What's Your Job IRL?

Discussion in 'Random Thoughts' started by MoatsArt, Oct 23, 2016.

  1. loadexfa

    loadexfa MOT: rhythmdevils audio

    Pyrate Contributor
    Joined:
    Dec 26, 2017
    Likes Received:
    2,542
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Location:
    SF Bay Area Peninsula
    TIL about duck punching. I first heard "monkey patch" like a year ago and I was also horrified.
     
  2. Pharmaboy

    Pharmaboy Friend

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    May 3, 2018
    Likes Received:
    2,463
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Location:
    Goshen, NY
    I have no idea what you guys are talking about--but it's a great exchange!
     
  3. yotacowboy

    yotacowboy McRibs Kind of Guy

    Pyrate Contributor
    Joined:
    Feb 23, 2016
    Likes Received:
    10,684
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Location:
    NOVA
    Home Page:
    Why is it that software developers feel the need to invent language for things that other fields have been dealing with for millennia?
     
  4. Vtory

    Vtory Audiophile™

    Pyrate MZR
    Joined:
    Sep 12, 2016
    Likes Received:
    10,831
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Location:
    East Coast
    Same here. I still think 'patch' sounds more intuitive to me though.

    I believe many coding folks might not know the terminology but did/knew it more or less as the idea is really tempting (not necessarily desirable though) in reducing the amount of task we have to deal with. Re-interfacing, dynamically re-binding, etc.. are all kinda benefits of dynamic languages. In theory they're all fine unless abused. In practice, as human being poor soul, we (at least myself) tend to converge to bad practices eventually.

    I always feel guilty in puching ducks. But punch day to day..
     
  5. fastfwd

    fastfwd Friend

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    Aug 29, 2019
    Likes Received:
    993
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Location:
    Silicon Valley
    Doesn't seem that bad to me. I mean, of course it can be abused, but that basic technique is the standard way to modify the behavior of code that's in ROM or otherwise immutable. The original Macintosh used it to patch ROM Toolbox calls, some embedded devices use it to update their firmware, CPU manufacturers use it to fix bugs through microcode updates, etc.

    And there are far worse sins available to programmers. I'd much rather see a well-documented "monkey patch", for example, than almost any other code without documentation.
     
  6. loadexfa

    loadexfa MOT: rhythmdevils audio

    Pyrate Contributor
    Joined:
    Dec 26, 2017
    Likes Received:
    2,542
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Location:
    SF Bay Area Peninsula
    YES. Business people do the same thing. Drives me up the wall.
     
  7. loadexfa

    loadexfa MOT: rhythmdevils audio

    Pyrate Contributor
    Joined:
    Dec 26, 2017
    Likes Received:
    2,542
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Location:
    SF Bay Area Peninsula
    My perspective is probably shaped by rarely dealing with immutable code and documentation usually being an afterthought.
     
  8. crazychile

    crazychile Eastern Iowa's Spiciest Pepper

    Pyrate BWC
    Joined:
    Jan 19, 2016
    Likes Received:
    2,512
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Location:
    Eastern Iowa
    I work in Agile development and that summarizes it perfectly, except assign happy Funtime story hour lingo to everything like we’re grade schoolers.

    Yeah, I remember my into to marketing class that I took after managing a couple of small businesses. I hated having to memorize fancy terms for common sense business activity that was part of a normal workday.
     
  9. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    Sep 27, 2015
    Likes Received:
    14,130
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Location:
    India
    I loved AWK. Thought I might manage to learn Pearl when I grew up, but I never grew up.

    Much of my work was like the dry cleaners. Here's some data: juggle it into that format. Fine, didn't need user interfaces, just Ready on Thursday*

    Oh, text-based menus. Especially when back when the people had terminals on their desks. Invalid option.



    * Ready on Thursday...
    "But outside it says One-Hour Dry Cleaning!"
    "Sure, but that's just the name of the shop"
     
  10. Pharmaboy

    Pharmaboy Friend

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    May 3, 2018
    Likes Received:
    2,463
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Location:
    Goshen, NY
    That rings a bell for me. My twin brother has been an in demand technical writer since the '80s. HIs specialty is comprehensively documenting software development; writing help files, user guides, training coursewear, etc. He has worked alongside software developers & admins for years.

    He spoke to me often about the many flavors of "who gives a shit about documentation?" that he encounters--including among the very same I.T. administrators & corporate planners who hired him to write the documentation in the 1st place.

    He recently had the experience of revisiting a big 6 accounting firm for which he spent 4-5 years developing massive user guides for a giant application (intranet; cellphone) that would govern all consultants' data collection for corporate storage--it would also be this acctg firm's client-facing application (ie, clients & consultants would use it together), so you can just imagine the multiple layers of security required in that highly regulated financial industry.

    A couple years after that they asked to rehire him to update his own ~2 yr old documentation to incorporate software revisions made in the interim. He told me that the state in which he found his own documentation was unbelievable, tragic--it had become extremely chaotic/disorganized. It has been bastardized/"updated" dozens of times for (apparently) political/in-fighting reasons. This acctg firm had no idea of the true state of the documentation. He tried to explain that it was so corrupted as to be unusable/incomprehensible for most consultants & customers...said it made more sense to start over. They pushed back, questioning his judgement & rationale. So he declined the work.
     
    Last edited: Nov 3, 2020
  11. Pharmaboy

    Pharmaboy Friend

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    May 3, 2018
    Likes Received:
    2,463
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Location:
    Goshen, NY
    Love these comments about the routinization/trivialization of consequential work. "Ready on Thursday"* is very droll.

    There's been some commentary here about irrational lingo that specialists use to describe their work (purpose being as much exclusionary to outsiders, as descriptive).

    I've been a medical writer for ~20 years (talk about exclusionary lingo!), and have encountered 2 magnificent examples of both things:
    • "Flipping burgers" refers to writing highly complex projects that are similar, one after the other, extreme deadlines, clearly undervalued by the client
    • "Flea-f'ing" is medical ad agency-speak for repeated meetings to over-discuss tiny points (while missing the big picture) of complex material
    *to obviously dissatisfied customer, "You never said you wanted these spots removed"
     
  12. fastfwd

    fastfwd Friend

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    Aug 29, 2019
    Likes Received:
    993
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Location:
    Silicon Valley
    There's an easy fix for that: Switch to an industry where documentation is a required deliverable. Medical-device manufacture and aerospace are the obvious ones, but any heavily regulated industry is a good candidate.

    In companies with sufficiently clued-in management, he might even find that technical-communicator pay is equivalent to engineer pay.
     
  13. Pharmaboy

    Pharmaboy Friend

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    May 3, 2018
    Likes Received:
    2,463
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Location:
    Goshen, NY
    That's a great suggestion. But unfortunately, in the real world, significant barriers exist to switching as described.

    Example: My brother has been repeatedly recruited over the decades by recruiters for pharmas & med device companies--they use tech writers extensively to document procedures, techniques, manufacturing milestones. However, he found over and over that no pharma/med device mfr would even consider him for their tech writing needs, despite his manifest experience. They only hire tech writers with experience in exactly the type of documentation they use (different from typical I.T./corporate tech writing). If he were 30 yrs younger and could work for 1/4 the comp, he could "start at the bottom" w/pharma clients to get the needed experience. But doing so would derail his career, now in late stage.

    I have a similar situation. Pharmas/med device mfrs hire medical writers incessantly to document pre-approval development of new drugs & devices. I have been recruited 1-3X/wk for the past 5 years for this kind of work (recruiters search "medical writer" on LinkedIn, and my name pops up). But I know from painful experience that no pharma/med device mfr would even consider me, despite my strong credentials in a different type of medical writing. For them, I'm no better (actually worse) than a mere trainee--recent grad w/science degree & zero experience. Like my brother, I'd derail my business model by chasing this stuff...it never makes sense.

    This is my 3rd career, maybe 4th; I'm not averse to changing things up. But it no longer makes economic sense to do so...
     
    Last edited: Nov 3, 2020
  14. fastfwd

    fastfwd Friend

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    Aug 29, 2019
    Likes Received:
    993
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Location:
    Silicon Valley
    Ok, agreed. "Easy fix" was an overoptimistic description, especially for someone who I now notice has been working since the 80s (I should learn to read better). Obviously, he isn't going to go back to school or take an entry-level job in a new industry.

    But software/IT techwriters are so universally unappreciated that for a writer just starting out, it's my opinion that even if it required taking a couple years off to gain the necessary subject-matter knowledge, it would be worth it to be able to work in another industry.
     
  15. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    Sep 27, 2015
    Likes Received:
    14,130
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Location:
    India
    Soon after I began my final job, I came to know that the corporate accountant ran one report twenty times, with different parameters, at the end of every month. I also knew that the accounting package would take input from a file as if typed and said, "I'll script that for you." Done: one command once a month and twenty files to hand over to her. Later we found an intermediate package, and the accounts people didn't need the reports run any longer: they just wrote their own formulae straight into Excel. My scripts were redundant. But I was equally proud of both achievements. Systems managers always want to make their own lives as easy as possible: if we can do the same for others, along the way, that's great :)

    On the technical-writing front, whoa, I was never that good at documenting my own stuff, except that even simple code was liberally commented for my own sake. But I knew a guy who never seemed to be in a permanent job until...

    Well, he was a guy who just loved taking stuff apart and finding out how it worked. Next thing I heard, he was working for a huge MNC. His job was taking stuff apart, and writing the manuals for the engineers on how to put it back together again. Exactly how he just walked into that job, I never found out. Nor why that wasn't done as part of the product development anyway.

    I just walked into two niche jobs, though neither as great as that. Kept them both for over a decade each.
     
  16. camarakane

    camarakane New

    Joined:
    Nov 8, 2020
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    1
    Location:
    United States
    I am a life coach by profession. I offer life coaching services and also teach spiritual life improvement and how to improve your emotional intelligence.
     
  17. mokobigbro

    mokobigbro Acquaintance

    Contributor
    Joined:
    Jun 16, 2018
    Likes Received:
    96
    Trophy Points:
    18
    Location:
    Jakarta, Indonesia
    I mix and master records for a living.
    Full time position in a studio but soon likely going freelance.

    Doing audio consulting on a side and might start making some affordable studio monitors for the local market.
     
  18. NationOfLaws

    NationOfLaws Friend

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    Nov 10, 2019
    Likes Received:
    874
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Location:
    US
    I manage a sales engineer team for consulting services at a large tech company. You may have heard of our most beloved product: Flash.
     
  19. supertransformingdhruv

    supertransformingdhruv Almost "Made"

    Contributor
    Joined:
    Mar 21, 2018
    Likes Received:
    579
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Location:
    DCish
    More than that, corporate jargon's a miserable snake that worms itself into your brain. I hate it, but what can you do-- almost everyone I work with or work for uses all these bullshit phrases to fill air and it's pretty contagious. After a week of excessive client calls, I find myself at home saying shit like "let's circle back and do a little forward planning on how to leverage our secret sauce to maximize impact [1]" instead of a regular "when do you want me to marinate the chicken?"

    [1] Minor exaggeration to deliver maximum impact by cherry-picking synergistic words.
     
  20. Pharmaboy

    Pharmaboy Friend

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    May 3, 2018
    Likes Received:
    2,463
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Location:
    Goshen, NY
    Just dreamed that I'm standing in front of a cherry tree full of ripe cherries. The farmer says, "I want you to pick the cherries."

    I say, "I don't know how. All I've ever done is corporate work on a computer."

    He replies, "OK, then--think of it as 'cherry-picking syngergistic words.' "

    "GOT IT!"
     

Share This Page