NAAO: Exit, stage left
I left NAAO when I was 21, and it wasn't on the best of terms. I only burned a bridge with one person, but it was unnecessary.
~ Aristotle Sabouni
Created: 2003-05-05 |
Let's call the person supervising me Sharon (the Karen of the early 1980s). Sharon was "supervising me" and had asked me to audit a few programs (final validation), which I did.
I immediately found a glaring error and brought it to her attention. I thought I was doing my job. I asked her why something was done a certain way because these items that were coupled yet not interdependent. If there was some dependency that I didn't know of, then we need to document it. If there wasn't, then it was way more complex than it needed to be because of this uneccessary coupling.
| 🗒️ Note: |
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| The logic error was there were 4 switches connected to lights. Instead of testing them independently (4 tests and setters), testing all of them together, means 16 tests and sets. Great if you're getting measured by the lines of code, but not good software design. |
It turns out that Sharon had written the piece of code, and it was wrong, and I'd caught it. She had given me the task expecting me to actually do my job and validate it. If I'd been told to just sign off on it that it worked, it would have passed. But I was told to do a code audit.
Programmers make mistakes. It's not a big deal, unless your ego is in the way of just fixing it. Her ego was in the way. So while I wasn't obnoxious, she was livid, because I'd caught something. So she started snapping at me to just fix it and get out of her face. (I wasn't in her face). I didn't the bitchiness (only later realizing it was her code), I just knew was not a pleasant person.
So I go and sit down, and start fixing it thninking she was getting worked up over nothing. I cared more about the quality of the work than some temperamental human having a bad day. Sharon was fuming, and decided not to let it go. She turns to the girl behind her (who sat next to me), and says in a loud voice, "Don't you hate know-it-all young-little-shits, that don't even have college degree, telling you how to code". (Sharon resented consultants as they out-earned her; but I was younger, unpedigreed and smarter - those things pissed her off the most). The girl looks to me, since that was obviously directed at me. I heard my mouth saying this before the censor had time to kick in, "If you think that's hard imagine having to work for a clueless bitch that couldn't code her way out of a for-next loop". True, but not my best moment.
It got amazingly quiet in the bay as everyone stopped what they were doing because I'd just publicly treated Sharon the exact same way she treated everyone else. She was livid before, but there aren't words to describe the new shade of purple for Sharon. She stormed off.
My boss (her boss) calls me into his office the next day, and I suspected it wasn't good. I just said, "did you get me two weeks [notice]?". He said, "Yup". They weren't walking me out the door, which meant that I had allies, or they knew this was an unfair firing.
He asked me what happened, and I explained; and he laughed. He knew I was right, and he didn't like her much - but she was in tight with the head of the entire division ("fucking her way to the top" was how most people put it). But it didn't matter, in a battle between consultant and employee, the consultant will always lose. More so when she's having a fling with the department head. I'd put in my 3 years, was underpaid compared to my contemporaries, had a great Resume for my age, and was ready to move on.
Later, I realized that I could have handled things better; but I wasn't looking to work there forever and I'd finished 3 projects in the time others had only worked on one. And eventually Sharon was going to find a reason to get me out, because that's what happens when you give some people power.
Post mortemAmusingly, a couple years after I left, my roommate was dating a girl that worked at Rockwell NAAO, as a tech writer, on that same team. It seems after I left, they had hired two tech-writers. One day, she and I were talking, and I casually mentioned something about "that incompetent backstabbing witch, Sharon". It wasn't like I was bitter at the injustice or anything. She laughed, knowing exactly who I meant, and replied, "I thought she was incompetent until I read some of her documents; she's pretty good". I was suspicious because Sharon wasn't good, and didn't do documentation. I said, "Oh, did the documents look like this" - and I pulled them up on my Mac. (They were not secure documents, and I'd kept copies of what I'd written). She laughed and said, "Exactly the same, except the name on the bottom". She was flabbergasted, I wasn't; that's what I thought. Later, during a meeting, she was getting attacked by Sharon, so asked Sharon publicly if she could have copies of the originals of some of those documents because she wanted to work on them, but Sharon couldn't produce them because they were written on a Mac. Sharon hemmed and hawed, but my friend said, "Oh, it's OK, I have a copy of them right here", and produced an original floppy that she'd gotten from me. Sharon turned pale, and left her alone after that; being that she could have been fired or humiliated for taking credit for someone else's work. Live by the sword, and die by the sword, I always say. As it was, Sharon left a while later; some scandal I heard. I'm not mad or bitter at Sharon; either her worldview has matured, or she's probably lived a difficult life, with "the whole world being out to get her" because she doesn't realize how the world often just reflects who and what we are. You've got to learn to forgive and move on; though while I can forgive, the Italian in me makes it very hard to forget. I only write it down, to let others learn from my experience whatever they choose to. |
Rockwell did call me back a few times for various follow on contracts, or for another Contract working on the AC-130 Gunship project and sub-sub-sub-contracting to Hughes Aircraft (Huge Air-Crash). I had made many friends and one enemy. That's not a bad score. I kept bumping into some of the people from there over the years. Despite a less than perfect parting, I had fun at the NAAO.
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