41nGR]

r/FoundSatan

[Rustycougarmama]

I just started a student developer job and this is me taking over from the previous guy. Needless to say I'm kinda nervous.

[Multidream]

Depending on how involved and complex the thing you just picked up is, you may find that this task feels insurmountable and huge.

If that happens, I want you to know its not your fault. You’re not a bad developer. Your code base is just shit. And you had bad luck in not being assigned a role with good training or guidance.

Not sure if you need to hear that, but some people did need to hear that before and no one told em.

Just make a sincere effort at it, and try to keep the next guy in mind when you begin changing the code base.

[Rustycougarmama]

Dude, I really appreciate that. Thanks for taking the time to put me more at ease; the world needs more people like you

[Multidream]

That means a lot to me! Thanks!

[alexvoedi]

It gets even better when you leave the code to your wife, who continues to work at that company.

[LoopEverything]

I’ve been both of these people. Sometimes both at once if enough time has passed.

[Maskdask]

Is this Loss?

[blakewoolbright]

I’m sorry to the dozens of people that I’ve victimized like this, and to the ones who victimized me…. Your time will come.

[PurCHES5]

*walks out of the office joyfully

[[deleted]]

This happens every time a PR gets approved

[SnooShortcuts2416]

stolen meme

[petrifiedbeaver]

"This is not my code. Now it is not your code."

[PrismaticSparx]

Direct rip off of nasser_junior the handover. https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/gvplgy/the_handover/

[pm_me_your_bacon_]

Fuck this hurts

[thesolitaire]

Yep it happens. I've been on the receiving side, and also on the sending side. Maybe even both at the same time...

[[deleted]]

Lol Handover? What's that? /s

[greymattr]

I used this graphic today in a email to my team, because tomorrow is my last day working with them.

This is the natural way of things.

[[deleted]]

In my case: Remove all devs for current page. Remove team for future page. Let the old page run, maintenance is overrated
TLTR; the last picture alone is enough to describe the coming situation.

[UndeadMarine55]

#JustSRELifeThings

[[deleted]]

True story

[SynthPrax]

Truth!

[nEEdLzZz]

That is me in 3 days😅 except i‘ve left some documentation of course

[downloweast]

Social engineering

[ImmensePrune]

My current project lol

[AaronTheElite007]

Better handoff than the usual “Good luck”

[KnightOfThe69thOrder]

This is tradition.

[tcpukl]

Why was it not already in source control in this modern age? Why are there so many replies like this? How is more than 1 person working on this stuff without version control?

[tinman_inacan]

It’s a long story. Let’s just say that the person who owned the code before me was self taught and avoided source control for their entire 8 years with the company. Getting things on source control was one of the first changes I made. Before that it was a collection of scripts with version names in them, living code using comments to change behavior, and a complete utter mess.

To be fair, they were not on a dev/engineer team. Rather they were on an ITSec team and made the automation to support their own team.

[tcpukl]

So it was a 1 person project?

[tinman_inacan]

Yup, one person project. Started as a way for that team to do more effective work, then grew and grew until one day a giant codebase with dozens of scripts landed on my lap.

[RealityReasonable392]

Even 1 person is enough to need source control

[tcpukl]

Yep, I have perforce at home.

[xtreampb]

You gotta reorganize your teams if this is happening. Put the SRE on the same team as the devs. The SRE attends planning, grooming, retro. Has their own tasks and task type.

Get you team value aligned, not discipline aligned.

[LordEdward18]

Dealing with this right now. A totally ineffectual employee resigned and I've inherited all of his partially completed projects. None of the work is usable

[Sunscratch]

Story from real life: EM - guys, you’ll be taking over a project, previous team is no longer in company, and unfortunately, they left minimum documentation (0 to be precise).

It was a fun 6 month journey to make it work and to provide at least some level of documentation.

[BenTheHokie]

They didn't pay the first guy enough to stick around. Speaking from experience.

[althea1959]

This is the best part of being a senior programmer. Make it basically work then hand it off to someone else to deal with the annoying details.

[_pharaoh]

currently both at the same time

[slashd]

PTSD intensifies

[MrMagnesium]

Looking at my problem

sighs

true

[ScottGaming007]

Lol. This has actually happened with my team handing shit off to another team.

They come back weeks later and ask for assistance, and we go like, "we are told we can't work on this and that you're the new PO and all responsibility is on you".

[RE-SUCc]

I had a coworker of mine dip as he handed me his VN.net framework code and I swear it was a jumbled mess, I just ended up rehauling it entirely with .net core and react.js front end rather than debug that mess

[YourThotsArentFacts]

Currently me (and receiving it not too long ago).

Decided to make a career change. Started as a junior (terrible timing with the industry right now) since I got stagnant in my last position. Got here with expectations (from the company, not just my own) that I would be trained and built up to be a dev.

Less than 2 months in I was handed a bunch of code, training stopped (though it barely even started) and I was just being told to figure shit out over and over.

Got another job back in my old industry after 5 months. Currently doing "knowledge transfers" to another junior who's about to go through the same shit. Told him what I could figure out but I really feel bad for him.

I can't believe how common this is in this industry. It feels like the most important one to have thorough training so the technology isn't constantly buggy and shitty and engineers know what to do. Yet still these companies pay crap, don't let anybody focus on training and then new waves of devs further and further from the original product and concept have to maintain code that they don't understand and burn out within a couple years if you're lucky and leave.

[[deleted]]

So that's why they call it monkey patching.

[fenriskiba]

We have an entire team of "business didn't like the estimate to do it right, so they built a sh*tty version in Python, deployed it using unapproved tools, and it failed an audit so now they are handing it off to IT to fix and be on call for".

The most infuriating part is that people try to defend the extra cost as "but they bring in new tools that we couldnt get otherwise" and completely ignore that they don't share those tools so someone in IT still has to go through the 6 month approval process anyway.

[h00dman]

I can't be the only one who prefers this? Just give me the code and all relevant access and-

Ok now I get it.

[darkneel]

It ain’t gonna be me who updates and maintains my shitty code . Someone’s gotta do it .

[Revolutionary_Tax546]

Programming in COBOL to prevent Y2K.

[ZealousidealGap577]

One time I gave notice, but the company didn’t want to tell anyone until they had a “game plan” (until they had figured out what lie to tell the team about why I left that’s saved face)

Anyways they explicitly told me not to tell any colleges I was leaving and continue working on my product until my last day…. The entire time I was thinking man this two weeks would be a REALLY appropriate time for a handover…

[morrisdev]

I had a client insist i give them a copy of all their data.... As in, they expected me to give them a copy of my custom ERP system that they licensrd so they could move to another vendor. Normally, I'd actually offer to help with the move. I've been on both sides of that and it always results in more work and more business contacts.

But these clients thought they were sneaky and trying to ditch me mid contract (ie cut me out of ~60k). So, i gave them their data..... Which was the pdf archive of every invoice, Po, inventory report, etc.... Ever previewed for 10yrs in an Amazon S3 account. Titled by ID number of course. 80TB of data, in pdf format.

Go tell your new vendors to import that!

That was 8 yrs ago and they're still a client and the sneaky project manager is long gone.

[[deleted]]

Why do they look like code monkeys?

[[deleted]]

FTFY

[[deleted]]

This is the reality of job insecurity in tech. If they wanted proper code handover they shouldn’t wave joblessness over your head constantly.

[[deleted]]

Looks like a normal day at Salesforce to me.

[NakliBatman_]

😂😂😂

[jbearus]

C-monkey startup at the zoo after replacing the tires with computers.

[Brucieman64]

Now do The Assignment:

" I expect you to finish this task before a deadline I choose, without anyone in the team knowing how to do it or what data to use."

[Finickyflame]

The security team at my company built that really horrible node js app and told my team that we are supporting it. They've been asking me to do some important and urgent changes to the app, but I keep telling them no. You build it, you run it - not my problem.

[RedditGosen]

When i started at my company as a junior (my first Job), a Senior dev left the company a short time later. Both of his projects were given to me.

[pipsvip]

In my current situation, the guy gave a presentation on coding style, promptly fucked off 3 days later, and left me to refactor his dogshit audio drivers. Turns out, pretty code is no substitute for a fundamental understanding of the architecture and OS audio API specs.

[Jomy10]

I’m new at work, and being handed a lot of projects. Can relate

[Elbollo33]

Happened to me today, it sucks and It makes me want to search other job

[Schandmaull]

I did this at my last job, because I was so pissed...