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tombjarne
2y

Wow this one deserves a rant. Where should I even begin? I got a new job for over half a year now doing work in an agency. We're building websites and online shops with Typo3 and Shopware (not my dream, but hey). All fine you might think BUT...

1) I have been working on the BIGGEST project we have all by myself since I started working at this company. No help, nobody cares.

2) If something goes wrong all the shit falls back to me like "wHy DiDnT yoU WoRk MoRE?". Seriously? How should one dev cover a project that's meant for at least two or three.

3) The project was planned four years ago (YES that's a big fat FOUR) and sat there for 3,5 years - nobody gave a fuck. I got into the company and immediately got the sucky shit project to work on.

4) I was promised some time to get familiar with the projects and tech we use and "pick something I like most to get started". Well that never happened.

5) I was also promised not to talk directly to our customers. Well, each week I was bombarded with insults, a shitload of work and nonsense by our customers because (you guessed it) I was obligated to attend meetings.

6) The scheduled time for a meeting was 30 minutes, sometimes they just went on for over two hours. Fml.

7) Project management. It does not exist. The company is just out to get more and more clients, hires more god damn managers and shit and completely neglects that we might need more devs to get all this crap finished. Nope, they don't care. By the way: this is not like a 200 employee company, it's more like 15 which makes it even sadder to have 4 managers and 3 devs.

8) We don't use trello (or anything to keep track of our "progress"), nobody knows the exact scope of the project, because it was planned FOUR FUCKING YEARS AGO.

9) They planned to use 3 months on this project to get it finished (by the way it's not just an online shop, it has a really sophisticated product configurator with like 20 dependencies). Well, we're double over that time period and it is still not finished.

10) FUCK YOU SHOPWARE

11) The clients are super unsatisfied with our service (who would have guessed). They never received official documents from us (that's why nobody knows the scope), nor did they receive the actual screen design of the shop so we just have to make it up on the go. Of course I mean "I" by "we", because appearently it is my job to develop, design and manage this shit show.

12) My boss regularly throws me in front of the bus by randomly joining meetings with my client telling them the complete opposite of things that we discussed internally (he doesn't know anything about this stupid project)

13) FUCK YOU COLLEAGUES, FUCK YOU COMPANY, FUCK YOU SHOPWARE AND FUCK YOU STUPID CUSTOMERS.

14) Oh btw. the salary sucks ass, it's barely a couple of bucks above minimum wage. Don't ask me why I accepted the offer. I guess it was better than nothing in the meantime.

Boy that feels good. I needed that rant. But hey don't get me wrong. I get that dev jobs can be hard and sucky, but this is beyond stupidity that I can bear. I therefore applied for a dev job in research at a university in my dream country. Nice colleagues, interesting projects, good project management. They accepted me, gave me a good offer and I can happily say that in 6-7 weeks my current company can go fuck themselves (nobody knows the 10.000+ lines of code but me). Just light it up and watch it burn!

rant

shopware

employer

php

customers

agency
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Comments
  • 7
    2y
    @UnicornPoo thanks! It's really sad that there are companies like that. The worst part is they have been in the market for 20 years! Tells everything if you can't "outgrow" 15 employees over 20 years...
  • 6
    2y
    Beware the walls of academia, though. They keep business bullshit out, but may also keep practical matters out.
    I've met many scientists who couldn't spin up a container or provision an AWS instance for shit.
    So make sure to always maintain a couple low-science-high-practicity projects, so that your product muscle wont grow weak.
    Good luck!
  • 4
    2y
    @JsonBoa thanks a lot! I met the team before and they seem really capable. Only two researchers and four devs :-) And it's a "good" university, so I guess (and hope) they know what they are doing. But as you said, that is never guaranteed!
  • 4
    2y
    @tombjarne

    Germany, right?
    Everybody look! This is what Germany is like all-over.
    See? It's the standard in DE and quite a good summary of reasons why I left.

    Thanks for the memories, tho.
    And best of luck in your new job!!
    Cheers mate
  • 4
    2y
    @scor Damn, I blew my cover with that Spax comment earlier :-D

    Yeah Germany just sucks in so many ways and the "professional" working environment is super outdated. I think it will be better soon hehe :-)
  • 4
    2y
    @tombjarne
    Sorry to let you know :
    Cultures are some of the sturdiest / hardest things to change.
  • 1
    2y
    @tombjarne
    And "the spax ma fest" must be celebrated. Great dialect.
    Just like "Tüddeldraht".
  • 3
    2y
    @scor true... but you don't necessarily need to change it when you can change your country haha :D
  • 2
    2y
    @scor Germany has so many great dialects and sayings, that's really what I love about it. But I really laughed hard to just randomly read that here on devrant.
  • 3
    2y
    This gives me so much hope. It means there are extremely badly managed companies that still somehow make money out there.

    Time to found my own.
  • 1
    2y
    Damn. I hope you can get the hell out of there and find some good money and peace.
  • 5
    2y
    This fits with all the warnings I've heard about working for agencies.

    I think "why didn't you work more" is something that wouldn't be said in most dev centric organizations or teams (except crunch based industries like games).

    And they're not serious about code quality or developer experience.
  • 4
    2y
    @jiraTicket It's as bad as you have been told and probably even worse. I'm shocked that they are still capable of hiring.

    My experience was similar to OPs but I worked in a massive global agency that in the past had clients like Rolex and Samsung.
    We kept asking for one or 2 more devs (we were three) and they kept saying they have no budget for them. My final blow was when I found out they had 2mil budget, but 300k was allocated for devs, 800k for marketing (radio, tv, billboards) and the rest was for bonuses for 5-6 managers.
  • 1
    2y
    @LordPeeve
    That finance allocation.
    Wow.
  • 1
    2y
    @LordPeeve
    Though I guess that's how a lot of mgmt does it.
    Ridiculously stupid, as where plus value being created should be at least covered?
  • 3
    2y
    @LordPeeve Regarding hiring I wonder if they mostly hire new devs or devs who've only worked for another agency.

    Feels like they'd have a hard time keeping devs with experience from working in serious dev centric orgs.

    But for your first job you have no idea what to expect and you have nothing better to compare it to. "Well, I guess this is what it's like everywhere"

    I remember how strong that feeling was at my first job. I couldn't shake it. It wasn't anything like this just a bit dull. And I kept thinking "Oh so this is what it feels like to be a developer..how different could it be at other places? not much. I'm the problem for not liking this." then being mind blown at loving my second job.
  • 1
    2y
    Sometimes a change of scenery and environment really helps to develop faster and achieve your goals. I am also thinking about finding a job in another country.
  • 2
    1y
    I come back to this rant every once in a while to regain my sense of shared reality. Thank you so much for posting this months ago.
  • 1
    1y
    @virtualdev glad to hear that 😁 well I think of my old job once in a while and really have no good memories whatsoever. Quitting was the best decision of my life
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