I Call Him Thorn - Part 1
A survivors account of working with an unscrupulous hack
You might have trouble believing what has happened over the past 14 months. I have trouble believing it and that is why I write; so I can recall accurately and marvel at the extreme situation. At present, I have given notice of resignation and await my exit interview next week.
Allow me to start by explaining I am a veteran software developer with some rather unique experience. I have worked on eXtreme Programming teams employing radical practices including pair programming and 100% test code coverage. Recently I spent over 7 years working at a quasi-startup that had effectively no deadlines. My career began with repairing and extending an ambitious, live, enterprise application in crisis.
My conservative upbringing and deep though habits have helped me succeed in my profession. I try to care about the big picture and have a profound respect for others. All this I say to explain that I am a conscientious and capable team player. I would class myself as a top-tier journeyman (but not a prodigy).
Also worth noting is my recent international move from a smallish city to a large one where software technology is a primary industry and there is a greater degree of competitive behavior. By this I mean there are fewer moral scruples and less courtesy governing the behavior of the residents.
In my 20+ years as a developer I had never encountered a person like Thorn, who was hired shortly after me at a large multinational company I will call Acme. Acme used to be much larger but had experienced a great deal of upheaval that seriously degraded the institutional knowledge retained at my work location. Not only were there large amounts of aging code in vast repositories, we also had to interact with ESL teams in a distant timezone that performed the majority of software development.
Thorn had worked for Acme about 10-15 years prior and retained some of the esoteric, domain knowledge from that time. Since then, he has been involved with a number of startups and had risen to the lofty station of CTO at a not-insignificant, tech startup before 'returning to his roots' as a software developer for Acme. Thorn worked from home and only came to the office for important meetings. He had some health issues that meant working from home was a great help.
My prelude to working at Acme was rather tumultuous as I had emerged from a risky, contracting engagement that left me waiting for well over 6 weeks wages with no indication of when it might be paid. Without mentioning other, unfortunate details you'll appreciate I was grateful to land a well paying job at a rather convenient location, even if some aspects were not ideal. For me, the manageable commute was to be my daily reward and it served nicely as I could walk home to get my exercise.
In the next part I'll describe some events but first its useful to describe some of Thorn's personal traits that explain a lot of what I witnessed. First is a distinct lack of conscience. This may be the product of his past experience in startups where ethics and courtesy take a back seat to landing a client or investor. Or it might be a personal belief as he has, more than once, expressed the mantra 'the strong take from the weak'.
Thorn is quite driven, he believes in careful time management and aims to waste none of it. His watch beeps every hour and he is commonly working into the late evening and on weekends. He likely sees himself as an apex, team member or an executive that should be making the important decisions and expects a team of underlings to carry out the details. In addition to this self image, Thorn has years of experience as a CTO playing all the political games that come with the territory as well as managing all manner of personalities and countering associated tactics.
Last but not least, Thorn has poor design and programming skills. Whether he had them previously and lost them during his time in management, or the absence of these skills drove him to management I do not know, but I suspect the latter. This shortfall is apparent in his sloppy coding habits, his inability to discuss concepts like decoupling, and the manner in which his code fails to address rather obvious, logical, use cases. I do wonder at Thorn's ability to ignore what must be overwhelming evidence against his self image. For him, 'fake it til you make it' must feel more like 'fake it til you run out of victims'.
See part 2 of this series for specific events during my time working with Thorn.
You might have trouble believing what has happened over the past 14 months. I have trouble believing it and that is why I write; so I can recall accurately and marvel at the extreme situation. At present, I have given notice of resignation and await my exit interview next week.
Allow me to start by explaining I am a veteran software developer with some rather unique experience. I have worked on eXtreme Programming teams employing radical practices including pair programming and 100% test code coverage. Recently I spent over 7 years working at a quasi-startup that had effectively no deadlines. My career began with repairing and extending an ambitious, live, enterprise application in crisis.
My conservative upbringing and deep though habits have helped me succeed in my profession. I try to care about the big picture and have a profound respect for others. All this I say to explain that I am a conscientious and capable team player. I would class myself as a top-tier journeyman (but not a prodigy).
Also worth noting is my recent international move from a smallish city to a large one where software technology is a primary industry and there is a greater degree of competitive behavior. By this I mean there are fewer moral scruples and less courtesy governing the behavior of the residents.
In my 20+ years as a developer I had never encountered a person like Thorn, who was hired shortly after me at a large multinational company I will call Acme. Acme used to be much larger but had experienced a great deal of upheaval that seriously degraded the institutional knowledge retained at my work location. Not only were there large amounts of aging code in vast repositories, we also had to interact with ESL teams in a distant timezone that performed the majority of software development.
Thorn had worked for Acme about 10-15 years prior and retained some of the esoteric, domain knowledge from that time. Since then, he has been involved with a number of startups and had risen to the lofty station of CTO at a not-insignificant, tech startup before 'returning to his roots' as a software developer for Acme. Thorn worked from home and only came to the office for important meetings. He had some health issues that meant working from home was a great help.
My prelude to working at Acme was rather tumultuous as I had emerged from a risky, contracting engagement that left me waiting for well over 6 weeks wages with no indication of when it might be paid. Without mentioning other, unfortunate details you'll appreciate I was grateful to land a well paying job at a rather convenient location, even if some aspects were not ideal. For me, the manageable commute was to be my daily reward and it served nicely as I could walk home to get my exercise.
In the next part I'll describe some events but first its useful to describe some of Thorn's personal traits that explain a lot of what I witnessed. First is a distinct lack of conscience. This may be the product of his past experience in startups where ethics and courtesy take a back seat to landing a client or investor. Or it might be a personal belief as he has, more than once, expressed the mantra 'the strong take from the weak'.
Thorn is quite driven, he believes in careful time management and aims to waste none of it. His watch beeps every hour and he is commonly working into the late evening and on weekends. He likely sees himself as an apex, team member or an executive that should be making the important decisions and expects a team of underlings to carry out the details. In addition to this self image, Thorn has years of experience as a CTO playing all the political games that come with the territory as well as managing all manner of personalities and countering associated tactics.
Last but not least, Thorn has poor design and programming skills. Whether he had them previously and lost them during his time in management, or the absence of these skills drove him to management I do not know, but I suspect the latter. This shortfall is apparent in his sloppy coding habits, his inability to discuss concepts like decoupling, and the manner in which his code fails to address rather obvious, logical, use cases. I do wonder at Thorn's ability to ignore what must be overwhelming evidence against his self image. For him, 'fake it til you make it' must feel more like 'fake it til you run out of victims'.
See part 2 of this series for specific events during my time working with Thorn.
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