Dave had “fuck you, pay me” programming skills

Quite literally.

Photo by Konstantinos Papadopoulos on Unsplash

Rewind to November 2000. Y2K hadn’t brought about Armageddon. Stack Overflow wouldn’t be created for another 8 years. Google had only recently turned 2. I wouldn’t hear about Google for almost another year. When I hit a software bug I would load up the Microsoft Developer Network help CDs. If I was still stuck I would go to the library and find a book.

Things have come along way for developers in the last 18 years.

Anyway with the end of my third year of Engineering, I had to find somewhere to do my work experience. So I wrote out a pitch:

“Hi, my name is Ben, I am a third year engineering student. I would like to complete 12 weeks of work experience with <insert company name> as part of my degree. I would like to do this with <insert company name> because during my study I have found <insert companies area> to be interesting. Can you direct me to who I should speak to?”

I then practised over and over until I had it memorised. Then I picked up the phone book and I started cold calling. I literally called every single engineering company in the phone book. The economy wasn’t great so no one was hiring, let alone taking on work experience students. In the space of just 3 hours I managed to get rejected by every single engineering company in Adelaide.

It was quite a humbling experience.

But I still needed work experience. I wasn’t going to settle for generic office work. So I picked myself up and started talking to everyone I met about my dilemma. My trainer at the gym, my friends’ parents, my parents’ friends, everyone. Had a Jehovah’s witness showed up, I would have invited them in, sat them down, put on the kettle and given them the pitch too.

After a couple of weeks I got a break.

My brother’s friend’s dad’s neighbour did business with an engineering firm. He had heard my story and was kind enough to make an introduction.

A couple of phone calls and one interview later I was set to start my work experience. James oversaw my work and Dave was to be my go to guy when I got stuck.

Dave wasn’t your average developer

Dave was the guy who wrote all of the software libraries for the company.

Dave was the guy who the other Engineers turned to when they got stuck.

Dave was the guy who helped me reverse engineer a telemetry system that had no documentation.

When people talk about rockstar, unicorn, 10x, ninja pirate, l33t haxor developers they are talking about people like Dave.

You get the idea.

Dave had mad skills.

Luckily for me Dave also had a gift for explaining programming. I learnt more from Dave in my first month of work experience than I had in my 3 years at university.

Dave’s not here man

About a month after starting I came into work one day and Dave wasn’t there. I had a bug and no idea how to fix it. I had been searching on AltaVista but wasn’t able to find anything helpful. I asked one of the other engineers and he told me to ask Dave. But Dave wasn’t there. At least I hadn’t seen him today.

There was a blonde girl sitting at his desk though.

Or so I thought.

Turns out that once a month Dave would come to work in drag. He would go all out. Body suit, make up, dress, jewellery, scarf, high heels, the whole nine yards. The whole time I was there no one ever said anything about it. No one even acknowledged that anything out of the ordinary was happening.

This was quite a confronting moment for me.

Now you might be thinking “yeah Ben, that is perfectly normal behaviour for some people”. You have to remember that this is the year 2000 though, not 2019, people were a lot less open minded back then. Like a lot. It wasn’t until the following year that the Netherlands would become the first country to establish same-sex marriage by law.

Yet there sat Dave.

I wasn’t sure if this was some sort of initiation ritual, or what was going on. But I had code to write. So like everyone else I just pretended that nothing out of the ordinary was happening.

No one dared comment on Dave’s behaviour.

Being in Dave’s bad books meant being denied support. Support for the libraries he wrote. The libraries which powered every clients’ project.

I was in awe of the respect that Dave commanded.

Show me the money!

One day Dave took things to a whole other level.

There had been a public holiday and payroll hadn’t been processed. To say that Dave was pissed doesn’t do the events that unfolded justice. Dave quietly printed out a sign in a giant font that said “show me the money”. He taped it to his monitor, sat back down in his chair, put his feet up on the desk and waited. It just so happened that there was a big client project running behind schedule. As with any regular day the other engineers started hitting Dave up for help.

But today was different.

Dave didn’t say a thing.

He just tapped the sign.

The engineers started to freak out, what do you do in that situation? You sure as hell don’t push Dave, if you end up on his shit list you may as well just quit. Shortly after James came over to have a chat with Dave, he explained the urgency of the project that everyone was working on. Dave just gently tapped the sign. So James went and got Peter, Peter was the CEO.

Peter came over and asked what was going on. Dave’s response is burn’t into my memory.

“I haven’t fucking been paid”

Peter calmly explained that the public holiday had messed up the payroll and that it would be in his next paycheque. To which Dave replied

“That’s nice, I can’t spent that at the shops though can I? No one takes ‘ill pay you next paycheque’ for groceries do they!”

At this point my brain imploded.

Dave is a lot like Paulie, any problems you go to Dave but you sure as hell better pay him on time.

Dave gave zero fucks about what anyone thought.

Dave gave Peter a piece of his mind in the front of everyone. Peter couldn’t do anything to speed up the payment. So as a peace offering he went to the ATM to withdraw Dave’s salary from his personal account. Peter defused the situation by apologising and assuring Dave it wouldn’t happen again.

Yes, thats right.

Peter apologised to Dave after Dave yelled at him in front of everyone.

Once Peter came back with the money Dave took down the sign and went back to helping people. When it comes to getting paid, Dave is a straight up gangster.

*NOTE* I have changed the names to protect peoples privacy.

What did I learn from Dave?