In 1999 or so I was working at a fairly large consumer software company. It was before the crash so good help was in short supply. As a result we ended up with some real winners. This one guy somehow convinced a VP and HR that he was a hotshot senior Java developer that wanted to transition into the project management side of the world.
I flipped the bozo bit on this guy after two weeks of dealing with him. Anything involving him would also involve a huge waste of time and effort and nothing would get accomplished. Somehow no one else had figured this out, so everybody just thought I was being overly critical of the guy.
My vindication came when we were in a meeting trying to figure out how to make a Delphi- SQL 7.0 e-commerce system in Iowa talk to a JD Edwards AS/400 backend system in Massachusetts for real-time inventory data and sales tax figures. This guy listened to us discuss the complexities of making these two highly disparate systems talk to each other in a meaningful and efficient way. He wanted to contribute his expertise so he waited for the perfect time to jump in with his $.02.
“Have you tried JavaScript?”
That sentence instantly became part of our corporate folklore. His solution to everything was “Have you tried.JavaScript?” It was apparently the only buzzword he picked up before coming to work for us.
Things went downhill from there. He discovered how to schedule meetings in Outlook and was then able to waste many peoples time simultaneously with a minimum of effort on his part. It was about that time I wrote a rule in Outlook to delete any email from him.
In a fitting end to his career with our company, he quit 2 days before he was going to be laid off with severance. Ironically he left to work for a company called Brightware.
This reminds of an incident I had the other day. I worked on a project for a non-profit organization while I was finishing up my degree in CS. It was a web portal written using Java Servlets with a MySQL back end. Periodically I will get a call from the NPO with a request for new features. I always try to help them as much as I can, which typically takes the form of me guiding them architecturally. Invariably they team me up with a some ‘expert’ that ‘really knows his stuff — I mean he is really very capable — this guy is really smart.’ And every bloody time the person turns out being a total momo. This last time I was talking about the arch, mind you I mentioned the components were Java, MySQL, and JSP with custom tagLibs, and then I did a quick walkthrough only to discover the guy only has a rudimentary grasp of JavaScript. The real killer here is that every previous expert had exactly the same skill set. None of them had ever even looked at Java. What is it with JavaScript that makes someone think if they can swap images on a web page on mouse over they are suddenly software engineers? I think that each of these experts are certainly Straight Shooters with Upper Management written all over them.
Aaron Fulkerson 