Job Security through Code Obscurity

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Today, some artists were moved away from my room. They were mostly ATDs, maintaining the pipeline.

I talked to Leandro, a very friendly guy, who was trained in VFX in school but was put into an ATD role after he came over to London. He was in this room when I moved in 2 weeks ago. Apparently he's been in this room for quite a while before I moved in too. He too would be moved out of the room before long.

Leandro gave me a phrase used by coders: "Job security through code obscurity". It means to write codes other people can't straigtaway understand, so that you will be needed to maintain your own code. In this way, you make yourself indispensible to the project, and thus guarantees your continued employment with the company. ;)

He does not want to be doing ATD work forever. So as to be available to move between roles in the pipeline, he tries to write very readable code, so people can easily take over his work. :)

I did a Google search and here are some links from the search results:

From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity

http://seven-degrees-of-freedom.blogspot.com/2011/01/job-security-through-code-obscurity.html

http://blogs.sas.com/sasdummy/index.php?/archives/189-Job-security-through-code-obscurity.html

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