Fresh out of university, Remco<\/b> accepted a job that allowed him to relocate to a different country. While entering the workforce for the first time, he was also adjusting to a new home and culture, which is probably why the red flags didn’t look quite so red.<\/p>\n
The trouble had actually begun during his interview. While being questioned about his own abilities, Remco learned about Conglomcorp’s healthy financial position, backed by a large list of clients. Everything seemed perfect, but Remco had a bad gut feeling he could neither explain nor shake off. Being young and desperate for a job, he ignored his misgivings and accepted the position. He hadn’t yet learned how scarily accurate intuition often proves to be.<\/p>\n
The second red flag was run up the mast at orientation. While teaching him about the company’s history, one of the senior managers proudly mentioned that Conglomcorp had recently fired 50% of their workforce, and were still doing great. This left Remco feeling more concerned than impressed, but he couldn’t reverse course now.<\/p>\n Flag number three waved during onboarding, as Remco began to learn about the Java application he would be helping to develop. He’d been sitting at the cubicle of Lars, a senior developer, watching over his shoulder as Lars familiarized him with the application’s UI.<\/p>\n “Garbage Collection<\/i>.” Using his mouse, Lars circled a button in the interface labeled just that. “We added this to solve a bug some users were experiencing. Now we just tell everyone that if they notice any weird behavior in the application, they should click this button.”<\/p>\n Remco frowned. “What happens in the code when you click that?”<\/p>\n “It calls But that wasn’t even guaranteed to run! The Java virtual machine handled its own garbage collection. And in no universe did you want to put a worse-than-useless button in your UI and manipulate clients into thinking it did something. But Remco didn’t feel confident enough to speak his mind. He kept silent and soldiered on.<\/p>\n![\"Red](\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Red_Flags_Tiananmen_Square.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nSystem.gc()<\/code>.”<\/p>\n