[meow1032]

As someone who works with a lot of state IT people, if they don't know how to hire programmers, they probably don't know how to manage programmers. In a bureaucracy, if the administrators are making these kinds of unrealistic hiring demands in a crisis, it probably means that the administrators outrank all programmers and don't trust them to make their own decisions. This is not an environment to work in.

[neaanopri]

This is a crisis, not a normal time. Fixing this system will make the difference between real people getting unemployment checks or nothing. That's worth enduring a bad boss for.

[BiteCode_dev]

Problem is, that's how they get away with everything.

They fix nothing, then wait for somebody to need them enough, or have compassion enough to handle their mess.

Basically here, they are saying: we didn't listen to all those competent people that told us we should have cleaned this system a long time ago because one day it will bite us back. We didn't think technical debt was a thing. It has always worked. And it's virtual. And IT is always exaggerating anyway.

Now it does bite them back, and do they take responsibility ?

No. They ask for competent people to have mercy and save the day because the situation is dire. Because this is special this time, unlike the other times.

This is completely not like with the health care system that never got fixed and now the medical personal is paying for it so that the people don't suffer as much from this mismanagement.

They will not pay more. They will no fix anything. They will not respect you more, change the way things are done, or take any responsibility for this. And in fact they will probably guilt trip you into give up your health to overwork on this with less resources and for less pay because it's an emergency.

A friend of mine works in an hospital right now. She has been at work for 15 days straight. They already told her she won't get paid for the days she was not supposed to work but did.

Then as a final fuck you, if this turns out ok, if the catastrophe is avoided, they will get the reward.

The nurses or the programmers ? They will be forgotten in a week. Nothing will change.

But for the mismanagers, their superior will thank them for managing this situation well. They may even get promoted and have more responsibility.

So you have the choice between saving the money of poor people now and reinforcing the suck of the whole system, of letting people suffer for a chance of a redo and purging the ones that lead to this.

This is a terrible choice to have to make.

Especially since we have the empathy to make us discuss this, while clearly they don't.

[eru]

> Fixing this system will make the difference between real people getting unemployment checks or nothing. That's worth enduring a bad boss for.

In absolute terms, perhaps. But if you are moving away from taking jobs out of self interest, and into doing something for the public good; you might as well check out https://80000hours.org/ and pick the job that has the most positive impact.

My guess is that working any kind of 'normal' programmer job and giving 10% of your income to an effective charity would beat out enduring the bad boss in New Jersey.

[renewiltord]

Did you apply? I think it would be interesting to hear the story of what it looks like inside if you decide to work with them.

[IanS00]

There's a difference between a generic "bad boss" and an incompetent one. An incompetent one will kill the project.

If NJ have failed to maintain legacy systems that good COBOL development needs, almost by definition they have incompetent management (and a Governor who can't even pronounce COBOL). They likely don't have the dev or test boxes that they should have. They will either put up barriers to the other systems the developer needs to understand, or will throw open the doors so that my fixes get broken by everyone else's fixes.

[matheusmoreira]

> Fixing this system will make the difference between real people getting unemployment checks or nothing.

Let them get nothing. Then they'll call for the heads of the governors, the very people who couldn't care less about the system until it stopped working. They are the ones who could have made a difference but actively chose not to because it just wasn't that important to them.

[krageon]

> That's worth enduring a bad boss for.

A bad boss will absolutely give you burnout, and that lasts for years. You are of course correct, but at the same time I would never ask this of someone and I wouldn't subject myself to it either. Bad bosses will destroy your quality of life in the medium-long term.

[DeusExMachina]

This would work if we had only one problem to solve. Real people getting unemployment checks is an important problem for sure, but not the only one.

It's better to direct our limited resources to better porjects with a higher success rate and/or impact.

[tomohawk]

No. It is worth holding the bad boss accountable and firing the bad boss who put them in this situation in the first place.

[0x8BADF00D]

They'll change their tune when they won't be able to find anyone. The free market is as honest as it gets. If you underpay and undertreat your employees, they will seek an alternative. It is simple opportunity cost.

[d3ad1ysp0rk]

I would normally agree, but emergencies can create opportunities for improvements in the process. See healthcare.gov for example.

[Frost1x]

"Chaos is a ladder" though it didn't turn out so well for that fictional character, his assessment wasn't wrong.