• ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    I literally saved my company twice. We were a small company providing contract programmers to a huge cable company (rhymes with Bombast), producing their mobile apps for them for iPhone, Android and Blackberry. When I started, we had just lost the Android gig because of the sheer ineptness of our offshore team (ironically enough, the gig was given to InfoSys who managed to do an even worse job). We were about to be shitcanned completely because we unable to produce a working TV guide-type application for Blackberry, thanks to the fact that no built-in control for Blackberry was able to handle a moving grid like a TV guide app requires. I produced probably the best mobile app I’ve ever written because I had experience with using Graphics classes for Java and was able to write an entirely owner-drawn control for this.

    Unfortunately this was in 2011 as Blackberry was going through its death throes, so this really achieved nothing other than making Bombast want to keep paying us to stay around. A year later we faced getting shitcanned again because we were way behind schedule on the iOS app, thanks to an estimate that I had nothing to do with (our company very intelligently never involved actual programmers in these schedule estimates). I spent an entire week literally living in the Bombast building, coding all day and most of the night, sleeping a couple of hours a night in my George Costanza setup underneath my cubicle desk. We barely made the release schedule and Bombast kept us on again. The vulture capitalist who originally funded us had been ready to stop operations and fire everybody for some time, but this was put on hold.

    Shortly after this, we were acquired by a west coast tech giant and us programmers were all laid off. The C-suite got millions in stock options, and I got … a very nice letter of reference when I applied for my school bus driver job. I’m thankful at least that I never had to deal with AI.

    • Bluescluestoothpaste@sh.itjust.works
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      3 days ago

      Exactly you didn’t do them a single favor, they would have gladly let the company shut down and move on to the next scam. If anything by working incredibly hard and creatively, you just made it a little awkward for them. “Wdym comcast isn’t firing us? That kid saved the contract?? But I already started on the next scam!”

      Im in a similar position we’ve been borderline bankrupt for two years now and everyone above me is less concerned that I am because i work with the hourly people and don’t want them to lose their jobs. The ceo is really like ambivalent if it’s better to keep the company going. This is one of several businesses he’s involved in and the $300K salary is just walking around money for him.