rating for Softscape
posted
by
jwilliams
on
January 25, 2007
Whoever wrote the comment was not a developer and does not know how we do translation, some of his facts are wrong. It is too bad the guy has such an attitude - obviously some serious issues.
We consistently are challenged by new opportunities and frequently travel to other coutnries and offices to help out. My salary has nearly doubled since I joined and I have been successful at convincing the CTO on how to improve several processes.
If anyone believes for a minute that a developer would ever question the value of testing, it is a proposterous silly thought that can only be formed by a person with either a vendetta or an agenda. I vote that whoever wrote this post your thoughs without anonymity and take a vacation.
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Re: Cool Place to work posted on January 31, 2007 12:46 PM
The Softscape modules that I saw generated orphaned records. I'd hardly call that brilliant. -
Re: Cool Place to work posted by thehacker on February 05, 2007 06:01 PM
Hi, I'm the guy who wrote the original post. Some things:You're right, I actually wasn't a developer, I was a "consultant". But I don't think that distinction is very meaningful here. I programmed webapps, whatever my official designation was. I saw the softscape software firsthand and implemented apps using it.Which of my facts are wrong about the translation system? My experiences were about three years ago, so I concede I may have misremembered some of the details. But the main idea - that translating an app to N languages required N copies of the cource code - is right on. During my orientation the CTO even held it up as a good thing! His reasoning went something like: He needed to make a deadline a few years before, and made an (egregious) hack - copying the source - to do it. It "worked so well" and "was such a good idea" that they did things like that from then on. Wow! See my other post: http://coderific.com/forums/posts/360?start=0 for a more thorough description of the dysfunctional development practices.No developers questioned the value of testing. My boss did. For him, it was an unnecessary expense. There was no process for doing automated unit testing, and I wasn't allowed to create one. I was forbidden from writing unit tests at all.I don't have a vendetta. I'm motivated by compassion to let others know what they're getting into before taking a job at Softscape.It seems I'm not alone in my views:http://www.vault.com/career-company/Softscape.html -
PS: posted by thehacker on February 05, 2007 06:25 PM
One of the guys who was in my orientation class got fired for disparaging the 'translation' system. He was bright, and seemed like he knew his stuff code-wise. He'd been hired for some development position they had created for him. One day, the CTO stopped by his cube and asked how things were going, had he familiarized himself with the code, etc. The guy said he found lots of duplicated code and tight coupling, and that the translation system was particularly egregious and should be refactored. He delivered this politely and directly, one engineer to another. The CTO, who was responsible for all of the things this guy was rightfully taking issue with, got offended and fired the guy on the spot. Everybody watched while sheepishly peeking around the corner or over the top of their cube walls as the guy grabbed his bag and got perp-walked. -
Re: PS: posted by digispd on April 13, 2007 08:34 AM
Oh, for Chsit's sake. When did Softscape ever test their products? I AM a developer, and the code is garbage. Version 10 is still not stable after four point releases. It commonly crashes systems. Obviously, brilliant is a relative term.
The data structures for the products use GUIDs for primary keys, there are no foreign key constraints, and orphans are common and pervasive. The individual tables have absolutely no normalization, making minor problems major to fix.
You are right, no developers are ever fired. They all quit. How many are there in Wayland now? I think there are three left. The rest are in Thailand, and thy're about as good as you'd expect at $6/hour (actually, I think Sofscape overpays them at $6/hour, based upon the product's performance) -
Re: PS: posted on April 13, 2007 10:54 AM
They pay them $6/hour?? Geez... I heard that they charge their clients $150+ an hour for onsite support. Thats a nice profit margin.
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development process | |
| clear requirements | unrated |
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| quality assurance | unrated |
| automated testing | unrated |
| peer review | unrated |
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