Developer: Airbag

Definition: a “safety cushion” developer - a developer who was hired to work with a specific purpose, to prove to management (business) the actual “vulnerability” of this developer and to show that the professionalism of this developer is useless in solving business problems in order to prove the professionalism of a group of individuals responsible for the code written earlier.

Or in another way: a developer hired to raise the CSW from a group of developers standing at the origins of the govnokod.

Pre: The term was coined by me personally and is based on my own experience of working in companies in [our] country.

How I first became a safety cushion.
I came to company X (a well-known large Russian company) in 2007. At that time I was still hoping for competent Russian business, lived with illusory dreams of career growth and personal development, obsessed with proving that I can work responsibly and efficiently if there are incentives and career growth . I made a mistake, made a mistake and continue to make mistakes.
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They took me to the position of Junior, but offered a pretty decent salary, which could not affect the decision to work in this company.

Only after many years of codes , I understood the purpose for which I and many of my colleagues who still work there (I recently visited) hired me. And they took me to work as an airbag.

How to determine that you are working airbag?

1. As a developer, you do not know the vector of development of the IT team and software solutions.
2. You are not called to all kinds of meetings, you are not aware of important decisions (a consequence of the first)
3. It often seems to you that developers standing out errors that are similar to yours, but at the same time they poke their nose into your code and your mistakes.
4. It often seems to you that all of you, except for a certain group of people, knead the same thing, write “pseudo-useful code”
5. Errors occur frequently, so often that you, as a Junior, work on them without interruption and are not talking about any development.
6. Discussions about new technologies, about software implementation of one or another block are intentionally “silent and fade out”
7. All attempts to rectify the situation - irritate only those like you.
8. A certain group of people meets with business representatives and never reports on their plans.
9. A certain group of people obviously writes something, but never speaks about this airbag.
10. You are paid consistently, which increases your desire to remain silent and continue your work.

If in all these points you recognized yourself, you were probably taken to the position of an airbag.

How, why, and why are developers of such a plan recruited?

First of all, for quick operational rewriting of the code, so that the profit will get to the same particular group of persons. Imagine a situation: 2000., several young people start a simple business, money and connections are found, developers are needed. They invite one, the second third to the team ... This is the team that writes the code in the initial approximation and the business starts to move up the hill. The more years pass, the more rapidly the “software product” of this team grows and the bigger the fees the team gets (the business really grows). But the team in turn also learns ... learns to write code, learns to manage resources (programmers), etc. And there comes a moment when the code that was written is not able to cope with the ambitions of the business is the moment X. presses the business with questions why it does not work there and there. What are we going to do and have I been crying to you so much. Before the team the question arises: what to do. Explaining to the business that “we wrote govnokod” and the current implementation leaves much to be desired - inconvenient and not profitable.

And a correct and obvious thought comes to mind: to prove to the management that all this is “not easy”, “laborious” and that any similar programmer will also do the job for a long time and also poorly, find it for the sum of “m”. It is somewhat higher than the market value, but by finding such a programmer (for the experienced person will immediately understand what the matter is), we will provide the safety cushion for your ass. We will kill several birds with one stone:

1) Let's show management that a modern developer is no better than us
2) delay time
3) Easily delegate some tasks (especially uninteresting) to it.

And here a special class of developers is hired. These do not necessarily have to be Juniors in terms of knowledge. Your knowledge is now interested in all the less. You must be behind the rear to cover the asses of those who have been shit for several years. You have to sit and maintain the old code so that these asses will rewrite the system using modern practices to get profit and writing pleasure again.

What if you understand that you are an airbag?

Simply put, do nothing. First of all, carefully weigh everything, form a certain interval for yourself, in which you clearly set yourself a goal to get out of this pillow, assess the team’s prospects, assess the potential for growth, and evaluate the attractiveness of wages and other other factors. The most important thing is to understand, you are where your head is. And then as with any work. Not satisfied - change. Satisfied - sit and shit write code to support the business and for the development of other asses.

Little salary

As a rule, the wages of “pillows” are really higher than the same Junior in a beginner and high-quality startup. This is due to several factors:

1) Business has reached the proper level and the profit is quite large. Vulnerability only in the software product.
2) When recruiting “pillows,” priority is given to individuals with extensive experience to prove to businesses that “it is the same as we are, but it also fails”
3) The management, as a rule, understands that steel nerves are required for supporting govnokod ... and not everyone will be able to exchange time and the desire to develop to maintain this code.

Briefly the pros and cons of work.

Pros: good zp, work in a company with a name, usually a friendly team (make friends with the same), free time (it will be enough in principle), familiarity with govnokodom (how to write it is impossible).

Cons: no development, the inability to influence the vector of development of the team, govnokod (nerves needed).

Prospects : to be honest, they are few. You will understand that the laurels are not yours, that you have great potential, that you are ready to fight and make decisions, that you want to influence the development process, but you will not have all this.

As a platform for the start and as a record in the resume - the perfect option. Not more.

To affect your decision to work as an airbag - I can not and do not want. It is up to you to decide whether your job suits you or not.

ps Thoughts are exclusively copyright and do not claim to be completely right.

pps I would really like to see people interested in business read it so that there is a better understanding that the IT department has its own ecosystem with its own rules and attitudes, that it has its own interaction environment ... and not always this environment turns out to be “right” as well as everything in this world. So that people understand why Vasya, who left their company, then writes code and creates a product that is known to the whole world.