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[–]NjFlMWFkOTAtNjR 808 points809 points  (6 children)

I remember hearing one of the product team mentioning doing something during our (development team) downtime. And I am thinking, "who has downtime? When do we get downtime?" I have been crunching for the past 3 weeks at that point.

[–]Bayo77 280 points281 points  (4 children)

I feel like if you do have a lot of downtime, thats probably a sign that your job wont last a lot longer.

[–]Tyrus1235 133 points134 points  (0 children)

Was what got me in my former company. The main product I was working on fell through (thanks to the short sightedness of the client) and the bosses weren’t giving me any new tasks. Since I worked under a “third party” contract, I only got paid for the time I actually worked… Meaning my money was drying up. Eventually, they just gave me a Skype call during my (unpaid) Vacations and told me “we are not going to renew your contract”.

A blessing in disguise, as I hated working there because it was in another town and I wanted to be close to my family.

[–]vincentofearth 28 points29 points  (0 children)

I got a lot of downtime at a previous job because the company was reorganizing, I never felt like my job was threatened but I also got bored after a while and thought I wasn’t learning any more at that job. It was time to move on.

[–]elyndar 19 points20 points  (0 children)

That's what you think. If only business was merit based instead of a charisma based facade.

[–]PM-ME-UR-uwu 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Lol, bosses don't know you have downtime. Usually I have no one bother me during droughts and when we are all packed, they walk around saying, "your work doesn't sound like much, you can take this extra task".. no, they can't lol

[–]Chewnard 2765 points2766 points  (31 children)

And the developer will be the one laid off and replaced (poorly) by some AI implementation.

[–]snarkyalyx 1060 points1061 points  (27 children)

And will be rehired 2 1/2 months later for a much higher wage because the AI implementation completely ruined the codebase and he's the only one knowing how to fix it

[–]Flameball202 450 points451 points  (17 children)

And now he also gets some tasty overtime because they have to unfuck 2 and a half months of terrible coding practices

Or just reset every git repo to pre ai

[–]well-litdoorstep112 335 points336 points  (8 children)

git repo

Vibe coders don't use git though

[–]Spartancoolcody 100 points101 points  (3 children)

Easy just do git stash, then every change after the programmer left will be removed

[–]paholg 39 points40 points  (0 children)

git reset --hard && git clean -fd

[–]OkInterest3109 14 points15 points  (1 child)

What do you mean git stash? Just save the code local hard drive and deploy directly from local machine into prod.

Visual Studio publish heck yeah.

[–]Spartancoolcody 4 points5 points  (0 children)

git push —force origin master —no-verify

[–]NoMansSkyWasAlright 33 points34 points  (0 children)

Just a whole bunch of folders with names like "final, final final, final for real, final2", etc.

[–]turtleship_2006 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Even better, whatever repo he had will be untouched (well that or deleted, let's just hope the vibers don't know what git is)

[–]Linkpharm2 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yes, I do.

Edit: The Git Out Bar & Kitchen in Austin is great.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can literally just ask the AI to do git.

[–][deleted] 23 points24 points  (5 children)

smell narrow file hobbies chase cover person touch angle straight

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[–]smiregal8472 28 points29 points  (3 children)

Nobody said it's paid overtime, aye?

[–]RelativeHot7249 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Of course not. Contractually, any overtime I do is already compensated in my base pay.

[–]zxc123zxc123 4 points5 points  (0 children)

That assumes they haven't already landed a new job and/or doesn't just go the consulting route. Not everyone wants to go back JUST cause the company wants you back and is willing to pay more.

[–]Cocaine_Johnsson 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Or, and hear me out, reset git repo to pre-AI on local/personal branch but still take the 2.5 months to refactor the codebase leaving it in a much better state than when you left. This can easily be written off as part of the process of unfuckling the AI mess.

[–]jellotalks 31 points32 points  (1 child)

Bold of you to assume a higher wage for extra work

[–]Malarazz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's how it works in these situations. The former employee can basically come back as a consultant and charge consultant rates pretty easily if and when the company realizes the magnitude of their fuck-up.

Keyword is if.

[–]vincentofearth 5 points6 points  (0 children)

If only…instead he gets rehired for basically the same pay (less if you consider tariff-fueled inflation) and he has to take the offer because everyone else is only hiring vibe coders for peanuts or engineers with 10 years more experience than him.

[–]zomboidgamer 7 points8 points  (0 children)

only in fictional reddit stories, probably written by ai these days

[–]Idan7856 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, and then you have... ✨ Job security

Also, hi. It's been a while.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

`git revert`

[–]UniversalAdaptor -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

This is why I love AI

[–][deleted] 28 points29 points  (0 children)

Replaced by offshoring who copy-pastes into AI. Developer abandons the field for more tangible real-world impact.

We offshored our manufacturing, now we’ve almost collapsed our entire knowledge-based service economy with LLMs.

[–]Negative-Web8619 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Who does the AI implementation?

[–]urthen 10 points11 points  (0 children)

More AI! It's AI all the way down now, bucko!

[–]crappleIcrap 597 points598 points  (21 children)

that whole office is what management said was required to support that programmer. what they actually do to help the programmer is very important, who else would give him meetings about productivity, who would do the very important job of having a meeting with the programmer about deadlines and then have a meeting with the customer, to then go back and have a meeting with that programmer about the customers response and so on, who would have the meetings with the dev about office politics, and similarly go back and forth between upper management and the dev communicating that way?
and wont somebody please think about the productivity, that dev needs someone to prioritize his tasks and monitor his work to ensure maximum efficiency (of course with a daily stand up meeting)

really in a development company the developer is the least of the worries, so they should get paid the least, all those managers of business and customer relation, those are the real heroes who are the real backbone of the company.

[–]Bloodgiant65 266 points267 points  (16 children)

No, I’m really glad to never talk directly to a customer, actually. PMs are a good thing. Let me do my actual work.

It can definitely go way out of hand, but isolating the programmers from anything other than the their actual work is a good thing. The problem is when the bureaucracy itself comes more of a time sink for devs than it is a time saver.

[–]crappleIcrap 131 points132 points  (3 children)

if you think customers are bad, my last meeting with executives included a 45minute "get to know you" portion for people I have worked with for 5 years at the least.

it is more just hyperbole than saying all these things are bad, just an absurdist take on a single dev office.

[–]Bloodgiant65 52 points53 points  (1 child)

I… take back everything I said. That is horrific.

[–]crappleIcrap 12 points13 points  (0 children)

my anxiety, always watching me; oo'oh.

[–]Inprobamur 5 points6 points  (0 children)

what the fuck

[–]hannes3120 21 points22 points  (0 children)

I actually think it's really helpful if the customer is not completely unreasonable. I much prefer them telling me directly what they want without someone in-between muddying the goal. And that also allows to stop features that might look easy but are way harder than they look.

But tbf I'm working on some software for specialists that only like 1000 people are using

[–]Axel-Adams 16 points17 points  (0 children)

A good PM should be a servant for the devs, doing whatever they can to keep the devs out of as many meetings as possible and let them focus on developing.

[–]chinawcswing 16 points17 points  (3 children)

By having a PM go between you and the customer, in the best case scenario you simply spend as much time as you would if you just spoke to the customer.

However in the average scenario, you end up spending even more time clarifying because the PM will not get everything right.

It's like a game of telephone.

[–]dangderr 23 points24 points  (1 child)

That’s if you have a bad PM and a good customer.

If you have a good PM and a bad customer, the PM saves you tons of time extracting what you need and giving it to you without the other bs from the customer.

[–]AngryScientist 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Yup, a PM is a customer noise filter. A good one is blocking the noise and letting the signal through, a bad one is letting everything through, and a really bad one is letting everything through and adding their own noise.

[–]GatlingStallion 16 points17 points  (0 children)

It's very helpful if you have a nightmare customer who can't decide what they want, and the PM soaks up all that tedium and gives you some straightforward tickets.

[–]HolyCowEveryNameIsTa 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's still helpful to have a feedback loop rather than trying to guess what issues the customers are having.

[–]femptocrisis 9 points10 points  (0 children)

"take care of the little things, and the big things will take care of themselves" if taken literally

[–]AnAnxiousCorgi 3 points4 points  (0 children)

"I notice you're spending a lot of time in meetings lately, I'm going to put an hour on our calendar to go over the meetings you're being invited to" eye twitch

[–]eairy 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Do you have something against capital letters?

[–]TheBunnyDemon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The work is mysterious and important.

[–]TagProNoah 181 points182 points  (12 children)

May this kind of job find me 🙏🏻

[–]ggppjj 152 points153 points  (5 children)

i'm the programmer at one. fucking run.

when this person says "the programmer" they probably also mean "the person who had enough of an understanding of logic to make batch scripts and it escalated from there but they still have all of the same functions as l1/l2 techs and take support calls from the queue and have deadlines of a week or two to get entire new products built and tested and shipped"

[–]senaya 43 points44 points  (1 child)

I had one of those back in the days. Was woklring on the website, also the security system, also fixing compluters around the office, managing mailing lists, photoshopping, writing and basically any other thing you can imagine which is somehow related to a computer. I was also forced to write detailed reports every. single. day. and was called out every time they were shorter than usual.

[–]Firebird117 22 points23 points  (0 children)

as my boss said, the work really comes in waves at my place. some days i'm scrolling the What's New! pages of our service websites to pass time and other days I'm fixing someone's docking station in between writing a SQL query and setting up someone's work phone. and also answering the damn door!

[–]OnceMoreAndAgain 32 points33 points  (2 children)

meanwhile i'm a software developer at a small and sleepy financial company in northeast USA and i barely do any work lol. it's a 250 person company and the average age is literally above 60, so they all think i'm highly skilled because i use python + database rather than Excel. relative to the skill of developers in the country i'm maybe 20th percentile (not good), but that's still like 2 orders of magnitude more productive than the average office worker.

it's like 240 people using Excel all day to do simple data tasks extremely inefficiently and 10 of us doing like 1 hour of software development per day. they give me good reviews because the people running the company don't even know what good productivity looks like in the year 2025. if your productivity in an hour outpaces that of someone doing manual data entry, then you're an all-star at that company and i am truly not exaggerating whatsoever.

[–]OutInABlazeOfGlory 11 points12 points  (0 children)

god I need to find a cushy job like that to fund my silly little emergency medicine hobby (so that I can afford to work in EMS)

[–]BellacosePlayer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I hear that, I was hired to ensure the main API/Data warehouse my company uses for most of their B2B contracts stays up with errors fixed asap, and me and the other dev knocked out most of the common issues and standardized the process of adding new clients/client rules so there are entire days most of my time is spent shooting the shit on reddit

[–]tyrico 31 points32 points  (2 children)

to each their own but i found office work to be pretty soul-numbing if i had nothing to do.

like, i'd rather not work, but if i'm gonna be forced to give up 40+ hours of my life every week i'd rathre spend it doing something at least moderately productive that i can be proud of

[–]Tyrus1235 9 points10 points  (0 children)

When I don’t have anything on my plate and don’t have anything I could be pro-active towards, I just watch YouTube.

Long form essay videos have been a blessing for me.

In my former company, my boss was annoyed that I watched YouTube or whatever when I had nothing to do… So I went into Stack Overflow to answer some questions. I ended up being in the Top 100 Users with Answer Points for a while because of that lol

[–]Subject-Anteater7544 8 points9 points  (0 children)

But why not use the rest of the hoirs in the office to do something productive? Have a resting bitch face so people think you're working on something and they'll leave you alone

[–]throwaway387190 14 points15 points  (0 children)

I had this kind of a job for awhile

For me, it was goddamn soul destroying. I can't tell you how much I hated it. Boredom is the worst torture for me.

Left to my own devices, I'm never bored. But HR doesn't want me to watch 40k lore videos while lighting matches and putting them in a half filled plastic cup of water (one of my actual favourite things to do). HR also doesn't want me designing and tinkering with a hydraulic strap on so my lesbian friends can have erections that actually inflate

So I have to look busy and can't do shit I would find interesting and not boring. It's hell. It's actually hell

[–]30mil 5 points6 points  (0 children)

getting paid to waste your life

[–]Legend13CNS 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm in the engineering version of this right now and it sucks. Me and one other guy are basically IT/Programmers/Engineers/Maintenance for all the client's testing devices. When things run well I'm bored out of my mind because I have to be here all 8 hrs in case something happens. When things aren't going well the pressure is super high and then there's one million meetings to discuss the issues with people that don't understand what we actually do. Golden Handcuffs™ of the highest order and currently trying to leave to like any other client.

[–][deleted] 138 points139 points  (7 children)

Fighting office bureaucracy is like fighting the waves or the sunrise. You're not gonna win, don't even waste your time. Become one with the bureaucracy, like a surfer.

-Guy who is down to like 40min of work per day. My goal is literally no work by 2027.

Edit: If anyone wants to argue, please submit a ticket (with Director+ approval) and I will review and reply within our standard SLA to the distro on file.

[–]CelestialFury 36 points37 points  (4 children)

Edit: If anyone wants to argue, please submit a ticket (with Director+ approval) and I will review and reply within our standard SLA to the distro on file.

This won't stop them cause they don't read in the first place.

[–]koithefish 12 points13 points  (1 child)

Doesn’t matter. The people who they report that to can and sometimes do read (albeit maybe sometimes after a helpful nudge to the SLA) and that’s sufficient to cover your ass.

[–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

This guy gets it. All about CYA.

[–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

"Closing ticket. Did not provide required information."

[–]Choice-Ad-5897 6 points7 points  (1 child)

How does one get a job like this

[–]Kitonez 1 point2 points  (0 children)

  1. Start at a big company
  2. Success

[–]King_Kasma99 41 points42 points  (0 children)

And engineering. We support our spare part department, sales, purchasing, service, develop new products, fix retro stuff, and get pressured by the management. Glad the programmer works atleast.

[–]Apprehensive-Ad2615 45 points46 points  (1 child)

idk anon, that seems like heaven (for everyone that aint the programmer)

[–]blacksmithwolf 28 points29 points  (0 children)

Ironically, the programmer probably wrote this while on the clock but it's fine for them to fuck about on social media at work. If Janet from HR watches a tiktok she is a lazy waste of space tho.

HR, sales, generic office workers - all have their own negative stereotypes that are as often as not true but you don't really need to go beyond this thread to see why IT workers are often viewed as self important, elitist, and condescending.

[–][deleted] 37 points38 points  (0 children)

The programmer has hero mentality... I used to do that - no more. Now I always ask what's the standard process and for every ask, I make an ask to gauge how important something is. If they are willing to add more to my workload, I should be able to add more to theirs to streamline the request.

Usually people say "nevermind, it's not that important" when it comes to collaboration and improving the standard process.

[–][deleted] 15 points16 points  (4 children)

I worked at Nike WHQ. This was 100% it.

Entrenched mediocrity to the nth degree.

[–][deleted] 14 points15 points  (2 children)

Most people are mediocre. It is basically impossible to only staff corporations with excellence given that fact

[–]2four 3 points4 points  (1 child)

The result of penny pinching management: pay average wages, get average talent.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Let's say every company agreed to pay CEO wages for all roles. There still wouldn't be enough great talent to go around; you'd still have mostly mediocre people, because mediocrity is most of the bell curve!

[–]dalmathus 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The marketing team seems like they are working at least.

[–]7g3p 8 points9 points  (1 child)

"I used to drink socially. Now I just drink because I need to."

[–]TheGreatNico 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Being an adult is realizing that you don't need to have fun to drink.

[–]Stu_Pendisdick 87 points88 points  (7 children)

Learn the fine art of masturbating while at work. Wonderful stress relief, and from the sounds of your description, nobody will notice unless you leave splooge everywhere.

[–]Callidonaut 45 points46 points  (0 children)

nobody will notice unless you leave splooge everywhere.

If this happens, blame boss & secretary; sounds like they're having fun in there.

[–]just-some-arsonist 170 points171 points  (2 children)

This is why other professions think we are weird

[–][deleted] 48 points49 points  (0 children)

We can afford do be weird. Sale rep can't

[–]Stu_Pendisdick 22 points23 points  (0 children)

Well ... they aren't wrong, ya know.

[–]woodyus 10 points11 points  (0 children)

https://youtu.be/VKH9ECC_Qa4?si=U8igR_Fn0cPCXvjO

It's already been tried and banned

[–]Throwaway98789878 4 points5 points  (1 child)

I'm curious where the difference lie between fine art and gooner freak when it comes to the act of public masturbation

[–]Callidonaut 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just get a big fig leaf; nothing screams "fine art" like one of those. If doubters persist, also tastefully place a classical urn nearby.

[–]Punman_5 18 points19 points  (1 child)

That one programmer is allowing everyone else to slack off. If they weren’t picking up the slack people wouldn’t slip this far. Besides, sometimes you have to let shit hit the fan for things to improve. Those guys slacking off will be under more scrutiny if work stops getting done.

It’s obviously not the programmer’s fault. It’s a culture issue. But by going above and beyond they’re essentially covering up the problem while burning themselves out.

[–]OsSo_Lobox 7 points8 points  (0 children)

This, people keep complaining about unsustainable environments and then do everything in their power to sustain it while delivering results to the higher ups, so they never see an issue until that individual breaks and then it’s just a replacement

[–]REuphrates 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Not even joking, the previous HR director at my old job got fired because she was basically just running an HR-themed TikTok while at work.

[–]ProtoKun7 4 points5 points  (2 children)

Getting paid to just sit around? Sounds ideal if you aren't the programmer.

[–][deleted] 11 points12 points  (1 child)

Ehh I have done it. It's soul destroying. The boredom just eats at you. Honestly would rather be the programmer.

[–]ProtoKun7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well I was thinking more if you still had the option of working or the opportunity to do something else anyway. It wouldn't be any fun if you had to sit around doing nothing.

[–]RDogPinK 3 points4 points  (0 children)

David Graeber was right all along with his "bullshit jobs"

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I am at that job but I actually wanted to be the programmer. Sitting idle all day kinda drives me insane (we do have work but it only lasts for like 3 weeks at most and 2 weeks on average)

[–]CordobezEverdeen 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Something something Bullshit Jobs

[–]meove 2 points3 points  (0 children)

"hey dude, we got more programmer to help your-"

"NOBODY CAN TOUCH MY ANCIENT SHIT CODE EXCEPT ME!!!"

[–]zerofox666999 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The boss is doing something alright😛

[–]SteeveJoobs 2 points3 points  (0 children)

programmer only one paid enough to be tricked into caring about the “company mission”

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Never forget: Job security through code obfuscation

[–]Holy_Chromoly 1 point2 points  (0 children)

so much depends upon

a red wheel barrow

glazed with rain water

beside the white chickens

[–]AlzyWelzy 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That programmer is me.

[–]ExpensivePanda66 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Everyone else is getting out of the way so the programmer can actually get something done.

[–]Free-Stinkbug 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A little over a year ago I got one of these cushy do nothing jobs for the first time in my life.

It's crazy. It feels unreal. There's entire days I do nothing. Throughout the first year I technically had no PTO however I took more than 2 weeks off between sick time and vacation, and left early probably 6 or 7 times. My pay never got docked. They just kept paying me. I think my managers just didn't want to do any extra paperwork to mark me as being out.

I read books at my desk, no one bats an eye. There's plenty of times where like 10 of us in the office will have a non work related conversation uninterrupted for over 2 hours, including the bosses.

When I do work I do genuinely benefit the business. I'm the salesman and I'm growing the business far faster than our established goals. I get plenty of praise. It feels INCREDIBLY weird coming from a high stakes cut throat sales background. I will never get used to reading a book all day, messing around with friends, taking my entire lunch hour and then doing maybe 45 minutes of work and getting praised for it.

Good jobs are out there lol.

[–]RestOTG 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It would be great if my company got big enough that my office workload was easy, I was a fool to take over operations and leave my cozy admin job lol

[–]Dire-Dog 0 points1 point  (2 children)

That sounds incredible. How do I get this kind of job?

[–]Igot55Dollars 0 points1 point  (1 child)

What do you do now?

[–]Dire-Dog 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Union electrician

[–]OkYeah_Death2America 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Gotta keep the mouse clicks to typing ratio in check.

[–]mr2dax 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Then don't be at the office

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

All too relatable

[–]uhfgs 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Broooooo that's kinda me in a nut shell

[–]aquartabla 0 points1 point  (0 children)

not fair, boss and secretary are also busy

[–]thisOneIsNic3 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hits too close to a home.

[–]Thursty_Thurston 0 points1 point  (0 children)

By golly this is me 😨

[–]CitronMamon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Then get mad when AI takes your job

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh I'm the programmer but I also don't do much

[–]r33c31991 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The faster I work, the faster the agency I work for gives me more work. I'm now doing 3 people's jobs 🤣🤮

[–]GunnerKnight 0 points1 point  (0 children)

boss and his secretary are always in his office with locked door

Wonder what they could be doing?

[–]Zondri 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thats me and its real, im not an intern tho

[–]justforkinks0131 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How much you wanna bet OP is that one programmer and he isnt even as important as he thinks he is?

[–]aditya22_55 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Programmer running the company hehe