Worst Practices

An AntiPattern that does not necessarily look like a good idea.

Worst Practices Explained:

  1. You have 2 weeks to finish the system. That's an order.
  2. Work mandatory saturdays and sundays until we ship the product.
  3. Do not write any automated tests, it makes us slow down.
  4. Working hours are 8:00am to 3:00am.
  5. Everything is equally important. One thing fails and you'll be fired. Translation: You're about to be fired. You've nothing to lose by searching for a new job while you pretend to work. Or, you can just quit. Sometimes it's good to ThrowYourBadgeOnTheTable.
  6. That functionality is a requirement, it is written down in the contract, but we didn't think it was possible to implement it, so we didn't even consider it. Adding that functionality now is impossible because the code is a mess.
  7. We haven't been able to build the system in the past month because it takes us a week to build the system, and our expert has been sick. Also we need to stop adding new functionality if we want to integrate everything.
  8. My developers work only for my project. If you need to ask them something, ask me
    • Disagree. Despite certain disadvantages, there is no workable alternative. Developers need a single conductor, not being asked to please everyone in sight. Also they are a valuable finite resource, and the alternative becomes a TragedyOfTheCommons. Of course, a control-freak manager can take this too far.
    • Also disagree. The main point of having a manager is to keep all the other managers off your back.
  9. I'm the coordinator here. If you want to ask someone else something, you have to go through me. I can't do it now, I have a meeting.
  10. We don't test our software. We will let our customer test our system when we finish it.
  11. We hire inexperienced people on purpose, they obtain experience on the job. Also it is cheaper and besides we do not have much experience ourselves.
    • This is not a worst practice unless you only hire inexperienced people. They have to get their first job somewhere.
  12. Do not let developers complain about the product they are building, it demoralizes the rest. I don't care if we don't find the problems earlier, they are perceived problems anyway, not real problems.

There is no such thing as Worst Practice in the literature, however, there are BestPractices described in many texts. One should think that WorstPractices, or at least BadPractices?, exist.

-- GeraldoXexeo

See: CaptainHornHair

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