Post: #1

IT guy gets a job at a startup six years ago doing QA. Smart enough to automate it, he proceeds to do Jack Schitt for the next six years.

Discovered and fired.

https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestio...r_6_years/

I would have promoted him to management. He already has the skills!

WIA

Post: #2

Damn.

If only half that time was spent reading books or working on some side businesses instead of video games.

At least he kept himself fit and saved his money.

Post: #3

Pretty goddamn smart, wonder how IT found out.

I'm sure he could've covered his tracks, or maybe randomized things he did while testing.

Nascimento is right, he could've been doing more shit improve himself along with lifting.

He could've done so much more, but no, he decided to play LoL.

I'm not sure how fit this guy is but, he says he needs to take lifting seriously and quit his beer addiction.

This leads me to believe he was a part time lifter.

Post: #4

If he was that great at automation, you'd think he could mine some Google money or bitcoins or some kind of side hustle.

Post: #5

What the hell? Idiot start up company should have fired the other QA staff and have him automate the entire thing. Why fire someone who can eliminate most of the other folks doing his job?

Post: #6

He probably started bragging and got caught.

Post: #7

He got three months of pay after they let him go, which means they probably will let him have unemployment and also probably agreed to give him a good recommendation so he's not screwed if he wants another job. If you live frugally and can get unemployment I'd do that, mooch off the system until you figure out what you want.

Spend $50k and get a decent used RV and travel the country banging chicks.

Post: #8

Quote:Finally fired after 6 years (self.cscareerquestions)

submitted 17 days ago * by FiletOFish1066

Throwaway and also had quite a large amount of alcohol since I am sad as fuck right now. Will get to the point though.

I graduated from college with a CS degree around 7 years ago from one of the shittiest California State University campuses. It was seriously a piece of garbage back then and apparently it is way worse now. I spent most of my time playing soccer with some friends and drinking and didn't take school seriously. Graduated with a 2.3 GPA and moved back in with my parents.

After a few months of searching I got a job at a company in the Bay Area, CA that was completely unknown 7 years ago but is now incredibly well known. It is actually quite hard to get a job here now, from what I hear. I got a job as a software developer working mostly on testing software, so mostly QA work. However I actually had to write some code as well. After around 8 months I had basically automated my own job by writing some programs to do it all for me. After that I would mostly just browse forums and do absolutely jack shit at work. My boss never really checked in on me and as long as the needed tests were taken care of he didn't give a fuck.

From around 6 years ago up until now, I have done nothing at work. I am not joking. For 40 hours each week I go to work, play League of Legends in my office, browse reddit, and do whatever I feel like. In the past 6 years I have maybe done 50 hours of real work. So basically nothing. And nobody really cared. The tests were all running successfully. I shit you not, I had no friends or anything at work either, so nobody ever talked to me except my boss and occasionally the devs for the software I was testing.

Yesterday my boss fired me. I guess IT found out after 6 years or so what I was doing and reported it to my boss. I explained I had automated my own job, but was still updating the automation tool, which was a lie. Anyway, I was fired.

After 6 years I literally do not even know how to write good software anymore. I basically forgot everything. I just played League of Legends and did nothing else. I got fit though, which is a plus, since I went to the gym every day during work. But I know nothing about programming or anything else. I am 28, without a job (although they are giving me 3 months of pay), and no skills. I have around $200k in my bank account since I still live with my parents and live frugally, so I won't be starving or anything like that, and can definitely support myself.

So what in the fuck do I do?? I still have a drive and want to take on programming and learn the modern technologies again, and I do want to find a new job. Is there any hope for me?

UPDATE:

Woah! I really didn't think this thread would turn up so huge. And thanks for the gold man!!

So I woke up this morning and now that I am sober I can think straight. I definitely cannot go through each and every comment and reply since there are so many. I did read most of them though. Thanks for all of the help and support guys!!

So what my plan is right now: First off I am taking a couple week vacation. I have some family in Europe and will go visit them and I plan to go to a couple of different countries. I haven't traveled much so should be fun. It will also be a much needed break. I just need to rethink everything in my life! When I get back I am definitely dead set on learning everything I forgot. I will take a month or two to catch up on learning DS & algorithms again, while reading cracking the coding interview. I will also be applying to some jobs. I have a couple of friends in industry that work at Big 4 companies here in the Bay Area so I might get some help from them if I can! I definitely think it would be awesome to work at a company like Google or FB. I will not move out right now. I will move out when I get a job. Probably a 1 bedroom 1 bath apartment to myself since I am a huge neat freak.

Other plans: I want to get serious about lifting, so I will try and cut my beer addiction and start eating cleanly. I'm working on getting rid of my LoL addiction as well. Definitely want to try and limit myself.

So yeah, thanks for all of the positive feedback guys! I'll try and answer some questions people asked to me via PM right now as well as reply to some of the comments below, but I have to go in a bit since I am going to go get some coffee with a friend. Probably going to book my plane ticket to Europe for sometime this upcoming weekend, and I will see where it goes from there.

Have a great day everyone and seriously thanks again for the gold and all of the support below!

Post: #9

This actually brings up a personal situation I find myself in.

My current gig offers me a lot of free idle time during the day and I'm sort of at a loss for how to take advantage of it. I spend the majority of my day in my private office reading BS on the internet (RvF mostly), watching YouTube fitness videos, and Netflix. I also nap. If any of you had a 9-5 where you were stuck in the office but with little to do, how would you make best use of your time to be personally productive/make extra money?

Post: #10

(06-09-2016 11:29 AM)The Beast1 Wrote:  What the hell? Idiot start up company should have fired the other QA staff and have him automate the entire thing. Why fire someone who can eliminate most of the other folks doing his job?

Stop oppressing me with common sense!

Post: #11

Success in Corporate America isn't about innovating or thinking outside the box, or even proving your worth, it's about being a mindless cog.

Post: #12

(06-09-2016 11:53 AM)General Stalin Wrote:  This actually brings up a personal situation I find myself in.

My current gig offers me a lot of free idle time during the day and I'm sort of at a loss for how to take advantage of it. I spend the majority of my day in my private office reading BS on the internet (RvF mostly), watching YouTube fitness videos, and Netflix. I also nap. If any of you had a 9-5 where you were stuck in the office but with little to do, how would you make best use of your time to be personally productive/make extra money?

Push for work-from-home for one day a week.

Post: #13

(06-09-2016 11:17 AM)Captainstabbin Wrote:  If he was that great at automation, you'd think he could mine some Google money or bitcoins or some kind of side hustle.

Guy says he's sitting on $200K in savings. Which is a pretty impressive haul, though I have to wonder if "I live frugally" is him trying to spin sitting on his ass in his folks' place for most of his 20s. Bay Area ain't a cheap place.

Post: #14

Great story. Great guy.

WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE

Reminds me of this from a few years back:

Outsourced Employee Sends Own Job to China

Post: #15

(06-09-2016 11:53 AM)General Stalin Wrote:  If any of you had a 9-5 where you were stuck in the office but with little to do, how would you make best use of your time to be personally productive/make extra money?

*WIA looks at number of his own posts*
*looks at embarrassing number of rep points*

Let me know when you get a good answer.

Recently I started researching Amazon products for my niche sites. Can't use the corporate internet for that. (Or this, most n my responses are done via phone)

WIA

Post: #16

(06-09-2016 11:53 AM)General Stalin Wrote:  This actually brings up a personal situation I find myself in.

My current gig offers me a lot of free idle time during the day and I'm sort of at a loss for how to take advantage of it. I spend the majority of my day in my private office reading BS on the internet (RvF mostly), watching YouTube fitness videos, and Netflix. I also nap. If any of you had a 9-5 where you were stuck in the office but with little to do, how would you make best use of your time to be personally productive/make extra money?

Several months ago, I read Robert Greene's book, "The 50th Law". When I read your post, I thought of this:

Quote:STEP ONE: RECLAIM DEAD TIME

When Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794–1877) was twelve years old he was forced to work for his father in his small shipping business. It was drudge work and he hated it. Cornelius was a willful, ambitious child, and so in his mind he made the following determination: within a couple of years he was going to start his own shipping enterprise. This simple decision altered everything. Now this job was an urgent apprenticeship. He had to keep his eyes open, learn everything he could about his father’s business, including how he could do things better. Instead of dull labor, it was now an exciting challenge.

At the age of sixteen he borrowed $100 from his mother. He used the money to buy a boat and began ferrying passengers between Manhattan and Staten Island. Within a year he paid back the loan. By the time he was twenty-one he had made a small fortune and was on his way to becoming the wealthiest man of his time. From this experience he established his lifelong motto: “Never be a minion, always be an owner.”

Time is the critical factor in our lives, our most precious resource. The problem when we work for others is that so much of this becomes dead time that we want to pass as quickly as possible, time that is not our own. Almost all of us must begin our careers working for others, but it is always within our power to transform this time from something dead to something alive. If we make the same determination as Vanderbilt—to be an owner and not a minion—then that time is used to learn as much as we can about what is going on around us—the political games, the nuts and bolts of this particular venture, the larger game going on in the business world, how we could do things better. We have to pay attention and absorb as much information as possible. This helps us endure work that does not seem so rewarding. In this way, we own our time and our ideas before owning a business.

Remember: your bosses prefer to keep you in dependent positions. It is in their interest that you do not become self-reliant, and so they will tend to hoard information. You must secretly work against this and seize this information for yourself.

STEP TWO: CREATE LITTLE EMPIRES

While still working for others, your goal at some point must be to carve out little areas that you can operate on your own, cultivating entrepreneurial skills. This could mean offering to take over projects that others have left undone or proposing to put into action some new idea of your own, but nothing too grandiose to raise suspicion. What you are doing is cultivating a taste for doing things yourself—making your own decisions, learning from your own mistakes. If your bosses do not allow you to make such a move on any scale, then you are not in the right place. If you fail in this venture, then you have gained a valuable education. But generally taking on such things on your own initiative forces you to work harder and better. You are more creative and motivated because there is more at stake; you rise to the challenge.

Keep in mind the following: what you really value in life is ownership, not money. If ever there is a choice—more money or more responsibility—you must always opt for the latter. A lower-paying position that offers more room to make decisions and carve out little empires is infinitely preferable to something that pays well but constricts your movements.

Reclaim your dead time. If you're going to be stuck at work anyway, might as well do something to better yourself. If it were me, I'd get a hold of some great books and read them while on the clock. In effect, your company will be paying you to educate yourself. Can't beat that!

Post: #17

Some kind of online hustle, or even smart ways to work on and plan an offline hustle. Hell even more productive and beneficial things to do or read throughout the day. My situation is such that not only do I have a lot of free time, but I also have a lot of privacy. I have my own office, with my own door, and half of the week I'm typically completely alone in the building.

I use the corporate network to browse the web and go on here etc. Although I could easily bring my own laptop in and use my phone's unlimited hotspot for internet instead if I wanted to go to shady sites, torrent stuff, or any other activity that would be blocked or not look good on my work computer/connection.

EDIT: ^ Great quote, LV. Didn't see it in your initial post until you edited it in. I have dabbled in working on learning language or bringing in a book I've been meaning to read. Those would be great, but I would also really like to think of a way I could make other money while at work.

Post: #18

(06-09-2016 06:10 PM)General Stalin Wrote:  Some kind of online hustle, or even smart ways to work on and plan an offline hustle. Hell even more productive and beneficial things to do or read throughout the day. My situation is such that not only do I have a lot of free time, but I also have a lot of privacy. I have my own office, with my own door, and half of the week I'm typically completely alone in the building.

I use the corporate network to browse the web and go on here etc. Although I could easily bring my own laptop in and use my phone's unlimited hotspot for internet instead if I wanted to go to shady sites, torrent stuff, or any other activity that would be blocked or not look good on my work computer/connection.

EDIT: ^ Great quote, LV. Didn't see it in your initial post until you edited it in. I have dabbled in working on learning language or bringing in a book I've been meaning to read. Those would be great, but I would also really like to think of a way I could make other money while at work.

Yeah, GeneralStalin, I think those are great ideas. I've thought about possibly learning a new language, too. Might come in handy if God forbid Trump doesn't win the election and Crooked Hillary turns the United States into a third-world hell hole. You think Russian would be a good choice?

Use your day job like you would a cheap slut. Get what benefit you can out of it, all the while working to increase your options so you can eventually upgrade and ditch it.

Post: #19

(06-09-2016 11:53 AM)General Stalin Wrote:  This actually brings up a personal situation I find myself in.

My current gig offers me a lot of free idle time during the day and I'm sort of at a loss for how to take advantage of it. I spend the majority of my day in my private office reading BS on the internet (RvF mostly), watching YouTube fitness videos, and Netflix. I also nap. If any of you had a 9-5 where you were stuck in the office but with little to do, how would you make best use of your time to be personally productive/make extra money?

No one can answer the bolded question but you. What do you want to do to make money?

I'm a similar situation: I worked in credit and collections for a multinational company and my boss give me two hours of work every 8 hour work day.

1)I've been teaching myself Spanish,
2)Reading relevant books on Amazon's cloud reader,
3) and working on my copywriting business(researching prospects to cold-call, working on/researching projects) in all my downtime.

They don't monitor the internet, save rvf and porn, where I work so I have carte blanche.

Of course I do that stuff because it helps me reach my long-term goals of eventually leaving the job and being 100% self-employed. You have to figure out what you want to do, no one here can tell you what to do.

(06-09-2016 12:00 PM)Red_Pillage Wrote:  Success in Corporate America isn't about innovating or thinking outside the box, or even proving your worth, it's about being a mindless cog.

You a fan of Carlin, Red_Pillage?

Post: #20

(06-09-2016 06:37 PM)LeoneVolpe Wrote:  You think Russian would be a good choice?

I don't know enough about the country to answer that with an informed enough opinion, but I myself have been thinking about spending some time there to see what it's about. From what I read, see, and hear, the women are spectacular and they have a great leader running the country.

(06-09-2016 06:40 PM)Goldin Boy Wrote:  

(06-09-2016 11:53 AM)General Stalin Wrote:  If any of you had a 9-5 where you were stuck in the office but with little to do, how would you make best use of your time to be personally productive/make extra money?

No one can answer the bolded question but you. What do you want to do to make money?

Yeah I get that. I was moreso asking what others would do just for some perspective and to get the conversation rolling.

Working on advertising my own business might be a good use of my time. Posting on social media, emailing/messaging/cold-calling people, and generally working on freelance stuff.

Been thinking about doing some graphic design work as well. T-shirt/album art design for bands/artists shit like that. Maybe if I sharpened my writing skills I could do some freelance work in that field too. There are plenty of options to make some nickels and dimes here and there doing what I like to do - write, draw, make/record music, etc.

I should be working on my website, among other things.

Post: #21

There was another guy who did something like that except he remotely outsourced his job to China for 1/5th of what he was getting paid. The guy from China would log in and do all his work while he fucked off. Unfortunately, network security finally caught on to what he was doing and he got fired.

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/17/...a-20130117

Quote:It's a worst-case scenario for most employees: There's someone in China who can do your job quickly, efficiently and for about one-fifth of your salary, and your boss absolutely loves his work.

But one U.S. software developer turned this nightmare on its head and actually benefited from outsourcing, a report says. That's because, unbeknownst to his bosses, he hired a Chinese developer to do his job, allowing him to take home impeccable performance reviews while actually spending the day watching cat videos and shopping on EBay.

According to Andrew Valentine, who works on the Verizon Risk Team investigating data breaches, the employee, who Valentine calls Bob, had pulled off the stunt for some time, allowing him to relax and earn a good salary while someone in China did his job for him.

Valentine was hired to investigate when the company, a Verizon client, saw that someone from Shenyang, China, was logging in to its computer network during every workday. The breach was traced to Bob's VPN network, but he had to be innocent, the victim of some kind of breach, the company figured. He was a quiet family man, "someone you wouldn't look at twice in an elevator," Valentine writes. And Bob was sitting there, working at his desk, every day. But when Valentine's staff looked more closely at Bob's computer, they ultimately found the smoking gun.

It's a worst-case scenario for most employees: There's someone in China who can do your job quickly, efficiently and for about one-fifth of your salary, and your boss absolutely loves his work.

But one U.S. software developer turned this nightmare on its head and actually benefited from outsourcing, a report says. That's because, unbeknownst to his bosses, he hired a Chinese developer to do his job, allowing him to take home impeccable performance reviews while actually spending the day watching cat videos and shopping on EBay.

According to Andrew Valentine, who works on the Verizon Risk Team investigating data breaches, the employee, who Valentine calls Bob, had pulled off the stunt for some time, allowing him to relax and earn a good salary while someone in China did his job for him.

Valentine was hired to investigate when the company, a Verizon client, saw that someone from Shenyang, China, was logging in to its computer network during every workday. The breach was traced to Bob's VPN network, but he had to be innocent, the victim of some kind of breach, the company figured. He was a quiet family man, "someone you wouldn't look at twice in an elevator," Valentine writes. And Bob was sitting there, working at his desk, every day. But when Valentine's staff looked more closely at Bob's computer, they ultimately found the smoking gun.

Bob had PDFs of hundreds of invoices from a third-party contractor in Shenyang for developer services. Bob had been paying the contractor $50,000 a year, while he himself made hundreds of thousands of dollars.


While the developer was working 9-to-5, Bob surfed the Web. At 9, he'd roll in and surf Reddit, watching cat videos. At 11:30 he'd grab some lunch. After lunch it was time for EBay for about an hour, when Bob migrated to Facebook. At 4:30, he'd email management, telling them what he had "done" during the day, and at 5, he'd go home.

"Evidence even suggested he had the same scam going across multiple companies in the area. All told, it looked like he earned several hundred thousand dollars a year, and only had to pay the Chinese consulting firm about fifty grand annually," Valentine writes.


Verizon spokeswoman Janet Brumfield confirms the story.

Valentine says it would be easy for other companies to ensure their employes aren't outsourcing their own jobs to China.

"Organizations need to routinely and aggressively monitor their security logs," Valentine said. "This could have been prevented if the organization had simply bothered to look."

Less than 1% of data breaches are discovered by looking into security logs, he said, but 86% of the time, information about breaches can be discovered in those logs.

Suffice it to say, Bob is no longer working for the company. It's possible that he is missed, though. His performance reviews were impeccable, and his company considered him the best developer in the building.

Corporate America is pretty much a joke these days. It's mindless dilbert work and filing TPS reports while you have to appease even more useless femalecentric human resources and management types.

edit: oops, beaten.

Post: #22

(06-09-2016 11:53 AM)General Stalin Wrote:  This actually brings up a personal situation I find myself in.

My current gig offers me a lot of free idle time during the day and I'm sort of at a loss for how to take advantage of it. I spend the majority of my day in my private office reading BS on the internet (RvF mostly), watching YouTube fitness videos, and Netflix. I also nap. If any of you had a 9-5 where you were stuck in the office but with little to do, how would you make best use of your time to be personally productive/make extra money?

Man, that would be a dream. I've had jobs where I had to sit around a lot, but never where I could bring a laptop along, so I mostly just read ebooks on my phone and tried to learn languages and stuff like that.

I would write fiction. My long term goal is to make my living entirely off my fiction, which realistically means I need a big backlog. It's the kind of thing that will take ~5-10 years of steady (not necessarily full time) work to achieve, and right now I'm too busy to spend much time on it.

There's a lot of admin stuff to do there too. Maintain a few websites mainly, but I would have to have book covers made or make them myself, do ebook and print book layouts, etc.

Post: #23

(06-09-2016 11:53 AM)General Stalin Wrote:  This actually brings up a personal situation I find myself in.

My current gig offers me a lot of free idle time during the day and I'm sort of at a loss for how to take advantage of it. I spend the majority of my day in my private office reading BS on the internet (RvF mostly), watching YouTube fitness videos, and Netflix. I also nap. If any of you had a 9-5 where you were stuck in the office but with little to do, how would you make best use of your time to be personally productive/make extra money?

If I was you, I would invest my time in whatever it is that gets you going. If you absolutely love your job then that's taken care of. If not, stash your cash and figure out a plan to get out. As long as your Well Being is taken care of, absolutely fallow your bliss

Post: #24

(06-09-2016 11:53 AM)General Stalin Wrote:  This actually brings up a personal situation I find myself in.

My current gig offers me a lot of free idle time during the day and I'm sort of at a loss for how to take advantage of it. I spend the majority of my day in my private office reading BS on the internet (RvF mostly), watching YouTube fitness videos, and Netflix. I also nap. If any of you had a 9-5 where you were stuck in the office but with little to do, how would you make best use of your time to be personally productive/make extra money?

This is my life right now.

I do mostly what you do, but dedicate 10-30 minutes of the day to exercise, which can be calisthenics, gripper training, or carrying a big box of books up and down the hall.

Post: #25

He should have gotten fired and sued.

He wasn't hired for a one-off contract work to build an automation program, he was hired on a continuous basis. That means you continually do new work. You make an automated program? Great - now you can automate other processes too.

However, the company is culpable too for not checking in on the bastard.

When the cat is away the mice will play.