Ohhhhhh shit, this is a good topic.

Well, I just expected more... Better.

Like maybe the programming lecture could have been Java 1.6 rather than 1.2, and taught rather than read from an archaic time of dusty powerpoints.

Maybe we could have used Spice or a reputable circuit modelling tool rather than CircuitMaker; a tool no longer being maintained that barely makes it past install because it was written in a time before circuits.

Maybe day fucking one of the first year, happy clappy, let's teach you HTML lecture the tutor could have just shown us a copy-pasted hello world. Rather than the ugly, mixed-case, no-end-tag-having, broke ass HTML 4 scribble she felt the need to go over every detail of.

When you try to clear term in messenger.

Fuck my life. I shouldn't be allowed to programming before midday.

I had to do a double take... Needless to say I can't sign in for shit, fucknows what mental finger dance I did on the shift key when signing up to these guys...

Also: forgotten password is "please type your email, if there's an account associated to this email address we'll fucking email it with password reset instructions"...

Fucking arsehole fucks, I just wanna pay my fucking energy bill.

My dad's a silicone guy, my little brother is a java-dev, my mom works for the NHS.

I'm a web and mobile dev.

So... My dad and little bro think I do WordPress and my mom thinks she should earn more than me.

In her defence I'm an NHS patient and I also think her and anyone else in the health industry should earn more than me.

Anyone else scared that this fucker can back flip now!?

https://youtu.be/fRj34o4hN4I

Anyone know any fuckers that work at BD? We need to get them reall drunk so they don't accidentally iRobot us.

Hey y'all!

So uh, I just finished my first week in the new jawb. And thought you guys would appreciate seeing the swagducky's new home!

My first week was awesome, the team is a group of interesting, skilled and clever people.

They started me off on an introductory task... I've been building an iOS game in unity! Different to the say job but damn it's been fun 😂😄

Fml... you keep getting the weekly discussions right on point.

I started with the last guys right out of university... just out of Hospital.

With a brand new degree and a Crohn’s diagnosis I stepped into the first place I found hiring. They were good guys, after a junior dev... to get stuck in their muck.

I did! I nailed project after project, tricky development after tricky development. I spent 5 years with them and over those years things changed.

They had a mass cull... the original idea was to get rid of the useless middle managers, the ones managing other managers being managed by another manager for no real reason.... the ones that do fuck all with their day.

But the fucking idiots upstairs put the job of working out the cull in the shitty middle managers hands.

So, instead, they cut the titles senior, junior and everything in between. Everyone was just a thing, no senior things, no junior things. Just things.

Once they’d done that they said “we’ll we have this many things, they’re all the same, let’s get rid of the things with the highest pay checks because the other things can do it just as well for less money”...

And that’s how they cut 50% of their senior techs.

I was one of the ones left behind but the damage became obvious quick. The middle managers barked out orders at people who couldn’t complete them, and everything went to shit.

My team was rebranded twice in as many years... an obvious ploy for funding, but the cost of the team fluctuated like hell because contractors had to fill the senior positions at 3 times the cost.

Then the managers started barking out Self contradictory orders. Do this, but this way...

This would work, but not that way... try explaining that to a group of non-technical, useless as fuck middle managers. It took months, and shit flows downstream so we got the bulk of the hassle for it.

Then my boy Morpheus, got a warning... they threatened his contract for saying “this will work, but not that way”.

He kept the contract, and the manager giving him the warning said he didn’t think he should... but he, and all the middle fuckwits don’t have the balls to stand up against nonsense.

That was the breaking point for me, I handed in my notice and told them a month was what they could have.

I didn’t have a position or an idea of where to go, a few long-standing offers as back up in a pinch but not the perfect job.

On the Thursday I decided I was done, I let my manager know. Then I boshed the fuck out of my CV and updated my profiles.

My phone started ringing off the hook, a senior NG2/MEAN/Ionic dev on the market is like candy to recruiters. They’re lovely too.

I went to a few interviews that were okay but not great. Then a company got in touch... one that I immediately recognised as an IT book publisher. They said they were looking for NG/NG2 devs, senior. winner! Set up the interview.

So I’d spent the weekend with the missus, about an hour away from mine and 2 from the interview. I hadn’t planned on staying there but at 6ish she looked over at me and said “do you have to go” <- imagine that with puppy dog eyes from a gorgeous Slovenian lass.

I folded quicker than a shitty pancake toss.

We spent the night together but that meant I had to be up at 6, to go back to mine, iron my interview clothes and make it to the train to manage the interview. Fuck. I did it, but I was at the interview wired on caffeine and struggling to be awake and coherent. I still managed, that’s what I do, I make do and try to do well regardless of the situation.

That comes from being ill btw, when you’re dealt a shitty hand you learn to play it well.

They were good guys, the heads all knew what they were on about, not the middle management bs I was used to.

They demoed me live with an ng1 test, which was awesome as hell to play with.

We chatted, friendly and cool guys! I loved the place.

The end of the week they got me in for second round. Ng2 and competence test, again I went for it!

Positive feedback and a “we’ll get back to you ASAP, should be by Tuesday”...

Tuesday was the Tuesday before the Friday I was due to leave the old company... I was cutting it close.

On the Monday the offers started rolling in, a few C# ASP MVC positions, cool but I was holding out for the guys I’d interviewed with.

Then Tuesday comes around, I’m nervous as fuck but it’s okay because I knew regardless I can pay the rent in December with one of the offers.

Then said yes!

The thing that seemed most important in the process was my ability to talk to any fucker. If you’re coming up to interview, talk to everyone, the grocer, your barista, the binmen, anyone. Practice that skill above all others.

I start tomorrow morning! I can’t wait.

Final thought: middle managers are taints.

!rant

So... innocent smoothies put knitted hats on their bottles in winter to support AgeUK.

That means my #swagduckie has the perfect winter hat 😄

Y’all in the uk, I can highly suggest this to keep yo duckie warm.

!rant

My fucking awesome ass JS #SwagDuckie arrived!

Awesomeeeeeeeee!

Also, stickers arrived the other day. I ended up mounting them on Black because the Apple logo shining through annoyed me 😊

Now I need a vinyl design that looks like a duckie for the back of the laptop.

Thanks @dfox, @trogus; international shipping to the uk was remarkably fast, I was shocked.

So we’ve taken over from a project team that disbanded... read: “cut their contracts because fuck this, I can earn more working for better people”.

Me and one other guy have been tasked with saving this heap of shit.

Obviously the project guys left saying “it’s nearly done, just this one feature”. Because cut contracts are easier to deal with if “everything is almost done”.

We jump on and find that’s not the case at all... this thing, is a beast, a big old stats analysis program... so we’re like “cool, let’s see what’s going o...OH MY GOD”.

The “recalculation” function was core to this POS. The contractors had done it in C# through entity framework... it took 24 hours to run, over a reasonably small data set that was due to double every 2-5 years.

So... here’s the deal, it ran over night.... then failed. And no cunt had noticed. Entity framework “can’t commit because I’m muddled up as fuck, did you really just put the whole db in EF in memory to work with it?” Exception.

Que 6 months of me and my lead doing the job properly.

Anyway, the failure: I ended up in Hospital again with a Crohn’s flare up... about 5 months in.

Fuckall to do with all this nonsense I just wanted to tell a story. it was an interesting/fun project to fix and my lead was a legend... so happy days.

Similar story, different set of contracted devs... they’d been defining requirements with the business users using the term “Risk” which the business users knew as a group of risks.

The domain model had been written RiskGroup<>—

Awhhh yeahhh!

Thanks @dfox and @trogus, y’all are cool kids!

These are gonna go all over the place!

Also, pretty sure my ducky is in the post office, being delivered Monday 😄

Y’all are awesome!

!rant

I’ve left the office! On my last day in the previous employer’s... the biggest smile on my effing face 😄

!rant

I got the job!

Yesterday morning I got a call from the wonderful recruiter I’d been working with, to say they were giving me a decent competitive offer 😄

After handing in my notice, backing my colleague, trying my best to look after the current employer... it paid off, I have the job that I wanted.

The guys at the new place really impressed me out the gate, clever, decent people doing some interesting stuff.

Senior is going back in my title where it belongs.

Basically it all worked out in time for Christmas 😄

I’ve been tracking this little saga on a tag but if you want to know what lead me down this route my previous rants are there. I’ll continue to rant as I finish in the current place and move on to the next 😄

@Qaldim you beautiful bastard.

Qaldim+=266; good morning and enjoy your day my brother 😊

Fuck my life...

Okay, so I’m working on a web app with a small group... the app is basically a lead generator for new business in another country. We just need contact details cause they’re a fucker to buy.

Step 1: prototype to the investors, working with the ceo to make this thing look shiny AF.

Goes well as fuck.

CEO: “when can we get this out?”

Me: “it’s basically done mate, get your guys to look at it and we can talk about marketing”

Que a shower of 10 or so bellends with senior in their title going into a room and coming out with:

Bellends: “so on this page we want the user to confirm and accept the contract”

Me: “cool, makes some sense, that’s what it’s already doing.”

Bellends: “afterwards we want to show them the price and have them put in their banking details.”

Me: “Wait, you what when?”

Bellends: “Yeah, well Jenny says we should have as few clicks as possible to get to the final stage and have the customer accept.”

Me: “Jenny’s on fucking crack, moving the contract formation phase to after the contract acceptance stage is not an option”

Bellends: “Oh it’s okay, Andy in legal said that would be okay”

Me: “Andy’s a fucking moron, tell him that online contract formation laws were updated 2014/2015 and you can’t do that anymore”

Bellends: “No, andy’s legal, surely he knows”

Bellends: “We want all of this above the fold”

Me: “OH FUCKING SUCK A DICK YOU ABSOLUTE BAND OF FUCKWADS... which one of you, which one hasn’t looked at a website this millennia!?”

Needless to say I ignored all their shit, got the lead generator out and told the CEO those ten people are certifiably fucking useless.

Bonus round; recent, but “it has to be on internal infrastructure”

“Why? It’s a mobile app sending rest calls to a third party saas.”

“It just has to, we have this thing called the private cloud and w”

“Wait... you what son, priv 🤦🏼‍♂️ private what mate?”

“Private cloud”

“You... you mean a server rack?”

“Nah we spent £2mn on it, it’s brilliant”

“Hahahaha you fucking dick, you blew £2mn on server infra with fuckall to put on it!?”

“No, no it’s the private cloud”

“Fucking idiot, aye son, where’s the fucking bean stalk you prick!?”

“It has to go on internal infr”

“Shut up, that won’t work”

So... Heard back from a recruiter today. Lovely lass.

I’d passed over a submission for her tech demo.

The brief was basically just to create a small simple module that calculates shit, nae effort.

But, when the recruiter had me on the phone she said “I know it’s a silly small module but try and run it up like you would a production ready app”.

The job spec and recruiter were keen on me demonstrating TDD, not specific on js version, final runtime, etc. The job was a senior spec at a higher salary range. So it warranted some effort, and demonstrating more than a simple module.

“Okay, cool, nae bother, let’s crack on.”

The feedback in the response from the dev today:
“He’s over-engineered tests, build...”

SUCK MY LEFT TESTICLE YOU FUCKWIT.

Talk to your recruiters, not me.

The feedback included a phrase I never hope to hear from a developer I work with:
“Tests are good but...” 😞

It was a standard 98% test suite from an RGR cycle, no more or less than I’d expect in prod.

The rest of the feedback was misguided or plain wrong. It was useful to see because I know now when they say they have “high standards” they mean: we listen to the dude who put the factory pattern in a JS brief.

Oh shit also: “someone’s done chmod 777” was in there as a sarcastic comment in the feedback. It was his fucking unarchive tool 😞

My response was brief and polite: “cheers for the consideration, all the best, James”

It’s honestly not worth warning them. Or, asking why they’d criticise something they’d asked me to do.

If you want a shitty js module, ask for a shitty js module and no more.

Whatever the task needs.

New paradigm? Probably a book first approach.
Library/API: their own suggested tutorials and references cause that shit moves quick.

If I have to read a cave painting to understand an ancient card punch language I’ll happily do it.

I’ve found, when I don’t know something yet I get the “brick wall” feeling, that this is all going to be too difficult... I’ve learned to love that feeling.

If all else fails: RTFM.

Fucking shit fuck! Absolute cunty-chops of a Work phone just went off at 3am because our directory has clearly been leaked.

This cunt right here is on 24/7 fallout so I can nae silence the bastard. It’s going inte do not disturb for the evening now but.

About 6 months to a year ago we started getting nuisance calls on the cunts. On floated numbers that seem geographically close.

Work have done fuck all in this time, because considering changing ours is a pain in the dick, and costs.

But tonight at 3am I got another; call, immediate hang up on redial.

This wee iPhone prick is looking at me like “ho! Got ya ye fucker”... it’s lucky it’s not been punted out the winde where it belongs. Little fucking prick.

If I look like shit tomorrow at the office, if any prick decides to mention I look tired, I’m gonnae tear the ballbags a new hole between their baws and their arse.

It’s now 4am, sorry fe the language, my Glaswegian heritage shines through at this time in the morning.

Fucking shit fuck.

I got off work, ranted with the wk rant... and forgot about it.

Typed out a -1000 character ish rant about the fuck of a dependency manglement situation I got myself into in node today. Pure artwork I swear.

>you can’t be posting rants within 2h of the last one.

>okay, that’s fine, I’ll park it and wait.

Switch app out to messenger to chat to my booty.

Switch back, check it’s still there... fucking empty new rant screen 😞

I know iOS have updated their app backgrounding... maybe that was the problem.

Or it’s just user error. FUCK!

I ain’t typing it again. That masterpiece of a rant is gone to the ether.

Once again I have loads.

My best teachers were...

The contractor that taught me C#, ASP MVC and SQL Server. Dude was a legend, so calm and collected. He wanted to learn JQuery and Bootstrap so at the same time as teaching, he was learning from me. Such an inspirational person, to know your subordinates still have something to teach you. He also taught me a lot about working methodically and improving my pragmatism.

The other, in school I studied computing A-Level. 100% scored at least one of the exams... basically I knew my stuff.

But, as a kid, I didn’t know how to formulate my answers, or even string together coherent answers for the exams. This dude noticed, first thing he did was said “well you’re better at this bit than me, practice but you’ll be fine” (manually working out two’s complement binary of a number).

Second thing he did was say “you know what man, you know what you’re on about but nobody else is ever going to know that”.

He helped me on the subjects I wasn’t perfect on, then he helped me on formulating my answers correctly.

He also put up with my shit attendance, being a teenager with a motorcycle who thinks he knows it all, has its downsides.

As a result, I aced the hell out of that course, legendary grades and he got himself a bit of a bonus for it to use on his holiday. Everyone’s a winner.

Liam, Jason, if you guys are out there I owe you both thanks for making me the person I am today.

The worst, I’ve had too many to name... but it comes down to this:
- identify your students strengths and weaknesses, focus on the weaknesses
- identify your own and know when to ask for help yourself
- be patient, learning hurts.

You can always tell a passionate teacher from one who’s there for the paycheck.

Get off work, check rant because work.

> 90 notifs, damn, must have been a busy day... damn Friday de... oh.

@WinnieThePooh: love you man. You’re my favourite.

I’m back for a fucking rant.

My previous post I was happy, I’ve had an interview today and I felt the interviewer acted with integrity and made the role seem worthwhile. Fuck it, here’s the link:
https://www.devrant.io/rants/889363

So, since then; the recruiter got in touch: “smashed it son, sending the tech demo your way, if you can get it done this evening that would be amazing”

Obviously I said based on the exact brief I think that’s possible, I’ll take a look and let them know if it isn’t.

Having done loads of these, I know I can usually knock them out and impress in an evening with no trouble.

Here’s where shit gets fucked up; i opened the brief.

I was met with a brief for an MVP using best practice patterns and flexing every muscle with the tech available...

Then I see the requirements, these fucking dicks are after 10 functional requirements averaging an hour a piece.

+TDD so * 1.25,
+DI and dependency inversion principle * 1.1
+CI setup (1h on this platform)
+One ill requirement to use a stored proc in SQL server to return a view (1h)
+UX/UI design consideration using an old tech (1-2h)
+unobtrusive jquery form post validation (2h)
+AES-256 encryption in the db... add 2h for proper testing.

These cunts want me to knock 15-20h of Work into their interview tech demo.

I’ve done a lot of these recently, all of them topped out at 3h max.

The job is middling: average package, old tech, not the most exciting or decent work.

The interviewer alluded to his lead being a bit of a dick; one of those “the code comes first” devs.

Here’s where shit gets realer:
They’ve included mock ups in the tech demo brief’s zip... I looked at them to confirm I wasn’t over estimating the job... I wasn’t.

Then I looked at the other files in the fucking zip.

I found 3 of the images they wanted to use were copyright withheld... there’s no way these guys have the right to distribute these.

Then I look in the font folder, it’s a single ttf, downloaded from fucking DA Font... it was published less than 2mo ago, the license file had been removed: free for Personal, anything else; contact me.

There’s no way these guys have any rights to this font, and I’ve never seen a font redistributed legally without it’s accompanying licence files.

This fucking company is constantly talking about its ethical behaviours.

Given that I know what I’m doing; I know it would have taken less time to find free-for-commercial images and use a google font... this sloppy bullshit is beyond me.

Anyway, I said I’d get back to the recruiter, he wasn’t to know and he’s a good guy. I let him know I’d complete the tech demo over the weekend, he’s looked after me and I don’t want him having trouble with his client...

I’ll substitute the copyright fuckery with images I have a license for because there’s no way I’m pushing copyright stolen material to a public github repo.

I’ll also be substituting the topic and leaving a few js bombs in there to ensure they don’t just steal my shit.

Here’s my hypotheses, anyone with any more would be greatly welcomed...
1: the lead dev is just a stuck up arsehole, with no real care for his work and a relaxed view on stealing other people’s.
2: they are looking for 15-20h free work on an MVP they can modify and take to market
3: they are looking for people to turn down this job so they can support someone’s fucking visa.

In any case, it’s a shit show and I’ll just be seeing this as box checking and interview practice...

Arguments for 1: the head told me about his lead’s problems within 20mn of the interview.
2: he said his biggest problem was getting products out quickly enough.
3: the recruiter told me they’d been “picky”, and they’re making themselves people who can’t be worked for.

I’m going to knock out the demo, keep it private and protect my work well. It’s going to smash their tits off because I’m a fucking great developer... I’ll make sure I get the offer to keep the recruiter looked after.

Then fuck those guys, I’m fucking livid.

After a wonderful interview experience and a nice introduction to the company I’ve been completely put off...

So here’s the update: if you’re interviewing for a shitty middle level dev position, amongst difficult people, on an out of date stack... you need people to want you, don’t fuck them off.

If they want my time to rush out MVPs, they can pay my day rate.

Fuuuuuuuuck... I typed this out whilst listening to the podcast, I’m glad I’m not the only one dealing with shit.

Oh also; I had a lovely discriminatory as fuck application, personality test and disability request email sent to me from a company that seems like it’s still in the 90s. Fuck those guys too, I reported them to the relevant authorities and hope they’re made to look at how morally reprehensible their recruitment process is. The law is you don’t ask if the job can be done by anyone.

!rant

Just had an interview for a position similar to mine in another company.

It was a breath of fresh air that the team lead was open and honest...

It’s not the best position but it’s stable Work that I’m good at, he was up front that it’s not the shiniest thing to work on but that there’s huge opportunity to grow.

His behaviour alone is why I’ll give the position strong consideration.

When you’re interviewing: don’t sweep anything under the rug, be up front about the job and at the least you’ll gain the respect of your candidate.

Just got a new TV, 4K... it’s one of those smart ones, by Samsung.

Anyone want to explain what the fuck “McAfee Security for TV” is, and why the fuck it is necessary!?

What kind, of absolute waster madman goes “I know what I’ma do today, write a virus for a tv”!?

Take that shit elsewhere McAfee.

Now accepting any links to known Smart TV 0-days and attacks...

And I had to sign in to 5 different fucking accounts to get to the fucking tv.

The world is broke as fuck. Roll on the apocalypse.

Recap: https://www.devrant.io/rants/878300

I was out Thursday at the Hospital. I'm what the doctors would call "Ill as fuck"

So, Friday I’m back in the office to the usual: "How was that appointment?"
I know people mean well when they ask this. So, I do the polite thing and tell them it went as well as it could.

Realistically it does't matter how well it went... They haven't cured Crohn's because I showed up to the appointment. They know I'm fucked already.

But, push it down, add it to the future aneurism.

I had to go through the usual resignation meetings with managers:
"We"re fucked now you're going"
"yep"
"we need to get a handle on how fucked"
"already done that for you, here"s a trello board, very fucked."
"we need to put a plan together to drop all the junior devs in the shit with the work you’ve been doing"
"You need about 4 devs, please refer to the previous trello board for your plan"

Meanwhile, me and Morpheus are in constant communication because all of this is like a Shakespearean comedy.

So, I overhear a conversation between a Junior Dev and the Solution Architect.

[SA] took over the project because he knows better than two tried and tested senior devs -_- (fuckwit).

JD: "It took me one and a half days to build it out"
SA: "Yeah, it must have taken me twice as long... It must be a problem with the project, you should just be able to check it out and run it."
JD: "I know, it has to be wrong"

All of this is about Morpheus' work of art, of an Ionic 3 hybrid app.

I fumed quietly at my desk because I've been ordered by the Stazi to be hands off.

Since Morpheus and me were pulled from the project [JD] and [JD2] were dropped into it to get it over the line.

It"s unfortunate and I was clear and honest with my advice to them: I personally would not take over the project because I"d be way out of my depth... Oh, and the App works, so uh, there's no work to do.

They have been constantly at our desks. Asking fuckdiculous questions about how to perform basic tasks. So they can get Morpheus" frigging masterpiece to the user.

It"s like watching that touch up of jesus that got borked by an amateur. Shit I have google, it's like watching this happen: http://ti.me/NnNSAb

[JD] came to me Friday evening.
"I can’t get this to build to iOS or install on [Test Analyst]'s phone."

Me: "No worries brother, where are you stuck right now?"

[JD] describes the first steps with clear indication he hasn't googled his problem.

Life lesson: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=lmgtfy

Que an hour of me showing [JD] how to build an Ion3 project for iOS. Fuck it, your man's in a bind and he"s asked politely for help. I can show him quicker than he can read 3 sets of docos.

I took him through 'ionic cordova build ios', the archive and release processes in XCode 9, then the apk bundling process for droid. Finally we have an MAM so the upload process for that too.

All the while cleaning up his AppIDs, Profiles, deployment attempts.
Damn they were a mess.

I did this with a smile on my face, not because I could say "I told you so"... But. because when any developer asks you how to do something. If you know how to do it, you should always be happy to learn them some new tricks!

Dude's alright, he's been dropped in the shit. Now I know how badly so I'll help him learn things that are useful to his role, but aren't project specific.

As a plausi-senior dev (I'll tell you about that later); it's my job to make sure my team have what they need to go home smiling!

I’m not a hateful fucker, the guy asked me an honest question so I am happy to give him the honest answer.

I took him through it a few times and explained a few best practices. Most were how to do his AppID and ProvProfile set up. Good lad, took it all on board.

However! In his frustration, he pointed the finger at Morpheus' "David" (ref: Michelangelo).

He miraculously morphed into a shiny colourful parrot and fed me SA's line:
"you should just be able to build from a clean clone"

My response was calm and clear:
"You can, it took me 20 minutes on Thursday evening. I was bored and curios, so I wanted to validate Morpheus' work. Here it is on my iOS device and my Android device. It would have taken me 5 if my laptop wasn’t so horrifically out of date."

I validated Morpheus' work so I have evidence, I trust that brilliant bastard.
I just need to be able to prove it's good.

[JD] took this on board.
Maybe listening to two tried and trusted senior devs is better than listening to a headstrong Solution Architect.

When JD left for the weekend I was working a late one (https://www.devrant.io/rants/874765).

His sign off was beautiful.
"I think I can happily admit defeat on this one, it can wait until Monday."

To which I replied: "no worries brother, if you need a hand give me a shout."

Rule 1: Don't be a cunt.
Rule 2: If someone needs help and you can give it: Give it!
Rule 3: Don't interrupt James' cigarette time.
Rule 4: goto Rule 3.

It’s now day 4 into handing in my notice. Here's a recap of day 1&2. Here's the recap of day 0: https://www.devrant.io/rants/871145

I handed in my notice on Wednesday with a leaving date of 10/27/17:
> format_date('27/10/17', 'short', 'muurcan');

Thursday, I had an appointment outside of the office... I was called by a marketing guy at [popular graph database company] to try and wiggle his way into my org. I forget his name, so we'll call him Derek:

Derek: 'Hi James, it’s marketer at [graph co] here; I know you downloaded our free book two months ago and we reserved the right to call you constantly since. I just wanted to...'

Me: 'Hol up Derek! I don’t want to waste your time, thank you guys for the book.
I’d have happily paid to avoid these phone calls.
I’ve resigned from [company] before getting a chance to introduce [most popular graph database platform on google, for real, go check now].
Again thanks, but I’m no longer a useful lead.'

Life lesson learned: free doesn’t mean free, free books aren’t worth shit. Marketing people are lovely... but have an job to do so they’re also basically all cunts.

If you want to learn graph DB best practices from oreilly, pay the £7 and be done with it.

Don’t download that book! Derek will take your number and use it like you’re a young naive college girl with a golden pička.

Aside: I’ve met a new girl! I’ve rapidly learned Slovenian swear words. She’s a beautiful Slovenian girl and has the mouth of a sailor. Peace out to any of my eastern euro buddies on here. Privyet, serbus, stay frigging awesome.

I'll be following up on the tag 'jct resigns' for anyone interested.

Senior manager calls me at 3pm today. I’ve known about this issue since last Friday, one of her pions told me to hold off until Thursday when he’s back in the office and that I could prioritise other tasks.

I have another task with a deadline of the 21st with the potential for fines if it’s not done.

Snr manager: “I’m calling to see how this is going”
Me: “cool, it’s not, bigger problems in the world”
Snr manager: “waah, this has to be done Monday or we face the potential of a court case, fines, this is the biggest problem in the world”
Me: “I’ve known about this issue for a week, have been told not to worry too much and nobody has mentioned the impact or timeline you’ve just given me.”
Snr manager: “so can it be done for monday”
Me: “no chance”
Snr manager: “why not?”
Me: “because it’s 3pm Friday and I have 1 hour of Work left, good luck”

My manager was in the room, he got an arsey call soon after. I don’t really care how that one went but he’s a good guy so I’m sure it was fine.

I also had the joy of asking: so give me an idea of the potential fine... to which they wouldn’t give me an answer.

I need this to weigh up which of the potentially finable tasks takes priority.

The other team that had trouble told me all the dates, gave me over a months notice and the scale of the problem.

If you want someone to help: be polite, give them as much warning as you have and be absolutely honest.

The job’s done cause I’m a fucking legend. But they’re not gonna find out until 5pm Monday. That’s the dickhead tax, they get the dickhead tax for being dickheads.

I’m gonna spend Monday working from home, incommunicado. Fuck incompetent arseholes.

Enjoy your weekend everyone, I know I will mine.

Wow... this is the perfect week for this topic.

Thursday, is the most fucked off I’ve ever been at work.

I’ll preface this story by saying that I won’t name names in the public domain to avoid anyone having something to use against me in court. But, I’m all for the freedom of information so please DM if you want to know who I’m talking about.

Yesterday I handed in my resignation, to the company that looked after me for my first 5 years out of university.

Thursday was my breaking point but to understand why I resigned you need a little back story.

I’m a developer for a corporate in a team of 10 or so.

The company that I work for is systemically incompetent and have shown me this without fail over the last 6 months.

For the last year we’ve had a brilliant contracted, AWS Certified developer who writes clean as hell hybrid mobile apps in Ion3, node, couch and a tonne of other up to the minute technologies. Shout out to Morpheus you legend, I know you’re here.

At its core my job as a developer is to develop and get a product into the end users hands.

Morpheus was taking some shit, and coming back to his desk angry as fuck over the last few months... as one of the more experienced devs and someone who gives a fuck I asked him what was up.

He told me, company want their mobile app that he’s developed on internal infrastructure... and that that wasn’t going to work.

Que a week of me validating his opinion, looking through his work and bringing myself up to speed.

I came to the conclusion that he’d done exactly what he was asked to, brilliant Work, clean code, great consideration to performance and UX in his design. He did really well. Crucially, the infrastructure proposed was self-contradicting, it wouldn’t work and if they tried to fudge it in it would barely fucking run.

So I told everyone I had the same opinion as him.

4 months of fucking arguing with internal PMs, managers and the project team go by... me and morpheus are told we’re not on the project.

The breaking point for me came last Wednesday, given no knowledge of the tech, some project fannies said Morpheus should be removed and his contract terminated.

I was up in fucking arms. He’d done everything really well, to see a fellow developer take shit for doing his job better than anyone else in [company] could was soul destroying.

That was the straw on the camels back. We don’t come to work to take shit for doing a good job. We don’t allow our superiors to give people shit in our team when they’re doing nothing but a good job. And you know what: the opinion of the person that knows what they’re talking about is worth 10 times that of the fools who don’t.

My manager told me to hold off, the person supposed to be supporting us told me to stand down. I told him I was going to get the app to the business lead because he fucking loves it and can tell us if there’s anything to change whilst architecture sorts out their outdated fucking ideas.

Stand down James. Do nothing. Don’t do your job. Don’t back Morpheus with his skills and abilities well beyond any of ours. Do nothing.

That was the deciding point for me, I said if Morpheus goes... I go... but then they continued their nonsense, so I’m going anyway.

I made the decision Thursday, and Friday had recruiters chomping at the bit to put the proper “senior” back in my title, and pay me what I’m worth.

The other issues that caused me to see this company in it’s true form:
- I raised a key security issue, documented it, and passed it over to the security team.
- they understood, and told the business users “we cannot use ArcGIS’ mobile apps, they don’t even pretend to be secure”
- the business users are still using the apps going into the GDPR because they don’t understand the ramifications of the decisions they’re making.

I noticed recently that [company] is completely unable to finish a project to time or budget... and that it’s always the developers put to blame.

I also noticed that middle management is in a constant state of flux with reorganisations because in truth the upper managers know they need to sack them.

For me though, it was that developers in [company], the people that know what they’re talking about; are never listened to.

Fuck being resigned to doing a shit job.

Fuck this company. On to one that can do it right.

Morpheus you beautiful bastard I know you’ll be off soon too but I also feel I’ve made a friend for life. “Private cloud” my arse.

Since making the decision Thursday I feel a lot more free, I have open job offers at places that do this well. I have a position of power in the company to demand what I need and get it. And I have the CEO and CTO’s ears perking up because their department is absolutely shocking.

Freedom is a wonderful feeling.

Most recently... taking something previous devs had failed at and knocking it out of the park.

Best example was a statistical regression and graphing tool on ASP MVC.

The devs were doing a massive brute force recalculation on the server layer. It would take 24h then fail to save (Entity framework brute force).

We moved it to the database layer and got it down to a passable time.

The same devs were outputting charts to ie 9, chrome, firefox... same deal, half an hour on the initial request (parser churn in the browser)... then failure.

Again got it into a passable time by switching to web sockets and long polling then outputting 1000 or so points at a time to give the browser time to render.

Taking those two cock ups and making them a workable solution was awesome.

Since then, teaching. We have apprentices, newcomers, interns all jumping in and looking to get working. They're all different, what works to teach one person won't the next, each of them so far has caught on to what I was teaching. It's a proud moment to be able to impart knowledge and see someone pick it up, enthusiastically... it's also awesome to see someone excited about what you do.

Pills. Failing that, everything everyone else has said... if you find yourself procrastinating too much, get medicated.

On top of that, routine, regiment and willpower.

I started learning Russian recently, trying for the second time. This time around, I found that the small positive reward gamification elements of Dualingo to be a great help (Streaks and daily bonus BS currency).

I've also found myself using Trello to list out things I need or want to do to stop from overwhelming myself. If I have a new task or thing I need to do whilst I'm already getting something else done, I note it down and then forget about it until it's time to find something new to get done.

If all else fails, then look at yourself. Take a long, hard look at yourself in the mirror. I became good at this through necessity, after illness and injury I realised that there's no time for chronic procrastination. If your life expectancy halved what would you change and how quickly?

If you still can't fix it, I'm guessing it's not as big a problem as you think it is... enjoy yourself!