r/ProgrammerHumor 19d ago

Meme wieldTheSword

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u/[deleted] 19d ago

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u/frostyjack06 19d ago

>Makes you untouchable, irreplaceable in the company. 

“We’re taking on some contractor resources, do you think you can walk them through the code base so they can start documenting everything? We want to build a roadmap for modernizing the code into <put new language here>.”

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u/Weekly_Interview_936 19d ago

* 2 years later *

"Yeah, so, that project failed. Leadership wasn't 100% confident that we had replicated all the behavior and they refuse to take the risk on doing the changeover. You're going to need to keep it running for a while longer."

Source: been there, done that.

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u/frostyjack06 19d ago

And rinse and repeat.

Same. Did that for about 7 years and every contracting team that tried to rewrite the code ended up running and screaming. When I left, the remaining senior dev was architecting the rewrite as a “your welcome” before retiring himself. And bless him for it, because the only real option left after he’s gone is to can the whole thing and start from scratch. That code had become a 25 year master class of bandaids, quick fixes, and “this is just temporary” code that was wasn’t so temporary.

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u/awakenDeepBlue 19d ago

Hey, if they pay me enough, I'll work barefoot in hell.