[logfromblammo]

My current employer makes the useless code comments mandatory. They do not need to make sense or be useful; the requirement is that they exist. Fortunately, they pay me enough that I am not looking for other jobs over it.

No, I'm looking elsewhere due to the many other aggravations that are not worth the salary.

Not only are businesses training younger developers to do this, but they are training older developers to expect it. Of course it is going to bleed over into the real world.

[pekk]

If they were paying you in part to make adequate documentation (which might well include good code comments) I wouldn't see any problem

[logfromblammo]

It is a Cargo Cult Code Convention.

Good code has documentation, therefore our bad code will become good by adding documentation. Truthful comments, such as the following, would likely get the writer fired and not improve the code one little bit.

/* This code block is a crufty, kludgy crock of dung. I have argued several times that it represents a morass of technical debt, security holes, and degraded performance, but I have so far been explicitly denied permission to fix anything in it. In addition, it is so tightly coupled to equally bad code that it is impossible to test easily. But now the good news. If you can stand to look at it, this code will pay your mortgage, and the mortgages of 20 other people, because your bosses have more money than brains. /

Instead of writing that, you get this.

/ Magic. Edit this code at your own peril. */