I took a job that sounded like it would be fun - writing financial code in C. The chief coder was sort of a dork but he had good equipment in the place and sounded like he was on top of things.

First day, I start looking over this code - it's hundreds and hundreds of lines long, if statements that went on for pages, tons of static variables, stupid use of h files to define functions - about every bad C practice you could imagine.

Some time in the first week he calls me into his office. I factored some of the tortured stuff he'd written into a manageable form and formatted it sensibly, and used ANSI prototypes and made sure everything had a defined type.

He didn't know what "void" was. This guy is hopping mad because he doesn't know what "void" means. Then he starts in on the reformatting. Then the naming convention I used. Then the factoring into smaller functions. On and on. He had no standard, but mine was unacceptable. He didn't know how to actually write C code, but mine was unacceptable.

I lasted 2 weeks (enough to get 1 paycheck). Never forget his name - Richard call me Richard. "Mornin' Rich." "It's Richard." "OK."

You should get a chance to look over code before taking a coding job. The funny thing is, that shitty Java you're looking at was probably written by someone whose resume was loaded with Java and was filled with various whoppers. H1B maybe. Expert.