Re: not enough real programmers? (was Re: Byte Magazine: 18 Vintage issues, 1985-1986)

["Ruff Records" <ruffrecords@geocities.com>]

Howard S Shubs wrote in message ...
>In article <37b1ae5d@195.34.192.13>, "Ruff Records"
><ruffrecords@geocities.com> wrote:
>
>>Forgive me for putting words in your mouth but I certainly got the strong
>>impression from your and Vikki's posts that it was commonplace.  If it
isn't
>>then I guess we all have a much better chance of finding a good employer.
>
>Okay, I gotcha.  I mis-spoke, I'm sorry.  Yes, it's common, but I've
>managed to avoid that kind of place since... well, my first job.  That
>place made a believer in software engineering out of me, as though I
>hadn't been.  Since then, I've become much more convinced that
>
>1) requirements must be frozen before design begins
>2) over-work is not a good thing
>
>The abrogation of 1 and 2 together can cause nasty effects, such as heavy
>stress.  I and the other younger people at that first company ended up
>coming down with various gastric distress ailments.  People were going in
>for various tests fairly often for a time there, before we correlated the
>problems and stopped taking the job so seriously.  I only had the Upper
>GI.  I was lucky, others weren't.  As I said earlier, I BELIEVE!


Me too, Howard.  Like I said before it nearly destroyed my marriage.  The
gastric thing is interesting.  I've only come accross that in one case and
that was a guy who was a workaholic.  We have not explored this yet in this
thread.  Do you come accross alot of workaholics in the companies that
expect long hours, I mean is it almost a company culture thing?

Ian