One of the reasons I left Amazon was that I was given the job to deploy code regularly (about weekly) at 1am or so, and one evening, there was a problem due to work of another team, so it escalated and we spent 6 hours dealing with it. We rolled the change back right away, but for contractual reasons their code had to be fixed and deployed and there was an interdependency. Fortunately, it wasn't my team's mistake, but I had to be there to help test it, etc.) So, it's finally working at 7am, and I stuck around for 30 minutes to make sure it kept working before going to sleep around 7:45AM.
I emailed my boss about it, and of course he was getting emails the whole while as the tickets status was changing.
Still, the fact that I showed up at 10:15 for the 10AM meeting that morning was "unacceptable" and I got chewed out. (~2 hours sleep!)
I made the mistake of thinking that my HR rep might be someone to talk to about this, because I wasn't sure how to make it clear to him that it was kinda unreasonable (Especially since I told him I'd be late for the meeting)... and that's when I found out that everything I told her was written up in an email & sent to him.... resulting in getting chewed out yet again for going to HR!
The lesson: as a programmer, never work for a boss who can't program, or at least, be very wary of it!
I have to say, it sounds to me like the lesson isn't about bosses who can't program, so much as "don't have a terrible boos". There are plenty of fields I know nothing about, but if I was managing people in that field, I would expect that on 2 hours sleep they wouldn't be effective, and I also wouldn't expect them to work both night and day shifts. It's common sense.
One of the reasons I left Amazon was that I was given the job to deploy code regularly (about weekly) at 1am or so, and one evening, there was a problem due to work of another team, so it escalated and we spent 6 hours dealing with it. We rolled the change back right away, but for contractual reasons their code had to be fixed and deployed and there was an interdependency. Fortunately, it wasn't my team's mistake, but I had to be there to help test it, etc.) So, it's finally working at 7am, and I stuck around for 30 minutes to make sure it kept working before going to sleep around 7:45AM.
I emailed my boss about it, and of course he was getting emails the whole while as the tickets status was changing.
Still, the fact that I showed up at 10:15 for the 10AM meeting that morning was "unacceptable" and I got chewed out. (~2 hours sleep!)
I made the mistake of thinking that my HR rep might be someone to talk to about this, because I wasn't sure how to make it clear to him that it was kinda unreasonable (Especially since I told him I'd be late for the meeting)... and that's when I found out that everything I told her was written up in an email & sent to him.... resulting in getting chewed out yet again for going to HR!
The lesson: as a programmer, never work for a boss who can't program, or at least, be very wary of it!