[HN Gopher] Work Somewhere Dysfunctional
___________________________________________________________________
Work Somewhere Dysfunctional
Author : mbellotti
Score : 94 points
Date : 2022-01-17 15:41 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bellmar.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (bellmar.medium.com)
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| You can't conflate unsolved problems with unsolved organizational
| problems like that. If you are really into the politicking and
| people stuff, sure. But that's why I love being an IC. I want to
| build stuff to solve our user's problems. Sure, I have to
| navigate the org stuff to have big impact, but that's the part
| where I want to spend the least focus. Which is a part of how I'd
| measure organizational dysfunction.
|
| That said, I'm grateful for people who are really into the org
| stuff. I've worked for a savant at that stuff and it really did
| improve things. Thank you all who suffer the politics on behalf
| of the rest of us.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| Agreed. Org stuff is important, but even the most well-managed
| org in the world won't make good progress without the right
| technical people.
|
| I have a _really_ hard time believing that Defense has a strong
| bench of IC engineers and scientists working on ML Safety. I
| 've received job offers from these types of firms and they're
| always paying at least 300K less than the competition when they
| probably need to be paying 200K-300K more (requires a
| clearance, WFH is impossible, my executive is not technical,
| etc.)
| pphysch wrote:
| The article is a bit long but the core lesson that "there are
| opportunities to be found in crises" is important. And spending a
| lot of time in a dysfunctional/crisis-plagued environment is a
| great way to hone that skill.
|
| As a side note, the Chinese words for "crisis" (Wei Ji ) and
| "opportunity" (Ji Hui ) share a common character (Ji ). A useful
| mnemonic (crisis can end in an opportunity, opportunity can begin
| in a crisis).
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Is there a meaning for that single character, in isolation?
| bserge wrote:
| Yeah, you could also work somewhere not as developed. It's
| dysfunctional alright, and the pay can be shit. But if the
| company seriously considers your ideas, you'll be seen as some
| sort of prophet. Many ideas and systems that you take for granted
| simply don't exist in developing countries. And they really need
| them.
| notpachet wrote:
| Unfortunately, the prophet is often also the first person the
| others come after with pitchforks when the crops fail to grow.
| bserge wrote:
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Cannot read medium without an account. Can we ban it already ?
| lazyant wrote:
| https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fbellmar.medium.com%2Fw...
| znpy wrote:
| there you go: https://archive.fo/MwT63 :)
| WHA8m wrote:
| I haven't had any problem. Did you?
| sshine wrote:
| Yes, after about ten seconds, the page that otherwise
| appeared to load fine suddenly becomes a 500 that
| encourages me to read other Medium articles.
| [deleted]
| Etheryte wrote:
| Blocking cookies lets you read away without any problems. If
| you're using Chrome, go to the website, click the small padlock
| in the URL bar, select cookies, and then block all the ones for
| Medium.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| That's ridiculous for reading some blog post.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I have a lot of personal emotional trauma from working at a
| dysfunctional start up where the 29 year old CEO idolized Steve
| Jobs and thought that yelling at people and manipulating people
| was cool.
|
| Don't work somewhere dysfunctional.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| Dear Author,
|
| Software Safety and especially AI Safety are hard technical
| problems. You're not going to figure out how to add a few 9s to
| the reliability of a computer vision system by studying org
| theory.
|
| Making progress on The Hardest Problems requires hiring the
| excellent ML engineers and scientists, and then having even half-
| decent management. Management does matter, but the strong IC
| talent is a precondition to progress.
|
| If Defense had armies of competent ICs but was still failing, I
| guess focusing on non-compensation-related organization issues
| might be reasonable. That's not even remotely the case.
|
| Just shy of 70% of CS PhDs from US institutions are foreign
| nationals, which means Defense is already talent-constrained. The
| 50% or so who are qualified to work on AI safety and qualify for
| relevant clearances would probably want a close to a 0 added to
| what Defense offers (and not even for moral reasons... security
| clearances and "must work at the office" are real drags on
| quality of life that require significant additional
| compensation).
|
| I've seen first-hand that defense systems are insecure and unsafe
| because _defense chooses not to purchase excellent IC talent_.
| The biggest organizational challenge in Defense is the lack of
| adequate compensation for engineers and scientists.
|
| The largest management problem in the Defense industry is
| figuring out how to get the org to pay for excellent engineering
| and scientific talent. Your competitors in the labor market are
| paying high six or low seven figures, don't require security
| clearances, don't require drug tests, and have much more
| hybrid/WFH flexibility. For me to take a job in defense to work
| on ML Safety, you'd probably have to pay north of $1M.
| [deleted]
| throwmeback wrote:
| This article kinda feels like an elaborate excuse for not leaving
| your current employer, partner etc.
|
| I mean seriously - why take shit when there's a 90% chance you're
| working on another elaborate CMS/CRUD-looking system? There's
| millions of them out there, you don't need to subject yourself to
| terrible experiences. Just go someplace else.
| itsdrewmiller wrote:
| Better an article than a job board at least.
| pram wrote:
| There's really no good reason to stick your neck out at a
| dysfunctional place. It's like that for a reason. You might get
| grit from the experience, but more likely you'll just become a
| bitter cynical husk. I know, I worked at Oracle.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I worked at a similar place and to call it dysfunctional would
| be an understatement. It made me a stronger and more fearless
| person but I was already a bit obstinate and had a tendency to
| challenge authority so it was ultimately good for me. I can see
| where different personality types would be affected positively
| or negatively by such an environment. It's not for everyone.
| tra3 wrote:
| > There's really no good reason to stick your neck out at a
| dysfunctional place
|
| I'm reading "The Pentagon Wars" [0], about how US Military used
| to develop weapon systems in the 70s and 80s; here's an
| anecdote from the book:
|
| > General Gavin recounted how he had to bury fifty young men
| near the village of Gela, Sicily, in 1943.1 The men had pieces
| of their own bazookas ground into their bodies by the German
| tanks they had been trying to stop. Their new bazookas had
| failed to stop the tanks. General Gavin condemned the Ordnance
| Corps for not testing the bazookas against German tanks that
| had been captured in North Africa. There had been considerable
| controversy back in the States over the development of the
| bazookas. At least one prominent scientist on the project had
| resigned because of his conviction that the warhead was too
| small to stop a tank. Sadly, he was proved correct. General
| Gavin was angry that the Ordnance Corps bureaucracy had given
| his troops an untested weapon.
|
| The book is great for a number of reasons one of which is
| describing how defense contractors were compensated on delivery
| not the quality. The bulk of the book deals with Bradley
| fighting vehicle development that was a death trap. James
| Burton, the author, ends up being pushed out of the military
| for raising a lot stink about the Bradley but not before making
| a huge difference in the design of the vehicle, that ends up
| saving a lot of lives.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon_Wars
| protomyth wrote:
| Study the development of American torpedoes for WWII as
| further reading. The Bureau of Ordnance has a lot of American
| blood on its hands.
| jcadam wrote:
| I greatly enjoyed the movie. They actually played it for us
| when I was in the military attending a course on space
| operations and we got to the subject of acquisitions.
| lmilcin wrote:
| Every place is dysfunctional to some extent.
|
| Working in truly dysfunctional and trying help the situation
| has taught me very valuable lessons that are very useful in
| less dysfunctional organisations.
|
| In other words -- seeing very clearly bad things helps you
| recognise it when it is less clear. Fixing very bad makes
| fixing less bad almost effortless.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| YMMV, but if the immediate team that you're working with has
| good leadership, sane people with rapport and trust amongst
| each other that can go a long way towards a positive working
| environment, even if the organization as a whole is an ocean of
| shit-show. It just means you got to be ready to jump ship
| quickly if something poisons your team (eg, an acquisition, or
| org-change).
| hikerrrr wrote:
| Eh, was semi rewarded myself for sticking my neck out at
| Oracle, rest of my team was let go, I was rewarded for my good
| attitude and small expertise just for showing up where previous
| coworkers couldn't. Reward was that I got to keep my job and
| watch my other coworkers told to take a hike... The challenge
| then became how to drop my cynicism more than how to work the
| dysfunctional org.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Getting to keep your job at Oracle seems to have been the
| real punishment here.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| > The value of working for a dysfunctional organization, the
| place where people build the most skills, is in getting hands-on
| experience fixing problems. Even if you don't in fact fix them...
| and you won't have enough control to fix everything. Even in
| situations where you have the authority to execute, you can't
| control the ripple effects of your changes. Maybe you'll
| accomplish something, maybe you won't.
|
| I'd definitely agree that you'll build the most skills at a
| dysfunctional place. The type of skills you learn are typically
| the opposite of what makes an established organization work
| though. There's a common saying of "work the people, then the
| problem". The challenge here is that when majority of your work
| is to improve the culture, the actual skills you were hired for
| start to slowly take the back seat.
|
| I don't agree that being selfish is going to help you at all. In
| fact, being selfish is the exact reason why most organizations
| are dysfunctional. Here's one that comes off the top of my head.
| Say you're a line engineering manager and you're incentivized to
| deliver a large feature that year by your manager who is largely
| clueless of what your group is doing. But, the whole team
| realizes that the feature you're incentivized to deliver is not
| in the best interests of the team right now. What do you do with
| your role power? Most people will selfishly get that feature
| implemented to get their max bonus & rewards that year. That type
| of behavior breeds more dysfunction.
|
| Here's a whole list of dysfunction: output over outcomes,
| obsession with internal metrics, lack of customer research,
| optimizing everything for little gain, shipping features like an
| assembly line, over-dependence on data/spreadsheets, fast paced
| twist and turns of work, over-engineering, trying to keep
| everyone happy, flip-flop decision making from people with role
| power.
| badrabbit wrote:
| Survivors bias much? Maybe you come out stronger or maybe you end
| up pessimistic and bitter for a long time or get burned out. As
| much of a good advice as "stay in prison, it will make you
| tougher".
| arnvald wrote:
| I worked at 2 dysfunctional companies and the most valuable thing
| I learned from it is never to work at dysfunctional company ever
| again.
|
| I might have a different definition of a dysfunctional place
| though - for me it's a place that works against me and my
| productivity, a place where I have to go through a number of
| hoops in order to do the job I was hired to do. And let me tell
| you, by the time I made it through all these hoops I was so
| drained of energy I lost all the passion and will to continue
| larrymyers wrote:
| I've worked at many dysfunctional companies, and the most
| valuable things I learned is that all companies are
| dysfunctional and you need to find the one where you can thrive
| despite the dysfunction.
|
| Now, that being said, find a company where your role is valued
| because it is directly tied to revenue generating activities
| for the company. Don't be in a support role. (This isn't novel
| advice.)
| protomyth wrote:
| That's a hard No!
|
| One of my jobs had the dysfunction cranked to 11 with politics
| (government and inter-office). I can honestly say that screwed me
| up for a good long while. It took two job switches to be normal
| again. You don't realize how far down you are until an outside
| observer points out you haven't smiled in months.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > People who want to study earthquakes need to go where there are
| fault lines. People who want to solve hard problems need to go
| where those problems live.
|
| There is no need for those places to be dysfunctional though. You
| can go study earthquakes in California or Afghanistan. You aren't
| any better for it dodging the Taliban though.
| subpixel wrote:
| I read this as long-winded but ultimately good career advice.
|
| In a truly dysfunctional company, you'll burn out and/or become a
| pariah if you try to tackle foundational, intractable problems.
| I've worked places with 'emporor's new clothes' level
| disconnections with reality. You seeing the problems others don't
| see is irrelevant.
|
| Focus on things you can improve and small changes you can effect,
| and build up a library of answers to behavioral interview
| questions. Accept that your efforts will be undone and be focused
| on your long term goals, which do not include dying on this hill.
|
| > On the other hand, people who have pragmatic and slightly
| selfish goals in addition to wanting the do good are more
| resilient. If the system change they envision doesn't work out,
| they still have something to show for all their efforts. That
| keeps them grounded and calm for much longer in the same
| environment.
| paulcole wrote:
| My favorite test of a workplace is to see how closely coworkers
| map to characters in the film Jurassic Park.
|
| The more obvious each casting choice is, the more dysfunctional
| the workplace.
| sdoering wrote:
| I never heard this analogy. Mind to explain it further? What to
| look for, why these characters in this movie?
|
| I would love to dive deeper into the analogy.
| paulcole wrote:
| It won't make any sense if you haven't watched the film.
|
| Basically you're looking for charismatic/deeply delusional
| founder, money-grubbing lawyer, smartest-person-in-the-room
| theoretical person, old-fashioned person who complains about
| the new way of doing things (but who might be right),
| scientist who cares only about results and who has no ethics,
| annoying kids.
|
| It's more a joke that I've seen play out in real life than a
| truely common method for analyzing dysfunction.
| etblg wrote:
| And they were so preoccupied with whether or not they
| could, they didn't stop to think if they should?
| notpachet wrote:
| Are we talking about the dinosaurs themselves?
| paulcole wrote:
| If those match up with the clients, RUN!
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| I imagine I could do it for shits and giggles if, say, I won in a
| lottery and my livelihood didn't actually depend on me having a
| job.
| mannykannot wrote:
| I have worked in some dysfunctional places, and had the good
| fortune to work in places that were not. While I learned useful
| things from both, I got way more out of the latter. In many
| cases, it was on a level that the dysfunctional places simply
| could not reach.
| dexen wrote:
| _> work somewhere dysfunctional_
|
| _> bellmar.medium.com_
|
| I did a double-take to ensure it wasn't _" ballmer.medium.com"_
| :D
| rizkeyz wrote:
| I can attest that exposure to quite dysfunctional environments
| have hardened my technical skills to a level which currently
| opens one opportunity after another. What other people shy away
| from, I eat for breakfast and be done with it.
|
| Many years ago, I found the character of the "The Wolf" in pulp
| fiction fascinating: a person who basically does normal, regular
| things in dysfunctional environments and charges a premium for
| that. I love when people call me, when the project is overdue,
| when nothing seems to work, when they ran out of options.
| Strangely, I seem to thrive in these settings.
| rdiddly wrote:
| OK fine, but "dysfunctional places" just automatically and glibly
| equals "the government?" Dysfunctional places, _" i.e."_ the
| government? Assuming the best, probably she just means "the one
| dysfunctional government agency I worked in and have been
| blogging about forever." I have to actively & intentionally reach
| for that explanation because otherwise it just rubs me the wrong
| way I guess, because of its resemblance to, among other things, a
| sloppy extrapolation/generalization by a young person who should
| endeavor to vacate my domesticated blade-leafed-plant-dominated
| steppe-biome reserve; a boring old joke along the lines of "I
| learned all my bullshit-detection skills from working with
| dishonest people, i.e. lawyers." ("Oh thanks a lot!" says every
| honest lawyer); or a tired talking-point of the hypocritical and
| unhinged faux-libertarian radical "government bad! always!"
| right.
|
| The secret to maintaining a vital mental landscape is to resist
| the temptation to think the whole world conforms to what you've
| seen so far in your short-ass life. Be content to "know" a lot
| less, and probably say less as a result. Ice Cube once rapped
| something about "shut my M.F. mouth if I don't know" and that
| seems like a pretty good policy, though if everyone did it, there
| would be a lot fewer blog posts in the world, unfortunately (or
| fortunately?)
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > The rewards are great if you can survive...
|
| Part of what makes a place dysfunctional is that the rewards have
| no correlation with performance or impact.
|
| Then there is stuff like this:
|
| > People who want to study earthquakes need to go where there are
| fault lines. People who want to solve hard problems need to go
| where those problems live.
|
| Sure, if you want to learn about dysfunctional places, go into
| them. Learning about them isn't a priority for most people, and
| if you have a technical profession (not administrative), it would
| be a hobby at most. So, do you enjoy it there?
| melony wrote:
| People who study earthquakes also get paid peanuts.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Yeah, but learning about earthquakes is a high priority to
| them.
|
| Learning about dysfunctional organization can be high
| priority to administrators, not to technical careers. It's
| basically useless knowledge for technical careers.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Sometimes they even get sent to jail:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/23/jailing-
| italia...
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >Sure, if you want to learn about dysfunctional places, go into
| them.
|
| I'm not sure how much you can learn, the number of ways
| organisations can be dysfunctional has no bounds. It's like
| that quote from Tolstoy about families:
|
| _" Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is
| unhappy in its own way."_
| depereo wrote:
| Dysfunctional organizations waste your time and teach you to
| spend all your effort on things that are irrelevant to your
| stated or desired goals.
|
| Don't waste your life on shitty organizations. They're not worth
| participating in. You're not growing useful skills.
|
| source: currently wasting my time in a shitty organization.
| smartidiot wrote:
| If the people who need your help don't want it, it's time to
| leave.
|
| That
| dade_ wrote:
| I think a better title is, "What to do if you find yourself
| working at a dysfunctional company."
|
| You may have started at a wonderful company that is acquired or
| for some other reason becomes dysfunctional. The place isn't
| dangerous, and the pay covers the bills, but you are losing
| market value (skills are dated, less relevant). Changing jobs is
| a pain, it could be bad timing for some reason, and perhaps you
| lack the experience or training (certs) you want at the next
| place. You may be jumping out of one pot into another, or worse,
| into the fire itself. In this case, this approach makes sense to
| me.
|
| However, I have to agree with the majority of the comments, avoid
| getting into one in the first place. Don't seek them out, and if
| you arrive and it's bad, get out quick.
| jancsika wrote:
| > People who want to study earthquakes need to go where there are
| fault lines. People who want to solve hard problems need to go
| where those problems live.
|
| People who want to study earthquakes don't get paid by the
| earthquakes.
|
| Author works for a defense contractor.
|
| I'd need a ton of evidence that _this particular_ defense
| contractor has the goal of doing something inherently safe with
| AI before I 'd read the author's analogy as anything other than
| the written equivalent of getting drunk at the local bar to cope
| with a dysfunctional marriage.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| People who want to study earthquakes will keep a distance and
| model and measure remotely.
|
| The idea that seismologists actually want to experience massive
| destruction personally is bizarre, and _completely_ wrong.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| Seismologists don't just sit there making models. They also
| like to do things like drill big holes into faultlines.
|
| If you're studying faultlines, you want to have reasonable
| access to the subject of your study. Otherwise you may as
| well be a marine biologist living in Kansas.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9ZPq5FRmnE
| https://www.gns.cri.nz/Home/News-and-Events/Media-
| Releases-a...
|
| Physical measurement is used to make better models, you need
| both. This: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH_PAGimWJM
| informs this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HipS-7kGe9c
|
| Likewise, if you want to study volcanoes, you'd want to have
| access to volcanoes.
|
| https://youtu.be/eJGmkOFBDvg
| jancsika wrote:
| > People who want to study earthquakes will keep a distance
| and model and measure remotely.
|
| Hee hee, I completely missed that implication of the analogy.
|
| There really should be an "earthquake chasers" reality show
| if there isn't already. Like, they get a signal from that
| early warning system in the U.S., the countdown starts and
| then reaches zero by the time they jump in their van.
|
| The rest of the episode would be counting the seconds as they
| hurry toward their destination, only to arrive upset that yet
| again they missed it by only a few tens of thousands of
| seconds.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| Yeah, the post definitely has some serious "tell me you
| aren't a geologist without telling me you aren't a geologist"
| energy.
| masterj wrote:
| The author also has a long history of working at many places
| that aren't defense contractors, and a great book on working
| with large legacy systems (read: Cobol, mainframes, et al but
| relevant to all developers) https://www.amazon.ca/Kill-Fire-
| Manage-Computer-Systems/dp/1...
| kilobaud wrote:
| Seismically active regions (e.g. California) absolutely have
| more earthquake experts than other places... I am not sure
| why that metaphor is singled out when the rest of the article
| is pretty clear its about finding the difference between a
| burning building and a building-set-on-fire.
|
| Firefighters don't just read about fires, they practice with
| actual flames, too.
| angarg12 wrote:
| > Unfortunately, places with hard problems that haven't been
| solved are also -- inevitably -- kind of dysfunctional.
|
| I disagree wholeheartedly. Many companies (from big tech to fast
| growing startups) have hard problems that need solving, and they
| needn't be dysfunctional. In fact some high performing
| organisations have plenty of hard problems, as solving hard
| problems usually yield even harder problems to solve.
|
| Sadly disagreeing with the premise makes the entire article a
| weak claim.
| redisman wrote:
| Most dysfunctional places are also not producing much of value
| . I've been at many shitty companies and there was nothing to
| learn other than the leadership had some personality disorders
| travisjungroth wrote:
| There are at least two types of having problems.
|
| There's having a problem like having a jigsaw puzzle. It sits
| in front of you and is there to solve. Your organization's
| problem could be making a faster database or improving
| education outcomes in a neighborhood. An organization can
| remain functional in the face of these problems.
|
| There's another type of having a problem which is like having a
| cold. It's in you and affects you. You organization's problem
| could be the front line employees don't trust leadership or you
| don't have enough resources. It's much harder to remain
| functional in the face of these types of problems. I think the
| author is referring more to this second type.
| franklampard wrote:
| As an engineer, one would want to solve the first kind but
| leave the second kind to MBAs
| lanstin wrote:
| Not if you have ever worked in a formerly successful org
| that got fixed by MBAs. People need to understand the
| nature of software before fixing organizations that make
| and maintain software. After being burned a few times, many
| engineers find it useful to at least wave off disasters
| waiting to be implemented and to reinforce the odd truly
| helpful suggestion from above. Best of all is creating
| technical solutions that enable the organization to
| function better, to increase lower level autonomy and
| decrease organizational coupling, to increase useful
| transparency so we can all see the ship and its vectors.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| That's their nominal task, and nominally why they make big
| bucks.
|
| But have you ever witnessed the MBAs solving it? I haven't.
| So I'd recommend to avoid the organizations with the second
| kinds of problems, so that you can focus on the first, and
| not even think about the MBAs.
|
| Or, alternatively, if you manage to find a way to do it,
| get the task for yourself and make the big bucks.
| ozzythecat wrote:
| I wonder how much of this article is survivorship bias.
|
| The risk of a dysfunctional workplace is the negative feelings
| that start consuming you, crawling into your personal life,
| impacting you emotionally, and causing burn out.
| wnolens wrote:
| I had the same opinion and tried to do this.
|
| Spent a decade in big tech surrounded by dysfunction, pushing
| truly innovative tech through the muck to release and expending
| significant effort to clean the muck as I went for myself and
| others. Now I'm just burnt out, jaded, and trying to exit tech
| altogether.
|
| At the end of the day if a direct line cannot be drawn between a
| problem (or its solution) and revenue, then management doesn't
| care and are not capable of filling in that line in their minds.
| And if you fill it in for them, you'll get at most a pat on the
| back.
| omginternets wrote:
| > Unfortunately, places with hard problems that haven't been
| solved are also -- inevitably -- kind of dysfunctional.
|
| This seems to conflate dysfunctional markets with dysfunctional
| workplaces. It seems like the author's thesis rests exactly on
| this logical error.
| steve_taylor wrote:
| Dysfunctional usually means I have to fight for permission to do
| the job I was hired to do. Been there, done that. No thanks.
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| This is what I was thinking too. That and "That's the way we've
| always done things" organisations where the default answer to
| anything is "no" even after hard _proof_ of a better way of
| achieving something. It 's exhausting when you can just work
| somewhere with more autonomy and less bureaucracy.
| dvtrn wrote:
| _It 's exhausting when you can just work somewhere with more
| autonomy and less bureaucracy._
|
| And trust. Bi-directional even, but in my mind that's
| implied.
| popilewiz wrote:
| idworks1 wrote:
| I like broken systems. Especially those that still manage to
| generate money. We all want to see clean code, written by sane
| people. But the reality is that it is rare. And when you meet
| clean code, there is a rigorous process that makes it nearly
| impossible to add new code/features.
|
| I worked at such place that boasted security on the outside. From
| within, it was spit and duct tape. I couldn't believe it was a
| fortune 10. After couple of weeks working on one of the smaller
| projects, I created a new branch and called it rewrite.
|
| When I had free time, I would rewrite the entire project from
| scratch. I really hated all the in line mysql connections in
| side_bar_bottom_new_v2.php. It took me a month to realize that I
| couldn't rewrite an application that was built over the course of
| 10 years, in my spare time. Only when I embraced it and took the
| time to understand how it was built, was I able to turn it into a
| secure app (messy, but still secure).
|
| Now when I meet dysfunctional systems, I don't get mad. I
| challenge myself to figuring out what the heck it is doing.
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