I don't understand this, or the linked article. Can someone explain to me what possible reason there can be for responding with disciplinary action when someone proposes an improvement?
I think this quote sums it up best: "I've realized that there were probably a dozen programmers on that ancient project who knew why the system was so slow and how to fix it. They knew, but they kept it to themselves because in that organization, there were some things that were more important than making the system better." The mistake was in assuming that code quality and performance always trumps other considerations. The title is misleading in this respect: it's not really programming advice. Even the phrase repeated in the article, stay the hell out of other people's code, is more about navigating the potential unknowns of a situation, and being in touch with what's happening around the office more generally.
An easy reason that often gets left out of these stories is that someone spent weeks on a rewrite without authorization rather than working on burning priorities.
That's a real problem, and quite common. I think it's important, when confronting or correcting someone doing that (whether they're your employee, colleague, superior, team lead, etc.) to emphasize that they're not being punished or thought poorly of because of their ingenuity or initiative, but because they're wasting time and need to stick to the plan. Otherwise, initially headstrong but very capable people are often ground down before they have a chance to get used to the roadmapping/planning/etc. process at a company. This is especially true with new engineers.
I have no idea if the GP post you're replying to is someone rationalizing being in that position as being "disciplined for touching the wrong code", or whether something actually screwy was going on. I just wanted to mention that distinction because it was important to me when I started out (if people had come down on me for having ideas, instead of for wasting time, I'd be in a much less useful, happy, and capable place today).
I look at documents and remove everything from my computer, and my guess is that op worked on it on his own time on his own machine. He was still working 4 years in that company, so he was not removed from project. Feels like action was uh, he got documents out of company.
Don't get any data out of company, I would never promote someone who got any documents out of company laptop to his own.
When they've gone on an unauthorised excursion through some code that has say, safety critical or legal, concerns some off the top of my head examples.
Hey guy's I've rewritten:
- The dosage control code for radiotherapy device so we can remove that expensive mechanical interlock!
- The data access layer of our patient records system!
- How we calculate x in out guidance software we can go to a cheaper CPU now!
especially if said code was rattling in the building around somewhere it might get into the code base.
In those cases, why not respond by explaining the risks or other considerations that might not be apparent from the code?
Frankly if there is real risk that the code is pushed to production by someone who shouldn't be touching it is a failure to properly safeguard critical assets.
Retaliating because someone tried to make something better is abusive and dysfunctional.
> When they've gone on an unauthorised excursion through some code that has say, safety critical or legal, concerns
> especially if said code was rattling in the building around somewhere it might get into the code base.
Reading code should never require "authorization". There might be some edge cases related to logistical technicalities (e.g. there's a security clearance/IP/trade secret/plain-text password concern). But there is no reason that the criticality or risk from changes to code should prevent people from reading it.
Writing or rewriting code should never require authorization; getting it released should.
That's not some 'everyone should do whatever they want, damn the managers' statement: do your job and try meet your goals; if you go off the reservation and waste time, don't be surprised if you get slapped. If you take your code to your boss/team and they say "that's too critical to touch right now/at your experience level", "I don't have time in my day to review your side-of-desk rewrite, shelve it", or "that's incredibly misguided and too stupid to even try to improve", that's on you to work through.
But the act of [re]writing code alone should never be forbidden.
If one of your job's responsibilities is "don't rewrite this code, even as a scratchpad or personal what-if,", that is fucked.
If one of your job's responsibilities is "don't read code that is out of your lane, and don't try to understand the haunted forests"[1], that is fucked.
Your responsibilities might not be explicitly to do those things. But if your responsibilities include the negatives ("never touch this, even if you don't check it in"), something is very wrong.
If code "rattling around the building" might somehow "get into the codebase", that is fucked: you have a horrible problem with your code review process, your release process, your developer prod-access/permissioning system, or your colleagues' willingness to accept as gospel things they find lying around. Or all of the above.
To be blunt, that comment seemed harmfully closed-minded, paranoid without reason, and lacking in understanding of how engineers grow and learn: by reading and writing code, even if nothing release-able comes out of it immediately.