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Got assigned an intern to mentor him, with an explicit order not to do any of the legwork for him.
We start out with some fuzzy requirements. Intern starts overengineering a generic solution, so I make out a best architecture that conforms to the business requirements and I explain it to the intern why are we going to use such approach and tell him how we are going to do it in three phases.
I explain the intern the first phase, break it down in small tasks for him and return to my projects...
After a couple of days of no words from the intern, I decide to check up on him to see how is he progressing, only to hear him complaining the task is boring. So, instead of doing the assigned tasks, he decided he should do a "design" for a feature I told him explicitly not to do, since it is going to be designed by the design team later on.
I explain it to the intern that we have to do the boring task first because we can't proceed with the next phase of the implementation without the necessary data from the phase one.
Intern says okay and assures me he got it now. Few days later, I check up on him, and he tells me he feels he is doing all the work and that I don't contribute to the project. I call up my boss and tell him intern wants a meeting. Since I was working from home, I quickly pack my things and head to the office. Boss talks to the intern before I managed to get to the office. Once I got there, I meet the intern, and he tells me everything is okay. I ask what did the boss say to make things okay all of a sudden, and he tells me he said we are a team now. Our company has a flat hierarchy model, so he tells me he doesn't feel he needs a mentor, that we are both equal, and that I have no idea how to work in a team, and then proceeds to comfort me on how human interaction is hard and that I will learn it one day... I was like wtf?
I tell him to finish the phase one of the project and start with the phase two, and I leave home again.
I call up my boss and ask him what did he say to the intern, and he says: "nothing much, just explained the project a little bit and how it fits in the grand scheme of things.". I ask about the equal team members thing, and me not being a mentor any longer, the boss goes wtf, saying he never said anything about that to him.
So the kid can't focus on a single task, over-engineers everything and doesn't feel he can learn anything from developers with more experience, doesn't want to obey commands, and also likes to lie to manipulate others.
Tomorrow we'll decide what to do with him...
Sorry for the long rant, it was a long stressful day.86 -
The programmer and the interns part 2.
We will discuss numerous events that happened over the past week or so.
Case 0:
We had our weekly engineering meeting. The interns were invited as well.
We hold meetings in the generic, big, corporate meeting rooms with a huge table in the middle.
There were more than enough chairs for everyone yet the most motivated and awkward intern (let's call him Simon) chose to stand, cause "it's cool man, I always stand". At this point we all know that he probably read about Agile stand up meetings and is confusing it with this one. Otherwise he's simply trying to stand out from the rest. (See what I did there?)
Anyway the meeting has started way later than planned (what a surprise) and took much longer than Simon expected. Everybody is sitting and listening to the CTO while occasionally glancing at the weird looking intern standing awkwardly and refusing to sit because it would make his original intentions pointless. He even tried to nod whith a serious face and his hands crossed when the CTO said something and looked at his general direction. The meeting was about a hour and a half long but with the delay it was at least 2.5 hours.
At the end Simon was so exhausted that he fell asleep on the office puff, was forgotten and locked inside. 3 hours later when I was home I received a call from him with his sleepy-trying-to-sound-awake voice telling the news. Lucky there's a 24/7 Noc team that could rescue him.
Case 1:
An intern who was late on his Linux test connected to every test VM (should I remind you that each one has a personal VM but they share passwords for their roots?) and tried to reset it with "sleep 10s; shutdown -h now".
He took down all 13 of those so I had to turn them on and switch passwords again.
Case 2:
One of the interns didn't do any of his training chores. Apparently he forgot what he was told to use, ignored all online documentation and used Windows CMD with Linux commands for almost a week already.
Case 3:
Simon uses Vim to write all text possible. Even mails, he then selects all and copies into the mail body. He spent half a day on a homework task I gave them. He wrote everything inside one text file using Vim. When he was done he saved the file and quit the editor. He then said "Oh shit! I've forgot to sign my name!". I explicitly told him that theres absolutely no need for that because I see which mail the file was sent from. He said "I don't even need a program for that!" and gave a couple of strokes on the keyboard.
Later I received an email from him with a .txt attachment. When I opened it the only text that was inside was "by Simon ;)".
I logged to his machine and checked the last command ran on the file:
echo "by Simon ;)" > linuxtasks.txt
Case 4:
The girl here uses a MacBook. She keeps getting confused with the terminal windows and rebooting her own machine instead of the remote VM.
Case 5:
Haven't checked yet how this happened but one of the interns deleted the gui from his local Centos.33 -
So, since I hear from a lot of people (on here and irl) that Linux has a 'very high learning curve', let me share my experiences with the first time my dad touched Linux (Elementary OS) without me interfering at all! (keep in mind that he is very a-technical)
*le me boots the system* (I already did setup a user account for him and gave him the password).
Dad: *enters password and presses enter*
Me: "Hmm that went faster than expected."
Dad: "Uhm I know how to login son, it's not that hard and pretty obvious".
Me: "Alright, why don't you try to open up the default word documents editor on here! I'll be right back!"
Me: *Goes away and returns after a minute*.
Dad: *already a few test sentences typed in LibreOffice writer* it's going pretty well :)!
Me: "Oo how did you find that?!"
Dad: "Well, there's a thingy that says 'applications' so I clicked in and found it in the "Office" section, do you think I am blind or something?!"
Me: 😐. uhm no but I just didn't think you'd find it that quickly. Now try to install Chromium browser! *thinking: he'll fail this one for sure* I'll be right back :).
Me: *returns again after a minute or so*
Dad: *already searching for stuff through Chromium*
Me: "wait, how the hell did you do that so quickly, it's not the easiest thingy for most people".
Dad: "Jesus, it's not that hard! I went to the application browsing thingy, typed 'software' and then a sorta software store icon showed up so I clicked it and it opened a windows with a search bar saying something like 'search for applications/software'. clicked in it, typed 'chromium', saw it coming up, there was a very clear 'install' button, it asked for my password, I put it in and after a little it gave a notification that it was installed. Then I went to that application browsing thingy again and typed Chromium. Then I hit enter because it selected an icon called chromium...."
Me: O.o. Okay this is going very good, now open an email client and login to your email address!
Dad: *goes to application browsing thingy, types 'email', evolution icon shows up, dad clicks it, email address setup steps show up and dad follows them quickly. After about a minute, everything is setup.
I expected this to be a hard process for someone who dealt with Windows his entire life but damn, I underestimated it.
Asked him if he found it easy/what he liked about it:
"Well, it's very clear where I can find everything, default browser/email/word document editor programs are easy to find and that's about all I need so yeah, great system!"
I am proud of you, dad!77 -
Sales employee Bob wants a clickable blue button.
Bob tells product owner Karen about his unstoppable desire for clickable blue buttons.
Karen assigns points for potential and impact (how much does a blue button improve Bob's life, how many people like Bob desire blue buttons)
Karen asks the button team how hard it is to build a button. The button team compares the request to a reference button they've built before, and gives an ease score, with higher score being easier (inverse of scrum points).
These three scores are combined to give a priority score. The global buttonbacklog is sorted by priority.
Once every two weeks (a "sprint") the button team convenes, uses the ease scores to assign scrum points. Difficult tasks are broken up into smaller tasks, because there is a scrum point upper limit. They use the average of the last 5 sprints to calculate each developer's "velocity".
The sprint is filled with tasks, from the top of the global button backlog, up to the team's capacity as determined by velocity. Approximate due dates are assigned, Bob is a happy Bob.
What if boss Peter runs into the office screaming "OUR IMPORTANT CLIENT WANTS A FUCKING PINK BUTTON WHICH MAKES HEARTS APPEAR"?
Devs tell boss to shut the fuck up and talk to Karen. Karen has a carefully curated list of button building tasks sorted by priority, can sedate boss with valium so he calms the fuck down until he can make a case for the impact and potential of his pink button.
Karen might agree that Peter's pink button gets a higher priority than Bob's blue button.
But devs are nocturnal creatures, easily disturbed when approached by humans, their natural rhythms thrown out of balance.
So the sprint is "locked", and Peter's pink button appears at the top of the global backlog, from where it flows into the next sprint.
On rare occasions a sprint is broken open, for example when Karen realizes that all of the end users will commit suicide if they don't have a pink heart-spawning button.
In such an event, Peter must make Bob happy (because Bob is crying that his blue button is delayed). And Peter must make the button team of devs happy.
This usually leads to a ritual involving chocolate or even hardware gift certificates to restore balance to the dev ecosystem.23 -
For this episode of practiseSafeHex's most incompetent co-worker were going to move past developers and go straight to a CEO.
*sitcom audience oooooohhhhhhh*
I know! , always risky, everyone has a bad story, but lets try bring it home. Here we go, Most incompetent co-worker, candidate 2, "R".
R was ... now how do I say this ... R was a special kind of Bastard. A perfect blend of impatient, arrogant, a dickhead and to borrow a phrase from family guy "below the line of mental retardation".
I've actually spoken about him recently here: https://devrant.com/rants/1141873/...
I won't bother duplicating the content here, but its worth a read.
Some of the other highlights of R include:
- Not understanding that my first demo was UI / Frontend only (despite frequent explanations). I didn't slack off for the next 2 weeks, I was busy making all those buttons actually do stuff and connect to the server. Shockingly "Test 1", "Test 2" and "Lorem ipsum" wasn't our content.
- He once asked how long a bunch of tasks was going to take, I told him 2 weeks and he gave me 2 and a half days. He pulled me into a meeting the next week to see where it all was, and I literally sat there saying "I asked for 2 weeks" over and over until he shut up.
- R's favourite phrase was "when I was a developer", typically followed by some sort of insult, forever labelling him "asshole" by everyone who has ever worked for him.
- When apple launched iOS 7 and changed the UI and the methods you could use, he refused to invest the time in upgrading to iOS 7, but demanded the app look like an iOS 7 app. No amount of "There is no method to access the status bar in iOS 6" could make him comprehend the issue at hand.
- The worst was when I was dealing with an issue to do with 64bit being introduced (which I tried to explain ... christ give me strength). When another dev fixed a similar but unrelated issue he stood up in front of the office and said loudly "pfft practiseSafeHex tried to tell me this was something to do with 64bit, which made absolutely no sense, guess he doesn't know what he's talking about"
Thankfully I handed in my notice ... after less than 2 months, making in abundantly clear why. Will R make it to the top of the list of most incompetent?
Tune in later for more practiceSafeHex's most incompetent co-worker!!!12 -
My boss is technically restricted shall we say.
As the cto I have also been designated office IT guy. Which means apparently fixing the printer. Which is ok I guess. I mean it's bullsh*t but hey.
Anyway, about 6 months ago he said he needed a new laptop. He lives his life in excel and outlook, and even though the whole company uses google docs for everything he still exports everything to excel, makes a copy, then saves it back to drive so everything gets out of sync.
It's a fun problem that I have banned everyone from doing obviously but he continues.
Anyway, anyway, he wanted a new windows laptop naturally. I said to spend about £700 on a decent machine rather than buying something cheap that will frustrate and not last long.
He doesn't listen and gets some old windows 7 machine for £300. It's an alright spec for 2009; he must not have got the memo about it being 2017.
4 months go by and he says he needs a new laptop because this one is too slow (not least because he opens 400 chrome tabs and never reboots his machine). Anyway, I fix the problem of uninstalling all his bloatware and it runs quicker but he has his heart set on a new machine.
He insists.
I suggest he spend the money this time so he literally doesn't buy a new one in 4 months. I suggest the surface book that's £1200. A little overpriced but he will love the touch screen, it's powerful enough and it's windows. Ticks all the boxes for him.
He suddenly decides he wants a Mac.
I tell him it will be a nightmare for everyone if he does that.
He insists.
I suggest the Mac book pro as I've had mine for 6 years now and it's still going strong. It's a little more expensive than the surface but it will last.
He then says he wants the air.
I say they haven't updated them in ages and they aren't actually that powerful.
He insists.
That night he just buys an air from the Apple Store.
WHY THE FU*k ARE YOU ASKING ME FOR ADVICE IF YOURE NOT GOING TO LISTEN YOU MOTHERFUC*er. WASTING MY TIME AND YOURS.
Was very close to rage quitting when he wanted me to back up his old machine but didn't bring in his hard drive and didn't want to put it in the cloud. #whatDoYouWantMeToDoWithYourOldPornCollection
To top it all off I ran some benchmarks and my 6 year old Mac book pro is more powerful than his "brand new" air.23 -
continued…
I'm In Canada. A woke HR lady hires an African guy despite him plagiarizing code and lying through an interview. First day he surfs soccer websites so I confront it and HR lady basically calls me a racist and to watch my back.
A second African new-hire comes into the office today and he seems quite capable in an area of specialization for our team. So I ask if we can have him on our team because he has skills. The exec decides to look at the costing for him and goes, "HOLY SHIT WHY ARE WE PAYING ANYONE THAT MUCH?" She looks at the résumé of the new guy and finds out that he is only at intermediate level in his specialization. So I say, "It could be worse. The other guy flat out lied through his interview and he got hired anyway." I forward the emails where I recommended against hiring the other guy and why.
My exec, who is a company stakeholder, opens the pricing list for recent hires. It is obvious that if you are not not white you get paid way above market value for your skill level. Exec is pissed off on a level I never knew was possible.
We make a call from the board room only to find out that the head of HR (also an executive) is driving this. My exec tells me to give her the room. The yelling was so loud everyone could hear what was said from outside the boardroom. At one point the HR lady says, "Just because we could get them cheaper doesn't mean that we should… We pay that much because it is 'the right thing to do'." My executive goes completely silent for a few seconds then in a super aggressive way says.
"…I am going to have your FUCKING head for this. Then I will make sure that you NEVER get a job in HR again for the rest of my natural life. ONLY ONE of us will survive this. YOU are the one pissing away profit. So get ready because I'm going to drown you and your team like a bag full of unwanted puppies." Then she hung up the Polycom. She came out about a minute later and kicked the office manager out of his office and sat there all day making calls and sending emails.
https://devrant.com/rants/2337768/...33 -
First time poster here. Please be nice :)
My biggest workaround is one that's being currently deployed to 40 truck drivers (trucking company here), preventing printers being out of usage while on the road. We also have to use HP ePrint to wirelessly print documents, but that's another story for another time I guess :)
CEO asked us to install wifi printers in our 40-ish trucks which has wifi on board. However he's always picking one of the cheapest options possible, so we got consumer grade printers (Laserjet 1002w). Those printers often disconnects without getting back on the truck wifi network EVER. I have to get physically in the truck, wire the printer via USB onto my laptop and reconfigure Wifi on it with the HP Windows tool. This means lots of printer downtime, which always happens when the drivers are three timezones away from our office
Then I thought: "What if I could sniff what HP sends via USB while I (re)configure the printer, and replay whats being sent later? Our trucks all have an Android tablet with a USB type-A connector with host capability, so I could write a small app that replays the config when plugged in by the user.
Three days of hacking around later, I have a working app. By chance, HP printers (or at least those models we have) uses HTTP POST via USB, so I could easily replay the request.
Edit: the end result is that truck drivers just plug the printer to their tablet, press "reconfigure" in a home made Android app, printer is reconnected to the truck and they're good to go. They don't have access to the network nor know enough to debug themselves anyways14 -
Was lead developer at a small startup, I was hiring and had a budget to add 3 new people to my team to develop a new product for the company.
Some context first and then the rant!
Candidate 1 - Amazing, a dev I worked with before who was under utilized at the previous company. Still a junior, but, she was a quick learner and eager to expand her knowledge, never an issue.
Candidate 2 - Kickass dev with back end skills and extras, he was always eager to work a bit more than what was expected. I use to send him home early to annoy him. haha!
Candidate 3 - Lets call him P.
In the interview he answers every question perfectly, he asks all the right questions and suggests some things I havent even thought of. CTO goes ahead and says we should skip the technical test and just hire the guy, his smart and knows what his talking about, I agree and we hire him. (We where a bit desperate at this stage as well.)
He comes in a week early to pick up his work laptop to get setup before he starts the next week, awesome! This guy is going to be an asset to the company, cant wait to have him join the team - The CTO at this stage is getting ready to leave the company and I will be taking over the division and need someone to take over lead position, he seems like the guys to do it.
The guys starts the next week, he comes in and the laptop we gave him is now a local server for testing and he will be working off his own laptop, no issue, we are small so needed a testing stack, but wasnt really needed since we had procedures in place for this already.
Here is where everything goes wrong!!! First day goes great... Next day he gets in early 6:30am (Nice! NO!), he absolutely smells, no stinks, of weed, not a light smell, the entire fucking office smells of weed! (I have no problem with weed, just dont make it my problem to deal with). I get called by boss and told to sort this out people are complaining! I drive to office and have a meeting with him, he says its all good he understands. (This was Friday).
Monday comes around - Get a call from Boss at 7:30am. Whole office smells like weed, please talk to P again, this cannot happen again. I drive to office again, and he again says it wont happen again, he has some issues with back pain and the weed helps.
Tuesday - Same fucking thing! And now he doesnt want to sign for the laptop("server") that was given to him, and has moved to code in the boardroom, WHERE OUR FUCKING CLIENTS WILL BE VIEWING A DEMO THAT DAY OF THE PRODUCT!! Now that whole room smells like weed, FML!
Wednesday - We send P a formal letter that he is under probation, P calls me to have a meeting. In the meeting he blames me for not understanding "new age" medicine, I ask for his doctors prescription and ask why he didnt tell me this in the interview so I could make arrangements, we dont care if you are stoned, just do good work and be considerate to your co-workers. P cant provide these and keeps ranting, I suggest he takes pain killers, he has none of it only "new age" medicine for him.
Thursday - I ask him to rather "work" from home till we can get this sorted, he comes in for code reviews for 2 weeks. I can clearly see he has no idea how the system works but is trying, I thought I will dive deeper and look at all of his code. Its a mess, nothing makes sense and 50% of it is hard coded (We are building a decentralized API for huge data sets so this makes no sense).
Friday - In code review I confront him about this, he has excuses for everything, I start asking him harder questions about the project and to explain what we are building - he goes quiet and quits on the spot with a shitty apology.
From what I could make out he was really smart when it came to theory but interpreting the theory to actual practice wasnt possible for him, probably would have been easier if he wasnt high all the time.
I hate interview code tests, but learned a valuable lesson that day! Always test for some code knowledge as well even if you hate doing it, ask the right questions and be careful who you hire! You can only bullshit for so long in coding before someone figures out that you are a fraud.16 -
The programmer and the interns part 3.
Many of you asked me to keep posting about the interns that I'm responsible for.
I had the intention but never had the time or the energy. Since the interns only kept doing stupid, unthinkable things and just filtering out the good ones is a task of its own.
Time has passed, some interns left us by their choice, others were fired (for obvious reasons). Some stayed loyal and were given permanent positions. New ones joined. I no longer am directly responsible for their wellbeing, yet, somehow I am still their tech-lead and the developer of their tools.
Without further delay,
Case 0:
New guy get's into the internship, has his LinkedIn title set to ‘HTML Technician’.
Didn’t know about the existence of HTML5.
Been building static web pages in the early 2000s. The kind with embedded, inline CSS.
Claims that he is about to finish an engineering degree (sadly I believe him).
Fails the entry level Linux test. Complains about the similarity of the answer options.
Fails the basic web-standars test because "they change so fast, but the foundation is HTML and it's rock-solid!".
Get's caught taking home onions and milk from the kitchen.
Is spotted eating in a restaurant under our offices in his day off. Thrice. He lives a 30 minute drive away and comes here on a bicycle or by bus.
Apparently didn't know that the scrolling wheel on the mouse is clickable.
Said that his PC experience is mostly from his PlayStation (PC = PlayCtation apparently).
Get's fired, says that he'll go to the press. Never does.
Case 1:
Yet another new intern. He seems very eager to learn and work, capable, even charismatic. Has an impressive CV.
Does nothing.
Learns from the "case 0" guy and spends time with him until he is fired.
Comes to work at 8:00 AM and immediately goes to sleep on an office puff. In front of everyone.
Keeps dining alone, without a notice, at different times, for hours. Sometimes brings food into the office and loudly eats it there.
On his evening shifts keeps disappearing for long periods of time. Apparently drinking in the nearby bars and hitting on girls.
Keeps bragging about his success with getting their numbers and rants about those who reject him.
For over a year he fails his final training test and remains a trainee, without the ability to work on a real case.
Not fired yet.
Case 2:
Company retreat. Beautiful, exotic views, warm sun beams, all inclusive package for everyone on a huge half-island.
Simon (he's still with us, now as a true engineer!) brings his MacBook to the beach in order to work and impress all others.
Everybody get's drunk and start throwing huge inflatable balls at each other. One hits his laptop and it immediately is flattened.
Upset Simon is going in circles and ranting about the situation, looking for a solution.
Loses his phone on the beach.
Takes his broken laptop with him while searching for the phone.
Dips the laptop in the river while drunkenly ducking in order to pick a clam.
Case 3:
Still company retreat.
Drunk intern makes out with an employee's drunk wife.
Huge verbal fight. The husband says that he files for a divorce. Intern get's fired.
Case 4:
Still company retreat.
Three interns each take an inflatable swimming mattress and drift with the current. Get found on the other side of the resort three hours later, with red skin and severely dehydrated.
Case 5:
Still company retreat.
The 'informally fired' intern gets drunk again, climbs through a window into a room and makes out with an employee's drunk wife.
Again, gets caught when the husband returns to find a locked door but can see them though the window.
Case 6:
Still company retreat.
We all get ferociously drunk and wander off to the unknown in search of more booze.
Everybody does something stupid and somebody finds Simon's phone.
Simon is lost.
Frenzied horde of drunks is roaming the half-island in search of ethanol and the lost comrade.
Simon's phone get's permanently lost.
Five people step on sea urchins but find that out only hours later and then are unable to walk.
The mob, now including more drunk people who joined voluntarily, finds the sexually active intern making out with the enraged employee's wife yet again.
Surprisingly Simon is found sleeping in a room nearby.24 -
I’m a senior dev at a small company that does some consulting. This past October, some really heavy personal situation came up and my job suffered for it. I raised the flag and was very open with my boss about it and both him and my team of 3 understood and were pretty cool with me taking on a smaller load of work while I moved on with some stuff in my life. For a week.
Right after that, I got sent to a client. “One month only, we just want some presence there since it’s such a big client” alright, I guess I can do that. “You’ll be in charge of a team of a few people and help them technically.” Sounds good, I like leading!
So I get here. Let’s talk technical first: from being in a small but interesting project using Xamarin, I’m now looking at Visual Basic code, using Visual Studio 2010. Windows fucking Forms.
The project was made by a single dev for this huge company. She did what she could but as the requirements grew this thing became a behemoth of spaghetti code and User Controls. The other two guys working on the project have been here for a few months and they have very basic experience at the job anyways. The woman that worked on the project for 5 years is now leaving because she can’t take it anymore.
And that’s not the worse of it. It took from October to December for me to get a machine. I literally spent two months reading on my cellphone and just going over my shitty personal situation for 8 hours a day. I complained to everyone I could and nothing really worked.
Then I got a PC! But wait… no domain user. Queue an extra month in which I could see the Windows 7 (yep) log in screen and nothing else. Then, finally! A domain user! I can log in! Just wait 2 extra weeks for us to give your user access to the subversion rep and you’re good to go!
While all of this went on, I didn’t get an access card until a week ago. Every day I had to walk to the reception desk, show my ID and request they call my boss so he could grant me access. 5 months of this, both at the start of the day and after lunch. There was one day in particular, between two holidays, in which no one that could grant me access was at the office. I literally stood there until 11am in which I called my company and told them I was going home.
Now I’ve been actually working for a while, mostly fixing stuff that works like crap and trying to implement functions that should have been finished but aren’t even started. Did I mention this App is in production and being used by the people here? Because it is. Imagine if you will the amount of problems that an application that’s connecting to the production DB can create when it doesn’t even validate if the field should receive numeric values only. Did I mention the DB itself is also a complete mess? Because it is. There’s an “INDEXES” tables in which, I shit you not, the IDs of every other table is stored. There are no Identity fields anywhere, and instead every insert has to go to this INDEXES table, check the last ID of the table we’re working on, then create a new registry in order to give you your new ID. It’s insane.
And, to boot, the new order from above is: We want to split this app in two. You guys will stick with the maintenance of half of it, some other dudes with the other. Still both targeting the same DB and using the same starting point, but each only working on the module that we want them to work in. PostmodernJerk, it’s your job now to prepare the app so that this can work. How? We dunno. Why? Fuck if we care. Kill you? You don’t deserve the swift release of death.
Also I’m starting to get a bit tired of comments that go ‘THIS DOESN’T WORK and ‘I DON’T KNOW WHY WE DO THIS BUT IT HELPS and my personal favorite ‘??????????????????????14 -
After spending a few months on this site, what strikes me the most, is how unhappy a lot of programmers are.
It kind of makes me sad to see so many of you struggle with office politics bullshit everyday.
I have a confession to make.
I've never had a programming job, or freelanced, yet I have made a very comfortable living with programming and marketing for the past 20 years.
I make my living by finding niches where there is shit software, and creating a better alarm clock.
The first 5-10 years of doing this, I worked my ass off (throughout my twenties)
But during most of my thirties, I barely had to
work to keep it all up. I get residual income still
from stuff I did 10 years ago.
I'm curious if anyone at all would be interested in learning how to do this, quitting their job, for example, or, just having the freedom to write your own code without answering to anybody but your own customers. Many of whom you never have to talk to, they go to your site, they buy, and rarely ever send emails (if you do it right)
Everybody here has knowledge that is so bankable, yet they seem to just surrender to
asshole bosses and clients. It doesn't have to
be like that.
If you'd be interested in this, please ++ this.
I'm thinking of creating an online course about creating and marketing your own software, specifically for programmers like you guys. and girls.
I genuinely just want to see if there's interest. I hope that's ok.63 -
My boss has a camera in the office for "security" reasons and I happen to be just right under it, exposing my computer screens to it. So I wrote a script that sends me an email whenever the camera port is accessed.14
-
Most awkward moment of my life happened 10 mins ago.
I really enjoy playing a sad trombone sound when someone says something stupid. I even have a widget on my phone's home screen so that I can play it almost instantly.
It's actually very funny when I use it with friends.
So, today I walk in the office during a rather heated argument between my boss and a sales lady who has been in the company forever.
I sit on my desk and pull out my phone to connect it to the charger since it was getting a bit low.
As the boss completes his phrase and there is that half second silence before the other person starts speaking I accidentally pressed the trombone button, playing the sound at full volume for a full 2-3 seconds that, needless to say, felt like an eternity.
Don't think I'm getting fired but God it was awkward.10 -
*deep breath*
Remain calm, don’t freak out, remain calm, don’t freak out.
*deep breath*
Ok, so my sort of new manager (had a slightly different manger-ish role on the team), has for the third time in as many months, just sent an email criticizing the dev team for our working from home-ness (which for the record has not been that bad, 2/3 or 3/3 have been in everyday for the past month)
In this same period, there has been late nights, weekends, successful releases, I’ve been invited to talk at a conference about my work (not a particularly big one, but still). Point is, everything is going well, very well in fact.
There has been no emails discussing our great work, thanking us for extra work, thanking us for picking up slack from other teams who are down a few people etc. no our major concern it seems is the “optics” of our team not being present in the open space.
Our contracts list flexible working hours, and his boss has frequently told us WFH is fine when things are too busy. But no he is complaining for us to get our hours in the office in line and make sure we are in the office more.
It’s been a particularly long and frustrating week, and I’m very tempted to inform him that if he is concerned about my chair and desk looking empty, that I can put them somewhere for him where they will always be occupied until a surgeon can remove them.
However, thanks to the deep breaths, I’ve managed to restrain myself long enough to run this past you all first and ask advice.
Please help,
Sincerely,
My sanity15 -
Person at work, staring at my keyboard: How much was it?
Me: The keyboard? Oh it's a cheap one for around $30.
Person: Huh... I'll never get you rich boys and your fads.
Well, I don't fucking judge you for your $600 phone, or your $80 shoes or shirts, you cuntwaffle. Fuckin' asshole has the face of a horse's left testicle, is always on his phone, which is arguably fine since he's not a dev but still fuck him, and has the gall to call me bringing my mechanical keyboard to work a 'rich fad'. Oh, that's rich coming from you. Ever seen your ugly mug in your undeserved branded clothing, you unloved, shit-gobbling piece of shit?
"You type so loud." And you breathe too loud but I don't tell you to stop but maybe I ought to.
Go suck on your daddy-uncle's chode for a couple more bucks and stop hanging around me, you judgemental cum-snorting piece of shit.
P.s. it's a cheap keyboard with blue switches but the office is normally noisy and busy enough that no one gives a shit about it. Planning on buying an Anne Pro sometime next month.27 -
So we had this girl working with us as a graphic designer, she has a great sense of humor and pretty much impossible to piss her off
So April 1st is considered "a fool's day" here, on March 31 i sent an official looking email to everyone ( minus the seniors ) in our office saying how she's kinda shy about having her birthday on April 1st and everyone should wish her so she wouldn't feel awkward about it
Needless to say her actual birthday is not in April
So when she came to office on 1st, everyone started wishing her and singing Happy Birthday, she spent whole day explaining to everyone that came to wish
It was awkward as hell and pretty hilarious 😂😂10 -
I went out of office for a while, and when I was going to sit on my desk, a co-worker said me “Elizadeath, the boss wanna talk with you”. I was concerned, I though “maybe something broke in production code, or they need an urgent code, I don’t know”.
Well, that wasn’t what I expected.
“Elizadeath” she said “I’m seriously worry about you. I saw the plastic bottles our team has collected for the recyling project, and I realized that most of the Coca-Cola bottles came from you!”
Yes, it was a Coca-cola addiction intervention 😂 I’m drinking more water and less coke from now, for my health 😊
17 -
!!good news
!!great news
!!linux dev lappy recommendations?
So, @Root might finally have a job! Woo!
(Pending a background check, drug test, cavity search, ...)
I'm excited, and kind of giddy. It's an open-office setup, but the devs are chill, the boss is chill (reminds me a bit of myself thus far, just... nice), pay is decent too. Drive is hell, but everything else feels kinda cushy. The parent company is super-stuffy corporate and has an HR and red tape fetish, but supposedly I won't have to interact with them at all. I start as soon as all of the background check nonsense comes through. (Don't get me started on that, please.)
One of the questions that came up, however, is what type of system I wanted to use. I requested a Linux lappy, and that's sadly a bit beyond the parent company's nontechnical IT department. They asked me for links to a few specific machines on amazon for options. (MacBook Pro or equivalent)
That's where this question comes in: Which lappys make great dev machines and also have decent linux (Debian/Mint/Ubuntu) support? The role is backend Rails development + some devops, so I don't need super-fancy graphics, though I will be attaching a 4k (hopefully IPS) display because space and pretty colors.
Recommendations welcome, as I should get back to them today!43 -
I have a telephone headset with a "confusing" mute button. Sometimes it works normally, but quite often it will "double-toggle" (toggle twice as though I pressed it twice, which essentially has no effect) - so I'm either left muted or left un-muted, the same as before I pressed the button at all - so I have to press it again, sometimes several times, for it to actuary work.
While I'm at my desk, I have a visual indicator of mute status (a light that turns green for un-muted or red for muted), so I can easily tell if my mic is hot or not. My old headset had a nice audible beep reminder if I was muted, but the new headset? Nope, not-so-much.
I work from home, while my wife works at an office; so each morning she leaves, but I stay in the home office. I almost always see her off one way or another, usually doing or saying something funny as she heads out.
So, one day, I'm on a large conference call with a number of cross-team managers, and my wife is about to head out the door. With the meeting droning on in my headset, I was in the kitchen with her for a while helping finish clean up after breakfast and getting her ready to go.
She needed to pack an ice-pack for some reason, and for the random humor of it, I start screaming something to the effect of "GIMMIE YO ICE PACKS - GIMMIE ALLLL YO ICE PACKS - YEAH! YEAH! IMMA PUT MY BAAAAAAAAALLLLLS ON IT - WHOOOOOOOOO!"
During which time I am jumping around like a crazy person, including actually grabbing one of the ice packs, putting it down the front of my pants and screaming. Loudly.
It was after my own screaming I overheard more than one person yelling on the bridge line "YOU'RE NOT MUTED! YOU'RE NOT MUTED!"
I have seldom felt such raw, unadulterated panic.
I rushed back to my home office - yes, the green light is on my desk - my mic is hot. When I pressed mute at some point earlier in the call, it double-toggled, leaving me un-muted, and I never knew.
Even more embarrassing was the chat session I saw on my computer screen. It was from my manager (one of the managers on the call) - he had pinged me several times while I was in the kitchen.
It read something like:
hey, you there?
is that your phone
I think your phone isn't muted
mute
dude, mute
is that you?
MUTE!
did you just say balls?10 -
For people who think/find that open source solutions are always better than commercial/paid/proprietary ones, you are not going to like this rant.
I'm starting to get really fucking fed up with people always, whenever I see someone (including myself) mentioning that an open source solution which is an alternative to a closed source one, saying that it's shit.
I've had countless encounters on here (also irl) where someone mentions that an open source solution (GIMP or Libre Office for example) is shit by default while they've maybe (or probably?) not even used it themselves.
Also people going "you can't even compare those two as for what they can do/features/functions". I'm definitely not saying that those open solutions are perfect. But to call them worthless or shit and/or to say that you literally 'cannot compare them' or that the open solution just doesn't work as a *FACT* is fucking bullshit.
Let's take GIMP for example, the use case of a friend of mine:
- He works both with macOS and Linux Mint, he *needs* a design/photo editing tool which is cross platform. (or at least one which works on macOS+Linux)
- He does not mind paying for software but he prefers to use software which is free as in freedom because he also likes to tinker with the software (a lot of people find this argument bullshit, I noticed on here. Why is that? It's a valid reason. Maybe not for you but we're not talking about you right now).
- He likes Photoshop but due to Linux incompatibility and the fact that he can't tinker around with the code, it's not an option for him.
- He'd gladly go for paid software but GIMP fills all his design/photo editing needs (also the more advanced ones but don't ask them to me because I have no fucking clue how that shit works)
- GIMP *just works* for him, he never has trouble with it.
Let's take Libre Office, my own use case:
- It *NEEDS* to work on Linux, which Libre does.
- It *HAS* to be open source, ethic/moral thingy; Libre Office is open source.
- It doesn't need to work complete magic but it needs proper basic document and 'excel' sheet functionalities which is the case with Libre and it works *for me*.
- I don't mind paying for it, will probably donate in the future (seeding the macOS+windows+linux versions fulltime at the moment)
See, for our use cases, it works very well. So why go into "it's no match for proprietary alternatives" mode right away? It actually is, as you see in the examples above.
Please stop saying that those solutions *don't work* or *are shit* because they do work and are useful for me and loads of people around the world.
Do they have *ALL* the features which their proprietary alternatives have? Maybe, maybe not, maybe they're missing some and maybe they even have some features which the proprietary alternatives don't have, I haven't checked out every feature.
I'm not saying that it works for you, for the record, I'm just saying that just because for you it is a fact that they're bad/shit/hardly working, doesn't mean they are for others.21 -
I really hate this company.
The code is a disaster. Every single other employee is a salesperson. Nobody has any bloody clue what I do or how difficult it is. They don't care about stability (unless things are crashing), maintenance (until crashing), code quality (until it delays features), or anything apart from shiny new features they can sell. The boss (the king salesman, if ever there was one) doesn't know how to manage, but tries to by acting like his "nice asshole" self -- he's an asshole that gives you passes, makes sure it's bloody obvious that he's doing it begrudgingly, yet everything is still absolutely your fault. If he arbitrarily decides it's too much your fault, he stops being "nice" and flips out on you in front of everyone. That's a "nice asshole": an asshole who can barely even pretend to be nice.
Fuck him.
And you know what? I really hate having to work next to these fucking birds, too.
Today was our weekly conference call, and I was both late and unprepared. I was too focused on my work, and got a ping 4 minutes into the meeting, so I obv didn't have time to prepare. Boss was also pissy today, and I didn't have much to show for my week, thanks to lots of little "OMG NEED ASAP" shit projects that all took too long, pushing back what I was actually supposed to work on. Which didn't get finished, of course, and today that project was "the most important" -- I suspect simply because it wasn't finished. AGADJFSKL. Cue the birds fucking screaming and never fucking shutting up no matter what I did. Blanket? No effect. Spray bottle? SCREAM MORE! Boss was yelling at me, the birds were screaming, and I couldn't think. Goddamn fucking disaster.
and yes, we have a macaw. A macaw and over 20 cockatiels. Said macaw decided today was a lovely day to just fucking SCREAM non-stop, and the tiels were doing their best to keep up. Thinking clearly during this cacophony? Not gonna happen.
Wait, "go elsewhere," you say? Somewhere quieter? Where is this "elsewhere?" We live in a fucking tiny house, and during the call it was (and still is) filled with sleeping people, and surrounded by a fucking desert. Who the fuck thought living in the desert was a good idea, anyway? Like, seriously. What brainless moron thought "You know what? This is a great place! Let's settle down right here," while trudging through the scorching sand and dust, looking at the basically lifeless horizon filled with large, hot, dry, dusty, barren rocks (aka "mountains"), and fucking dying from thirst? Probably someone so delirious from heatstroke they never actually recovered, and continued raving that it's a goddamn paradise to their heat-addled imbecile followers. I really hope they hallucinated a la-z-boy in place of a hedge of teddybear cholla and died an excruciating and prickly death. Fuck that guy/girl, too.
But I digress.
I seriously need an office that isn't a 30 min drive into gang-central. I'd work outside, but I live in the middle of the bloody fucking desert, and get heat exhaustion within about half an hour. Everywhere else in the house people bother me almost incessantly.
just. FUCKING FJASKLDFJGAG.
I HATE THIS PLACE SO SO SO MUCH.
'I've had such Zen lately,' Alex said. Maybe then, but lately? I've just been too exhausted and burned out from putting up with all this shit to get angry. Days like today? I could pour kerosene over everything and laugh as it all just burned to ash.15 -
Let's get something straight people, the trend to change terms in programming languages for PC approved ones is NOT for "making the workplace a better place".
If you are one of those who say "oh it's just terms, if it makes them feel better why not?", "I don't care so should everybody else", "the outrage proves we need to change the terms!".
No sir, first of all, since when has programming been about ditching standards to make people "feeel" better? Since when has engineering been about that?! We are engineers, we don't change shit and waste effort trying to fix things that are working.
Second, this word cleansing does NOT come from a well intentioned one, it's not about making the workplace a better place, it's not about minorities, it's about sanitizing language from an ideological and political standpoint to please an agenda pushing minority who doesn't give a shit about any real social issues.
They have done it to movies, videogames, news, political speech, magazines, books and now programming. It doesn't stop and they will never be satisfied, it's not about changing the terms, no one gives a shit about the terms, it's about pandering to ideological crybabies who want to control what you say because it "offends" them or some supposedly oppressed group from which we just hear anecdotal evidence.
Personally I wouldn't give a shit if it was for technical reasons, but it's not and I've seen what this shit does to communities I love and I won't stand it happening to the dev community just because some weak ass, no balls coders decided to pander to the retards on the far left to score virtue points instead of standing their ground.
Are you worried about oppressed groups? Donate money to third world children, speak out about women in Siria, travel to actual shitty 3rd world countries so you realize changing words on a GitHub repo on your expensive ass MacBook, sipping your soy based coffee on an office with air conditioning is not making the world a better place you delusional prick.
You want to ignore the facts be my guest, be willfully ignorant, but I will not police myself and my ideas for your ideological beliefs, not in gaming, not here. Fuck off.
31 -
I usually don't work for indian clients. But when I do, they make sure I don't get paid.
Some highlights from my last project,
Client: Do you know ERPnext?
Me: No, but I am good at python.
Client: My boss wants me to find a guy who can create barcode generator for erpnext.
Me: I can use pyBarcode to do it.
This is exciting I thought. I get to learn a new framework. Start working on it. Not an hour passes by,
Client: hey can you remove this menu item?
Me: Which one?
Client: Also can you add the dashboard icons to left sidebar? Like Odoo? Do you know it? It is also python based.
Me: Then why don't you just use Odoo instead?
Client: My boss wants it. He doesn't understand computers. He is pissing mr off.
Me: Then how come he suggested erpnext?
Client: His friend told him.
*experience mindfuck*
For the next 3 days he has me working on these UI tweaks, never mentions barcode again.
But I finish the barcode stuff. Tripple check everything to make sure they work. Tell him to check so I can get paid. Guy asks his boss to check.
Boss > Client: It doesn't work
Me: What doesn't work?
Boss > Client: Everything!
Client: I actually tested everything and they work. My boss doesn't know how to use it. He is very old.
Makes me make more changes and finally when I ask for the work done so far,
Client: Boss didn't come to office today. I'll get you paid. Please try to understand my situation.
Me thinking, "mofo your boss didn't hire me,l. You did". But I keep calm and tell him I won't work until I get paid 50%.
3 days passed. No reply. Set his skype status to "Away" forever.
*spidey sense tells me I'm not getting paid, again*
U am beyond pissed and burnt out. I fucking wish there was a mafia I can request to collect my fucking money from them.20 -
TL;DR: don't fuck with your IT guy.
One of the guys in our office treats his laptop like shit, has dropped it a number of times and had managed to break the screen. There was a nice crack diagonally corner to corner across the screen with a nice black splotch around it making a good chunk of his screen unusable. Servicing the laptop would be too expensive and would mean being without the machine for several weeks forced to use a Mac.
I offered to replace the screen for him since I have experience doing laptop repairs. Once the screen arrived I kept the laptop for the evening and spent an hour replacing the screen. I left a note telling him he owed me $60 for my time.
He sees the note, laughs and says "I'll buy you lunch."
Not only does this guy only keep his word when offering to buy lunch about 10% of the time, when he does actually do it he charges it on the company card so it isn't really him paying for it. So I spent my lunch break writing up a little Python app which randomly fucks with his mouse and keyboard.
I sent him a message that I needed to run some tests on his new screen tonight so I'll be able to install it and set it to run on boot.
The app does things like:
Jiggle the mouse
Minimize all windows to show the desktop
Double click
Right click
Can't decide if I want to add in reboots as well.
I figure I'll leave it going until I get $60 worth of entertainment out of it.17 -
Continued…
The company that I’m working for has done lots of subtle racist things surrounding diversity policy. There was a major blowout between execs and suddenly all went quiet. The guy that was hired against my recommendation was gone. Until early January when he showed up at our building to raid our kitchen. WTF. It turns out HR decided to move him to the other office and out of sight so my team wouldn’t see him. He isn’t working on a project and is getting paid on the bench for more than the 100% billable devs.
After I saw him bumming around, I replied to a recruiter that has been trying to recruit me to their company.
The position pays 25% more 😲 and comes with a an amazingly relaxed development environment. Developer time is managed and allocated by someone in a dedicated role. 80% of the time is sprint work and the rest is self-driven projects or learning. Teams are stable, mostly local, and there is very low turnover. Developers get Mac or Linux computers.
I’m doing an executive meet and greet at the other company tomorrow. They will be the ones that will make me the final offer. I feel pretty good about it too because they will let me sign up to start in a month and a half so I can give a long notice, work until the end, and my current company can hire me back as a consultant in a pinch. It softens the blow for my current company and it makes it easy for me.
Worst case scenario I don’t take the position but use it for leverage. Who am I kidding? I’ll definitely jump ship when negotiation is done tomorrow.
https://devrant.com/rants/2338969/...7 -
I fucked up again.
Someone needed a flashdrive for a presentation. Forgot that I keep personal code on on of them for backups (it's always nice when there is no reception to have an offline copy of my code, for instance when we go out into the bush or to remote areas).
I gave them my flashdrive. Forgot it had the code on.
Now someone at head office has taken my program, claimed it as their own - and has just earned themselves a decent amount of money (praised in the monthly company newsletter).
My program has been stolen (by my own stupidity) and butchered. It has been made into something that it was never intended to be.
Fuck that guy.13 -
Worst disturbance while working?
Some of my faves:
- Mgr flying his new $400 drone around the office (hitting walls, ceiling, etc). I mentioned the price because he crashed it a week later (un-repairable kind of crash), so I didn't feel too sorry for his loss.
- Mgr trying out his new blowgun and blowing darts at a cardboard box down/bewtween the cube hallway (where anyone could walk out of at any time). We would hear the "pfffft" and a loud 'Yea!'.
- Mgr would walk by a cube entry-way, fart, and walk away laughing.
- Mgr called me into area and his desk+the floor area around his desk was covered in peanut shells.
Me: "Wow, you got a mess here."
Mgr: "Yea, got tired of trying to hit the trash can. Maintenance will vacuum the office this weekend."
The mess was one thing, but what disturbed me the most was this asshole thinks Maintenance-Jim has nothing better to do than clean up after this so-called adult.
Karma kicked in and an hour later the owner's wife (we're still a family owned company, so he+his wife are on friendly basis with everyone) stopped by to say hi and walked in on the mess.
June: "What do we have here!?"
Mgr: "Oh...um...uh..I was eating a few peanuts and putting the shells in the trash can and accidentally knocked it over. I was on my way to get the vacuum cleaner."
June: "Hmmm...this looks like more than a few. *You* clean it up right now and *never* let me see this again!"
Mgr: "Yes..yes ma'am...right now.."
Whole office heard the exchange and it was frickin' awesome.12 -
Man, we have a snake in our company.
This snake is responsible for terrible code. They oversee a offshore team, but hold them to no coding practices. They don't do code reviews or checks. They let them be lazy and get away with sloppy work every time.
And if you critize their team - they will defend them and get angry at you. You can't adress the problem because said snake is always around. He's in a senior position for giving our company cheap workers, doing years of damage to our product while the non-code savvy managers remain blissfully unaware of their product being ruined in the background.
This snake is the senior product office. He has a share in the company now. He is from the overshore team's country. That team now has their claws so dug into our companies roots and are just pumping lsd's into it constantly. Feels good untill you die from an overdose.
Here I am, the new junior software developer, trying to tear out the claws that have sunk into these roots. Im up against the snake. The snake hates me. I hate the snake. I am trying to open the eyes of the managers. They hate that. They want to silence me so I don't expose the awful, unprofessional level of work they do.
Well, that's too bad. I won't back down from this, snake.14 -
More sysadmin focused but y’all get this stuff and I need a rant.
TLDR: Got the wrong internship.
Start working as a sysadmin/dev intern/man-of-many-hats at a small finance company (I’m still in school). Day 1: “Oh new IT guy? Just grab a PC from an empty cubicle and here’s a flash drive with Fedora, go ahead and manually install your operating system. Oh shit also your desktop has 2g of ram, a core2 duo, and we scavenged your hard drive for another dev so just go find one in the server room. And also your monitor is broken so just take one from another cubicle.”
Am shown our server room and see that someone is storing random personal shit in there (golf clubs propped against the server racks with heads mixed into the cabling, etc.). Ask why the golf clubs etc. are mixed in with the cabling and server racks and am given the silent treatment. Learn later that my boss is the owners son, and he is storing his personal stuff in our server room.
Do desktop support for end users. Another manager asks for her employees to receive copies of office 2010 (they’re running 2003 an 2007). Ask boss about licensing plans in place and upgrade schedules, he says he’ll get back to me. I explain to other manager we are working on a licensing scheme and I will keep her informed.
Next day other manager tells me (*the intern*) that she spoke with a rich business friend whose company uses fake/cracked license keys and we should do the same to keep costs down. I nod and smile. IT manager tells me we have no upgrade schedule or licensing agreement. I suggest purchasing an Office 365 subscription. Boss says $150 a year per employee is too expensive (Company pulls good money, has ~25 employees, owner is just cheap) I suggest freeware alternatives. Other manager refuses to use anything other than office 2010 as that is what she is familiar with. Boss refuses to spend any money on license keys. Learn other manager is owners wife and mother of my boss. Stalemate. No upgrades happen.
Company is running an active directory Windows Server 2003 instance that needs upgrading. I suggest 2012R2. Boss says “sure”. I ask how he will purchase the license key and he tells me he won’t.
I suggest running an Ubuntu server with LDAP functionality instead with the understanding that this will add IT employee hours for maintenance. Bosses eyes glaze over at the mention of Linux. The upgrade is put off.
Start cleaning out server room of the personal junk, labeling server racks and cables, and creating a network map. Boss asks what I’m doing. I show him the organized side of the server room and he says “okay but don’t do any more”.
... *sigh* ...20 -
Worst of 2020:
Seeing company get stuck in an organizational swamp. Devs tend to be reasonably good at working from home...
Management isn't. Meeting quality has gone down the drain, half of management thinks "if the boss can't see me why work at all?", the other half has constant calls with tiny working groups where nothing is final and everyone is left confused.
I'm convinced: Everything management is afraid of about allowing devs to work from home is based on projection of their own weaknesses.
They're not passionate enough to work without oversight. They might not be introverts, but extroverts are perfectly able to communicate poorly, especially when a few digital hurdles get in the way.
The average developer might actually be more attuned to the intricacies of emotionless text chats, and preventing disruptive elements in video calls.
Also, unless someone physically helps a manager to remove their head from their own ass once in a while, their "gut feelings" about the market and products are actually just amplified bias caused by their endless self-absorbed yelling into the echo chamber that is their stretched out rectum.
Holy motherfucking hell, have I seen some weird projects float by in 2020, pooped out by isolated product managers whose brain clearly has melted when they had to survive without office fruitbaskets and organizational post-it walls.
Yeah let's promote our international character, by giving away travels and hotel bookings, using pictures of happy hugging people in foreign countries... Great promo during a pandemic.
Or let's get "woke" and promote the "colored users" on our platforms, by training ML to categorize people by skin pigment (Apart from how illegal and ethically insane that is on multiple levels, about 85% of our users pick shit like anime characters and memes for their avatar).
Or how about we make a Microsoft Store app, even though the vast majority of our end users are students using cheap Android phones, older iPhones, Macbooks and Chromebooks.
😡
Anyway, now that I have dressed up my Christmas tree with some manager intestines...
Best of 2020:
I got to play through my Steam backlog, work on hobby projects, and watch a lot of YouTube.
All this pandemic insanity has convinced me all the more that I want to work way more in Rust, and publish way more on open source projects.
I became maintainer/collaborator on a bunch of semi-prominent libraries & frameworks, and while no community is perfect, I enjoy my laid-back coffee-fueled debugging on those packages much more than listening to another crack addicted cocksucker in a suit explain their half-assed A/B test idea to me at 9AM.
So, 2021 will be me half-assing through the spaghetti at my official fuckfest of a job so I can keep filling my bank account — and investing way more time and effort into stuff I find truly engaging, into projects with a heart and a soul.3 -
Sooooo me and the lead dev got placed in the wrong job classification at work.
Without sounding too mean, we are placed under the same descriptor and pay scale reserved for secretaries, janitors and the people that do maintenance at work(we work for a college as developers) whilst our cowormer who manages the cms got the correct classification.
The manager went apeshit because the guidelines state that:
Making software products
Administration of dbs
Server maintenance and troubleshooting
Security (network)
And a lot of shit is covered on the exemption list and it is things that we do by a wide fucking margin. The classification would technically prohibit us from developing software and the whole it dptmnt went apeshit over it since he(lead developer) refuses (rightfully so) to touch anything and do basically nothing other than generate reports.
Its a fun situation. While we both got a substantial raise in salary(go figure) we also got demoted at the same time.
There is a department in IT which deals with the databases for other major applications, their title is "programmers" yet for some reason me and the lead end up writing all the sql code that they ever need. They make waaaaay more money than me and the lead do, even in the correct classification.
Resolution: manager is working with the head of the department to correct this blasphemy WHILE asking for a higher pay than even the "programmers"
I love this woman. She has balls man. When the president of the school paraded around the office asking for an update on a high priority app she said that I am being gracious enough to work on it even though i am not supposed to. The fucking prick asked if i could speed it up to where she said that most of my work I do it on my off time, which by law is now something that I cannot do for the school and that she does not expect any of her devs to do jack shit unless shit gets fixed quick. With the correct pay.
Naturally, the president did not like such predicament and thus urged the HR department(which is globally hated now since they fucked up everyone's classification) to fix it.
Dunno if I will get above the pay that she requested. But seeing that royal ammount of LADY BALLS really means something to me. Which is why i would not trade that woman for a job at any of my dream workplaces.
Meanwhile, the level of stress placed my 12 years of service diabetic lead dev at the hospital. Fuck the hr department for real, fuck the vps of the school that fucked this up royally and fuck people in this city in general. I really care for my team, and the lead dev is one of my best friends and a good developer, this shit will not fucking go unnoticed and the HR department is now in low priority level for the software that we build for them
Still. I am amazed to have a manager that actually looks out for us instead of putting a nice face for the pricks that screwed us over.
I have been working since I was 16, went through the Army, am 27 now and it is the first time that I have seen such manager.
She can't read this, but she knows how much I appreciate her.3 -
What is the most ridiculous over-the-top "startup" thing you've been the victim of as a developer?
Alternatively, what kind of weird startup luxury would you absolutely love to have at your company?
For me, at various companies I've worked at/visited:
1. Hammocks & fatboy beanbags. Current employer has a "Netflix & Chill" corner with nice couches, and a small gym. I have encountered isolation/flotation tanks at the office of one of our partners... which is cool, but over the top in my opinion.
2. A fully automated aquaponics garden in the lunchroom. Was awesome, until some fish died and started to rot.
3. One hoverboard per employee, at previous employer. I splashed hot chocolate milk in an arc over three desks. A coworker broke his ankle while watching me spill chocolate milk.
4. Daily scrum standup meetings, on socks, in a big bouncy castle. Not kidding. Fucking ridiculous... (but secretly fun). That employer also had spiral slides between all floors, a tiny half-pipe with tiny skateboards, and someone who rode a unicycle way too much. It was a fucking circus. Stuck in the office of a Fintech company.
5. Soldering bench (at my current company), with drawers full of breadboards, servos and electronics components. Completely unrelated to my work, but it was my idea. It's just great to build a simple kits together with another random coworker while brainstorming platform features & refining specs... much better than meetings with bullshit slides.
6. Unlimited energy drink. Developed a serious caffeine habit (15-20 cans a day), and almost got a stomach ulcer. Not beneficial to employee health.
7. I really do love working from home + unlimited holidays. Just being able to honestly say "fuck you guys, I'm gonna get drunk and play games today", and at other times working until 4am and sleeping in the next day, or taking a week to work in a park in Rome... It makes work truly feel like my favorite hobby. Combined with a good sprints and curious/ambitious people, you can easily track productivity anyway.19 -
Story time! Promised this, so making good on the promise. Eh-hem.
Misunderstandings [A slice of life short play that actually happened]
Dramatis Personae (anonymized, bc of course):
Moi ........ me, myself and possibly some lint
Robert ..... co-architect
Daisy ...... line dev
Lisa ....... also line dev
Prologue: the beginninning
[A project is starting up, new devs are coming on, including the two individuals who drive this story.
Daisy, of Indian origin, an exceptional dev and lovely person. Mother, wife, very conservative by upbringing in her early 40s.
Lisa, also exceptional dev, lovely person. Mother, also wife, self-made immigrant with liberal views derived from personal pride and self-bootstrapping]
Enter the office, We introduce everyone, off to a nice start, everyone is happy and excited to be working on [large bank project].
Lisa and Daisy form a friendship of commonality, they have similar backgrounds by all appearances and similar concerns due to children the same age and shared employment. They seem to become fast friends and things proceed normally for some months. Smooth sailing, all is well.
The fuse is lit.
Scene: Lunchtime gossip
[Robert, middle 40s architect adjacent Moi, also architect, age is my own damn business [old, so very old].]
Robert: "So, it seems like Daisy and Lisa are getting along great."
Moi: *snerfs a little, almost chokes on enchilada* Yes, yes they are, It's nice to see...
Robert: *eyebrow, having learned to read my expressions* "Aaaaaaand..."
Moi: "I adore both of them, but they are primarily friends because they don't actually understand most of what the other says"
[Lisa has a thick Taiwanese accent, Daisy has a standard northern indian accent. Never the two shall meet]
Robert: "Are you sure, they seem to have a lot of conversations?"
Moi: "Positive, you weren't at lunch with the three of us. They're polar opposite in terms of values, it'll be fine so long as that never comes up"
Robert: "I'm not even digging into that"
Moi: *flan*
Sizzle.
Scene: This is bat country
[More months pass, everything is fine, project is humming along nicely, save a few blips of personality conflicts. Moi takes a vacation. A gas station, somewhere in the middle of Wyoming, a snowstorm, a sports car full of luggage]
*phone rings*
Moi: *looks down, sees it's Robert, eyebrow raises, answer* What's on fire?
Robert: "We had to let Lisa go"
Moi: "Ah, they finally understood each other."
Robert: "Yes..." *deep sigh*
[Fade to flashback]
Bang.
Scene: The office, Lisa's desk
[Daisy and Lisa are discussing non-descript conversation. Daisy broaches the subject of Lisa's past divorce and being a single mother]
Daisy: "It must have been hard, how did you manage?"
Lisa: "I had my daughter, she was my motivation. We made it here, I met my current partner"
Daisy: "That's good! It is so hard, coming to something new. I could never imagine leaving my husband."
Lisa: "He left us, we weren't important, I don't want to marry every again"
Daisy: "Surely you do though? Marriage is great for a woman, my parents found a great husband for me."
Lisa: "Haha, lucky you. Most indian marriage is like prostitution."
[At this moment, Daisy's demeanor takes a nose dive. Whatever was actually said, what she heard was, "Indian marriage is prostitution"]
Daisy: *tears begin pouring down her face, she flings herself back in her chair, head shaking violently she screams* "I AM AN HONORABLE WOMAN!"
[Daisy runs out of the room, straight to HR. Lisa sits there, stunned, not really understanding what just happened or the consequences]
Scene: Back in bat country
[Robert finishes the story, the emotions are a mixture of hilarity at the absurdity of the situation and frustration in the work void it has created]
Moi: "Satan, well. Fuck me. Fuck us. Fuck. Is Daisy alright, is she at least staying? We can't lose two devs at the same time."
Robert: "She got a few days off, she seems fine now, but she's... yeah, I never laughed so hard"
Moi: *double facepalm* "Yeah, the word choice was a bit outrageous. It's not like we didn't know it was coming. I'm going to get back on the road."
Robert: "Alright, enjoy yourself, I'll try and prevent any other forest fires."19 -
Worst thing you've seen another dev do? So many things. Here is one...
Lead web developer had in the root of their web application config.txt (ex. http://OurPublicSite/config.txt) that contained passwords because they felt the web.config was not secure enough. Any/all applications off of the root could access the file to retrieve their credentials (sql server logins, network share passwords, etc)
When I pointed out the security flaw, the developer accused me of 'hacking' the site.
I get called into the vice-president's office which he was 'deeply concerned' about my ethical behavior and if we needed to make any personnel adjustments (grown-up speak for "Do I need to fire you over this?")
Me:"I didn't hack anything. You can navigate directly to the text file using any browser."
Dev: "Directory browsing is denied on the root folder, so you hacked something to get there."
Me: "No, I knew the name of the file so I was able to access it just like any other file."
Dev: "That is only because you have admin permissions. Normal people wouldn't have access"
Me: "I could access it from my home computer"
Dev:"BECAUSE YOU HAVE ADMIN PERMISSIONS!"
Me: "On my personal laptop where I never had to login?"
VP: "What? You mean ...no....please tell me I heard that wrong."
Dev: "No..no...its secure....no one can access that file."
<click..click>
VP: "Hmmm...I can see the system administration password right here. This is unacceptable."
Dev: "Only because your an admin too."
VP: "I'll head home over lunch and try this out on my laptop...oh wait...I left it on...I can remote into it from here"
<click..click..click..click>
VP: "OMG...there it is. That account has access to everything."
<in an almost panic>
Dev: "Only because it's you...you are an admin...that's what I'm trying to say."
Me: "That is not how our public web site works."
VP: "Thank you, but Adam and I need to discuss the next course of action. You two may go."
<Adam is her boss>
Not even 5 minutes later a company wide email was sent from Adam..
"I would like to thank <Dev> for finding and fixing the security flaw that was exposed on our site. She did a great job in securing our customer data and a great asset to our team. If you see <Dev> in the hallway, be sure to give her a big thank you!"
The "fix"? She moved the text file from the root to the bin directory, where technically, the file was no longer publicly visible.
That 'pattern' was used heavily until she was promoted to upper management and the younger webdev bucks (and does) felt storing admin-level passwords was unethical and found more secure ways to authenticate.5 -
So i've been put in charge of bringing the devs together to form a small dev team, instead of having 3 separate devs (including me) sitting apart on separate projects. The idea was to have us talk more, work together more, learn more about the other projects, reuse more code etc.
(I've been arguing to let us do this for a while)
So I asked my manager could we move to the 4 desks in the corner, so we can have our own space, talk without having to book a meeting room each time etc. Its also a bit quieter over there and we all really need that in our noisy office.
Manager sent me an IM today while I was working from home to tell me we can have the desks. Was super happy, messaged the devs to tell them they can start moving.
Just got a message from one of them to say our manager has started moving his stuff over too. Seems he agreed with me that it is quieter over there and he doesn't like the noise either ... so he's joining us.
A huge part of the move was us wanting to work on side projects to automate and speed up various things in the team, that he has been against. We know we can make huge improvements but he doesn't see it. He's only interested in Word, Excel and Powerpoint.
So now we have our space, and anytime we try to work on something we are actually interested in, we'll have a little voice in the corner to pop up and point out what other things he deems more important and tell us to stop wasting our time.
Pretty fucking annoyed to be so happy and then get shot down like that. Happy weekend everyone!!9 -
Once upon a time in Devland, there were two best friends @Alice and @Michelle and they worked together at The DevCo company as developers.
After a tough day handling an @-ANGRY-CLIENT-, they thought that they had to go and @RantSomewhere and so they went to a café. At the café, they ranted about some stupid clients, and @theItalianGuy at the third floor of their office building who never picked up calls, and @thatJavaGuy from the second floor who, they thought, was @notarealDev, and the usual stuff about their work. Somewhere in between, @Alice thought it would be @funvengeance to @hack @theNSA; “@karma is coming to get them”, said @Michelle.
To do this, they knew they’d have to take help from none other than @Gandalf who lived in a nearby @cave. So, the next day, taking a leave from work, @Alice and @Michelle embarked on journey to meet @Gandalf. After about an hour’s drive, they reached @Gandalf’s @cave. @Michelle went ahead to knock on @Gandalf’s rusty cave door. Being a lazy @necromancer, he magically opened his door 2 minutes later. “Who is't dares to disturb me in mine own catch but a wink?” shouted a voice from the back; “We’re two developers from DevCo and we need your help in our mission to @hack @theNSA”, shouted @Michelle. After a few seconds, he replied, ”Hmm… N'rmally I wouldst sendeth thee to mine own cousin @Hagrid, but in thy case, I sayeth thee shouldst visiteth the detective who is't goeth by the nameth @S-Holmes”. @Alice replied back, “Thank you, Sir @Gandalf, we’ll get help from this @S-Holmes, I’ve heard that he’s an @exceptionalGuy”; “Mine own pleasure, Farewell!” said @Gandalf, and the door closed shut.
So, @Alice and @Michelle went back to their car, and that time @Alice raised a question, “How are we gonna find this @S-Holmes? We don’t have a phone number or anything so we could contact this guy.”
“We should call @thatJavaGuy from work, I’ve heard he is a man of resources, he must know how to contact @S-Holmes”, said @Michelle.
And it was true, after a call with @thatJavaGuy, they were able to obtain @S-Holmes’s phone number.
“Howdy, this is @S-Holmes, what can I diddily ding dong do you for?”
“Hi, I’m @Alice, I’m from DevCo and I was hoping that I could get your help in our mission.”
“What kind of mission?”, asked @S-Holmes.
“We want to @hack @theNSA.”, replied @Alice.
“Okay… I think I might be able to hel-diddly-elp you! There’s an old and abandoned laberino noodly-near @stacked Street. It was made in @1989 and since then, it houses a magical computeroo that can hel-diddly-elp you in your mission. So, you just have to connect the computeroo to the Internet and you can diddily ding dong do your programmeroo thing and then you'll have access to the the noodly-nsa diddily ding dong database!”, answered @S-Holmes.
S-Holmes continued, “But I shall warn you, there's a riddly-rumorino that the laberino was abandoned because of an @electric-ghost that lurks there, but I bel-diddly-elieve it is just a computeroo program that was diddily ding dong designed to try to @stop hackers from accessing the top secret stuff!".
“Okay, thanks for your help! I bet we can handle whatever this @electric-ghost thing is, so… Goodbye!”, replied @Alice.
“Goodbye!”, said @S-Holmes and that ended their conversation.
Luckily, the @stacked Street was just a couple of miles away from them, so they reached the lab quickly.
As they got close to the lab they saw something that really surprised them…
--------
To be continued in part two...
(Do you want a part two? :/)
My first ever story is a little special because it is kind of dev related at it has "cameos" by various devranters, as you might have noticed.
How many did you count?
More in Part Two.
Thank you for reading and please, any feedback is welcome. Did you like it?
I haven't really revised it once, it is straight out of the keyboard.
Should I drop the "@" ?
But then it would impossible to spot some of the devRanters .
Let me know.
PS
What should be the title?
1)Alice in DevLand?
2)Adventures of Alice and Friends: Hacking the NSA?
You decide..(or maybe I'll pick the second one :D)21 -
I was thinking today about a certain aspect of running a software startup and then it came to me...
Hank Scorpio, from the Simpsons, was right in his approach.
So many time I have seen people get hired only for the company to get a less-than-optimal performance from them.
But why is this? Of course, it is many factors but one of the major ones is...
Employers seem to lump employees in together and assume that since most developers operate in one way that the new devs should be the same way.
The problem with this seems to be that we are all pandering to the lowest common denominator.
Let's face it, most devs (like most people) are not good, and almost everyone is not living up to their potential because of a lack of understanding of themselves and how they can achieve more.
On top of that, most devs are just employees who will do what you tell them to.
Since those above developers are the norm (Reference Seinfeld "95% of people are undatable") we have to assume that there is a 5% who are exceptional.
The difference between the 5% and the 95% is NOT some built-in superiority but that the 5% has a good idea themselves and an understanding of how to get the most out of them. They set goals and then find the right path to achieve them. They don't coast.
By assuming these developers are the same as the others is REALLY hampering their potential and by doing this the company only hurts itself.
So, that's a lot of talking but what actionable things can be taken away from this?
Hank asks Homer "What is your dream?"
Well, employeers should take the time to identify which of these developers are in the 5%. A problem arises though when the 5% decide it is in their best interest to blend in.
Like when home says his dream is to "Work for you?" Hank shuts him down and wants to get to the truth. He makes Homer comfortable with not only vocalizing but achieving his dreams.
When an employer is looking for their types they should be looking for the following...
1. A real genuine desire to achieve
2. A real plan to get their goals done
3. Critical thinking and self-evaluation
But more importantly, when they identify these types they should be asking questions like...
- How can we help you be more productive?
- Is there anything about our current operating norm that is hindering you?
- How does your productivity workflow look?
3 difficulties arise though…
1. Most hiring managers are incompetent, and quite frankly, everyone thinks they are in the 5% and for those managers who delude themselves into this without putting in the work, they will have an impossible time actually identifying those who are actually good and productive employees.
2. Showing special treatment to these folks may upset the people below.
3. You will hear things you don’t like…
Examples include…
- That new fancy open-office that you got because it was the trendy thing to do, you might hear that this is a huge hinderance.
- These days people seem to treat devs like nomads, “just give him a laptop and a table and he is fine”!. You may hear that this is complete BS. Real achievers may want a dedicated desk with multiple monitors, a desk with drawers etc.
- This WILL cost you money. I know of developers who cannot work without a dedicated whiteboard. Buy them whatever they need.
- They may want BOTH a standing desk and a chair to sit on.
- Etc.
The point is that it seems to me to be a foolish strategy to tailor your entire company to force everyone into the same work habits. Really good employees have the self-awareness to develop their own productive practices and any keeping of them inside a box will NOT help.
27 -
Buckle up kids, this one gets saucy.
At work, we have a stress test machine that trests tensile, puncture and breaking strength for different materials used (wood construction). It had a controller software update that was supposed to be installed. I was called into the office because the folks there were unable to install it, they told me the executable just crashed, and wanted me to take a look as I am the most tech-savvy person there.
I go to the computer and open up the firmware download folder. I see a couple folders, some random VBScript file, and Installation.txt. I open the TXT, and find the first round of bullshit.
"Do not run the installer executable directly as it will not work. Run install.vbs instead."
Now, excuse me for a moment, but what kind of dick-cheese-sniffing cockmonger has end users run VBScript files to install something in 2018?! Shame I didn't think of opening it up and examining it for myself to find out what that piece of boiled dogshit did.
I suspend my cringe and run it, and lo and behold, it installs. I open the program and am faced with entering a license key. I'm given the key by the folks at the office, but quickly conclude no ways of entering it work. I reboot the program and there is an autofilled key I didn't notice previously. Whatever, I think, and hit OK.
The program starts fine, and I try with the login they had previously used. Now it doesn't work for some reason. I try it several times to no avail. Then I check the network inspector and notice that when I hit login, no network activity happens in the program, so I conclude the check must be local against some database.
I browse to the program installation directory for clues. Then I see a folder called "Databases".
"This can't be this easy", I think to myself, expecting to find some kind of JSON or something inside that I can crawl for clues. I open the folder and find something much worse. Oh, so much worse.
I find <SOFTWARE NAME>.accdb in the folder. At this point cold sweat is already running down my back at the sheer thought of using Microsoft Access for any program, but curiosity takes over and I open it anyway.
I find the database for the entire program inside. I also notice at this point that I have read/write access to the database, another thing that sent my alarm bells ringing like St. Pauls cathedral. Then I notice a table called "tUser" in the left panel.
Fearing the worst, I click over and find... And you knew it was coming...
Usernames and passwords in plain text.
Not only that, they're all in the format "admin - admin", "user - user", "tester - tester".
I suspend my will to die, login to the program and re-add the account they used previously. I leave the office and inform the peeps that the program works as intended again.
I wish I was making this shit up, but I really am not. What is the fucking point of having a login system at all when your users can just open the database with a program that nowadays comes bundled with every Windows install and easily read the logins? It's not even like the data structure is confusing like minified JSON or something, it's literally a spreadsheet in a program that a trained monkey could read.
God bless them and Satan condemn the developers of this fuckawful program.8 -
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.13 -
Here's a follow-up to my New Year's resolutions rant six months ago:
( https://devrant.com/rants/1117379/... )
I've completed (or made significant strides in) 5 of my 7 resolutions:
1) Rid and keep my like free of toxic people. This includes parents.
I have had a serious conversation with everyone who made my life worse and whom I wanted to keep around, outlining my issues with them and my expectations should they want to remain in my life. I happily cut out everyone who refused to change their behavior, including my parents. My life is quieter now, and much nicer.
3) Take care of myself for a change!
I've started this, but with work, a monster, etc. it's been almost prohibitively difficult. Minimal lasting progress despite considerable effort. I will make more time for it and make it happen. (I was down 12 pounds at one point! Though this isn't just about weight.)
4) Stop putting up with things I don't have to.
If I don't like something optional, snip snip!
I no longer wait patiently (fuming) for slow-moving people. If something prevents me from being productive or going about my day, I no longer let it. Carpe diem; calcitrare culus! I have been much more productive and energetic because of this.
5) Actually enjoy things I enjoy.
Okay, this one is very difficult. Whenever I'm not working, I feel like I'm wasting my time. However, I have made a conceited effort every day to take time off and do something that sounds fun. Sometimes that's more work, but usually it's music, a game, a book, exercise, or bed. I'm still working on actually enjoying my time away from work, however, but I'm making progress!
7) Finish de-googling my life.
I no longer use a gmail account (except a work-provided account), nor do I use any of their services unless absolutely necessary (and I do so through TOR). My phone still has Google Play Services; however, I'm working on finding a replacement that I can @Root. (Suggestions welcome!)
------
The two resolutions I haven't yet addressed:
2) Find a well-paying job that isn't also toxic.
My job has gotten less toxic of late, with the boss actually listening and everyone writing up feature requests (with co-sponsors) instead of just dumping them in my lap. I perform an effort analysis on them, and everyone discusses them as a team to determine which actually deserve development time. This is tens of times better than before. I also no longer have to be at the office. In fact, I haven't been there in months -- and don't even remember the alarm codes haha. I may also be getting another developer, though I suspect this is actually a lie.
6) Finally buy a harp. I've wanted one since I was 3 ffs.
I haven't done any research yet on which harp(s) I should buy. Also, I have no idea where I would keep it, so I may defer this until we move, or just get a tiny one (lap-sized and cute!) to practice on. Probably both!
------
It's been six moths, and I'm happy with my progress. 😄9 -
So, some time ago, I was working for a complete puckered anus of a cosmetics company on their ecommerce product. Won't name names, but they're shitty and known for MLM. If you're clever, go you ;)
Anyways, over the course of years they brought in a competent firm to implement their service layer. I'd even worked with them in the past and it was designed to handle a frankly ridiculous-scale load. After they got the 1.0 released, the manager was replaced with some absolutely talentless, chauvinist cuntrag from a phone company that is well known for having 99% indian devs and not being able to heard now. He of course brought in his number two, worked on making life miserable and running everyone on the team off; inside of a year the entire team was ex-said-phone-company.
Watching the decay of this product was a sheer joy. They cratered the database numerous times during peak-load periods, caused $20M in redis-cluster cost overrun, ended up submitting hundreds of erroneous and duplicate orders, and mailed almost $40K worth of product to a random guy in outer mongolia who is , we can only hope, now enjoying his new life as an instagram influencer. They even terminally broke the automatic metadata, and hired THIRTY PEOPLE to sit there and do nothing but edit swagger. And it was still both wrong and unusable.
Over the course of two years, I ended up rewriting large portions of their infra surrounding the centralized service cancer to do things like, "implement security," as well as cut memory usage and runtimes down by quite literally 100x in the worst cases.
It was during this time I discovered a rather critical flaw. This is the story of what, how and how can you fucking even be that stupid. The issue relates to users and their reports and their ability to order.
I first found this issue looking at some erroneous data for a low value order and went, "There's no fucking way, they're fucking stupid, but this is borderline criminal." It was easy to miss, but someone in a top down reporting chain had submitted an order for someone else in a different org. Shouldn't be possible, but here was that order staring me in the face.
So I set to work seeing if we'd pwned ourselves as an org. I spend a few hours poring over logs from the log service and dynatrace trying to recreate what happened. I first tested to see if I could get a user, not something that was usually done because auth identity was pervasive. I discover the users are INCREMENTAL int values they used for ids in the database when requesting from the API, so naturally I have a full list of users and their title and relative position, as well as reports and descendants in about 10 minutes.
I try the happy path of setting values for random, known payment methods and org structures similar to the impossible order, and submitting as a normal user, no dice. Several more tries and I'm confident this isn't the vector.
Exhausting that option, I look at the protocol for a type of order in the system that allowed higher level people to impersonate people below them and use their own payment info for descendant report orders. I see that all of the data for this transaction is stored in a cookie. Few tests later, I discover the UI has no forgery checks, hashing, etc, and just fucking trusts whatever is present in that cookie.
An hour of tweaking later, I'm impersonating a director as a bottom rung employee. Score. So I fill a cart with a bunch of test items and proceed to checkout. There, in all its glory are the director's payment options. I select one and am presented with:
"please reenter card number to validate."
Bupkiss. Dead end.
OR SO YOU WOULD THINK.
One unimportant detail I noticed during my log investigations that the shit slinging GUI monkeys who butchered the system didn't was, on a failed attempt to submit payment in the DB, the logs were filled with messages like:
"Failed to submit order for [userid] with credit card id [id], number [FULL CREDIT CARD NUMBER]"
One submit click later and the user's credit card number drops into lnav like a gatcha prize. I dutifully rerun the checkout and got an email send notification in the logs for successful transfer to fulfillment. Order placed. Some continued experimentation later and the truth is evident:
With an authenticated user or any privilege, you could place any order, as anyone, using anyon's payment methods and have it sent anywhere.
So naturally, I pack the crucifixion-worthy body of evidence up and walk it into the IT director's office. I show him the defect, and he turns sheet fucking white. He knows there's no recovering from it, and there's no way his shitstick service team can handle fixing it. Somewhere in his tiny little grinchly manager's heart he knew they'd caused it, and he was to blame for being a shit captain to the SS Failboat. He replies quietly, "You will never speak of this to anyone, fix this discretely." Straight up hitler's bunker meme rage.13 -
> Root struggles with her ticket
> Boss struggles too
> Also: random thoughts about this job
I've been sick lately, and it's the kind of sick where I'm exhausted all day, every day (infuriatingly, except at night). While tired, I can't think, so I can't really work, but I'm during my probationary period at work, so I've still been doing my best -- which, honestly, is pretty shit right now.
My current project involves legal agreements, and changing agent authorization methods (written, telephone recording, or letting the user click a link). Each of these, and depending on the type of transaction, requires a different legal agreement. And the logic and structure surrounding these is intricate and confusing to follow. I've been struggling through this and the project's ever-expanding scope for weeks, and specifically the agreements logic for the past few days. I've felt embarrassed and guilty for making so little progress, and that (and a bunch of other things) are making me depressed.
Today, I finally gave up and asked my boss for help. We had an hour and a half call where we worked through it together (at 6pm...). Despite having written quite a bit of the code and tests, he was often saying things like "How is this not working? This doesn't make any sense." So I don't feel quite so bad now.
I knew the code was complex and sprawling and unintuitive, but seeing one of its authors struggling too was really cathartic.
On an unrelated note, I asked the most senior dev (a Macintosh Lisa dev) why everything was using strings instead of symbols (in Rails) since symbols are much faster. That got him looking into the benchmarks, and he found that symbols are about twice as fast (for his minimal test, anyway), and he suggested we switch to those. His word is gold; mine is ignorable. kind of annoying. but anyway, he further went into optimizing the lookup of a giant array of strings, and discovered bsearch. (it's a divide-and-conquer lookup). and here I am wondering why they didn't implement it that way to begin with. 🙄
I don't think I'm learning much here, except how to work with a "mature" codebase. To take a page from @Rutee07, I think "mature" here means the same as in porn: not something you ever want ot see or think about.
I mean, I'm learning other things, too, like how to delegate methods from one model to another, but I have yet to see why you would want to. Every use of it I've explored thus far has just complicated things, like delegating methods on a child of a 1:n relation to the parent. Which child? How does that work? No bloody clue! but it does, somehow, after I copy/pasted a bunch of esoteric legacy bs and fussed with it enough.
I feel like once I get a good grasp of the various payment wrappers, verification/anti-fraud integration, and per-business fraud rules I'll have learned most of what they can offer. Specifically those because I had written a baby version of them at a previous job (Hell), and was trying to architect exactly what this company already has built.
I like a few things about this company. I like my boss. I like the remote work. I like the code reviews. I like the pay. I like the office and some socializing twice a year.
But I don't like the codebase. at all. and I don't have any friends here. My boss is friendly, but he's not a friend. I feel like my last boss (both bosses) were, or could have been if I was more social. But here? I feel alone. I'm assigned work, and my boss is friendly when talking about work, but that's all he's there for. Out of the two female devs I work with, one basically just ignores me, and the other only ever talks about work in ways I can barely understand, and she's a little pushy, and just... really irritating. The "senior" devs (in quotes because they're honestly not amazing) just don't have time, which i understand. but at the same time... i don't have *anyone* to talk to. It really sucks.
I'm not happy here.
I miss my last job.
But the reason I left that one is because this job allows me to move and work remotely. I got a counter-offer from them exactly matching my current job, sans the code reviews. but we haven't moved yet. and if I leave and go back there without having moved, it'll look like i just abandoned them. and that's the last thing I want them to think.
So, I'm stuck here for awhile.
not that it's a bad thing, but i'm feeling overwhelmed and stressed. and it's just not a good fit. but maybe I'll actually start learning things. and I suppose that's also why I took the job.
So, ever onward, I guess.
It would just be nice if I could take some of the happy along with me.7 -
Story time!
A little over a year ago I was in the hiring process with a new company and countered their initial offer. I was told by the CTO that it was no problem and they would get back to me soon.
A couple days go by and I'm then informed that they're hiring a new IT director and would like me to interview with him as well. It felt kinda lame since I'd already been offered the job but I rolled with it.
When I showed up to the office for an interview I tried to call and let them know I was there and couldn't get a hold of anyone. 30 minutes later I get a call from the CTO saying they couldn't find the new IT director and when they got him to answer the phone he said he had left early and would call me to do a phone interview.
Obviously the whole experience so far has been pretty lame but I stuck with it because I knew the CTO personally. I did the phone interview and quickly realized this dude was a prick, and would be a terrible boss, but I spoke with the CTO again who told me to stick with it and eventually I did get the job.
Fast forward about a month and it's clear the new director is trash. He literally bragged about firing a dude over an accidental outage (wtf!?).
He had the technical experience you'd expect of a junior help desk and his management skills were pretty clearly sub-par.
He was also, for whatever reason, completely unable to communicate with the only woman on our team. When assigning work he would always feel the need to ask if she could 'handle it' rather than just assigning it to her like it's done for everyone else. He was pretty clearly sexist.
The whole team hates this dude by this point but he's somehow managed to woo the executives into thinking he shits gold.
I was helping him set up a Python venv on his machine when I noticed another VPN client installed which certainly piqued my interest. After a bit of digging it was clear he was using company time and company equipment to continue working for his previous employer.
We turned over logs and he was fired the next day. He tried to add me on LinkedIn afterwards and I have never declined something quicker.
Moral of the story is don't be a dickhead.1 -
If you are a salesperson, you can just go straight to hell. You're all a bunch of cocksucking twats and I'm amazed you manage to get yourselves dressed each day. You're a no good fucking waste of oxygen and you need to put your fork in a socket the next time you're eating.
I'm working on building a crm and ticket management system for use in the office to handle client passwords. Since I'm building from scratch I wanted to make sure I had properly planned my classes and functions before opening the code editor so I put a message on my door that says "Don't interrupt, thanks" followed by the date so people knew it was a fresh message and not something left from the previous day.
I'm deep in the zone, the psuedo code and logic is flowing, I'm getting classes planned and feeling really productive for an hour or so when suddenly my door flies open and in comes a sales person.
SP: "Hey, do you have any extra phones lying around? Mine's being slow and keeps hanging up on people."
Me: "Do you see the sign on my door right there at eye level which says not to bother me?"
SP: "oh, do you want me to come back later?"
Me: "You've already interrupted me now, let's go see what's going on before I spent an hour setting up a new phone for you." While we are walking across the office I asked him when the last time the phone rebooted.
SP: "idk, Salesperson#2 suggested that as I was headed over here but I figured I'd just ask you."
We get over to his desk and I see he has two phones sitting on his desk. "Where did this one come from?"
SP: "Oh that was on the desk over here but I figured I could use it."
Me: "Well aside from the fact that the phones are assigned to specific people for a reason, you took the time to unhook your phone to set this one up and you didn't think to reboot your phone first. Plug your phone back in."
He plugs the old phone, which is assigned to him, and while booting it does a quick firmware update and boots up fine. He tests a few things and decides it's all better now.
So someone suggested a fix for you and you decided, instead, you would break company IT policy by moving equipment from one station to another without notifying the IT department. You entered a room which had a closed door without knocking, and you disobeyed the sign on the actual door itself which politely requests that you go away. All because you couldn't be bothered to take 2 minutes and reboot your phone, which you had to do anyways.
You completely broke my train of thought and managed to waste 2 hours of effecient workflow because you had an emergency.9 -
Guy I work with: Hey can I borrow you for a minute
Me: sure. What do you need?
Him: so this is a project me an the other dev worked on
Me thinking: Well I know he did it all and sent you the project so don't tell me you worked on it
Him: so we use it to do this and this and send an email to this new account I made because (2 minute explanation)
Me thinking: I don't care. Just tell me what your issue is! I already know what it is and does from what you told me the last time when you showed me. Which took an hour of my time.
Him: so he sent me this code which is called <Descriptive name> and in the method we have variables call <descriptive name> and it returns a <variable name>
Me thinking: You mother fucker! I don't give a shit what your method is named, what it the variable names are, and you don't need to read through every line of code to me! Just from the descriptive name you just said I know what it does! What the fuck is your issue!?
Him: we also have these other methods. This one is called <Descriptive name> which does...
Me: are you fucking seriously going to read me your code line by line and tell me what you named your variables AGAIN!?
Him: and we named this one <descriptive name>
Me: you mother fucker...
Him: and it calls this stored procedure. (Literally opens the stored procedure and shows me) and it is called...which has parameters called... And it is a select query that inserts
45 minutes later after he finishes explaining all 3 pages of his code and his 5 stored procedures that the other dev wrote...
Him: So anyway, back to this method. I need to know where to put this method. The other dev said to put it in this file, but where do you think I should put it in here? Should I place it after this last one or before it?
Me thinking: You fucking wasted my fucking time just to ask where to place your mother fucking method that the other dev sent to you in a project with only 3 files, all less than 500 lines of code with comments and regions that actually tell you what you should put there and 5 small stored procedures that were not even relevant to your issue! Why the fuck did you need to treat me as a rubber ducky which would fly away if you did have one because you didn't have an issue, you just didn't know where to put your fucking code! FUCK YOUR METHOD!
Me: Where ever you want
Him: Well I think it won't work if I placed it before this method.
I walked away after that. What a waste of time and an insult to my skills and really unchallenging. He's been coding for years and still can't understand anything code related. I'm tired if helping him. Every time he needs something he always has to read through and explain his shit just to ask me things like this. One time he asked me what to name his variable and another his project. More recently he asked why he couldn't get his project he found online to work. The error clearly stated he needed to use c# 7. His initial solution was to change his sql connection string. 😑
He should just go back to setting up computers and fixing printers. At least then he would never be in the office to bug me or the other dev with things like this.7 -
This is my most ridiculous meeting in my long career. The crazy thing is I have witnessed this scenario play out many times during my career. Sometimes it sits in waiting for a few years but then BOOM there it is again and again. In each case the person that fell into the insidious trap was smart and savvy but somehow it just happened. The outcomes were really embarrassing and in some cases career damaging. Other times, it was sort of humorous. I could see this happening to me and I never want it to happen to you.
Once upon a time in a land not so far away there was a Kickoff Meeting for an offsite work area recovery exercise being planned for our Oklahoma locations. Eleven Oklahoma high ranking senior executives were on this webinar plus three Enterprise IT Directors (Ellen, Jim and Bob) who would support the business from the systems side throughout the exercise.
The plan was for Sam Otto, our Midwest Director of Business Continuity to host this webinar. Sam had hands-on experience recovering to our third party recovery site vendor and he always did a great job. He motivated people to attend the exercise with the coolest breakfasts and lunches you could imagine. Donuts, bagels, pizza, wings, scrumptious salads, sandwiches, beverages and desserts. He was great with people and made it a lot of fun.
At the last minute Charles 'Don't Call Me Charlie' Ego-Smith, the Global Business Continuity Senior Vice President, decided to grand-stand Sam. He demanded the reins to the webinar. Pulled a last-minute power-play and made himself the host and presenter. You have probably seen the move at some point in your career. I guess the old saying, 'be careful what you wish for' has some truth to it - read on and let me know if you devRanters agree...
So, Charlie, I mean Charles, begins hosting the session and greets all of the attendees. Hey, good so far! He starts showing some slides in the PowerPoint presentation and he fields a few questions, comments and requests from the Oklahoma executives. The usual easy to handle requests such as, 'what if we are too busy to do recover all systems', 'what if we recover all of our processes from home', 'what if we have high profile visitors that month?' Hey you can't blame them for trying. You are probably thinking to yourself, 'been there - heard that!' But luckily our experienced team had anticipated the push-back. Fortunately, Senior Management 'had our backs' and committed that all processes and systems must participate and test - so these were just softball requests, 'easy-peasy' to handle. But wait, we are just getting started!
Now the fireworks begin. Bob, one if the Enterprise IT directors started asking a bunch of questions. Well, Charles had somewhat of a history with Bob from previous exercises and did not take kindly to Bob's string of questions. Charles started getting defensive and while Bob was speaking Charles started IM'ing. He's firing off one filthy message after another to me and our teammate Sam.
'This idiot Bob is the biggest pain in the ass that I ever worked with'; 'he doesn't know shit', 'he never shuts the f up', 'I wanna go over to his office and kick his f'in ass...!'
Unfortunately...the idiot Charles had control of the webinar and was sharing his screen so every message he sent was seen by all of the attendees! Yeah, everyone including Bob and the Senior Oklahoma executives! We could not instant message him to stop as everyone would have seen our warnings, so we tried to call Charles' cell phone and text him but he did not pick up. He just kept firing ridiculously embarrassing dirty IM messages and I guess we were all so stunned we just sat there bewildered. We finally bit the bullet and IM'ed him to STOP ALREADY!!! Whoa, talk about an embarrassing silence!
I really felt sorry for Bob. He is a good guy. Deservedly, Charlie 'Yes I am going to call you CHARLIE' got in big time hot water after the webinar with upper management. For one reason or another he only lasted another year or so at our company. Maybe this event played a part in his demise.
So, the morale is, if you use IM - turn it off during a webinar if you are the host. If you must use it, be really careful what you say, who you say it to and pray nothing embarrassing or personal is sent to you for everyone to see.
Quick Update - During the past couple of months I participated on many webinars with enterprise software vendors trying to sell me expensive solutions. Most of the vendors had their IM going while doing webinars and training. Some very embarrassing things came flying across our screens. You learn a lot reading those messages when they pop-up on the presenters' screen, both personal and business related. Some even complaints from customers!
My advice to employees and vendors is to sign-out of IM before hosting a webinar. Otherwise, it just might destroy your credibility and possibly your career.5 -
So... my girlfriend has a very random work schedule. Sometimes she works 4 days a week sometimes only 1, sometimes only at the weekend sometimes not at all. If only there would be an app to track that... 🤔
She tried quite a few apps on the app store but they were shit/ugly/too complex..etc
Wait.. i’m a developer, i can do that.
So i made a dead simple calendar-like app in javascript+fuseopen.
She selected the colors, background, layout etc..
If she taps on a date it turns red indicating that is a workday, if a workday is tapped it turns back to normal color.
The main logic is:
Main:
If(AppHasSavedWorkdays){
//check if save is current month
LoadCalendarWithWorkdays();
}else{
CreateEmptyCalendarAndSave();
}
She likes it.
Cool, so let’s build this! She has an iphone and my mac is still in the service center so i can’t build🙁
But its okay, i have a mac at my office, we can build there, the only downside is that is 40min of travel.
We take the subway, go to the office, build the app, make a certificate, install to her phone, everything goes as planned.
Coming back we were lucky enough to catch the bus that goes in 30 min intervals, we only had to wait like a minute so life is good 😃
I enter the house, chill down on the bed, pull out my laptop to close the project when a FUCK ME!!!!
I completely forgot to implement a whole else branch on start!!!
Soo the app does nothing when is opened on january 1😂😂
I guess that’s why we have testers and qa.. 😃
8 -
Almost 3 years ago I contacted an IT company that was looking for developers. The job listing was vague at best but it was a 10 man company with huge international clients for content migration and improvement.
I had basically no prior development experience but got invited to the interview regardless. I took a test in Java, first time I had seen the language but I finished it with some help from Google. At the time I was still a student so I couldn't work full time either.
Disregarding all that, the team lead advised the CEO to hire me regardless, so he did.
Forward to today.
I still proudly work for this company and have been responsible for a complete redesign of their flagship product. I learned a great deal about software development and developed an amazing relationship with most of the employees. The company has quadrupled in size since and we are moving to a bigger office start of next year.
Sometimes life gives you gold, not lemons.7 -
A few years ago I started a profile on a social media app to share programming endeavors and humor.
After a year or so I became somewhat close with the ~20 subscribers out of my ~1000 that would always comment on my posts. We started a programming group chat and all hung out there, sharing stories, posting random pics, etc.
When I was interviewing with my current company, I shared all the details with the group and kept them up to date while they cheered me on and wished me luck. Once I got my offer everyone was ecstatic.
One friend in the chat remembered my company has an office in NYC, where they live, and asked if I could arrange a tour. I asked around and it seemed like it wouldn't work out, but just a few weeks later I was sent to the NYC office to collaborate with another team for a few weeks.
I let my friend know I would be in town, and when the time came - we met up, toured the NYC office, ate really good tacos, and enjoyed the city.
10/10 would friend again.2 -
My dad had been telling me about his friend's amazing son who was working in the IT dept. of some hospital and was raking in a lot, was super smart and 'worked in a hi-fi environment'. Kept telling me to go meet him to get some work online if possible.
Now, I know my dad is easily influenced and impressed especially because of his non-tech background. And today, after a month of him reprimanding that I'm not listening to him and letting go of a big opportunity, he finally pulled me by my collar and brought me to visit the guy in his office...
And turns out the staff has never even heard the guy's name! And their IT dept. can fit no more than 3 people, is filled with papers, monitors from the 90s and chairs that would cause permanent back aches.
He looks so dejected and the guy isn't picking up his phone either but I had an inkling how this meeting would turn out. :/6 -
Prologue
My dad has an acquaintance - let's call him Tom. Tom is an gynecologist, one of the best in Poznań, where I live. He's a great guy but absolutely can not into tech of any kind besides his iPhone and basic PC usage. For about a year now I've been doing small jobs for him - build a new PC for his office, fix printer, fix wifi, etc. He has made a big mistake few years ago by trusting a guy, let's call him Shitface, with crating him software for work. It's supposed to be pretty simple piece of code in which you can create and modify patient file, create prescription from drugs database and such things. This program is probably one of the worst pierces of code I've ever seen and Shitface should burn for that. Worse, this guy is pretentious asshole lacking even basic IT knowledge. His code is garbage and it's taking him few months to make small changes like text wrapping. But wait, there's more. Everything is hardcoded so every PC using this software must have installed user controls for which he doesn't have license and static IP address on network card.
Part 1
Tom asked me to build him a new PC that will be acting like a server for Shitface's program. He needs it in Kalisz (around 150 km from my place). I Agred (pun intended) and after Tom brought me his old computer I've bought parts and built a new one. I have also copied everything of value and everything took me around three hours.
Part 2
Everything was ready but Shitface's program. I didn't know much about it's configuration so when I've noticed that it's not working even on the old PC I got a bit worried. Nevertheless I started breaking everything I know about it and after next three hours I've got it somewhat working. Seeing that there's still some problems with database connection (from Windows' Event Viewer) I wrote quick SMS to Shitface asking what can be wrong. He replied that he won't be able to help me any way until Monday (day after deadline). I got pissed and very courteously asked him for source code because some of libraries used in this project has license that requires either purchase of commercial license or making code open source. He replied within few minutes that he'll be able to connect remotely within next 10 minutes. He was trying to make it work for the next hour but he succeeded. It was night before deadline so I wrapped everything up and went to bed thinking that it won't take me more than an hour to get this new PC up and running in the office. Boy was I wrong.
Also, curious about his code, I've checked source and he is using beautiful ponglish (mixed Polish and English) with mistakes he couldn't even bother to fix. For people from Poland, here's an example:
TerminarzeController.DeleteTerminarzShematyDlaLekarza
Part 3
So I drove to Kalisz and started working on making everything work. Almost everything was ready so after half an hour I was done. But I wanted to check twice if it's all good because driving so far second time would be a pain. So I started up Shitface's program, logged in, tried to open ANYTHING and... KABUM. UNHANDLED EXCEPTION. WTF. I checked trace and for fuck sake something was missing. Keep in mind that then I didn't know he's using some third party control for Windows Forms that needs to be installed on client PC. After next fifteen minutes of googling I've found a solution. I just had to install this third party software and everything will work. But... It had to be exactly this version and it was old. Very old. So old that producent already removed all traces of its existence from their web page and I couldn't find it anywhere. I tried installing never version and copying files from old PC but it didn't work. After few hours of searching for a solution I called Mr Shitface asking him for this control installation file. He told me that he has it but will be able to send it my way in the evening. Resigned I asked for this new PC to be left turned on and drove home. When he sent me necessary files I remotely installed them and everything started working correctly.
So, to sum it up. Searching for parts and building new PC, installing OS and all necessary software, updating everything and configuring it for Tom taste took me around what, 1/3 of time I spent on installing Mr Shitface's stupid program which Tom is not even happy with. Gotta say it was one of worst experiences I had in recent months. Hope I won't have to see this shit again.
Epilogue
Fortunately everything seems to work correctly. Tom hasn't called me yet with any problems. Mission accomplished. I wanna kill very specific someone. With. A. Spoon.1 -
!!office drama
I haven't been around much in recent weeks. Due to family illness, christmas shopping, dealing with estranged parents, and brooding over the foregoing, I haven't had a lot of time or energy left to myself.
tl;dr: The CTO ("API Guy") is ostensibly getting fired, and I might be taking over his job. I don't know if I should accept, try to stave this off, or simply flee.
------
Anyone who has been following my recent rants knows that API Guy is my boss, and he often writes terrible code. It's solid and unbreakable, but reading it is a *nightmare.* One of our applications is half the length of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, and it's difficult to tell what code is live and what amounts to ancient, still-active landmines. This is one application; we have several, most of which I've never even looked at.
Ostensibly the code is so terrible because the company grew extremely quickly, and API Guy needed to cram in lots of unexpected / planned-against features. From what I can see, that seems about right, but I haven't checked timeframes [because that's a lot of work!].
Here's a brief rundown of the situation.
- API Guy co-founded the company with the CEO.
- CEO and API Guy have been friends for a long time.
- CEO belives the company will fail with API Guy as head of tech.
- They could just be testing me; I have zero way of knowing. API Guy seems totally oblivious, and CEO seems sincere, so this feels pretty doubtful.
- CEO likes pushing people around. CEO believes he can push me around. API Guy doesn't budge. (I probably won't, either, except to change task priorities.)
- API Guy's code is huge and awful, but functional.
- API Guy is trying to clean up the mess; CEO doesn't understand (maybe doesn't care).
- Literally nobody else knows how the code works.
- Apart from API Guy and myself, the entire company is extroverted sales people.
- None of these sales people particularly like me.
- Sales people sell and sell and sell without asking development if they can pull enough magic features out of their hat to meet the arbitrary saleslines. (because the answer is usually no)
- If I accept, I would be the sole developer (at first) and responsible for someone else's mountain of nightmarish code, and still responsible for layering on new features at the same pace as he. Pay raise likely, but not guaranteed.
- My getting the position is contingent upon the CEO and the investors, meaning it's by no means guaranteed.
- If I don't accept, likely API Guy will be replaced with someone else of unknown ability, who doesn't know the code, and whom I must answer to regardless. Potentially OK, potentially a monumental disaster.
Honestly, it feels like I'm going to be screwed no matter what course I choose.
Perhaps accepting is slightly better?
The best would be to assume the position of CTO and keep API Guy around -- but that would feel like an insult to him. I doubt he'd be okay with it. But maybe. Who knows? I doubt the CEO would seriously consider that anyway.
I feel like a lamb between a dim, angry rhino, and an oblivious one.23 -
Series of events between me (Mi) and dude in office (DIO).
Instance 1
DIO: There is not psql installed on staging.
Mi: Install it.
DIO: YUM is not working.
Mi: *tries yum it works* It is
DIO: Oh. Didn't work earlier.
Mi: *blank* Make sure you install 9.6
DIO: Cannot find psql
Mi: *types psql, it is already installed*
DIO: Oh, didn't work earlier.
Instance 2
DIO: Made this change to the API, the endpoint is not returning the right value
Mi: *restarts server, shit starts working*
DIO: I am pretty sure I did that, don't know what happened.
Instance 3
DIO: Cannot alter role to give login to this db user.
MI: *runs alter role db_user with login* works
DIO: Don't know why it wasn't working before.
Instance 4
DIO: I have been stuck on this test for the past 1 day, cannot get the API to return the right data while the Rest Endpoint works fine.
Mi: You are hitting the wrong endpoint in the test.
DIO: Oh, I put an extra 's'
Mi: BTW you are testing Spring-Boot with that test and nothing else.
DIO: Yes but what if Spring Boot has a bug?
Mi: ok.7 -
HoD in my college is a "22 year experienced C programmer" with a PhD in CS.
One day I went to him and told, it is very hard to work with TurboC, and it isn't needed as we can easily migrate to GCC.
He asked me why was I complaining. No other student has any problem. They have been using it ever since the college started and everyone was "comfortable" with it.
I stood silent. He then went on to say, even JVM was coded in TurboC. I nodded and left the office as i didn't have an argument.
He's the same guy who had earlier said, "printf returns an array of characters printed", so I guess everything works here.11 -
FLOYD IS HERE 😎
Gather around kids, it's story time.
So my first breakup left me so damaged and I was in darkest phase of my life. I was alone. Physically, mentally, and emotionally. I went for therapy and spearheaded into success and grew in life soooo fucking much.
31st December 2016, I first joined dR and since the first day this place felt home. Met some of brightest mind and most amazing souls here (sadly many left the place).
I used to shit post and rant a lot. But I loved everyone here. But then I don't quite remember, but I decided to quit this place as community started to grow. Many others left as well.
I came back here in 2019 IIRC and started all over again. Got along well with new members and started having fun.
I used to crib and cry about being underpaid. Lost a kickass Europe job due to pandemic.
I will skip what all happened between me and @Scout but she is a sweetheart, though very rough and brutal with me at times (actually very often), but she is so selfish for me and cares for me that I couldn't resist but listen to her always. A lifelong friend for sure :)
I used to rant about my dumb office colleagues. Definitely not the sharpest minds but good people at heart (which I did not realise).
So in October 2020, I earned a new job and my company retained me with a 100% raise and a promotion making me lead of product innovation and UX.
November end I met a girl in professional context on LinkedIn who was conducting a workshop. Being hungry for learning, meeting new people and kill my lockdown boredom, I singed up.
Now I went for December break and my colleagues sent me a gift hamper when they came to know I got a promotion. I felt bad that I ranted about them so I deleted my account and also wanted a social detox.
Post the workshop, I started conversing casually with the girl I met. She was married. But things hit off. Eventually in February end I confessed that I had feelings for her and in next few days she reciprocated. I told her I was aware of her marital status and it's okay if nothing happens between us. Then she started to open up of how she was with one guy for 17 years and was abused in everyway and wanted to separate but never had the courage and all.
She decided to file for paperwork and then be with me. Things got messy when her family got involved thinking I was causing all of it.
She went back to her partner and I realised I had some emotional and mental issues of a person's past that bothered me. But we were overcoming it. Soon the honeymoon period started phasing out.
Her family started giving me death threats. We went underground even further. More arguments and fights between us.
@Scout kept telling me I was stupid and I disregarded her. I feel like an idiot for not listening to her.
That girl kept gaslighting me, hurting me intentionally, scratching the surface made me realise how broken and damaged she was. She lied to me and created fake persona of herself to make me fall for her. Everything was lie. Literally.
I felt horrible for trusting her. My trauma relapsed and I started having crazy panic attacks leading to self harm and being suicidal. That girl was drugged all the time with psychological medicines and very poor character & personality in general (I don't want to judge anyone but just stating the facts).
Eventually she just disappeared and I was like fuck this. Earlier, after every fight, she used to show fake affection and I used to melt but not this time.
I was like fuck this shit. I have some super amazing friends like @kiki who helped me overcome this. I started going for therapy and realised what all areas I need to improve. My therapist is soooo brilliant, she understands the root cause instantly and also knows how to fix it. And the same day I and both my parents were COVID-19 positive. Last few weeks were dark and haunting.
Further more, the girl comes back after a week and then acts as a 'nice girl'.
Initially fake affection, then drama, followed by making me guilt trip, then threats, and now blaming me.
I kept ignoring her calls (50 to 70 calls in a day), emails, left her unread on Telegram, and everything I could do to ignore her without blocking her. I started gaining my happiness back.
During this mess, I lost 5+ KG of weight. She has no friends in her mid 30s. Knows no life or survival skills. Her family hates her, no career, no emotional or mental maturity, literally nothing. Insanely dumb and toxic manipulative person who is not even worth being called an ex. As per her everyone around her is an asshole except her. Every time something happened, she used to blame and bad mouth the other person. Now she is doing with me. In all her life situations, either she was a hero or a victim. One upped me all the time. Now that I see it, I hate myself for allowing it all of it and now having enough self worth to walk out of it earlier.
Continued in comments...61 -
From my work -as an IT consultant in one of the big 4- I can now show you my masterpiece
INSIGHTS FROM THE DAILY LIFE OF A FUNCTIONAL ANALIST IN A BIG 4 -I'M NOT A FUNCTIONAL ANALYST BUT THAT'S WHAT THEY DO-
- 10:30, enter the office. By contract you should be there at 9:00 but nobody gives a shit
- First task of the day: prepare the power point for the client. DURATION: 15 minutes to actually make the powerpoint, 45 minutes to search all the possible synonyms of RESILIENCE BIG DATA AGILE INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION MACHINE LEARNING SHIT PISS CUM, 1 hour to actually present the document.
- 12:30: Sniff the powder left by the chalks on the blackboards. Duration: 30 minutes, that's a lot of chalk you need to snort.
13:00, LUNCH TIME. You get back to work not one minute sooner than 15.00
- 15:00, conference with the HR. You need to carefully analyze the quantity and quality of the farts emitted in the office for 2 hours at least
- 17:00 conference call, a project you were assigned to half a day ago has a server down.
The client sent two managers, three senior Java developers, the CEO, 5 employees -they know logs and mails from the last 5 months line by line-, 4 lawyers and a beheading teacher from ISIS.
On your side there are 3 external ucraininans for the maintenance, successors of the 3 (already dead) developers who put the process in place 4 years ago according to God knows which specifications. They don't understand a word of what is being said.
Then there's the assistant of the assistant of a manager from another project that has nothing to do with this one, a feces officer, a sys admin who is going to watch porn for the whole conference call and won't listen a word, two interns to make up a number and look like you're prepared. Current objective: survive. Duration: 2 hours and a half.
- 19:30, snort some more chalk for half an hour, preparing for the mail in which you explain the associate partner how because of the aforementioned conference call we're going to lose a maintenance contract worth 20 grands per month (and a law proceeding worth a number of dollars you can't even read) and you have no idea how could this happen
- 20:00, timesheet! Compile the weekly report, write what you did and how long did it take for each task. You are allowed to compile 8 hours per day, you worked at least 11 but nobody gives a shit. Duration: 30 minutes
- 20:30, update your consultant! Training course, "tasting cum and presenting its organoleptic properties to a client". Bearing with your job: none at all. Duration: 90 minutes, then there's half an hour of evaluating test where you'll copy the answers from a sheet given to you by a colleague who left 6 months ago.
- 22:30, CHANCE CARD! You have a new mail from the HR: you asked for a refund for a 3$ sandwich, but the receipt isn't there and they realized it with a 9 months delay. You need to find that wicked piece of paper. DURATION: 30 minutes. The receipt most likely doesn't even exist anymore and will be taken directly from your next salary.
- 23:00 you receive a message on Teams. It's the intern. It's very late but you're online and have to answer. There's an exception on a process which have been running for 6 years with no problems and nobody ever touches. The intern doesn't know what to do, but you wrote the specifications for the thing, 6 years ago, and everything MUST run tonight. You are not a technician and have no fucking clue about anyhing at all. 30 minutes to make sure it's something on our side and not on the client side, and in all that the intern is as useful as a confetto to wipe your ass. Once you're sure it's something on our side you need to search for the senior dev who received the maintenance of the project, call him and solve the problem.
It turns out a file in a shared folder nobody ever touches was unreachable 'cause one of your libraries left it open during the last run and Excel shown a warning modal while opening it; your project didn't like this last thing one bit. It takes 90 minutes to find the root of the problem, you solve it by rebooting one of your machines. It's 01:00.
You shower, watch yourself on the mirror and search for the line where your forehead ends and your hair starts. It got a little bit back from yesterday; the change can't be seen with the naked eye but you know it's there.
You cry yourself to sleep. Tomorrow is another day, but it's going to be exactly like today.8 -
If you need to learn/teach object orientation, these are my approaches (I hate that classic "car" example):
1) Keep in mind games like Warcraft, Starcraft, Civilization, Age of Empires (yes, I am old school). They are a good example of having classes to use, instantiating objects (creatures) and putting them to work together. As in a real system.
2) Think of your program as an office that has a job to do, or a factory that has something to deliver. Classes are the roles/jobs and objects are the workers/employees. They don't need to be complex, but their purpose must be really (really, really) well defined. Just like in a real office / factory.
3) Even better (or crazier), see your classes and objects as real beings, digital creatures in a abstract world, and yourself as a kind of god, who creates species (define classes) with wisdom. Give life when it is the time for them to come into the world (instantiate object) and kill them when they are done with their mission (dispose an object). Give them behavior, logic, conditions to work with, situations where they take action, and when they don't. Make them kinda "smart". Build them able to make decisions and take actions based on conditions. Give them life. Think on your program as an ecossystem. There must be balance, connection, species must be well defined and creatures must work together to achieve a common objective. Don't just throw code and pray for it to run. Plan it.
-----
When I talk about my classes like they are real beings, and programs as mini-worlds, some people say I am crazy, some others say that's passion.
It is both! @__@3 -
When your primary Android app (with over 1/2 million total downloads) gets banned...
And all the email says is read these [links to] policies!
Back story: this happened to me back in 2011, no matter what I did there was no way to get in touch with a human at Google, I sure hope this process has gotten better! Having my app suspended with no way to fix and get it back is ridiculous!! This could ruin a business.
Over two years later, on a Google+ hangout with Google Android devs out of the Google London office, I said to them how silly it is that this happened....one of them asked me for the app ID, I provided, he looked it up in a system which then had a reference code which then related to SEO violation....wow I finally found the answer, how silly that an SEO violation (too many keywords in the app description) can get your app permanently suspended. What a shame. I wouldn't wish this on any solo developer trying to self learn and make something...
Sometimes I really just have to say "Fuck you, Google" out loud a few times.
9 -
Privacy.
I have an Amazon Echo.
I've enabled Hey, Siri.
I've given Google the OK.
I don't tape my web cam.
And I find it highly amusing that someone has potentially seen my fat, hairy ass strut naked about my home office while singing "What's up" at the top of my lungs. Perhaps multiple times.
Should I feel bad? That I may have cost the American taxpayer money in the therapy required to rehabilitate those FBI or NSA agents that have witnessed me in my full glory?13 -
This happened a while back but thought it would be an interesting story.
So there is this guy, I'll call him Jack. Jack was a weirdo. He just graduated high school but thought of himself as very hot in terms of dev skills. He boasted lots of good programs, that are the best in industry, except they don't work (like the best proven file compressor, that just can't decompress anything because of some "bugs"). He also entered language holy wars quite actively, saying that Delphi is the best platform ever.
Aaanyway, a couple of years pass. Jack is now a student. Jack tries to make some money, so he talks to some guy, that offers him a "job" at the tax office, where he has to modernize the data infrastructure of the tax authorities. If you think this sounds very wrong, then you're 100% correct. But it gets better. After 2 months of work, the guy manages to do that. It's a simple CRUD application after all.
So everything works, but the guy who gave him this job refused to pay. He stalled and then just stopped answering the phone. Jack is now furious. So what he does, is publish the databases online, so everyone could see the income of every citizen. Authorities are in panic. They send the police to his door. They seize his computer and lock him up for a few days.
To sum it all up: Jack took up a job, without any contract, without any NDA, which is completely illegal in of itself, but he did that with the tax authority. And delivered the product before getting paid. And when he understood that he was owned, he published all online. He got bit back. The guy who gave him this job had no consequences for illegally hiring someone and not paying for their work.
Lesson: Don't be Jack11 -
#First
I joined a start up and worked after college hours as an intern over there. I would usually bunk my college and go to my internship. I had limited knowledge at that moment. I worked very hard over there because I wanted (still want) to gain practical knowledge.
Almost a month into it and I had to take a break from it because I had college work. Rejoined the same start up during my vacations. Worked quite a lot and learnt quite some stuff. I continued the internship after my one month vacation for another month once my college started. All this while I was not being paid, not even a little bit of allowance. But that didn't matter because I wanted to learn
Fast forward six months to November 2016. I have been placed in an MNC through my college placements. One day I get a call from this start up owner(we had become good acquaintances by then) if I was willing to work as a paid intern while I was working on the projects that the company landed (so I guess as a free-lancer) and as an unpaid intern while I was working on the company projects. I agreed. Jump to December. I have joined and started working on an Android project of this very big company.
At time point, I should inform you'll that I'm not very good at Android and that the company size is very small. Company owner plus the tech lead in one city (where I'm from) and another two full time employees in another city. Out of which one quit to start his own company apparently. The start up would primarily employ interns and provide exposure to them while getting their work done.
Back to the story. The tech lead vaguely assigns everyone their work. Everyone over here includes new interns and previous interns like me who will get paid some amount. 3-4 days into the project, the tech lead quits. The tech lead and the company owner call three of us and says that one of you will have to be a project manager for this project. And then both of them and 2 of my colleagues look at me. And I don't know what to say. I hesitate initially because it's too much responsibility but agree to it finally.
The next day I come to office and read about the project thoroughly and catch up with my colleagues about the progress. The entire day I'm panicking about what I'm going to do. In the evening, my boss tells me that we have to go for a meeting with the client for whom we are doing this project. At this moment, the shit out of me has been scared. Mostly because I don't know what the fuck am I going to do over there apart from being stupid and asking dumb questions. So we reach the client's office and wait for him. The entire time I'm thinking to myself that I'm going to drown this company by opening my mouth. Surprisingly, all the questions that I asked seemed legitimate and I asked a lot of questions. And so I didn't drown the company after all...phew!
It's been more than a week. And holy fuck! What a pain it is to manage people. Half of my time is spent on updating excel sheet about their progress, where are they stuck and what is needed. And the other half about thinking what the fuck am I doing or how am I gonna do it.
So to sum up, intern-turned-freelancer-turned-project manager who has no idea what the fuck is going on. Seems pretty crazy, don't you think.6 -
our HR made a survey about home office and how people think about coming back to office in the future. Shortly afterwards, our new CEO sent us an e-mail saying that he would like to see more employees in the office again soon. After all, it is paid for and must therefore be used. Of course, it's better for everyone to commute 2 hours to work every day, and last year home office worked well for everyone.
Personally, I can do without constantly sitting with my colleagues in a noisy office where 10 people are on the phone at the same time.
Bonus: In his opinion, software is better when it has more LOC.
Bonus2: Last working day for me is end of September. After that I start my new job with 43 days vacation per year :D10 -
So I ve been clinically depressed for about 10 years now. Been really great at hiding it. My illness and loneliness was so severe that i made up imaginary friends and that got so severe i couldn't tell what s real and what s not. Then about 5 years ago, i met a girl. As the cliche goes, everything felt better. Sunshine and stuff. I opened up to her. Shared stuff. I started becoming normal. The pain became bearable and manageable. Turned to entrepreneurship. Had goals and stuff. Had 7 failed startups but kept on going. Raised investment for an 8th. It went better than anyother. Was going to become the next big thing bla bla. She became the reason i turned from being a loner weirdo to someone awesome. Anyway, as nothing tends to last, my best friend who had been through thick and thin in my work, quit last year in October. He messed up some work from big client nd we had a fight. He left. In the meantime i scored a big multinational company. I was gonna propose to my girlfriend in March this year. But instead she decided to leave for someone better who left her in 3 weeks lol. Anyways, we broke up. During that time, my second friend decided to fuck up my work with the big company so hard that they were about to blacklist my company. And then he left too. I had a small team. 4 5 people doing their best. By that time, i was the only one left. On 28th feb i had my breakup, on 1st march i was sitting 700 km away from home in an office trying to talk the company out of blacklisting us. It took me around 20 days to make that happen. All the while dealing with the obvious, my depression getting stronger than ever. My imaginations taking shape and fucking up my reality. The voices in my head getting stronget and stronger. 4 months now since she left. I dont think i miss her anymore. She tried coming back once but i didn't let her. In the 4 months, i m at my worst. I am getting government contracts now. But i have no desire to do anything. The pain is unbearable. So much that on its good days it sucks the life right out of me. So much that when it gets severe the urge to harm myself in any way goes of the charts. My best friend and i, we became friends again after my ex left. He s been helping me as much as he can. I have all the good oppurtunities and chances that any entrepreneur who has been busting his ass for 5 years straight would kill to have. But i cant do anything. I m the only one left on my team. I have to handle the business, dev, marketing etc etc ends on my own. I tried hiring and scaling up but i messed that up because of obvious reasons. And now my company has 2 months of runway left. And i know if i bust my ass i can make it to 8 months more and even raise a round a. But its really hard to do when either you re sleeping 20 hrs a day or you re sleeping 3 4 hrs because you re afraid of the nightmares. Or when even you ve had a good day, the pain becomes so much that you lay on the floor having a breakdown. Yeah, i m trying professional help. I m hoping it helps me. Because right now, i dont care about being happy. I just want my sanity. Something i m clinging to with every fiber of my being. Something that s burning out like a candle burning from both ends. I cant give up my work. I dont want to. That s all i have. That s all what i love doing and now i cant even do that. I just want this to end somehow. Either i get better and the pain and the void and silence and everything else goes away, or i do. I dont know what will happen first. And i dont care. I just want to be normal. But i guess that s too much to ask.8
-
Salesperson makes commission on sales, CTO gets bonus for going to out of office meetings, designer gets bonus for every design finished. What does the web developer get?
Answer: "we can't afford to give out bonuses just for doing your job."
There are 10 websites to build in the next 6 months, 3 brand new offices in different states that need it equipment ordered and installed by me, and the other 160 clients who all think their edits are most important.
And to top it all off, every time I give an estimate for the work, boss says "just give it to them." Gee, maybe you could afford to pay me a living wage or incentivize me to keep working 6+ hours a night at home if you stopped giving away everything I build for free.
You lower the value of my work and every other web developer out there when you tell clients that the website I built them isn't worth paying for. If every one of the free sites on my list was just charged the minimum $10k, I'm looking at $200k on this board that could have been used to hire me some help or increase my pay to make me feel appreciated.
I love my job and the people I work with, but when you aren't making enough to pay the bills and you work 70+ hours a week something has to change.8 -
I am on the fucking verge of throwing my coffee cup at a coworker.
I am sitting in an office with someone who has to vocalise everything that he thinks.
It started this morning, I was trying to solder the board on my headphones, because there was a cable that had come loose, and every fucking time that I start, some shithead phones, and then a few minutes later, he comes in and talks shit. Burnt myself.
Now I am trying to maintain some code, and every fucking time I start typing and getting into my code, the need to talk has to fucking arise. I have literally thrown the last 45 minutes out of the window because I cannot fucking concentrate. Nothing helps. Throwing a coffee cup will probably just inspire more to talk about.
Phenomenal, another motherfucker just came into my office and decided that it is decent to use the phone to phone his buddies.
Fuck this shit.10 -
Project Cortana: Day 56
*What I liked*
Here is the rant where I described the project: https://devrant.io/rants/962190
Time for a review. The biggest advantage I have found was the productivity. Let me explain:
1. Cortana: It's useful as fuck if anyone is willing to use it all the time. It really helps to get reminders and notifications everywhere (PC, Laptop and Mobile).
2. Microsoft Launcher: An underrated gem due to the hate towards M$. Thanks to it's transparent theme, it looks absolutely gorgeous. The most useful part is the "Feed" where you get all your emails, recently edited documents, recently used apps or contacts all together. I was quite surprised to see the level of customization if offered considering it's M$.
3. M$ Office: I probably don't need to talk much about it, it's the most productive tool you can get. Outlook is fucking brilliant on mobile. Other office apps, while they are great on mobile, are probably more useful in tablets. And the "Focused Inbox" is the best thing happened to outlook.
4. M$ To-Do: Holy fuck, this is sick. I know that there is many alternative with more features. But this app is the perfect example of a todo app. Simple, has the exact right features and has a really smooth, beautiful UI. This really helped me to be productive.
5. OneDrive: Didn't find much difference compared to Google Drive.
6. People: Something that I discovered later and found it really useful. You can pin contacts in the taskbar and see emails, calender items associated with that contact in one click. Found it really useful considering I was chatting with my Supervisor and lectures quite frequently.
7. Windows Mail App: While I really like it, I have mixed feeling about it. I would really love to have HTML signature. Not sure why M$ is not implementing it. But the "Share" in the Context Menu is really useful while sending attachements.
Finally, the "Fluid Design" so far is beautiful. Loving the effects.
I will write what I didn't like in the next rant.14 -
What an absolute fucking disaster of a day. Strap in, folks; it's time for a bumpy ride!
I got a whole hour of work done today. The first hour of my morning because I went to work a bit early. Then people started complaining about Jenkins jobs failing on that one Jenkins server our team has been wanting to decom for two years but management won't let us force people to move to new servers. It's a single server with over four thousand projects, some of which run massive data processing jobs that last DAYS. The server was originally set up by people who have since quit, of course, and left it behind for my team to adopt with zero documentation.
Anyway, the 500GB disk is 100% full. The memory (all 64GB of it) is fully consumed by stuck jobs. We can't track down large old files to delete because du chokes on the workspace folder with thousands of subfolders with no Ram to spare. We decide to basically take a hacksaw to it, deleting the workspace for every job not currently in progress. This of course fucked up some really poorly-designed pipelines that relied on workspaces persisting between jobs, so we had to deal with complaints about that as well.
So we get the Jenkins server up and running again just in time for AWS to have a major incident affecting EC2 instance provisioning in our primary region. People keep bugging me to fix it, I keep telling them that it's Amazon's problem to solve, they wait a few minutes and ask me to fix it again. Emails flying back and forth until that was done.
Lunch time already. But the fun isn't over yet!
I get back to my desk to find out that new hires or people who got new Mac laptops recently can't even install our toolchain, because management has started handing out M1 Macs without telling us and all our tools are compiled solely for x86_64. That took some troubleshooting to even figure out what the problem was because the only error people got from homebrew was that the formula was empty when it clearly wasn't.
After figuring out that problem (but not fully solving it yet), one team starts complaining to us about a Github problem because we manage the github org. Except it's not a github problem and I already knew this because they are a Problem Team that uses some technical authoring software with Git integration but they only have even the barest understanding of what Git actually does. Turns out it's a Git problem. An update for Git was pushed out recently that patches a big bad vulnerability and the way it was patched causes problems because they're using Git wrong (multiple users accessing the same local repo on a samba share). It's a huge vulnerability so my entire conversation with them went sort of like:
"Please don't."
"We have to."
"Fine, here's a workaround, this will allow arbitrary code execution by anyone with physical or virtual access to this computer that you have sitting in an unlocked office somewhere."
"How do I run a Git command I don't use Git."
So that dealt with, I start taking a look at our toolchain, trying to figure out if I can easily just cross-compile it to arm64 for the M1 macbooks or if it will be a more involved fix. And I find all kinds of horrendous shit left behind by the people who wrote the tools that, naturally, they left for us to adopt when they quit over a year ago. I'm talking entire functions in a tool used by hundreds of people that were put in as a joke, poorly documented functions I am still trying to puzzle out, and exactly zero comments in the code and abbreviated function names like "gars", "snh", and "jgajawwawstai".
While I'm looking into that, the person from our team who is responsible for incident communication finally gets the AWS EC2 provisioning issue reported to IT Operations, who sent out an alert to affected users that should have gone out hours earlier.
Meanwhile, according to the health dashboard in AWS, the issue had already been resolved three hours before the communication went out and the ticket remains open at this moment, as far as I know.5 -
My friend at my office tell me what he did everyday
6.00 am wakeup
6.10 am code while showering (using phone)
8.00 am make a coffee
8.05 am start code
12.00 pm eating lunch
12.10 pm start code
5.00 pm go to home
5.30 pm pickup a phone and do a some socmed
6.00 pm eating
6.10 pm code in pc
11.00 pm sleep
He did that everyday. Im shocked he can code like that. Then i ask him why. He tell me that he loves code so much, everytime he found an error he find a way to solve it and he said it was fun so he cant stop code
I think my boss has brainwashed him :/11 -
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 3.4 -
Hey guys and ladys. I've got another little rant about my teacher.
As some of you may know, i finished my final exams last week, so basically every relevant grade is done. Every teacher except of my special snowflake programming teacher spends the lessons casually talking with us (some even say we dont need to show up anymore).
Little backstory: Grades need to be done on 18th, June and i get my certificate on 22nd.
Back to my rant. Special Snowflake is different. He wants ANOTHER project. This is totally his idea and is nowhere mentioned in our curriculum. It has to be done until next friday, it has to be C# and we need a detailed documentation. This wouldn't be a problem normally - if I wouldn't be moving at the moment. Special Snowflake knows this but doesn't care.
Except from the criteria above he wants it to be:
- fancy
- loved by everyone. Literally we need to make something EVERYBODY wants in their daily life
- good looking
- everyone should want to pay money for this
How am I supposed to come up with an idea and program the shit out of it in less than 2 weeks, which i need to paint my new office and pack some more stuff.3 -
Back in the day, I joined a little agency in Cape Town, small team small office with big projects, projects they weren’t really supposed to take on but hey when the owner of a tech business is not a tech person they do weird things.
A month had passed and it was all good, then came a project from Europe, Poland to be specific. The manager introduced me to the project, it was a big brand - a segment of Lego, built on Umbraco (they should change the name to slowbraco or uhmmm..braco somewhere there) the manager was like so this one is gonna be quite a challenge and I remember you said you are keen on that, I was like hell yeah bring it on (genuinely I got excited) now the challenge was not even about complexity of the problem or code or algorithms etc you get my point… the challenge was that the fucking site was in polish - face palm 1 - so I am like okay code is code, its just content, and I already speak/familiar with 13 human languages so I can’t fail here ill get around it somehow. So I spin up IIS, do the things and boom dev environment is ready for some kick ass McCoding. I start to run through the project to dig into the previous dev’s soul. I could not relate, I could not understand. I could not read, I could not, I could not. - face palm 2 - This dude straight up coded this project in polish variable names in polish, class names in polish, comments in freaking polish. Look, I have no beef with the initial guy, its his language so why not right? sure. But not hey this is my life and now I should learn polish, so screw it, new tab - google translate, new notes, I create a dictionary of variables and class etc 3 days go by and I am fucking polish bro. Come at me. I get to read the previous devs soul through his comments, what a cool dude, his code wasn’t shit either - huge relief. So I rock on and make the required changes and further functionality. The project manager is like really, you did it? I am like yeah dude, there it is. Then I realise I wasn’t the first on this, this dude done tried others and it didn’t go down well, they refused. - face palm 3 -
Anyway, now I am a rock star in the office, and to project managers this win means okay throw him in the deep - they move me to huge project that is already late of course and apparently since I am able to use google translate, I can now defeat time, let the travelling begin. - face palm 4 - I start on the project and they love me on it as they can see major progress however poland was knocking on the door again, they need a whole chunk of work done. I can’t leave the bigger project, so it was decided that the new guy on Monday will start his polish lessons - he has no idea, probably excited to start a new job, meanwhile a shit storm is being prepared for him.
Monday comes, hello x - meet the team, team meets x
Manager - please join our meeting.
I join the meeting, the manager tells me to assist the new dev to get set up.
Me: Sure, did you tell him about he site?
Manager: Yes, I told him you knocked it out the park and now we just need to keep going
Me: in my head (hmm… that’s not what I was asking but cool I guess he will see soon enough -internal face palm 5 - ) New dev is setup, he looks at the project, I am ask him if he is good after like an hour he is like yeah all good. But his face is pink so I figured, no brother man is not okay. But I let him be and give him space.
Lunch time comes, he heads out for lunch. 1hr 15mins later, project manager is like, is the new dude still at lunch.
We are all like yeah probably. 2hrs pass 3hrs pass Now we are like okay maybe something happened to him, hit by a car? Emergency? Something… So I am legit worried now, I ask the manager to maybe give him a ring. Manager tries to call. NOTHING, no response. nada.
Next day, 8am, 9am, 10am no sign of the dude. I go to the manager, ask him what’s up. Manager: he is okay. However he said he is not coming back.7 -
(Best read while listening to AEnima by Tool, loudly)
Dear Current Workplace,
Fuck you, for the reasons enumerated below.
Fuck your enterprise grey blue offices, the stifling warm air of a hundreds of bodies and sub par "development laptops".
Fuck your shitty carbonated water machines which were a cost saving measure over decent drinkable water.
Fuck your fake "flexi time", "you can do home office whenever you want" bullshit. You're still inviting me to mandatory meetings at 09:00 regularly.
Fuck your shitty, in house, third part IT provider sister company. They're the worst of all worlds. If it was in company, we'd get to give out to them, if it was an external company we'd fire them. And yes, when I quit I will quote the dumpster fire that is our corporate VPN as a major factor.
Fuck your cheery, bland, enterprise communication. Words coming under the corporate letterhead seem to lose all association with meaning. Agile, communication, open are things you write and profess to respect, but it seems your totally lack understanding of their meaning.
Fuck your client driven development. Sometime you actually have to fix the foundations before you can actually add new features. And fuck you management who keep on asking "why are there so many bugs and why is it always taking longer to deliver new releases". Because of you, you fucknuts, Because you can't say "NO" to the customer. Because you never listen to your own experienced developers.
Fuck your bullshit "code quality is important to us" line. If it's so important, then let us fix the heap of shit you're selling so that it works like a quasi functional program.
Fuck you development environment which has 250 projects in a single VS solution. Which takes 5mins plus to compile on a quad core i7 with 32 gb of ram.
Fuck this bullshit ball of mud "architecture". I spend most of my time trying to figure out where the logic should go and the rest of the time writing converters between different components. All because 7 years ago some idiot "architect" made a decision that they didn't have to live with.
Actually, fuck that guy in particular. Yeah, that guy who was the responsible architect for the project for 4 years and not once opened the solution to look a the code.
Fuck the manual testing of every business process. Manual setup of the entities takes 10mins plus and then when you run, boom either no message or some bullshit error code.
Fuck the antiquated technology choices which cause loads of bugs and slow down development. Fuck you for forcing me to do manual tests of another developers code at 20:00 on a Friday night because we can't get our act together to do this automatically.
Fuck you for making sure it's very clear I'm never going to be anything but a code monkey in this structure. Managers are brought in from outside.
Fuck you for being surprised that it's hard to hire competent developers in this second rate, overpriced town. It's hard to hire anywhere but this bland shithole would have anyone with half a clue running away at top speed.
Fuck you for valuing long hours and loyalty over actual performance. That one guy who everyone hated and was totally incompetent couldn't even get himself fired. He had to quit.
Fuck you for your mediocrity.
Fuck you for being the only employer for my skill-set in the region; paying just well enough that changing jobs locally doesn't make sense, but badly enough that it's difficult to move.
Fuck you for being the stable "safe" option so that any move is "risky".
Fuck your mediocrity.
Fuck you for being something I think about when I'm not at work. Not only is it shit from 9 to 5 you manage to suck the joy out of everything else in my life as well?
Fuck you for making me feel like a worse developer every day I work here. Fuck you for making every day feel like a personal and professional failure. Fuck you for making me seriously leave a career I love for something, anything else.
Fuck you for making the most I can hope for when I get up in the morning is to just make it until the night.6 -
I try as hard as possible not to be judgemental towards incompetent colleagues, motivating myself with the knowledge that we were all incompetent at some point, and that people need a chance to learn, and that sometimes too much pressure will lead you to believe that they're bad. Or sometimes, people just aren't good at the stuff you want them to be good, and you just need to discover that niche where they will be very useful.
Mostly that goes well.
I've had the incompetent late bloomer who was a family man who started too late to dev, and wasn't really serious. A bit of harsh talk, some soul searching over a few beers, made him into a really valuable asset. Not the brightest rock, but reliable, steady-paced developer who earned his stay.
Then there was the girl who wasn't really good at coding, but saved our team from disaster many times by keeping things into account, and realizing what must be developed or tested at every step.
However, there are exceptions. I've worked with people who have been nothing but a menace, through their incompetence AND attitudes.
The most noteworthy example was an intern that we sought out, by talking to professors to point us to their best students. So we got that intern on board. He seemed strange at first. Kind of perfectionist. Talked serious, with an air of royalty, and always dressed sharply. He really gave the impression that one must be worthy to receive his blessing. The weirdest part was his handshake. It was as if he was touching an iron hand heated to 3000 degrees. It was over before you even knew it. Leaves you kinda offended. Especially when he always took a wet wipe after that and wiped his hands. Am I really that gross?
But that's fiiiine. I mean we're all different and weird in our own ways, right? So he's a germophobe, so fucking what? We just gotta find a way to work together, right?
WRONG.
As soon as he started (and remember, he's a paid intern, who barely knows how to code, and has zero industrial experience), he started questioning my architecture solutions, code implementations, etc. I don't mind discussion and criticism, which is why I welcomed his input. But it seemed like he wasn't willing to accept any arguments, so I started looking for excuses not to talk to him.
Meanwhile, the most productive team member we had, to whom you could just give and describe an idea, with architecture and stuff, well, and you'd see it implemented the next week, with only the most well placed questions asked, started going into fights with this intern for the same reasons I was avoiding him.
.....
And here's the kicker.
Get this:
This intern comes to me (I was the team lead), while that guy is not in the office, and with a straight face, dead serious, starts telling me that that guy was making stupid decisions and being a bad team member because he doesn't ... I quote him almost verbatim... "follow my indications". He said that I had to do something because he refused to work with him together.
I was stunned.
This good for nothing imagined superhuman, who was completely useless and an amazing annoyance to pretty much everyone in the team, came to me, telling me that the most capable and productive developer in the team is bad, because he doesn't follow his orders, and that I had to pick between the 2.
I couldn't believe what I had heard.
I had so much emotion in me right then. I was angry, but at the same time I could barely abstain from laughing.
I just told him calmly that he was wrong, and that I wouldn't mind if he never came back. I didn't see him for 5 years after that.
Anyway, later that week our team went for a dinner + beer, and the stories from all the team members started pouring in. They didn't want to talk him down either, but now that he was gone, it was a weight off, and everybody could tell their story.
What a fucking asshole.
So 5 years after I stumbled on him as he was entering a church. Still an arrogant bitch. Barely exchanged 10 polite words and I continued on my way as he was disinfecting his hands from my filthy handshake.4 -
Just found out that softmaker.de has a website were they publish one of their professional fonts every month.
I looked at it and then downloaded all previous months. 😂
I just ❤ the web archive!
---
Btw. does anyone has experience with the officesuite from softmaker.com on linux?
They provide an office-suite for linux as well which I appreciate but I'm not that hyped since I currently don't need it and the design is kinda old fashioned. (I once tested FreeOffice.)
-
Navy story time again. Lots of blabbering, you have been warned.
I haven't written for some time, due to paperwork bullshit that can be easily automated by even the most shitty database... no, scratch that, the simplest Excel spreadsheet with basic formulae. But I digress.
On my quest to justify myself being unproductive, I'll share with you a small story I omitted from this post:
https://devrant.com/rants/2099473/...
The lunacy of the man involved, while certainly entertaining after a few years (and nautical miles) away, is certainly disturbing and most certainly true. (Late disclaimer: ALL my rants are not made-up. This is shit that truly happened before my very eyes, and while I was sober.)
After I set up some cute little stuff to try and get the CO interested, in order to give me permission (and a cut from the budget) to proceed in restructuring and upgrading the ship's net, I tried a more direct approach: connecting and setting up his work laptop with the ship's GPS, radar and AIS receptor via ethernet, and installing an ECS system so that he could monitor the ship's position, movement and targets from his office (the fat fuck couldn't be bothered to go up one deck). A day later he called me to his office.
Expecting some kind of... praise? Permission? Complaints on the font style? whatever, I entered. Oh, how I wish I had not.
I was barraged for TWO FUCKING HOURS by the CO, complaining that I was taking care of the net and PCs and neglecting the Navigation department (I was not, automation is my friend combating moronic paperwork). I would have thought it as just another failed attempt, but after TWO MINUTES from the end of the barrage:
CO:... so, my personal laptop is kind of slow, you think you can do anything about it?
ME: ....................
I.
SHIT.
YOU.
NOT.
What was rushing through my mind was somewhere between bipolar and multiple personality disorder, with the third option of Alzheimer's disease. I half-expected some Candid Camera crew to pop out, but no.
CO: So? Can you speed up my laptop?
ME: ............................... I don't know, sir, I have paperwork to take care of.
CO: That can wait, surely you can do something about it, you know computers.
ME: [really long pause, blood pressure rising] I'll look into it in a moment, sir.
And I never did. I told of the incident to the ship's doctor, and he expressed great worry over this, but in the end, nothing was done.
My sympathies to everyone who has to interact with non-technicians of the homo sapiens species (ironically, homo sapiens means "wise man" in latin... the irony).3 -
Post after a long long time...
Wanted to reply to so many comments and mentions, rant about a bunch of topics, do a face reveal after I went for a vacation with family and got some pictures, update y'all on my job hunt, but was busy like hell.
Anyway, time for a story.
After my rejection with Meta and Booking, I started preparing like crazy and my interviews started going well. Refined my LinkedIn further and recruiters started reaching out as well.
Over time, with efforts and feedback, I was able to build a good pipeline.
One of my dream companies reached out to me and I got hired in just 1 round and all others were merely a formality. I was euphoric, but at the same time didn't get over excited as this seemed fishy.
They made a very good monetary offer and I didn't talk to my manager yet regarding resignation. They are pushing me for an early joining.
Read a bunch of Glassdoor reviews and also spoke to a friend who just recently quit that organisation.
He confirmed that the company has 3 months of notice, has sandwich leave policy, and some other XLT political mess.
I decided to decline the offer tomorrow.
Day saved? Not yet.
Because of this I slacked off work a lot. I am super screwed with work items pending because I thought I'd quit.
My boss resinged and new one isn't that supportive yet. He is trying to change everything overnight. Typical.
I ended up performing poorly in other companies because I was confident I'll pick this offer and didn't prepare for upcoming good companies.
Moreover, we have our offices opening up from April and I might be asked to relocate to another city which does not have a team but just because it is on paper, they might force me to be in office 50% of the time.
And what's worse is, my relationship with tech is deteriorating and they are putting the entire product team in bad light.
I have a planned weekend trip coming up, so I won't be able to prepare for interviews or work on case studies so that shit will pile up more.
I am sooooo fucking screwed. Life was stable and then all of a sudden too 180° flip.
I am hysterical right now.16 -
Long rant, sorry.
I’m pretty upset, or let’s say: I want to kick asses and chew gum but I’m all out of gum(The duke TM).
Yesterday we had a discussion in the office about salary basically.
Context: The company has about 150 employees and earns a lot of money. I’m the lead dev for about 1.5 years since I joined.
So I talked to our CEO/HR about a raise since I was hired as a normal fullstack dev(title is lead dev now) but have to:
train my junior(PHP), frontend guy(react), our QA(Automation with cypress atm), our junior devop(gitlab, jenkins, docker) and even assist marketing with GTM and adword campaigns.
I’m a jack of all trades basically since I was a freelancer for big brands for a long time.
I’m fine with helping/training, I like it a lot but I still have to watch everything and be fast with my own stuff. If anything goes wrong, people call me.
That will change since I train them all(They will all be independent soon) but still, doing everything for the same pay feels wrong.
Bottom line: CEO told me it’s cool that they can use all my skills but I won’t get a raise.
The worst/strangest was: My coworkers heard about that(as always in an office) and were like: Everybody should get paid equally because we’re all a team. Uhm, ok?
I just contacted the head hunter which got me that job. I guess I’ll just see what the market has to offer.
It should never be about money but this was confusing. People telling me we should all be equal who are on their mobiles 3h a day and feel underpaid. Check yourself, really.
People who think their pure presence is enough.. Germany -.-25 -
If you are sick...
STAY THE FUCK HOME!
It has nothing to do with how YOU are feeling. It’s about RESPECT for those around you.
Especially if you work in an open office. Coming into an open office when sick is like coughing right on someone’s face repeatedly, it shows that same level of (lack of) respect.
Almost every company I have seen fucks this up so bad. It’s the same shit every year....
People are afraid to take days and stay home. They go in and make everyone sick, then everyone is taking days off and we are “short” on people. Then the incompetent CEO is scratching his head as to why this toxic work environment could produce such a toxic result.
And one more fucking thing.
If you got a cold/flu on Monday and your in the office on Wednesday because you are “feeling a bit better” then your a fucking idiot. At day 3 you are just starting to expel germs while still being highly contagious.
If you come into an open office while sick then I would say...
“Smarten the fuck up! And start showing some respect for the people you work with!”
If you have created (or are creating) a culture that encourages this then I would say...
“Fuck you! You should be fucking smarter than that.”
————
If your still sitting there thinking something like...
“Well I have to attend the meeting” or some other shit. Then let me add this to the pile.
Not everyone has had a rosy fucking life.
You may be working next to someone who has a lowered immune system due to past medical problems. What may be a week of sickness for you could end up being a month in the hospital for them.
You may be working next to a person who has a family member dying of cancer. If you make them sick then they can’t visit that family member (colds can kill cancer patients) and you may be stopping that person from seeing their loved ones one last time before they die.
Don’t be a fucking asshole.
STAY THE FUCK HOME!6 -
@netikras since when does proprietary mean bad?
Lemme tell you 3 stories.
CISCO AnyConnect:
- come in to the office
- use internal resources (company newsletter, jira, etc.)
- connect to client's VPN using Cisco AnyConnect
- lose access to my company resources, because AnyConnect overwrites routing table (rather normal for VPN clients)
- issue a route command updating routing table so you could reach confluence page in the intranet
- route command executes successfully, `route -n` shows nothing has changed
- google this whole WTF case
- Cisco AnyConnect constantly overwrites OS routing table to ENFORCE you to use VPN settings and nothing else.
Sooo basically if you want to check your company's email, you have to disconnect from client's VPN, check email and reconnect again. Neat!
Can be easily resolved by using opensource VPN client -- openconnect
CISCO AnyConnect:
- get a server in your company
- connect it to client's VPN and keep the VPN running for data sync. VPN has to be UP at all times
- network glitch [uh-oh]
- VPN is no longer working, AnyConnect still believes everything is peachy. No reconnect attempts.
- service is unable to sync data w/ client's systems. Data gets outdated and eventually corrupted
OpenConnect (OSS alternative to AnyConnect) detects all network glitches, reports them to the log and attempts reconnect immediatelly. Subsequent reconnect attempts getting triggered with longer delays to not to spam network.
SYMANTEC VIP (alleged 2FA?):
- client's portal requires Sym VIP otp code to log in
- open up a browser in your laptop
- navigate to the portal
- enter your credentials
- click on a Sym VIP icon in the systray
- write down the shown otp number
- log in
umm... in what fucking way is that a secure 2FA? Everything is IN the same fucking device, a single click away.
Can be easily solved by opensource alternatives to Sym VIP app: they make HTTP calls to Symantec to register a new token and return you the whole totp url. You can convert that url to a qr code and scan it w/ your phone (e.g. Google's Authenticator). Now you have a true 2FA.
Proprietary is not always bad. There are good propr sw too. But the ones that are core to your BAU and are doing shit -- well these ARE bad. and w/o an oppurtunity to workaround/fix it yourself.13 -
TLDR: Small family owned finance business woes as the “you-do-everything-now” network/sysadmin intern
Friday my boss, who is currently traveling in Vegas (hmmm), sends me an email asking me to punch a hole in our firewall so he can access our locally hosted Jira server that we use for time logging/task management.
Because of our lack of proper documentation I have to refer to my half completed network map and rely on some acrobatic cable tracing to discover that we use a SonicWall physical firewall. I then realize asking around that I don’t have access to the management interface because no one knows the password.
Using some lucky guesses and documentation I discover on a file share from four years ago, I piece together the username and password to log in only to discover that the enterprise support subscription is two years expired. The pretty and useful interface that I’m expecting has been deactivated and instead of a nice overview of firewall access rules the only thing I can access is an arcane table of network rules using abbreviated notation and five year old custom made objects representing our internal network.
An hour and a half later I have a solid understanding of SonicWallOS, its firewall rules, and our particular configuration and I’m able to direct external traffic from the right port to our internal server running Jira. I even configure a HIDS on the Jira server and throw up an iptables firewall quickly since the machine is now connected to the outside world.
After seeing how many access rules our firewall has, as a precaution I decide to run a quick nmap scan to see what our network looks like to an attacker.
The output doesn’t stop scrolling for a minute. Final count we have 38 ports wide open with a GOLDMINE of information from every web, DNS, and public server flooding my terminal. Our local domain controller has ports directly connected to the Internet. Several un-updated Windows Server 2008 machines with confidential business information have IIS 7.0 running connected directly to the internet (versions with confirmed remote code execution vulnerabilities). I’ve got my work cut out for me.
It looks like someone’s idea of allowing remote access to the office at some point was “port forward everything” instead of setting up a VPN. I learn the owners close personal friend did all their IT until 4 years ago, when the professional documentation stops. He retired and they’ve only invested in low cost students (like me!) to fill the gap. Some kid who port forwarded his home router for League at some point was like “let’s do that with production servers!”
At this point my boss emails me to see what I’ve done. I spit him back a link to use our Jira server. He sends me a reply “You haven’t logged any work in Jira, what have you been doing?”
Facepalm.4 -
Bit of an essay. TLDR: come Monday I'm either getting fired or promoted. And the CTO is a dickhead. If you think you work with me or know who I am, no you don't, shut the hell up.
Was having a discussion with my team, went on for a bit, at one point my manager mentioned that the CTO wanted me to go into the office occasionally, same thing I've had since I joined when they literally wanted me to move hundreds of miles to be close to the office mid covid when the office was closed. I give a nondescript answer. He's a bit more persistent, I snap a little but the conversation moves on. Discussion of company and team dynamics, at one point he makes a comment about people at another company being told if they don't go into the office they won't be eligible for promotion.
I ask everyone else on the call to leave.
I point out that 2 years ago me and him were interviewing candidates. He on a few occasions introduces me to candidates as a _senior_ engineer. My job title does not contain the word senior. I let it slide the first time, not worth it for a slip of the toung. Happens a couple more times, I take him aside and privately point out my job title does not contain the word senior. He says he didn't realise and thought I was.
My take away then: I'm expected to do the work of a senior without being paid for it and without being given the acknowledgement of the appropriate job title. I remind him of this. My job title hasn't changed. Fuck, I took a low ball offer when I joined and have had a minimal pay rise in like, 3 years. My tone is "not happy".
His response? He discussed promoting me with CTO however budged constraints. I somewhat understand, however.
We have promoted several people in the last few years. We have grown by hiring new people in the last few years (5 in a company of 30). There are ways to compensate someone in ways that do not impact day to day budget (shares, TC, total compensation, is normal terminology in the tech field for this). I ask why the hell should I travel a few hundred miles to the office to get get to know people, put effort in to a company that demonstrably doesn't value me? Particularly as all levels of management have completely failed at developing a social atmosphere during covid? My first month, I had 3 5 minute meetings with my manager a week. That was all of the communication I had with people. I literally complained and laid out what they should do instead, they adopted most of it.
I also ask him if he genuinely thinks being here is in my professional interest? My tone has well passed pissed off.
I will say, I actually quite like my manager, we have a good working relationship and I've learned a lot from him.
He makes some mediocre points, tries to give advice about value of shares. To me, the value of shares is zero until they are money. The value to the company, however, is that it's a sizeable chunk on their balance sheet and shares sheet that they have to be willing to justify. If I wanted money, I'd go work at a high frequency trading bank and make 5x what I'm on now. No joke, that's what they pay, I could get a job, came close in the past but went to amazon. He understands.
He says will discuss with CTO. They were on a call for like an hour. His tone has changed to "you will be promoted ASAP, comp may be structured as discussed". Point made.
I'm in this job because it's convenient, is easy for me. Was originally lower challenge than previous, has a range of chances to learn and _that's_ the value to me. He's suitably nervous.
Point made I think.
So given I swore a few times, at least once about the CTO. Interesting to see how it goes.
Message from him to the effect that he spoke to CTO, has been told to write a proposal for promotion (kinda standard), will discuss with HR on Monday as they're on holiday.
So, maybe not getting fired today?
Blood pressure still very high.10 -
I am much too tired to go into details, probably because I left the office at 11:15pm, but I finally finished a feature. It doesn't even sound like a particularly large or complicated feature. It sounds like a simple, 1-2 day feature until you look at it closely.
It took me an entire fucking week. and all the while I was coaching a junior dev who had just picked up Rails and was building something very similar.
It's the model, controller, and UI for creating a parent object along with 0-n child objects, with default children suggestions, a fancy ui including the ability to dynamically add/remove children via buttons. and have the entire happy family save nicely and atomically on the backend. Plus a detailed-but-simple listing for non-technicals including some absolutely nontrivial css acrobatics.
After getting about 90% of everything built and working and beautiful, I learned that Rails does quite a bit of this for you, through `accepts_nested_params_for :collection`. But that requires very specific form input namespacing, and building that out correctly is flipping difficult. It's not like I could find good examples anywhere, either. I looked for hours. I finally found a rails tutorial vide linked from a comment on a SO answer from five years ago, and mashed its oversimplified and dated examples with the newer documentation, and worked around the issues that of course arose from that disasterous paring.
like.
I needed to store a template of the child object markup somewhere, yeah? The video had me trying to store all of the markup in a `data-fields=" "` attrib. wth? I tried storing it as a string and injecting it into javascript, but that didn't work either. parsing errors! yay! good job, you two.
So I ended up storing the markup (rendered from a rails partial) in an html comment of all things, and pulling the markup out of the comment and gsubbing its IDs on document load. This has the annoying effect of preventing me from using html comments in that partial (not that i really use them anyway, but.)
Just.
Every step of the way on building this was another mountain climb.
* singular vs plural naming and routing, and named routes. and dealing with issues arising from existing incorrect pluralization.
* reverse polymorphic relation (child -> x parent)
* The testing suite is incompatible with the new rails6. There is no fix. None. I checked. Nope. Not happening.
* Rails6 randomly and constantly crashes and/or caches random things (including arbitrary code changes) in development mode (and only development mode) when working with multiple databases.
* nested form builders
* styling a fucking checkbox
* Making that checkbox (rather, its label and container div) into a sexy animated slider
* passing data and locals to and between partials
* misleading documentation
* building the partials to be self-contained and reusable
* coercing form builders into namespacing nested html inputs the way Rails expects
* input namespacing redux, now with nested form builders too!
* Figuring out how to generate markup for an empty child when I'm no longer rendering the children myself
* Figuring out where the fuck to put the blank child template markup so it's accessible, has the right namespacing, and is not submitted with everything else
* Figuring out how the fuck to read an html comment with JS
* nested strong params
* nested strong params
* nested fucking strong params
* caching parsed children's data on parent when the whole thing is bloody atomic.
* Converting datetimes from/to milliseconds on save/load
* CSS and bootstrap collisions
* CSS and bootstrap stupidity
* Reinventing the entire multi-child / nested params / atomic creating/updating/deleting feature on my own before discovering Rails can do that for you.
Just.
I am so glad it's working.
I don't even feel relieved. I just feel exhausted.
But it's done.
finally.
and it's done well. It's all self-contained and reusable, it's easy to read, has separate styling and reusable partials, etc. It's a two line copy/paste drop-in for any other model that needs it. Two lines and it just works, and even tells you if you screwed up.
I'm incredibly proud of everything that went into this.
But mostly I'm just incredibly tired.
Time for some well-deserved sleep.7 -
Tl;Dr - It started as an escape, carried on as fun, then as a way to be lazy, and finally as a way of life. Coding has defined and shaped my entire life from the age of nine.
When I was nine I was playing a game on my ZX spectrum and accidentally knocked the keyboard as I reached over to adjust my TV. Incredibly parts of it actually made a little sense to me and got my curiosity. I spent hours reading through that code, afraid to turn the Spectrum off in case I couldn't get back to it. Weeks later I got hold of a book of example code to copy out to do various things like making patterns on the screen. I was amazed by it. You told it what to do, and it did it! (don't you miss the days when coding worked like that?) I was bitten by the coding bug (excuse the pun) and I'd got it bad! I spent many late nights on that thing, escaping from a difficult home life. People (especially adults) were confusing, and in my experience unpredictable. When you did things wrong they shouted at you and threatened to take you away, or ignored you completely. Code never did that. If you did something wrong, it quietly let you know and often told you exactly what was wrong. It wasn't because of shifting expectations or a change of mood or anything like that. It was just clean logic, simple cause and effect.
I get my first computer a year later: an IBM XT that had been discarded by a company and was fitted with a key on the side to turn it on. With the impressive noise it made it really was like starting an engine. Whole most kids would have played with the games, I spent my time playing with batch scripts and writing very simple text adventures. And discovering what "format c:" does. With some abuse and threatened violence I managed to get windows running on it. Windows 2.1 I think it was.
At 12 I got a Gateway 75 running Windows 95. Over the next few years I do covered many amazing games: ROTT, Doom, Hexen, and so on. Aside from the games themselves, I was fascinated by the way computers could be linked together to play together (this was still early days for the Web and computers networked in a home was very unusual). I also got into making levels for Doom, Heretic, and years later Duke Nukem 3D (pretty sure it was heretic; all I remember is the nightmare of trying to write levels entirely by code!). I enjoyed re-scripting some of the weapons and monsters to behave differently. About this time I also got into HTML (I still call this coding, but not programming), C, and java. I had trouble with C as none of the examples and tutorial code seemed to run properly under a Windows environment. Similar for my very short stint with assembly. At some point I got a TI-83 programmable calculator and started rewriting my old batch script games on it, including one "Gangster Lord" game that had the same mechanics as a lot of the Facebook games that appeared later (do things, earn money, spend money to buy stuff to do more things). Worried about upcoming exams, I also made a number of maths helper apps, including a quadratic equation solver that gave the steps, and a fake calculator reset to smuggle them into my exams. When the day came I panicked and did a proper reset for fear of being caught.
At 18 I was convinced I was going to be a professional coder as I started a degree in Computer Science. Three months later I dropped out after a bunch of lectures teaching what input and output devices were and realising we were only going to be taught Java and no C++. I started a job on the call centre of a big company, but was frustrated with many of the boring and repetitive tasks we had to do. So I put my previous knowledge to use, and quickly learned VBA to automate tasks. It wasn't long before I ended up promoted to Business Analyst where I worked on a great team building small systems in Office, SAS, and a few other tools.
I decided to retrain in psychology, so left the job I was in and started another degree. During my work and placements my skills came in use a number of times to simplify and automate tasks. I finished my degree, then took a job as a teaching assistant while I worked out what I wanted to do next and how to pay for it. Three years later I've ended up IT technican at the school, responsible for the website, teaching a number of Computing lessons each week, and unofficial co-coordinator for Computing as a subject. I also run a team of ten year old Digital Leaders who I am training in online safety and as technical experts; I am hoping to inspire them to a future in coding. In September I'll be starting teacher training with a view to becoming a Computing specialist teacher. Oh, and I'm currently doing a course in Android Development in my free time.
And this all started with an accidental knock on the keyboard of a ZX Spectrum.6 -
They want me to be a speaker at this event , I wrote them this
Regarding this statement on the speaker form “Presentation rooms are set up theatre style with a lectern, lectern mic, screen, laptop with Windows XP Office
2007/Vista XP and a projector.” – is it just an old form?
I do have one question what does this mean exactly? Are you actually using windows xp? it’s not supported by Microsoft anymore, so it’s quite dangerous to have unless it’s not attached to the internet what so ever and never has been. Vista… is not much better. Windows 7 is 2008 you should at least be using that I would of thought? I mainly ask because if I am going to speak about technology and computers I can’t exactly say I’m an expert when I’m using tech as old as that. I mean I’m 20 I was 7 when xp came out, I know how to use it but it’s ancient, in computer terms It’s as old as Aztec times and I’d rather not be sacrificed to a sun god (seriously if anyone who knows tech at all sees me I’ll be embarrassed and taken the piss out of majorly).
Could I just use my laptop? If needs be?
Sorry to be a pain1 -
TLDR: There’s truth in the motto “fake it till you make it”
Once upon a time in January 2018 I began work as a part time sysadmin intern for a small financial firm in the rural US. This company is family owned, and the family doesn’t understand or invest in the technology their business is built on. I’m hired on because of my minor background in Cisco networking and Mac repair/administration.
I was the only staff member with vendor certifications and any background in networking / systems administration / computer hardware. There is an overtaxed web developer doing sysadmin/desktop support work and hating it.
I quickly take that part of his job and become the “if it has electricity it’s his job to fix it” guy. I troubleshoot Exchange server and Active Directory problems, configure cloudhosted web servers and DNS records, change lightbulbs and reboot printers in the office.
After realizing that I’m not an intern but actually just a cheap sysadmin I began looking for work that pays appropriately and is full time. I also change my email signature to say “Company Name: Network Administrator”
A few weeks later the “HR” department (we have 30 employees, it’s more like “The accountant who checks hiring paperwork”) sends out an email saying that certain ‘key’ departments have no coverage at inappropriate times. I don’t connect the dots.
Two days later I receive a testy email from one of the owners telling me that she is unhappy with my lack of time spent in the office. That as the Network Administrator I have responsibilities, and I need to be available for her and others 8-5 when problems need troubleshooting. Her son is my “boss” who is rarely in the office and has almost no technical acumen. He neglected to inform her that I’m a part time employee.
I arrange a meeting in which I propose that I be hired on full time as the Network Administrator to alleviate their problems. They agree but wildly underpay me. I continue searching for work but now my resume says Network Administrator.
Two weeks ago I accepted a job offer for double my current salary at a local software development firm as a junior automation engineer. They said they hired me on with so little experience specifically because of my networking background, which their ops dept is weak in. I highlighted my 6 months experience as Network Administrator during my interviews.
My take away: Perception matters more than reality. If you start acting like something, people will treat you like that.2 -
Continuation from :
https://devrant.io/rants/835693/...
Hi everybody! I am sorry that as a first time poster I am building 2 long stories, but I really like the idea of connecting with other people here!
Well, as I was mentioning before, I got a job in Android development and had a blast with it. Me and the developer clicked and would spend our time discussing PHP, the move to other stacks (I was making him love the idea of Django or Spring Java) games, bands and cool stuff like that. This dude was my hero, his own stack was developed in a similar MVC fashion that he had implemented from scratch before for many projects. It was through him that I learned how to use my own code (rather than frameworks and other libraries) to build what I wanted. I seriously thought that I had it made with a position that respected me and placed me in the lead mobile development position of the company. Then it happened. He had taken 2 weeks of unauthorized leave, which was ok since he was best friends with the owner of the company, those 2 along another asshole started it so they could do whatever they wanted. And I could not make much progress without him being there since there were things that he needed to do, that I was not allowed, for me to continue. When he came back I was quickly rushed to the owner of the company's office to discuss my lack of progress. The lead developer was livid, as if he knew that he had fucked up. He blamed the whole thing on me (literally told the owner that it was my fault before I was summoned) and that we lost 2 weeks of business time because I did not had the initiative to make progress on my own. I felt absolutely horrible, someone that I had trusted and befriended doing something like that, I really felt like shit. I had mad respect and love for this guy. It got heated, I showed the owner the text messages in which I showed him my pleas to led me finish the parts that were needed while he was away. Funny enough, he acted betrayed. After that it was 3 months of barely talking to one another except for work related stuff. He got cold and would barely let me touch the internal code that he was developing. It was painful. The owner kept complaining about progress and demanded that I do a document scanner for the company, which was to be attached to their mobile application. Not only that but it had to be done with OpenCV. Now, CV is great, but it is its own area, it takes a while to be able to develop something nice with it that is efficient and not a shitstorm.
I had two weeks.
Finished in one. After burning my brain and ensuring that the c++ code was not giving issues and the project was steady I turned it in...to their dismay. And I say so because I felt that they gave me such a huge project with the intention of firing me if it was not done. After that it was constant shit from the owner and the lead developer. I was asked then to port the code to the IOS version. I had some knowledge of it already so I started working on it. Progress was fast since the initial idea was already there and I really love working on Apple devices. And when I was 70% done the owner decided to cut me loose. At first he cited things such as lack of funding and him being unable to pay my salary. I was fine with that even though I knew it was not true. So at the time I just nodded and thanked the company for my time there. Before I left, he decided to blame it on me, stating that if they were not producing money that it was perhaps my fault. I lost my shit, and started using my military voice to explain to him how a software company is normally ran. Then I stormed out.
It was known to me, that the lead developer had actually argued against me being laid off. And that he was upset about it, we made amends, but the fact remains that I was laid off because the owner did not think of me as an asset, regardless of how many times I worked alongside the lead developer or how valuable I was actually to the company, their infrastructure did get better while we worked together, so I just assumed that he never actually did any mention of my value.
I lasted 2 months without a job, feeling horribly shitty because my wife had to work harder to ensure our stability whilst I was without any sort of salary. At this time I had already my degree, so all I had to do was look better. In the meantime I decided to study more about other technologies. I learn React, and got way better at JS and Node that I thought I could and was finally able to get another job as a full stack developer for another company.
I have been here since 2 months. It has been weird, we do classic ASP, which is completely pointless at this time, but meh. At this time though, I just don't really have the same motivation. Its really hard for me to trust the people that I work with and would like to connect with more developers.21 -
I was impressed with my latest job interview in the government (got the job).
Applied online, and they extended the application deadline because the lack of quality of applications.
I got invited for an interview. Present there were HR manager, Department manager and an employee from the regional office (opening a new dev department in the region).
Most of the interview consisted of them telling me about the company, and asking a bit about me. Nothing technical.
1.5 month later I got a 2nd interview. Present were two developers from the main office in Oslo. Again, very little questions about my technical capabilities. Mostly just repeating the stuff said in the first interview. Though I did have to send some code in for review by them.
A month later I get a phone call from the department head saying they’d like to offer me a job, but they don’t have a concrete job offer yet, as it has to be approved by a committee (gov stuff). That takes two weeks, and I finally got job offer. 42% pay rise from the current job in the private sector.
I later went and re-read the ad for the job. “Bachelor/ master required. For particularly qualified applicants, this requirement can be ignored.”
Fascinating that they didn’t give me more tests.2 -
Long rant ahead.. 5k characters pretty much completely used. So feel free to have another cup of coffee and have a seat 🙂
So.. a while back this flash drive was stolen from me, right. Well it turns out that other than me, the other guy in that incident also got to the police 😃
Now, let me explain the smiley face. At the time of the incident I was completely at fault. I had no real reason to throw a punch at this guy and my only "excuse" would be that I was drunk as fuck - I've never drank so much as I did that day. Needless to say, not a very good excuse and I don't treat it as such.
But that guy and whoever else it was that he was with, that was the guy (or at least part of the group that did) that stole that flash drive from me.
Context: https://devrant.com/rants/2049733 and https://devrant.com/rants/2088970
So that's great! I thought that I'd lost this flash drive and most importantly the data on it forever. But just this Friday evening as I was meeting with my friend to buy some illicit electronics (high voltage, low frequency arc generators if you catch my drift), a policeman came along and told me about that other guy filing a report as well, with apparently much of the blame now lying on his side due to him having punched me right into the hospital.
So I told the cop, well most of the blame is on me really, I shouldn't have started that fight to begin with, and for that matter not have drunk that much, yada yada yada.. anyway he walked away (good grief, as I was having that friend on visit to purchase those electronics at that exact time!) and he said that this case could just be classified then. Maybe just come along next week to the police office to file a proper explanation but maybe even that won't be needed.
So yeah, great. But for me there's more in it of course - that other guy knows more about that flash drive and the data on it that I care about. So I figured, let's go to the police office and arrange an appointment with this guy. And I got thinking about the technicalities for if I see that drive back and want to recover its data.
So I've got 2 phones, 1 rooted but reliant on the other one that's unrooted for a data connection to my home (because Android Q, and no bootable TWRP available for it yet). And theoretically a laptop that I can put Arch on it no problem but its display backlight is cooked. So if I want to bring that one I'd have to rely on a display from them. Good luck getting that done. No option. And then there's a flash drive that I can bake up with a portable Arch install that I can sideload from one of their machines but on that.. even more so - good luck getting that done. So my phones are my only option.
Just to be clear, the technical challenge is to read that flash drive and get as much data off of it as possible. The drive is 32GB large and has about 16GB used. So I'll need at least that much on whatever I decide to store a copy on, assuming unchanged contents (unlikely). My Nexus 6P with a VPN profile to connect to my home network has 32GB of storage. So theoretically I could use dd and pipe it to gzip to compress the zeroes. That'd give me a resulting file that's close to the actual usage on the flash drive in size. But just in case.. my OnePlus 6T has 256GB of storage but it's got no root access.. so I don't have block access to an attached flash drive from it. Worst case I'd have to open a WiFi hotspot to it and get an sshd going for the Nexus to connect to.
And there we have it! A large storage device, no root access, that nonetheless can make use of something else that doesn't have the storage but satisfies the other requirements.
And then we have things like parted to read out the partition table (and if unchanged, cryptsetup to read out LUKS). Now, I don't know if Termux has these and frankly I don't care. What I need for that is a chroot. But I can't just install Arch x86_64 on a flash drive and plug it into my phone. Linux Deploy to the rescue! 😁
It can make chrooted installations of common distributions on arm64, and it comes extremely close to actual Linux. With some Linux magic I could make that able to read the block device from Android and do all the required sorcery with it. Just a USB-C to 3x USB-A hub required (which I have), with the target flash drive and one to store my chroot on, connected to my Nexus. And fixed!
Let's see if I can get that flash drive back!
P.S.: if you're into electronics and worried about getting stuff like this stolen, customize it. I happen to know one particular property of that flash drive that I can use for verification, although it wasn't explicitly customized. But for instance in that flash drive there was a decorative LED. Those are current limited by a resistor. Factory default can be say 200 ohm - replace it with one with a higher value. That way you can without any doubt verify it to be yours. Along with other extra security additions, this is one of the things I'll be adding to my "keychain v2".11 -
Years ago I used to work a guvmant site. They had really strict security rules for internet and how you spent your time. Makes sense considering what that site did. I was a support engineer for some of their process control equipment.
I was approached by an operator supervisor to install dvd player software on a business machine (non process related). Basically just a general purpose PC with no function other than time cards and general office use. I was fine with the request, but the reason was for watching movies during a holiday period by the operators. Not for anything official. So I made some noise about my dislike of this request feigning moral superiority. But the supervisor swore up and down it was for "training" dvds.
So I wrote a simple windows script. The script basically popped up a window that said:
"Security has detected unauthorized media inserted into this machine. Please state the reason for this infraction." It provided a dialog to enter a justification. After you entered the justification it said: "Security has been contacted and your user logged. You will be contacted shortly."
This script was then attached to the supervisors Start folder so it ran when he, and only he logged in. We made sure the "training" video (some movie) was already inserted at this point.
He logged in. He just about shit his pants when reading this. He promptly logged and left the building to walk somewhere else in the site. We called him and let him know it was a gag. His response: That son of a bitch Demolishun!2 -
Lately I have been overthinking a lot. I am stressing myself out on every single decision believing that decisions I make today will define my tomorrow.
In hindsight, all the major and positive impact that have happened in my life were the decisions I took on the fly without much underlying research. The executional part did have me struggle a little but almost all of the best things happened to me were unplanned.
Funnily this has been my philosophy since years but guess what, I failed to follow it this time.
My overthinking and over planning caused me to mess up a little leading to a lot of unwanted anxieties.
Now let's reflect a little on the past, when my first relationship ended.. wait.. even earlier..
When I was in 5th standard, I was crazy bullied at school but I was happy go lucky and things turned out in my favour throughout till date.
I used to do what I loved and enjoyed. I literally never worried or thought about future. Not even once, things just fell in place for me miraculously.
When my first relationship ended, I was shattered. The darkest time of my life and me being all alone, I came out strong.
I used to live happy. I used to do stuff that I loved. I used to not care about what people thought. No socials for me. I used to follow random dark or counter culture stuff and be a little rebel that I am.
I remember, she and I used to go for fuck tons of events, hangout at waterfront of the city, spend time together and just be ourselves.
I never used to compete, compare, or conflict with anyone.
devRant was (and still is) a digital home for me. Wonderful phase of life.
Then shit went south. I joined Reddit. A girl told me about a pen pal app. Met another girl there.
Joined Telegram again to be in touch with her. She wasn't interested but I stayed on Telegram.
I could pick up any girl in minutes and do so effortlessly.
Slowly the twin extrovert in me came out. I started building and maintaining insanely awesome network.
Started spending more time on Reddit and Telegram.
Joined a bunch of professional communities. Career sky rocketd.
I was still happy and living a gala life at this stage.
Slowly, I realised I was underpaid (via professional communities). That unsettled me.
I frantically started hunting for jobs. 2020 and COVID-19 hit. Being indoors sucked more.
Became more aggressive on job hunt, money, building skills, work work work...
Met a hoe who fucked my emotions and ethics even further.
Got a high paying job. WLB went negative.
I started losing myself. I forgot my hobbies. I don't know what happiness is. I don't remember when I last smiled. I started planning my finances. Overthinking and stressing about shit troubled me into sleepless nights followed by early morning calls made things worse to my health.
I lost the clarity of my life. I FUCKING LOST ME.
I want myself back and I am gonna work for it. That happy little rebel Floyd who never gave a fuck about other's opinion on him or his beliefs. That dude who was shy to talk to girls. The guy who'd follow his passion and not society of high paying jobs or shit.
I almost got my finances and taxation sorted. Now I'll work to get my office timings in place. If not then I'll switch and find a job in UK/EU with a good WLB. And at the same time I'll pursue my hobbies.
Enough of rat race shit. Money has always been an outcome of my hard work and high work ethics. I want to live a life and I am willing to trade of extremely high paying/stressful FAANG jobs for a small company keeping me happy.
I'll be the happy Floyd that I was once was.
Because, the heart wants what the heart wants :)2 -
My company hired a new person on my team. He was scheduled to start on a Monday but pushed back a week at the last minute. The rumor around the office was that his flight home that weekend was canceled, but he didn’t notify our boss of it until minutes before he was expected in.
Next Monday he didn’t come in, and no one could get in touch with him. We eventually discovered that he was in jail. He claimed he was pulled over on the way to work for a traffic violation, then found out he had an outstanding warrant from a traffic ticket mix-up over ten years ago. Unsurprisingly, when he did make it in later that week, he was immediately fired.
I’m wondering how reasonable it was to fire him. A responsible, organized friend of mine also got in trouble from a traffic ticket she was never notified of, so I know his story isn’t impossible and doesn’t mean he’s a bad person. On the other hand, missing your start day because you’re in jail is never a good look — doubly so after he pushed back his start date the first time. My company has a very open culture so I would have some room to encourage us not to put inappropriate weight on what is often a very flawed legal system.6 -
Story time!
I worked at a company that was the HQ for a sizable organization for a while, until it was eventually bought out by another company, and then yet another company who was located in the valley.
We were kinda a forgotten office not being the HQ, like most places like that are.
No customers EVER visited our building, few if any people knew we existed even, even our own company. I visited HQ in the valley on a number of occasions and was stalked by the video monitoring system for hours before I was stopped by security and the cops called because nobody believed there as an office outside the valley when I explained why my badge looked different .... (San Jose cops were very nice about it and really pissed at the security team.) But that's another story...
One day people who were never at our office decided (after many meetings without talking to anyone at the office) ... they decided the beige walls at our office didn't match the company colors.
So they took all the generic wall coverings down and painted all the walls an almost imperceptible different color.
So now we had an office with all white(ish) walls and nothing on them. Due to the configuration of the building there were these huge monolithic white walls that looked pretty dumb.
This lasted quite a while so as a joke I printed up and framed (found an old frame, as a former HQ we had lots of stuff lying around) a sign that said:
"This space intentionally left blank."
When the "mediocre hotel room quality art" and posters were scheduled to go up the folks putting the art up skipped that wall thinking the sign was official.
Even the somewhat corporate drone directors, and one VP at our office thought it was so funny, they didn't say a word about it. Word has it back at HQ they assumed it "must be fire code or something" and told the folks hanging the crappy art to skip that wall.
It lasted on that wall for a decade until we moved out of that building. On the last day, everything was moved, but that sign remained. No idea if it is still there or not...1 -
TLDR: Read the post.
Bare with me here, I am new to all of this jazz. But I wanted to tell a story.
I have been a programmer for a while now, working on various projects with various companies, doing various things. I know that sounds vague, but it's the truth.
I never work on the same thing, ever, I never work with any fancy IDE, because I don't need one. I personally believe no developer works with the massive huge code base all at once, but instead works on it in pieces. That's a story for another day.
I have seen the shittiest of the shittiest and some how survived, I have been beaten down by code bases that were out sourced yet some how managed to stand up and gain my baring and fight back. I have dealt with clients, bosses and idiots from A-Z. Watching them all scramble around for their pennies like greedy rich white men seeking more pennies to swim in.
Some how I survived all this. I started working from home almost 3 years ago, the freedom is exhilarating. The ability to fuck off for most of the day and work at night, or work all morning and fuck off. There's nothing better.
As you work from home you think, this will be amazing. Until the crippling loneliness takes over and even the 6th bottle of beer doesn't quench the thirst of human contact. The pain of being trapped in the four white walls of your office makes that bottle of tequila, to numb out the emptiness inside look more satisfying.
At some point, you crawl out of your space to find people to interact with, refusing to be beaten down by both shit code and loneliness only to find all your friends, family and significant others are working, in offices, where they cant just fuck off for a day with you. The silence of the house, the office, the what ever becomes deafening.
its crawling all over you like bugs that pick away at your mind, breaking you, hating you. So you decide that a coffee shop is the best place, only to sit there and people watch or check Facebook or what ever else people do at coffee shops that isn't actually work.
The point in all of this, is that working from home is both a positive and a negative. It has destroyed me, created a workaholic and, probably, an alcoholic. There isnt a day I dont wish that I could sleep away the deafening silence of the world around me as every one busies off to the office.
One might think: get an office job, but I have become accustomed to my misery, pain and suffering of working from home, isolated and medicated by vaping and alcohol. the freedom, from what I have found, is worth more then the sacrifice of it - to work around people I slowly begin to hate, people that make me want to overdose on anything rather then see their smug faces and be beaten down by their idiotic words, code bases and money grubbing hands...
I guess I'll get back to work now, in my house, with my cats, my vape and my beer. Here's to freedom and the sacrifices that go along with it.5 -
This happened with one of our senior profs during the first year of my college. I wouldn't call him a dev if my life depended on calling him a dev but regardless, I narrate the story here.
We were "taught" C++ by some really dumb professors during our first year of college and it was mandatory that everyone cleared the subject regardless of what field of engineering the students chose. Having already done 2 years of C++, it was quite a breeze for me. But during the final lab exam, one of my friends requested my help in solving the quite tough question (for those beginners). Thinking the exam and teaching was unfair, I stupidly wrote the answer on a piece of paper and passed it to him. One of our teachers, who had seen him ask me, was lying low waiting to catch me in the act and she swooped in and busted our asses kicking us out of the exam hall and sending us to the HoDs office like some prize from her war against academic corruption.
In the end, I failed the exam for cheating and had to redo (not only the exam but the entire lab course).
When I returned to college during the summer vacations to redo the course, I first met the antagonist of our story. Having a huge head that looked like a deformed watermelon and an ego the size of a building, he assaulted us first with a verbal diarrhoea of his achievements as a CS professor. I quickly realised that I was in a class of people who had failed to grasp how to make a program that printed "Hello World". To make things shorter, every question the prof gave us, I managed to solve in a mere matter of minutes, several better than his own solutions. Not having expected a student who knew his shit, he was determined to play me down. He hurled tougher question at me and I knocked them over his enormous head piercing his ego. He asked me such questions as how to reverse 1000 and get 0001 and wasn't satisfied with the several ways I gave because none of it were what he had in mind (which turned out to be storing them in a fucking array and printing them in reverse. That's printing not reversing you dung beetle). I kept my calm throughout but on the day of the final exam, he set quite a tough paper for a class of people who had already failed once. To his utter shock and dismay, I aced that too and I produced flawless code. This man who has an MTech from one of the most reputed colleges of my country then proceeded to tell me that he had to cut my marks because I had used more than one function when the question had asked for one function ( it never said only one). I lost my shit and pointed out that since I was the programmer, it was my wish how I coded. I also explained to him how repeating code is a bad practice and one should use functions to reduce redundancy and keep the code clean. Nevertheless, he lost his shit and he threatened me with consequences as apparently "I didn't know who I was messing with". I handed over the paper and stormed out of the class (though he called me back and tried to argue more with me. I apologized for losing my shit and left when he was done talking). I ended up getting a 'C'. Totally worth it.4 -
I was working in a manufacturing facility where I had hundreds of industrial computers and printers that were between 0 and 20 years old. They were running on their own clean network so that someone has to be in the manufacturing network to access them. The boss announced that the executives will be pushing a “zero trust” security model because they need IoT devices. I told him “A computer running Windows 98 can’t be on the same VLAN as office computers. We can’t harden most of the systems or patch the vulnerabilities. We also can’t reprogram all of the devices to communicate using TLS or encrypt communications.“ Executives got offended that I would even question the decision and be so vocal about it. They hired a team to remove the network hardware and told me that I was overreacting. All of our system support was contracted to India so I was going to be the on-site support person.
They moved all the manufacturing devices to the office network. Then the attacks started. Printers dumped thousands of pages of memes. Ransomware shut down manufacturing computers. Our central database had someone change a serial number for a product to “hello world” and that device got shipped to a customer. SharePoint was attacked in many many ways. VNC servers were running on most computers and occasionally I would see someone remotely poking around and I knew it wasn’t from our team because we were all there.
I bought a case of cheap consumer routers and used them in manufacturing cells to block port traffic. I used Kali on an old computer to scan and patch network vulnerabilities daily.
The worst part was executives didn’t “believe” that there were security incidents. You don’t believe in what you don’t understand right?
After 8 months of responding to security incident after security incident I quit to avoid burning out. This is a company that manufactures and sells devices to big companies like apple and google to install in their network. This isn’t an insignificant company. Security negligence on a level I get angry thinking about.8 -
Chrome, Firefox, and yes even you Opera, Falkon, Midori and Luakit. We need to talk, and all readers should grab a seat and prepare for some reality checks when their favorite web browsers are in this list.
I've tried literally all of them, in search for a lightweight (read: not ridiculously bloated) web browser. None of them fit the bill.
Yes Midori, you get a couple of bonus points for being the most lightweight. Luakit however.. as much as I like vim in my terminal, I do not want it in a graphical application. Not to mention that just like all the others you just use webkit2gtk, and therefore are just as bloated as all the others. Lightweight my ass! But programmable with Lua, woo! Not like Selenium, Chrome headless, ... does that for any browser. And that's it for the unique features as far as I'm concerned. One is slow, single-threaded and lightweight-ish (Midori) and another has vim keybindings in an application that shouldn't (Luakit).
Pretty much all of them use webkit2gtk as their engine, and pretty much all of them launch a separate process for each tab. People say this is more secure, but I have serious doubts about that. You're still running all these processes as the same user, and they all have full access to the X server they run under (this is also a criticism against user separation on a single X session in general). The only thing it protects against is a website crashing the browser, where only that tab and its process would go down. Which.. you know.. should a webpage even be able to do that?
But what annoys me the most is the sheer amount of memory that all of these take. With all due respect all of you browsers, I am not quite prepared to give 8 fucking gigabytes - half the memory in this whole box! - just for a dozen or so tabs. I shouldn't have to move my web browser to another lesser used 16GB box, just to prevent this one from going into fucking swap from a dozen tabs. And before someone has a go at the add-ons, there's 4 installed and that's it. None of them are even close to this complete and utter memory clusterfuck. It's the process separation. Each process consumes half a GB of memory, and there's around a dozen of them in a usual browsing session. THAT is the real problem. And I want to get rid of it.
Browsers are at their pinnacle of fucked up in my opinion, literally to the point where I'm seriously considering elinks. Being a sysadmin, I already live my daily life in terminals anyway. As such I also do have resources. But because of that I also associate every process with its cost to run it, in terms of resources required. Web browsers are easily at the top of the list.
I want to put 8GB into perspective. You can store nearly 2 entire DVD movies in that memory. However media players used to play them (such as SMPlayer) obviously don't do that. They use 60-80MB on average to play the whole movie. They also require far less processing power than YouTube in a web browser does, even when you download that exact same video with youtube-dl (either streamed within the media player or externally). That is what an application should be.
Let's talk a bit about these "complicated" websites as well. I hate to break it to you framework web devs, but you're a dime a dozen. The competition is high between web devs for that exact reason. And websites are not complicated. The document itself is plain old HTML, yes even if your framework converts to it in the background. That's the skeleton of your document, where I would draw a parallel with documents in office suites that are more or less written in XML. CSS.. oh yes, markup. Embolden that shit, yes please! And JavaScript.. oh yes, that pile of shit that's been designed in half a day, and has a framework called fucking isEven (which does exactly what it says on the tin, modulo 2 be damned). Fancy some macros in your text editor? Yes, same shit, different pile.
Imagine your text editor being as bloated as a web browser. Imagine it being prone to crashing tabs like a web browser. Imagine it being so ridiculously slow to get anything done in your productivity suite. But it's just the usual with web browsers, isn't it? Maybe Gopher wasn't such a bad idea after all... Oh and give me another update where I have to restart the browser when I commit the heinous act of opening another tab, just because you had to update your fucking CA certs again. Yes please!19 -
- Back in October 2019 -
- Me: Hey, these two servers are having weird problems. Several services we use stop functioning every 7-10 days. I can temporarily fix them by taking them off the domain and putting them back on, but I don’t know why they’re happening or what further damage this workaround causes.
- Boss: Thats not good. Well. Keep doing the fix when it’s needed.
- Me: We should really reach out to someone at Microsoft through our support plan. I have no idea how to fix any of this and it’s making our Hyper-V environment very unstable.
- Boss: K. Let’s not worry about that now, let’s just keep working around it.
- In January 2020 -
- Me: Hey boss. More and more errors are generating from these servers. I’ve created a log of everything Ive found to hand off to a support agent. We really need to.
- Boss: Okay. Let’s talk to our internal team that uses Hyper-V and see what they did since they don’t have any problems.
- Me: Its not Hyper-V specific. It’s stemming from AD and authentication. It causes problems even without Hyper-V installed, so I don’t think it will help.
- Boss: K. Let’s just do what we can with what we got.
- Today, May 2020 -
- Me: Hey. The servers no longer work at all, and the workaround has no effect anymore. I’m completely stalled on my project now and have nothing to do.
- Boss: What?? What happened to them?
- Me: *Sends 17 page PDF file documenting all found issues, errors, warnings, and weird anomalies in both servers, as well as troubleshooting steps I’ve already performed*
- Boss: None of this makes any sense. I need you to start troubleshooting right away.
- Me: But... I can’t... *Sends screenshots of errors having no search results on the web, screenshots of Microsoft Support Techs on forums telling me we need to open tickets with Microsoft directly, other reasons why I’m completely blocked*
- Boss: Keep trying to figure it out. We need this resolved as soon as possible and we can’t let it happen again in the future.
Now I’m completely alone in our office, bitterly staring at the servers, trying to force an epiphany on how to fix these dumb boxes.5 -
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.5 -
I work for a web agency.
Over the last 18 months a company asked us about 5 different quotes for rather minimal changes to their website.
While being minimal changes, estimating costs for them still requires several hours of work for research, meetings, correspondance and writing the damn things. They never even gave us a response (neither positive nor negative), except once where they told us that they wouldn't pay for project management because their instructions are so clear that PM isn't necessary.
As a response to the last one, after several months, they send us a 10 pages long pdf with requirements for a new website (or a "restyle" like they call it, even if it has absolutely nothing in common with the current one).
We inform them that we can't permit ourselves to continue studying new solutions for free and therefore tell them that a detailed offer would cost them something like 300$, and that amount would then be discounted from the eventually accepted job. We also roughly estimate a price range of about 15k - 20k for the new website.
We get an email back, from the CEO (until now it was a secretary), with essentially 3 arguments written in condescending form:
1. he brags about his revenue being over 9 billion $$$ a year, and that being a part of a global holding for which "communication is essential" (sic.) means that they need to coordinate and "can't simply accept an offer" [even if it's 400$, for specific change exactly requested by them, I guess...]
2. 15k is too much [... for the website representing this 9 billion dollar holding on the internet, for which the requirements are written in the 10 pages long pdf]
3. He asks for a meeting
We accept the meeting, we go to their office.
When we arrive there, the secretary informs us that the CEO will not participate. So we talk the her and the head of the "Communication Dept" in videoconference.
I explain them that if the sum, which we thought would be appropriate (~15 - 20k), is too high, the Pareto principle would allow us to, theoretically, achieve about 80% of the features and quality for about 20% of the cost. Their genuine response is:
"So your estimate was wrong! You can do it for much less!".
I try to explain them that the most money in a project goes into "attention to detail".
The "Communication Dept." person, who is "doing this job since too much time" (sic.), refuses to believe and insists that "details" don't exist on the web.
I tell her: "In any kind of work, the more effort you put into something, the better it tends to get, with diminishing returns".
She insists: "I don't understand this".
So now I'm here, doing the 6th offer, free of charge, for a 5k website, for a company that generates 9kkk revenue each year, trying to define a "Definition of Done" that works out.
FML I guess.
Sorry for the long post.7 -
I've never used Windows in my day-to-day life. No kidding.
When I got my father's first computer, I used an old distribution called BBC Linux. I didn't have any computer knowledge, it was my first contact with a computer, so I went to a friend's house and asked for a CD to install on my computer. I don't know if this friend ended up making a "gotcha" and thought I'd give up, but I just read the manuals and fell in love. That was year 2000.
Then I used Conectiva Linux, then I went to Red Hat 9, then Slackware, then in 2007 I started using Solaris. And I stayed on Solaris (Solaris 10, Solaris Nevada and OpenSolaris) until 2011.
In 2011 I bought a Mac. I stayed at Apple until 2020, when I couldn't stand Apple forcing me to buy new computers (I still don't understand how a 2011 iMac, i5 (4 Hyper Thread cores) with 16GB of RAM, 1TB SSD only runs up to High Sierra).
Then I bought a Dell. It came with Windows 10, the first thing I did was install WSL2. I could not stand it, the system is bad, sorry. I installed OpenSuse and have been using it for two years.
It's just that every day someone tells me "how can you use this"? "There is no alternative to Windows, do you want to be different?"
I know that my story was the reverse of the "mainstream", so I'm going to talk about my vision of Windows, that in my brain it is actually the "alternative".
- Having a file explorer without "tabs" in 2022 is unthinkable for me.
- I love terminal. And the Windows terminal is very limited. "ps ... | awk ... | xargs ..." is a must for me. "find ./ -name '...' -exec ..."... these things on Windows are totally "different" and have the "powershell way" while all other operating systems keep the same form. And cygwin is not an option. As Wine for serious work is also not.
- Dragging a file into the terminal, and having it write its path, is so natural, that when Windows didn't do it, I was dismayed.
- I've always used StarOffice, OpenOffice and now LibreOffice. All the people in my story received my documents and reports as a PDF and no one complained. Until a coworker saw me editing in LibreOffice and said "oh I want it in word format". As long as he didn't know, everything was fine, right?
- Windows is paid. And is there advertising? I don't understand. And I refuse. If you want to display advertising, then excuse me. I have no problem paying, I'm not an opensource shiite. It's just that paying and not working bothers me much more than an opensource that I can fix or expect a fix knowing the good will of the people involved.
- Hyper-V is a joke. QEMU/KVM is better, and Bhyve on FreeBSD which is a very young project, is already a million times better than Hyper-V.
- Developing in C/C++ for Windows is only possible in two ways: Either you've always lived in Windows and your brain is conditioned, or you compile with MSYS2 (CLang or GCC).
- There is no significant evolution of the windows desktop since 95.
- Multiple workspace support with multiple monitors, not ready. It's another joke.
- REGEDIT does not need any comment.
- The system loses performance over time. I still don't know how Windows achieves this.
- I've seen people complain about desktop fragmentation on Unix and Linux. Many DEs end up leaving applications with different themes (like running a Qt application in Gnome and GTK in KDE), but to be quite honest, the lack of Windows standard bothered me much more. Even Microsoft's own software is completely different: Control Panel, Calculator, Paint and Office, To-Do, and Settings, have horrible style differences and look-and-feel fragmentation.
- Dark mode has not been implemented. It's another joke. Many applications are white while everything else is dark. Sorry, even on Linux which is a mess, this has been resolved. And well resolved.
- NTFS? Serious?
- C:, D:.. It doesn't convince me since DOS.
- Bloatware.
- News "biased" in the search bar is a lack of respect for those who use the computer to work.
And that. For me, Windows is the alternative operating system. I can't take Windows seriously, for me it's an experimental one like Haiku or ReactOS. It's good to play.
About market share, it doesn't convince me to use it. But convinces me to sell. I've always developed applications to run on Windows. And when I need it, I turn on a VM to compile the project. But in everyday life? Impractical.15 -
This will be long and it's more of an IT rant, but I think it still fits.
So a user comes to me and says "hey on my phone I can't see anything in my junk email folder but there are a bunch of emails in there on my PC." I take a look at the Outlook app on his phone. The "Junk" folder that he has open is actually in his deleted items folder. So clearly it's not the real junk folder. There are no other folders named "Junk", but there is one named "Spam". I open that and there are a bunch of emails in there.
ME: "Does this look like what you were expecting to see?"
USER: "Oooohhh so you think it's called "Spam" instead of "Junk" on my phone?"
ME: "I'm not sure, does this look like what you were expecting to see?"
USER: "See, I always thought junk and spam were two different things."
ME: (grinding my teeth and taking a deep breath) "Does. This. Look. Like. What. You. Were. Expecting. To. See?"
USER: "Yeah, looks like it."
OK THEN FRICKING TAKE YOUR PHONE AND GET OUT OF MY OFFICE.
I didn't really say that last bit, but I sure was tempted to.7 -
So I trolled one of my co-workers who has an iPhone saying "Buy a real phone" .. and now people are picking that around the office and throwing it at everyone who uses Apple products .. "buy a real laptop".. etc3
-
I work for a small company with about 10 employees working full-time in the office. We all report directly to the CEO, Phil. When the pandemic hit, Phil went into full panic mode and had us all move our desks 12+ feet apart, wash our hands every 20 minutes, sterilize everything in between uses, etc. Nothing super weird, and better than having no reaction at all, but it was a hypervigilant process that made me expect him to be very accommodating when our state went on lockdown.
Boy, was I wrong. Our industry is considered essential so we’re still open, but Phil is being odd when it comes to working from home. For background, about 95% of our work can be done remotely. The other 5% would require about 15 minutes in the office once a week. I was the first one to pose the idea of working from home and Phil nervously agreed, but only let do it three days a week. My coworkers were given similar instructions but were “encouraged to come in every day, if possible.” A few of them do.
Since then, Phil has gotten pretty weird about the situation. He refers to people who are working from home as being “off work” (which is NOT the case, we are all working and available while at home, which he knows because he calls us for work-related things during work hours!). Today, Phil asked me if my coworker Travis was in his office, and I said Travis was working from home, and Phil replied in a sour tone, “So he’s not working then, great.” He has made similar comments about my other coworkers. When I’m working from home, he’ll call me and ask in a sarcastic tone, “What are you even working on today?” Or he’ll give me an assignment and end with, “Can you actually do work on this today? I need you working.” One time, he called while I was in the bathroom and when I called him back less than five minutes later, I was told that I “need to be available and not screwing around.”
The weirdest thing is that none of us has had productivity problems! My job is such that I can tell when anyone is slacking even a little and I haven’t noticed any issues. Personally, I’ve actually been MORE productive! And I’ve never been accused of “screwing around” while at the office before, so this attitude has baffled me.
He is so convinced that we aren’t working that he cut our work-from-home time down two days a couple weeks ago, and now it’s being cut down to one day as of next week – when COVID cases are higher in our city than ever!
My guess is that because Phil isn’t physically seeing us work, he assumes we aren’t working. CCing him on stuff to leave “proof” doesn’t work because he doesn’t read his email. He is also naturally a nightmare of a micromanager (and an across-the-office yeller) so not being as “in control” is probably freaking him out. But what is the best way to handle this?10 -
I am the manager of a customer service team of about 10-12 members. Most of the team members are right out of school and this is their first professional job and their ages range from 22-24. I am about 10 years older than all of my employees. We have a great team and great working relationships. They all do great work and we have established a great team culture.
Well, a couple of months ago, I noticed something odd that my team (and other employees in the building) started doing. They would see each other in the hallways or break room and say “quack quack” like a duck. I assumed this was an inside joke and thought nothing of it and wrote it off as playful silliness or thought I perhaps missed a moment in a recent movie or TV show to which the quacks were referring.
Fast forward a few months. I needed to do some printing and our printer is in a room that can be locked by anyone when it is in use (our team often has large volumes of printing they need to do and it helps to be able to sort things in there by yourself, as multiple people can get their pages mixed up and it turns into a mess). The door had been locked the entire day and this was around noon, and the manager I have the key to the door in case someone forgot to unlock it when they left. I walked in, and there were two of my employees on the couch in the copier room having sex. I immediately closed the door and left.
This was last week and as you can imagine things are very awkward between the three of us. I haven’t addressed the situation yet because of a few factors: This was during both of their lunch hours. They were not doing this on the clock (they had both clocked out, I immediately checked). We have an understanding that you can go or do anything on your lunch that you want, as long as you’re back after an hour. Also, as you mentioned in your answer last week to the person who overheard their coworker involved in “adult activities,” these people are adults and old enough to make their own choices.
But that’s not the end of the story. That same day, after my team had left, I was wrapping up and putting a meeting agenda on each of their desks for our meeting the next day. Out in broad daylight on the guys desk (one of the employees I had caught in the printing room) was a piece of paper at the top that said “Duck Club.” Underneath it, it had a list of locations of places in and around the office followed by “points.” 25 points – president’s desk, 10 points – car in the parking lot, 20 points – copier room, etc.
So here is my theory about what is going on (and I think I am right). This “Duck Club” is a club people at work where people get “points” for having sex in these locations around the office. I think that is also where the quacking comes into play. Perhaps this is some weird mating call between members to let them know they want to get some “points” with the other person, and if they quack back, they meet up somewhere to “score.” The two I caught in the copier room I have heard “quacking” before.
I know this is all extremely weird. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to write you because of how weird this seems (plus I was a little embarrassed). I have no idea what to do. As I mentioned above, they weren’t on the clock when this happened, they’re all adults, and technically I broke a rule by entering the copier room when it was locked, and would have never caught them if I had obeyed that rule. The only company rule I can think of that these two broke is using the copier room for other purposes, preventing someone else from using it.
I would love to know your opinion on this. I tend to want to sweep it under the rug because I’m kind of a shy person and would be extremely embarrassed to bring it up.21 -
Really fed up with my colleague and possibly my job. Am starting to doubt am cut out to be a developer
Am a junior java dev , been working working for this company for about 2 years now. Although they hired me to be a java dev, they pretty much exclusively had me working on JavaScript crap because none of the other more senior devs wanted to do even so much as poke JS with a long stick....
Oh and the salary was crap but i figured since i had barely 3 years of exp i thought i would stick with it for a while
But a few months ago after seeing other opportunities I got fed up and threatened to quit , already started interviewing etc
Got an offer, not exactly what i wanted but better than where i was. Went to quit but they freaked out and started throwing money at me. They matched and exceed the other salary and promised to addressed the issues that made me want to leave. Ie get me to work more on the java side of the project and have me work with someone more senior who could sort of mentor me, i had been working semi solo on the js shit till then...
The problem is that my supposed mentor is selfish prick... he is the sort of guy who comes in real early, basically he goes to early morning prayer then come in at some ungodly hour and fuckoff home around 3pm
He does all his work early morning then spends the rest of the day with his headphones on stealthily watching youtube, amazon, watching cricket, reading about Palestine , how oppressed muslims are or building a website for some mosque.
I asked him to let me sit with him so that I could just learn how this or that part of the sys worked , he agreed then the very next day comes in and does all the work before i get in at 9 , i asked him how he did it and he tells me oh just read the code.
Its not as simple as that, out codebase is an old pile of non standard legacy dog shit. Nothing works as it should, i tried to go through documentation online for the various stuff we use , but invariably get stuck when i try the usual approach because it turns out the original devs had essentially done a lot of custom hacks and cowboy coding to get stuff working, they screwed around with some of the framework jars & edited libraries to get stuff to work, resulting in some really weird OSGI errors.
My point is that i cant really just "read the code" or google ...
I gotta know a bit more what was actually modified and a lot of this knowledge isn't fucking documented, theres a lot of " ohhh that weird bug yeah yeah that happens cuz x did this hack some years ago to fix this issue and we kinda built on it, yeah we weren't supposed to do that but heyyy what u gonna do, just do this or that instead"
I was asked to set up a web service to export something, since thats his area of expertise and he is suppose to be teaching me the ropes, i asked him to explain where i should start and what would the general workflow be, his response is to tell me to just copy the IMPORT service and rename it to export then "just do it um change it or something" very helpful indeed (building enterprise application here nothing complex at all!!)
He sits right next to me so i can see how much works he actually does, i know when he just idly sitting there so thats when i ask him questions, he always has his earphones on so each time i gotta find a way to get his attention with a poke or a wave, he will give a heavy sigh and a weary look as he removes his headphones, listen to my question then give me the shortest answer possible before IMMEDIATELY turning away and putting his headphones on as fast as possible regardless of whether I actually understood or even heard what he said. If i ask another question ( am talking like an immediate follow up question for a clarification or something) he will
Do the whole sigh + tired look routing to make me know yeah you are disturbing me. ( god was so happy the day he accidentally sat on and broke them)
Yesterday i caught a glance at his screen as i was sitting down and i think he and another dev were talking about me
That am slow with my work and take forever to get into gear.
Starting to have doubts about my own ability n wether am really cut out to be a developer. I know i can work hard but its impossible to do so when you have no clue where to start and unable to look it up since all the custom hacks doesn't really allow any frame of reference.
Feels like am being handicapped and mocked, yesterday i just picked up my gear n left the office.
I never talk ill about my colleagues, whenever i have a 121 with my mgr i always all is fine, x n y are really helpful etc
I tried to indirectly tell my other colleague about this guy, he told me that guy had kinda mentally checked out of this job and was just going through on auto pilot and just laughed it off (they have been working together for almost a decade and a buddies) my other colleague is pretty nice but he usually swamped with work so i feel bad to trouble him.
Am really Fed up with it all7 -
Management Double standards...
At a previous employer, the manager had me doing some QA testing for a updated version of some customer facing UIs. I spent 3 days constantly testing, except for my lunch break.
Every bug that I found I sent to a Sr dev.
Now this Sr dev was a coding savant. I mean awesome coder, but he had the personality of a rat and snake combined. If he wasn't coding he was brown-nosing the manager, talking about how he was doing all the work, or trying to rat on us other devs.
Anyway this dev has spent the 3 days of bug fixing alternating between watching videos and fixing bugs. Don't know what the videos were, don't realy care. I do know that he did not like to be disturbed while watching them...
On the third day, on my lunch break, I decided to watch two fifiteen minute videos on VSTS feeds and linking node packages.
As soon as I started Sr dev came over and asked me if I was focused on the teams priorities. I told him that it was my lunch break and since this was related to an upcoming sprint I thought it was worth it.
This S.O.B. goes full out hissy fit. He was flat out throwing a tantrum like my small daughter would. He made such a noise that my manager walked over and asked what was going on.
This shitbag Sr dev smirked at me and asked to speak to the manager in his office. When the manager called me over I knew what was up. I was lectured on not focusing on the teams priorities. I tried to explain that the videos were relevant to an upcoming sprint but was shot down. When I brought up the fact that the Sr dev was watching videos, the manager told me flat out that he didn't care. I was mad and told the manager that this was bullshit. All the manager cared about was keeping the Sr dev happy. I was told to "treat <shithead sr dev> with respect or else".
It was at that time I decided to look for another job. Less than a month later I left, for a much better paying job with awesome benefits. Sr dev acted like he was hurt I was leaving. Manager couldn't have cared less.
When some others on the team heard what he did, they started looking for work elsewhere too.
A month after I left another Sr dev on the same project left. At the same time a BA and QA tester demanded to be put on another team or else they would leave.
Manager started out with a team of 6 was left with only two people.
When the last one left, manager had the nerve to ask me why I didn't let him know anyone was unhappy. I told him if he cared so little for me, why would I think he care about them.
Ultimately, leaving was one of the best things I could have done. -
If anyone has been keeping up with my data warehouse from hell stories, we're reaching the climax. Today I reached my breaking point and wrote a strongly worder email about the situation. I detailed 3 separate cases of violated referential integrity (this warehouse has no constraints) and a field pulling from THE WRONG FLIPPING TABLE. Each instance was detailed with the lying ER diagram, highlighted the violating key pairs, the dangers they posed, and how to fix it. Note that this is a financial document; a financial document with nondeterministic behavior because the previous contractors' laziness. I feel like the flipping harbinger of doom with a cardboard sign saying "the end is near" and keep having to self-validate that if I was to change anything about this code, **financial numbers would change**, names would swap, description codes would change, and because they're edge cases in a giant dataset, they'll be hard to find. My email included SQL queries returning values where integrity is violated 15+ times. There's legacy data just shoved in ignoring all constraints. There are misspellings where a new one was made instead of updating, leaving the pk the same.
Now I'd just put sorting and other algos, but the data is processed by a crystal report. It has no debugger. No analysis tools. 11 subreports. The thing takes an hour to run and 77k queries to the oracle backend. It's one of the most disgusting infrastructures I've ever seen. There's no other solution to this but to either move to a general programming language or get the contractor to fix the data warehouse. I feel like I've gotten nowhere trying to debug this for 2 months. Now that I've reached what's probably the root issue, the office beaucracy is resisting the idea of throwing out the fire hazard and keeping the good parts. The upper management wants to just install sprinklers, and I'm losing it. -
I have discovered a fresh hell
Some guy I’ve never met or heard of in the office lobbed a comment at one of my *approved and merged* pull requests. He doesn’t say anything specific, only that my REST urls are not in line with naming convention. That’s all he says, and I’ve already walked the URL consumers through the code and given them the URLS.
I’m really annoyed that this guy won’t just say what he has in mind, but fine whatever this is a professional environment and developers are not known for being a diplomatic people. Let it go and get your work done!
I do some googling and find an obvious change that needs to happen- I implement it, open a new pull request and inform my URL consumers of the change.
This rando still isn’t satisfied and still won’t say what needs to change. I am on round 3 of this wonderful cycle and this guy is acting all fuckin HAUGHTY about it. “Here is a list of conventions I found googling, you should read them even if it takes 4 hours because it will benefit your career”
Sure dog you’re probably right on that one but we are in a professional environment and at this point you are holding up production so you can wave your dick around! Just SAY WHAT YOU MEAN SO WE CAN MAKE THE CHANGES AND GET OUR WORK DONE4 -
Ohh man i fucked up bad. 5 days as intern, and i fuck up really bad with my ego and ignorance.
I love my this company. A great environment, lots of people to learn from , i am given reasonable tasks and i feel happy to complete them. But what happened today was weird and fucked up.
I have never worked at a place with seniors designers tech leads and more people with positions. I have also worked with a lot of competitive people who are always in a race to be first.
And how do we come first? Have a lot of knowledge, hear the smallest of detail and sprint towards goal (because the combination your knowledge, assumptions and speed is enough to make you reach to the top). You don't ask for specific details, because they are obvious. And that's me in short.
Today i fucked up.
Mistake #1 ) first i was given a small task by my senior. It was a 20 mins task max if i had done it the normal noobie way . But i am a pro in mind , i have to do it with all the architecture , even if i don't understand why. So i asked for 50 mins. They gave it and did not had a problem with my time, but with the way i wrote my code.
He was like "who told you to make it like this ? Why did you made it like this?" And was visibly irritated. And i was like super chill saying "i don't know the why, but i know its correct way of using it" , pissing him even more. In my eyes he's just a super friendly sr, more like a bro and wouldn't mind some cheeky answers. And he didnt show any
consequences for that time.
Mistake #2 this is super fucked up. Our office is going under some renovation & interns were asked to sit in the co-working spaces (outside of the office). It was already very disturbing and i had to go to office every few minutes.
So after lunch this happens : We are working on a new module that already has a tonne of screens and logics. I have made a small part which is from the middle and now we can go both in the forward or in the backward direction.(Also, its quite a new module whose idea was recently discussed and decided. And weirdly i am also being treated like a core member as the ceo once himself asked what would he my flow for doing things in this. i am in direct contact and under direction of backend , designers , ceo and My senior and many ppl are giving me tasks ) And... Aagh fuck it. .. its a long story and i don't feel like repeating it but
inshort :
got a task,
didn't understood it completely and thought its my task to figure it out, took a long time figuring it my self ,
techlead/designer somehow changed my and my sr. direction of flow even tho we were taking a different approach
I sit in a noisy and irritating place
Techlead/designer comes during the time when i am figuring out the solution(already overtime the one in point #2) nags for result.
I get in an argument with him, justifying for my time and arguing that it's difficult to think technical logics for that design
( truth be told, it WAS a difficult logic which he thought was too easy. It consisted of 3 variables and 8 states we were doing different works for 4 of them and rejecting 2 and ... I don't know, i had got that wrong . But that shouldn't had been my problem to solve. I should have gone to my senior and didn't get into argument with tech lead ). It think i might have offended him too.
After he left, i am so angry on him that after sometime my senior comes and i misbehave with him. He just asks to meet me before i go, and i do so. During the meeting we discuss this whole fuck up and how many times i showed him my ego and indiscipline. And then i realise what a fuckup i did due to my ego and lack of asking, blindly following my own over confidence and blindly following or arguing with others.
Fuck fuck fuck6 -
So I'm on vacation right now to visit family. I received an email from the head of department that, due to our department getting 7 new hires in one day, the seating arrangement has been changed.
My new seat is next to this one developer who's old enough to be my dad. He's a very nice guy and all, but the problem is he burps ALL. THE. TIME. I've never met anybody more gassy. His burps don't stink, thank God, but they're loud enough that it's seriously jarring.
You know how us devs can be completely in the zone until some marketing dickbag taps you on the shoulder and asks you to check your email or help with something that is absolutely not your job and you completely lose all focus and have to start over? Its exactly like that, except it happens every 10 minutes.
Another thing is, my back is now facing away from the wall, towards the rest of the office. The nearest section to mine is management. That means that anybody, including the CEO, can walk up right behind me and see what I'm doing at all times.
I really hate that. Id much rather be next to the wall to have some sort of privacy. Somehow sitting next to burpy guy is still the thing I'm most annoyed about though.
I tried to ask for a different seat, but my manager effectively said that I have no choice but to sit there because that guy is part of my team, and teammates should sit together. He forgot about the fact that, while the work him and I do is indeed related, I've been working on a solo project for the past few months and I don't need to be next to anybody in particular because I'm the only one working on this thing. Theoretically, I could sit in the toilet with my laptop and get my work done just fine. Maybe when I talk to him face to face in the office I can convince him to have some mercy on me.
The bright side is I'm very excited about meeting those 7 new hires I mentioned. They seem to be smart, capable people so I look forward to working with them and learning from them. Every cloud has a silver lining. 😊7 -
So ok here it is, as asked in the comments.
Setting: customer (huge electronics chain) wants a huge migration from custom software to SAP erp, hybris commere for b2b and ... azure cloud
Timeframe: ~10 months….
My colleague and me had the glorious task to make the evaluation result of the B2B approval process (like you can only buy up till € 1000, then someone has to approve) available in the cart view, not just the end of the checkout. Well I though, easy, we have the results, just put them in the cart … hmm :-\
The whole thing is that the the storefront - called accelerator (although it should rather be called decelerator) is a 10-year old (looking) buggy interface, that promises to the customers, that it solves all their problems and just needs some minor customization. Fact is, it’s an abomination, which makes us spend 2 months in every project to „ripp it apart“ and fix/repair/rebuild major functionality (which changes every 6 months because of „updates“.
After a week of reading the scarce (aka non-existing) docs and decompiling and debugging hybris code, we found out (besides dozends of bugs) that this is not going to be easy. The domain model is fucked up - both CartModel and OrderModel extend AbstractOrderModel. Though we only need functionality that is in the AbstractOrderModel, the hybris guys decided (for an unknown reason) to use OrderModel in every single fucking method (about 30 nested calls ….). So what shall we do, we don’t have an order yet, only a cart. Fuck lets fake an order, push it through use the results and dismiss the order … good idea!? BAD IDEA (don’t ask …). So after a week or two we changed our strategy: create duplicate interface for nearly all (spring) services with changed method signatures that override the hybris beans and allow to use CartModels (which is possible, because within the super methods, they actually „cast" it to AbstractOrderModel *facepalm*).
After about 2 months (2 people full time) we have a working „prototype“. It works with the default-sample-accelerator data. Unfortunately the customer wanted to have it’s own dateset in the system (what a shock). Well you guess it … everything collapsed. The way the customer wanted to "have it working“ was just incompatible with the way hybris wants it (yeah yeah SAP, hybris is sooo customizable …). Well we basically had to rewrite everything again.
Just in case your wondering … the requirements were clear in the beginning (stick to the standard! [configuration/functinonality]). Well, then the customer found out that this is shit … and well …
So some months later, next big thing. I was appointed technical sublead (is that a word)/sub pm for the topics‚delivery service‘ (cart, delivery time calculation, u name it) and customerregistration - a reward for my great work with the b2b approval process???
Customer's office: 20+ people, mostly SAP related, a few c# guys, and drumrole .... the main (external) overall superhero ‚im the greates and ur shit‘ architect.
Aberage age 45+, me - the ‚hybris guy’ (he really just called me that all the time), age 32.
He powerpoints his „ tables" and other weird out of this world stuff on the wall, talks and talks. Everyone is in awe (or fear?). Everything he says is just bullshit and I see it in the eyes of the others. Finally the hybris guy interrups him, as he explains the overall architecture (which is just wrong) and points out how it should be (according to my docs which very more up to date. From now on he didn't just "not like" me anymore. (good first day)
I remember the looks of the other guys - they were releaved that someone pointed that out - saved the weeks of useless work ...
Instead of talking the customer's tongue he just spoke gibberish SAP … arg (common in SAP land as I had to learn the hard way).
Outcome of about (useless) 5 meetings later: we are going to blow out data from informatica to sap to azure to datahub to hybris ... hmpf needless to say its fucking super slow.
But who cares, I‘ll get my own rest endpoint that‘ll do all I need.
First try: error 500, 2. try: 20 seconds later, error message in html, content type json, a few days later the c# guy manages to deliver a kinda working still slow service, only the results are wrong, customer blames the hybris team, hmm we r just using their fucking results ...
The sap guys (customer service) just don't seem to be able to activate/configure the OOTB odata service, so I was told)
Several email rounds, meetings later, about 2 months, still no working hybris integration (all my emails with detailed checklists for every participent and deadlines were unanswered/ignored or answered with unrelated stuff). Customer pissed at us (god knows why, I tried, I really did!). So I decide to fly up there to handle it all by myself16 -
A few days ago Aruba Cloud terminated my VPS's without notice (shortly after my previous rant about email spam). The reason behind it is rather mundane - while slightly tipsy I wanted to send some traffic back to those Chinese smtp-shop assholes.
Around half an hour later I found that e1.nixmagic.com had lost its network link. I logged into the admin panel at Aruba and connected to the recovery console. In the kernel log there was a mention of the main network link being unresponsive. Apparently Aruba Cloud's automated systems had cut it off.
Shortly afterwards I got an email about the suspension, requested that I get back to them within 72 hours.. despite the email being from a noreply address. Big brain right there.
Now one server wasn't yet a reason to consider this a major outage. I did have 3 edge nodes, all of which had equal duties and importance in the network. However an hour later I found that Aruba had also shut down the other 2 instances, despite those doing nothing wrong. Another hour later I found my account limited, unable to login to the admin panel. Oh and did I mention that for anything in that admin panel, you have to login to the customer area first? And that the account ID used to login there is more secure than the password? Yeah their password security is that good. Normally my passwords would be 64 random characters.. not there.
So with all my servers now gone, I immediately considered it an emergency. Aruba's employees had already left the office, and wouldn't get back to me until the next day (on-call be damned I guess?). So I had to immediately pull an all-nighter and deploy new servers elsewhere and move my DNS records to those ASAP. For that I chose Hetzner.
Now at Hetzner I was actually very pleasantly surprised at just how clean the interface was, how it puts the project front and center in everything, and just tells you "this is what this is and what it does", nothing else. Despite being a sysadmin myself, I find the hosting part of it insignificant. The project - the application that is to be hosted - that's what's important. Administration of a datacenter on the other hand is background stuff. Aruba's interface is very cluttered, on Hetzner it's super clean. Night and day difference.
Oh and the specs are better for the same price, the password security is actually decent, and the servers are already up despite me not having paid for anything yet. That's incredible if you ask me.. they actually trust a new customer to pay the bills afterwards. How about you Aruba Cloud? Oh yeah.. too much to ask for right. Even the network isn't something you can trust a long-time customer of yours with.
So everything has been set up again now, and there are some things I would like to stress about hosting providers.
You don't own the hardware. While you do have root access, you don't have hardware access at all. Remember that therefore you can't store anything on it that you can't afford to lose, have stolen, or otherwise compromised. This is something I kept in mind when I made my servers. The edge nodes do nothing but reverse proxying the services from my LXC containers at home. Therefore the edge nodes could go down, while the worker nodes still kept running. All that was necessary was a new set of reverse proxies. On the other hand, if e.g. my Gitea server were to be hosted directly on those VPS's, losing that would've been devastating. All my configs, projects, mirrors and shit are hosted there.
Also remember that your hosting provider can terminate you at any time, for any reason. Server redundancy is not enough. If you can afford multiple redundant servers, get them at different hosting providers. I've looked at Aruba Cloud's Terms of Use and this is indeed something they were legally allowed to do. Any reason, any time, no notice. They covered all their bases. Make sure you do too, and hope that you'll never need it.
Oh, right - this is a rant - Aruba Cloud you are a bunch of assholes. Kindly take a 1Gbps DDoS attack up your ass in exchange for that termination without notice, will you?5 -
Hey everyone, cozyplanes here with another quick excel prank i thought of.
It is called TEEST, and the technique behind is simple, but interesting. Recommend taking a look, and pranking with your friends.
The following is the README of TEEST (Text in Excel Every Single Time) in Github.
You can check the simple project here ( https://github.com/cozyplanes/teest )
Disclaimer: Do not use or modify neither the program or the source code to make software violating the law.
### How do I use it?
1. Head to https://github.com/cozyplanes/teest and download the latest release `EXE` file.
1. Windows may warn you with the missing signature. The file is a DEBUG file, so there isn't a publisher signature. You can proceed downloading anyway since it has been virus checked by the developer.
2. Type the message you want to display in the textbox.
3. Click `Save text` button.
5. To check the file, click `Cancel` button in the opened popup dialog.
### What happens?
When an MS Excel file (`.xlsx`) has been opened, by using TEEST, two files gets opened.
1. The original file user opened
2. Excel file named `message.txt` with the custom message you have written.
`message.txt` excel file will open every single time a person opens a excel file.
*In some older versions of Excel, the message may overlap with the user opened file.*
### Why does this happen?
When MS Excel program is executed, it is programmed to check the files in the following 2 folders.
- `C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office[versionnumber]\XLSTART`
- `C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART`
In normal conditions, there is no file in those folders (or the folders doesn't exist at all) but when you use TEEST and click `Save text` button, it saves `message.txt` file in the folders above. From MS Excel is executed again, it will find out there is a file in the folders above, so it will show those text files in Excel.
### Where is this technique used?
There should be a lot of software using this trick, but it is widely known for ransomwares such as `GandCrab` and `TeslaCrypt` displaying decryption methods in MS Excel by this trick.
### How can I disable it?
1. Open TEEST again.
2. Click `Save text` button and click `Cancel` in the following popup.
3. Delete `message.txt` file in the opened explorer.
### LICENSE
This software is under the MIT License. Refer to the `LICENSE` file for more information.
### Contact
<cozyplanes@tuta.io>
Spam/Ads not allowed. Please only send questions or concerns about the software. It may take up to 48 hours to get a reply.13 -
This happened 3 years ago in my previous company. It was a small start up company and we worked on PHP stack. One of the its ex-founders had written Windows Mobile App which now had to be upgraded with new features. So we hired this new dot net guy. I always thought dot net guys were ELITE coders and was excited to see how they work.
While I played Xbox and had fun, our dot net guy stuck to his workstation furiously working. My boss who was casually strolling out of his office for a stretch saw dot net guy working hard and suggested we all developers should take him as an example.
20 days went by and each day the dot net guy did the same. He came, he silently worked on his workstation, he left in the evening. In those 20 days my boss asked twice to the dot net guy if he has finished features he was assigned but he said he did not. After a month when he said the same negative answer and had nothing to show for the work he has done he was fired.
I was so curious to see what code that ELITE coder had written for a month but could not deliver a feature(Maybe some error he could not fix?). So I open the code repo on which he worked and I see 30 commits from that guy to it. He had made a single commit each day(Fair enough he wants to commit everday before leaving). It was time to check his commit diffs to see his ELITE code. What do I find? In every fucking commit he either added a blank line to the DocBlock or removed the same. Nothing less nothing more! So much for the hyped not-so-ELITE dot net guy...1 -
Oh boy, finally something to rant about.
I got hired in a "small" company (not even 2000 people in it), then got "shipped" to a way bigger company. Basically, I work for this company (the french biggest internet / phone service provider) but in the name of my own. And this since last wednesday.
First off, I'm fucking stupid. After leaving the big company that I was in before, I swore to myself that from now on, I would work for smaller companies, mainly because I couldn't stand the inertia that big company have. You ask for something, you get it a month and a half after. The old company has about 6000 employees... This company has 98k people in it. Fuck. My. Life.
Now, to the rant: Orange (the company) decided that they had to move their office somewhere else. They set up a lot of things so that all we needed to do was to put things in boxes, to work somewhere else until next monday, then we could go to the new office on tuesday morning.
Keep in mind that I have been there for 8 days: I keep learning how they do their stuff. For example, if I need a specific docker image, I can't get it from the Docker Hub, the download will fail. However, if I hit an Orange subdomain's registry, I will get this image from a mirror. Because fuck logic.
When we join the company, they give us a Windows laptop ("yeaah we have useless but required Orange softwares that don't run on Linux" "Yeeaaah fuck you") that have a specific VPN allowing us to use the Orange network and, in theory, you can download docker images or clone orange repositories from that network.
In practice, you can simply just go fuck yourself. Why? Because whenever you want to curl, wget or pull anything (or even pip install), your connection keeps being shut down while it waits for the response's header.
The worst part? According to my (new) boss's evasive answers, the way to fix that works with glue, sticks and the power of the Force.
WHY THE FUCK DO YOU ENFORCE US A SHITTY OS FOR DEVELOPMENT, WHEN THE TOOLS YOU SHOVE IN IT WITH A FAKE SMILE DON'T EVEN WORK, AND WE HAVE TO HACK OUR WAY TO FUCKING WORK?6 -
So here's my problem. I've been employed at my current company for the last 12 months (next week is my 1 year anniversary) and I've never been as miserable in a development job as this.
I feel so upset and depressed about working in this company that getting out of bed and into the car to come here is soul draining. I used to spend hours in the evenings studying ways to improve my code, and was insanely passionate about the product, but all of this has been exterminated due to the following reasons.
Here's my problems with this place:
1 - Come May 2019 I'm relocating to Edinburgh, Scotland and my current workplace would not allow remote working despite working here for the past year in an office on my own with little interaction with anyone else in the company.
2 - There is zero professionalism in terms of work here, with there being no testing, no planning, no market research of ideas for revenue generation – nothing. This makes life incredibly stressful. This has led to countless situations where product A was expected, but product B was delivered (which then failed to generate revenue) as well as a huge amount of development time being wasted.
3 - I can’t work in a business that lives paycheck to paycheck. I’ve never been somewhere where the salary payment had to be delayed due to someone not paying us on time. My last paycheck was 4 days late.
4 - The management style is far too aggressive and emotion driven for me to be able to express my opinions without some sort of backlash.
5 - My opinions are usually completely smashed down and ignored, and no apology is offered when it turns out that they’re 100% correct in the coming months.
6 - I am due a substantial pay rise due to the increase of my skills, increase of experience, and the time of being in the company, and I think if the business cannot afford to pay £8 per month for email signatures, then I know it cannot afford to give me a pay rise.
7 - Despite having continuously delivered successful web development projects/tasks which have increased revenue, I never receive any form of thanks or recognition. It makes me feel like I am not cared about in this business in the slightest.
8 - The business fails to see potential and growth of its employees, and instead criticises based on past behaviour. 'Josh' (fake name) is a fine example of this. He was always slated by 'Tom' and 'Jerry' as being worthless, and lazy. I trained him in 2 weeks to perform some basic web development tasks using HTML, CSS, Git and SCSS, and he immediately saw his value outside of this company and left achieving a 5k pay rise during. He now works in an environment where he is constantly challenged and has reviews with his line manager monthly to praise him on his excellent work and diverse set of skills. This is not rocket science. This is how you keep employees motivated and happy.
9 - People in the business with the least or zero technical understanding or experience seem to be endlessly defining technical deadlines. This will always result in things going wrong. Before our mobile app development agency agreed on the user stories, they spent DAYS going through the specification with their developers to ensure they’re not going to over promise and under deliver.
10 - The fact that the concept of ‘stealing data’ from someone else’s website by scraping it daily for the information is not something this company is afraid to do, only further bolsters the fact that I do not want to work in such an unethical, pathetic organisation.
11 - I've been told that the MD of the company heard me on the phone to an agency (as a developer, I get calls almost every week), and that if I do it again, that the MD apparently said he would dock my pay for the time that I’m on the phone. Are you serious?! In what world is it okay for the MD of a company to threaten to punish their employees for thinking about leaving?! Why not make an attempt at nurturing them and trying to find out why they’re upset, and try to retain the talent.
Now... I REALLY want to leave immediately. Hand my notice in and fly off. I'll have 4 weeks notice to find a new role, and I'll be on garden leave effective immediately, but it's scary knowing that I may not find a role.
My situation is difficult as I can't start a new role unless it's remote or a local short term contract because my moving situation in May, and as a Junior to Mid Level developer, this isn't the easiest thing to do on the planet.
I've got a few interviews lined up (one of which was a final interview which I completed on Friday) but its still scary knowing that I may not find a new role within 4 weeks.
Advice? Thoughts? Criticisms?
Love you DevRant <33 -
I rarely tell this story because it's hard to believe and would show me in a bad light if people don't believe its details. I know there have been foolish moves from my part, and more stuff should have been agreed to in writing, and I did step into a legal grey area. However I am pleased with what I did and how it all turned out, and this is as close to the truth as possible without needing to explain too many details.
I was once a team lead in an outsourcing company. We had a flexible payment plan depending on results. That helped me motivate myself and my team. Things worked great.
But then the boss started acting like shit:
1. Flexible payment means minimum, right?
2. Promises are made to be broken, as long as your employees have hope and work overtime for a whole month just to finish an important project before schedule, right?
3. Who needs a good, comfortable, SAFE work environment when you can save 30$ on not buying a new crappy chair in place of the old broken crappy chair, if it can be maintained standing by just a bit of duct tape and careful balancing on it? It's not like that developer who earns 30$ per hour has anything else to think about than balancing on a broken chair, right?
I'm a very calm person at work. I never ever raised my voice at anyone for 10 years of my career. Except this situation. I pulled the boss out of the office so his secretary wouldn't hear what I had to say. I threw this everything into his face.
A guy from sales got out of the office to go to the bathroom, and when he heard me, he carefully snuck back into the office (I didn't see him. He told me this over a beer after he left).
Of course I quit on the spot, convinced most of my team members to leave (wasn't hard, I just had to offer a secure plan, which I did), and helped my team members to get good positions elsewhere, and assisted others in starting their own business, by stealing customers from this company (the asshole did not foresee this when he prepared the labour contracts), after he accused me of plagiarism (that I stole code from somewhere else) and used that excuse to not pay me what we agreed upon.
I didn't want litigation. I just used karma, while remaining in the legal realm.
Within a month after this, more than half of his company was gone, and he was left with only a fraction of the revenue he was making before, since the only ones left were people that did not produce value (sales that had nothing to sell, accounting that had nothing to account, etc.), and just one person maintaining one remaining contract that was bringing barely enough money to sustain half of these people.
Now I want to congratulate you for actually finishing reading this :)1 -
I think that two criterias are important:
- don't block my productivity
- author should have his userbase in mind
1) Some simple anti examples:
- Windows popping up a big fat blue screen screaming for updates. Like... Go suck some donkey balls you stupid shit that's totally irritating you arsehole.
- Graphical tools having no UI concept. E.g. Adobes PDF reader - which was minimalized in it's UI and it became just unbearable pain. When the concept is to castrate the user in it's abilities and call the concept intuitive, it's not a concept it's shit. Other examples are e.g. GEdit - which was severely massacred in Gnome 3 if I remember correctly (never touched Gnome ever again. I was really put off because their concept just alienated me)
- Having an UI concept but no consistency. Eg. looking at a lot of large web apps, especially Atlassian software.
Too many times I had e.g. a simple HTML form. In menu 1 you could use enter. In menu 2 Enter does not work. in another menu Enter works, but it doesn't submit the form it instead submits the whole page... Which can end in clusterfuck.
Yaaayyyy.
- Keyboard usage not possible at all.
It becomes a sad majority.... Pressing tab, not switching between form fields. Looking for keyboard shortcuts, not finding any. Yes, it's a graphical interface. But the charm of 16 bit interfaces (YES. I'm praising DOS interfaces) was that once you memorized the necessary keyboard strokes... You were faster than lightning. Ever seen e.g. a good pharmacist, receptionist or warehouse clerk... most of the software is completely based on short keyboard strokes, eg. for a receptionist at a doctor for the ICD code / pharmaceutical search et cetera.
- don't poop rainbows. I mean it.
I love colors. When they make sense. but when I use some software, e.g. netdata, I think an epilepsy warning would be fair. Too. Many. Neon. Colors. -.-
2) It should be obvious... But it's become a burden.
E.g. when asked for a release as there were some fixes... Don't point to the install from master script. Maybe you like it rolling release style - but don't enforce it please. It's hard to use SHA256 hash as a version number and shortening the hash might be a bad idea.
Don't start experiments. If it works - don't throw everything over board without good reasons. E.g. my previous example of GEdit: Turning a valuable text editor into a minimalistic unusable piece of crap and calling it a genius idea for the sake of simplicity... Nope. You murdered a successful product.
Gnome 3 felt like a complete experiment and judging from the last years of changes in the news it was an rather unsuccessful one... As they gave up quite a few of their ideas.
When doing design stuff or other big changes make it a community event or at least put a poll up on the github page. Even If it's an small user base, listen to them instead of just randomly fucking them over.
--
One of my favorite projects is a texteditor called Kate from KDE.
It has a ton of features, could even be seen as a small IDE. The reason I love it because one of the original authors still cares for his creation and ... It never failed me. I use Kate since over 20 years now I think... Oo
Another example is the git cli. It's simple and yet powerful. git add -i is e.g. a thing I really really really love. (memorize the keyboard shortcuts and you'll chunk up large commits faster than flash.
Curl. Yes. The (http) download tool. It's author still cares. It's another tool I use since 20 years. And it has given me a deep insight of how HTTP worked, new protocols and again. It never failed me. It is such a fucking versatile thing. TLS debugging / performance measurements / what the frigging fuck is going on here. Take curl. Find it out.
My worst enemies....
Git based clients. I just hate them. Mostly because they fill the niche of explaining things (good) but completely nuke the learning of git (very bad). You can do any git action without understanding what you do and even worse... They encourage bad workflows.
I've seen great devs completely fucking up git and crying because they had really no fucking clue what git actually does. The UI lead them on the worst and darkest path imaginable. :(
Atlassian products. On the one hand... They're not total shit. But the mass of bugs and the complete lack of interest of Atlassian towards their customers and the cloud movement.... Ouch. Just ouch.
I had to deal with a lot of completely borked up instances and could trace it back to a bug tracking entry / atlassian, 2 - 3 years old with the comment: vote for this, we'll work on a Bugfix. Go fuck yourself you pisswads.
Microsoft Office / Windows. Oh boy.
I could fill entire days of monologues.
It's bad, hmkay?
XEN.
This is not bad.
This is more like kill it before it lays eggs.
The deeper I got into XEN, the more I wanted to lay in a bathtub full of acid to scrub of the feelings of shame... How could anyone call this good?!?????4 -
Just had a junior/mid dev who worked in our company for around 3 months quit because in his words "he is unable to win any argument".
I saw his comments in MR's and other seniors were just being meticulous. Had he compromised a little or atleast got to knew the devs in person and took this offline most of his problems would have been resolved. Never scheduled any meetings before implementing stuff, he just followed his gut and then shot himself in the foot plenty of times.
Personally I think it wasnt even a skill issue but a communication issue. We have a relaxed culture where u can work in the office or fully remotely so the guy came in on his first day, picked up his laptop and we never saw him. Tried to invite him for an afterwork beer or some activities, he never accepted.
If he had met the devs in person he would have seen that:
1. One guy has OCD and he never agrees with anyone but if theres a timeline hes able to make compromises and hes actually chill
2. Second guy is also a perfectionist but has mentor capabilities and you can always go to him about anything and he helps to mediate with the first guy. You can run everything through this guy and he will never give you shit
3. Third guy in the team is just a junior hotshot whos a bit insecure and disagrees in comments just because he can. But he can be dealt with very quickly with showing a little backbone.
Like seriously these are just people that you can deal very easily when u know their personalities. Instead he saw everyone in company as these 2D robots that he wasnt able to win his arguments against.
Communication shouldnt happen only in standups and MR comment section. U have to learn to deal with people otherwise u will burn urself out like this guy and quit.11 -
maybe I'm being picky, but it bothers me when an office has no natural sunlight. I'm already working 40h/week, and i won't even see the light of day. i feel completely alienated from life.7
-
Last year I changed jobs from a large multi-national to a small local agency (which happens to be run by friends of mine).
One of the reasons for doing this was that my work involved more office politics than *actual* software development, and had just plain stopped being fun.
Now, I am having fun again! An example?
For one of our clients we have to connect to (a lot) of third-party APIs. Often even SOAP APIs!
Now I hear you protest "But that is no fun at all! SOAP APIS SUCK!" Which is true, more often than not. 😔
BUT! My friend started an internal API-SNAFU Trello board. Every time you get bitten in the ass by some ill conceived fuck-up of an API, you get to add your complaint to the board.
Beside giving as something to reciprocally rant about, the board also serves a serious function: depending on the amount of fuck-ups an API has been known to make, the price for working with that API will go up.
Who said it doesn't pay to complain? 😀1 -
My coleague's story
- before leaving after long day at the office final look at support cases (after official support hours)
- sev1 ticket logged an hour ago, noone called us (although should have; after support hours)
- angry manager calls and demands to get in touch with the client immediately (we're already after support hours, FTS should pick the case, not us)
- we reach out. Customer has business-impacting case
- after initial info gathering: some cert got expired, they got a new one and placed it in the app's directory. The app still does not work
- the first question we ask: "are you sure you have placed it in the right directory?"
- "yes, we are sure. No problems there" - answers a voice with indian accent
- noone finds the root cause for hours.
- It's already 1am
- someone from client's specialists comes up with an idea: "are we sure the cert is in the right place? Let's try to move it to the same directory the old one was in the first place"
- .................................................
- production is working again
- "Why didn't anyone from support suggest this?!?!"
- .................................................
- 2am. Case solved, manager is informed everything's allright now.
- In the morning we get yelled at by the manager bcz we supposedly missed a sev1 ticket and were incompetent during the conf. call
This reminds me why I stay away from support. And why I started hating people. And why I do not work with indians (our ways are too different for me to stay sane and not to kill anyone).3 -
Alright... how the FUCK is an IP address considered personal data by GDPR????
Fucking boomers don't even know what an IP is. Guess what, every website you've ever been to has your IP! It's in your router, your fucking ISP's registry, and in every DNS server within 1000 miles of you!
Imagine thinking your IP gives up private information, god, just fuck me, I hate all of it, idiotic fools fumbling around with shit they don't understand.
...WKO making every developer's life a living nightmare because fucking GOOGLE FONTS stores a copy of your IP for their stupid analytics. You know what? Just don't use the internet either, that needs your IP too. In fact, don't pay taxes either, the tax office has a copy of your address, that's pretty personal information if you ask me! Just live in the woods and survive with the wolves.
I already know the future 'resolution' to this one - store fonts locally, resolve this dangerous "issue"... "waaaahhh fullStackClown! the site is slower now!!!"
...an infinite circle of clownshipness continues...
tune in next week as the world continues to approach it's circus fate!53 -
Elon musk has shown himself to be a terrible person, a worse manager and someone who hasn't a clue of what a code review is. A summarily fires so many people that he can't find someone to open the doors for his big in person meeting or the vet the badges. He offers 3 months termination pay or you can work 12 hours a day 7 days a week hardcore. But none of the payroll people are around anymore either. Critical subsystems have not a single engineer left to work on them. He's paranoid that employees will sabotage the software. But I think he's doing such a good job it would be impossible to tell that anyone else was helping him.
An engineer wrote a prescient seven page report listing problems ahead including user verification. So Elon twit-fired him.
Also entirely predictable is the stress that the world cup will put on the system beginning today, I believe. He doesn't "like" microservices.
I work for the psychiatrist once who barely needed to sleep. Maybe Elon can function with 12-hour days week in week out. But it's cool to think you're going to squeeze substantially more work out of people by doubling their hours. More likely you will more than double their errors and what will that do to you budget? 50 years ago IBM determined that the best way to improve programmer productivity was to give each one their own office.
I can't believe he's whining over spending 13 million dollars a year on food. That is so far from being a strategic item. Soapbox out.28 -
I fucking hate morning people like the one in the story below!
Before we begin story time I want to acknowledge some things.
This is largely a case of a person having a lack of awareness and giving in to their base instincts (which are wrong).
People all tend to think that everyone else is like them (most children below a certain age cannot make this distinction and many adults never learn it either).
To take it a step further, anyone who isn't just like them is Lazy/Bad/An Asshole/etc.
FUCK THOSE PEOPLE
Now it's story time...
---------
I worked for a startup. We used a modified SCRUM, and we had standups every day @ 10 AM, the other team had then at 11:30 AM.
We get a new product owner. He is a morning person. But basically, he is a day-trader so he wakes up at 5 AM to trade and is in the office by 8 AM every day.
The problem is, he uses this as a reason to leave every day at 3 PM when EVERY other member of the team is there until at least 5 PM.
So he says one day (when I am not there) that we are moving our standups to 8:30 AM...
"Because he wants to make more use of the time and wants to get more done!"
So the next day a bunch of us miss this standup, the second day I was there in time but instead of going to the standup I sent them a picture of myself sitting in a coffee shop across the street with a message saying...
"I will be holding a meeting today at 10 AM, I expect EVERYONE to be there. If anyone on our team is absent then we will sit there and that absent person will be responsible for the time we waste waiting for them."
10 AM rolls around and the Product Owner is nowhere to be seen. The team starts complaining about the early standup and I tell them that this meeting is for me to take care of it. I tell them to sit silently and let me handle it.
We all message the PO saying the same thing...
"Come to the meeting, You are wasting our time!!!"
So he shows up at 10:20 AM and it begins.
(Now I'm going to do this as a conversation)
PO: "So I assume this is about the standup?..."
ME: "Feel free to ramble on as long as you want, you have already wasted 20 minutes of our time so we will sit here quietly and wait for you to decide you are ready to stop wasting our time with your ramblings. That's fine."
<PO then shuts up in disbelief>
ME: "So are you finished?"
PO: ...
ME: "I'm expecting an answer PO!"
PO: Yes, for now.
ME: I am moving our standups to 5 PM, end of discussion.
PO: Becuase your too lazy to be here by 8 AM?
<I expected this>
ME: No because I'm an asshole who expect everyone to conform to my schedule.
PO: ..., Well, I am not here at 5 PM.
ME: Sounds like your too "lazy" be here at 5 PM, eh?
PO: I have other things I do then.
ME: Ah, now the truth comes out. You care more about your life than our business. That's unacceptable! I personally don't care what you want to do. The fact is that we are working here and every day we end up having PO questions that need to and can't be answered because you are not here.
PO: <To the team> The standup is still at 8:30 AM.
ME: <To the team> The standup is at 5 PM. End of story. And from now on whenever we have questions before 5 for PO and he is not here we will be recording it and putting it in his report.
Then I walk away.
That day we held a standup at 5 PM. He wasn't there. He held a standup at 8:30 AM and he didn't even show up. He stayed home a video in. He then arrived in the office and said...
PO: Since no one was in the standup today we will be moving it back to 10 AM.
ME: Since PO has seen the selfishness of his ways, We will be moving the standup from 5 PM back to 10 AM.
FUCK THOSE PEOPLE6 -
Stories from Gary #000
Short background info:
So I'm working as a game dev for 3 years now and by now I can say that I've seen some shit. Mostly because of one of our game designers, let's call him Gary.
So Gary, from here on called GDG (Game Designer Gary), is a regular game designer (GD). His job is to come up with new game ideas, commission the assets, make sure that translations are done, etc. - simply put, he has to get a lot of shit together before we can start working on a new game.
Would be no problem at all if GDG wasn't lazy as shit and would work for once in his life. No dev really wants to work with him anymore, since he's known for calling a game or any issue "ready for development" even if half the assets or specs are still missing.
Let's move on to a particular situation that happened a couple of months ago.
I had an issue assigned to me, which was about implementing the translations for a new game. As I read the issue and checked if everything I needed was given, I noticed that the most important part was in fact missing - the keywords for the translations.
-.-
So, I called GDG and asked where I could find the keywords, to which he responded "Oh, I'm working on them right now... and by the way I got a weird bug with the translation program. Can you come check it out?". Sigh. I went over to his office, rambling about how I should be able to help him with a program I rarely use and which was written ages ago.
As soon as GDG saw me coming roundbthe corner, he started explaining how the keywords aren't ready yet, since the program to create translations and their keywords won't let him name a translation.
"I can create new translations, but I can't assign a keyword to them."
"Okay, show me what you did", I told him, eager to leave.
He started to type the keyword, which turned out to be huge ass long and immediately I noticed a little counter, like "x/50", directly beneath the text field started to count up with every new character GDG typed. See where I'm going with this? HE WASNT ABLE TO RENAME A TRANSLATION BECAUSE HE WAS TOO LAZY TO FUCKING READ AND CONCENTRATE FOR ONCE. Sorry for that, but even thinking about it gets me angry again.
To some this might sound like nothing, but it really got to me at this point. Maybe it will become more understandable as I post more GDG stories.
tl;dr: A 40 something year old man, who's been working in his job for over 10 years wasn't able to use a program which he daily uses and asks me for help, only to find out he's a complete dipshit.4 -
I think I’ve applied to 5 jobs that show up as “remote” now only to get halfway through a screening call and find out “oh, we’re looking for people in Albuquerque”.
Are my expectations out of whack? If you’re looking for someone in your city, you’re not looking for someone remote. You’re looking for a local worker who just has an office that’s not on your balance sheet.
Is it semantics?
Am *I* the bastard?5 -
*sigh*
So we have this supervisor that I’ve mentioned before in my previous rant(read if interested). This man has been a pain to my side since I started working here. He does a phenomenally good job at being a douche bag and he has the need to resort to screaming and yelling if you happen to disagree with his methodology in any point of you. He likes to make fun of and be little you as well. Oh and I’ll mention he does it in front of all your co-workers. All bad habits and even less from some one in a supervisor position.
I think I’m a pretty reasonable guy, I try to get my work done only asking for help when absolutely necessary ie idk what’s going on or I’m stuck. This guy has the bad habit of breathing over your shoulder while you’re working......... Anyway I hit a breaking point today and waited til he was in his office to confront him.
I asked to walk in politely and asked if I could close the door it was a personal matter. After I sat down and vented to him explaining that what he’s doing with this egotistical persona of his is wrong and it’s creating an environment that cause everyone to feel like shit thus cause lowered work efficiency. I told him that belittling and offending is a bad tactic and that we are grown ass adults. It shouldn’t be necessary for you to yell or make fun of me, shit if I wanted to eat yelled at I’d go home to my father. He’s allowed this guy is not.
Well cutting it short I finished the convo and he didn’t say much just agreed with some points and stressed others that would be too much to mention. I’m not dumb either I recorded the convo just in case he tries to pull something. But I get the feeling like this is gonna turn out really well or it’s gonna go south.
Just wanted to rant to the rantFam first.
I’m done now.6 -
Another oldie - apologies if it has been done before.
So there were these two developers in a light aircraft looking to land, but they were completely fog bound and had no clue where they were (I said it was an oldie - no GPS).
So they flew around for a while, getting lower and lower hoping to see a landmark, when they flew past this office building.
As they went by, they saw a single light on in one of the windows, so they flew around again and attracted the guy's attention.
On the next loop around, the pilot shouted "WHERE ARE WE?"
Then on the next loop around, the guy in the office shouted back "YOU'RE IN AN AIRPLANE".
They looped around again, and the pilot shouted "THANKS!" and set course south west for 15 miles and made a perfect touchdown at Seattle airport.
Hi passenger looked at him and said "How did you do that??"
He said "Quite simple really. I asked that guy a perfectly reasonable question, and got an answer that was 100% correct, but totally useless, so I deduced that must be Microsoft, and I knew that the airport is 15 miles to the south west"2 -
TL;DR Dear boss, firstly, you always get someone to review anything important done by a fucking intern.
Secondly, you do not give access to your fucking client's production server to an intern.
Thirdly, you don't ask your fucking intern to test the intern's work that has not been reviewed by anyone directly on your client's fucking production server.
Last week, the boss and one of the lead devs (the only guy with some serious knowledge about systems and networking) decided to give me (an intern who barely has any work experience) the task of fixing or finding an alternate solution to allowing their support team access to their client machines. Currently they used a reverse SSH tunnel and an intermediary VH but for some reason, that was very unreliable in terms of availability. I suggested using OpenVPN and explained how it would work. Seemed to be a far better idea and they accepted. After several days of working through documentations and guides and everything, I figured out how OpenVPN works and managed to deploy a TEST server and successfully test remote access using two VMs. On seeing my tests, the boss told me that he wanted to test it on the client network. I agreed. Today he comes to me and he tells me to prepare testing for tomorrow and that the client technician is going to give me access to one of their boxes. And then he adds, "It's a working prod server. We'll see if we can make it work on that" and left. I gaped at him for a while and asked another dev guy in the room if what I heard was right. He confirmed. Turns out, the lead dev and the boss's son (who also works here) had had a huge argument since morning on the same issue and finally the dev guy had washed it off his hands and declared that if anything goes wrong from testing it on production, it's entirely the boss's own fault. That's when the boss stepped in and approached me. I ran back to his office and began to explain why prod servers don't top the list of things you can fuck around with. But he simply silenced me saying, "What can go wrong?" and added, "You shouldn't stay still. You should keep moving". Okay, like firstly what the fuck and secondly, what the fuck?.
Even though OpenVPN client is not the scariest thing to install, tomorrow's going to be fun.4 -
!story
As is the case with many of you, I am also the de facto technology fixer for my family, and usually the first one they call when something goes wrong.
Usually it's a 'something wants to update, should I do it?' simple issue. Other times I have to remote connect to see why Word isn't uploading templates correctly or whatever.
Yesterday was different though.
Me: So whatcha need?
Mom: Well, my office has recently wanted me to be remote-capable in case they need me for something and they don't have the right people to fix it (she's been working at the same office for 20+ years and knows basically everything)
Me: Okay. So I guess they're setting up a VPN for this?
Mom: Yes. And I was calling because they might try and install it on my personal laptop and I wanted to know whether or not I should be concerned about our IT guys being able to look at or steal all my personal data.
I then proceeded to explain how a VPN works and that convincing her company to provide her with a separate computer would be the safest option and whatnot. But I was honestly really surprised that she was concerned to begin with.
For a while now, it seems there's been one story after another of companies being irresponsible with their customer's data, with little to no reprocussion or action that could really make a difference.
But as a direct result, we're now getting to the point where even the tech illiterate are becoming more aware of how this is effecting them.
It gave me hope for the future in an industry where many times there is very little. And I hope it does for you as well.
Thanks, mom. I'm proud of you.2 -
I am a junior web developer, currently working in my first job for a small company, I was hired because I have an interest in meteor and modern web dev.
When I say small I mean I am the only full time js dev.
So the project we are working (my first ever professional project from start to finish) is a travel booking web app (being a little vague, for the sake of privacy). I am the lead developer, as a new programmer of a project that is far from trivial. There are no other javascript devs in office, no sort of code review. We have an outsourced dev but as I got in a flow with one dev my boss supposedly told him to do it part time (without discussing with me), but haven't heard anything from him, so assuming he's just disappeared (probably annoyed at being treated like a commodity).
Boss has set up the stages, and forces me to move on to the next stage before that stage has been finished. I will have to go back over the whole thing to finish things off.
He will only hire cheap juniors, one front end guy with barely any experience is styling the site.
He is used to churning out WordPress and Magento sites.
Wish I had a senior I could learn off.
I want to stick at this project and see it through, but i can only see it ending in a train wreck.
At the same time I want out, I want to work under a better team with senior programmers and better code review.
I just have to do my best and see how it goes I guess6 -
With all M$ buying GitHub thing i really hope some good things will come out of it like:
- Better version control inside Visual Studio.
- Microsoft making its projects more open source, since it now has an official platform for itself.
- Faster and better service from GitHub since there is now a much bigger budget for servers and other things.
But there are some things that i think are worth thinking about:
- Will this be another one of Microsoft's paid services?
- Will there be "intergration" into the Office apps along Skype, Word and others?
- Will the privacy policy change?
Most likely, none of the bad things happen but me being paranoid as i am, I'd prepare. I always try to be optimistic and just ignore it for now until Microsoft start doing things.1 -
It’s been so long since I posted but this time it’s juicy again.
I got a coworker, no prio experience but already a year and few months into the job. He’s bad.
Magnitudes of bad!
We’re trying to teach him but to no avail. Everything about him sucks, major ballsack to be exact.
His attitude is to avoid every task, finishes nothing and then starts something new.
„Did you do X like we told you to?“
„No I started on Y, because I thought it [looks better, seems more interesting, thought that X is useless…]“
When you ask him much is done he is always „almost“ finished and needs your help on the „last 5-10%“. Yeah fuck that!
But that guy has a talent, his talent is to always give you technically correct answers which actually are complete bullshit.
„What are you doing at your job?“
„Staring at a screen and typing things.“ dude what?
That guy used the excuse „I can’t do maths“ on everything.
For an exam he had to calculate how long it would take to reach a certain amount if you would get some interest in that every year.
He asked the teacher for the formula. During the exam! And when the teacher didn’t want to give it to him he wrote plainly „can’t do maths“ on the paper and left
His code is of a quality as if he would write his first line in a week and then has the audacity to blame me and the colleagues for not explaining it right.
Ok you might think now we’re teaching him bad, or are too impatient. But honestly if you have to explain how to do a for loop for over about 15 months and get that attitude I think you get the right to be angry. I don’t mind explaining on how things work, even for the hundredth time, but then don’t tell me you understood, go behind my back, complain at a colleague how bad I explained, get explained by him and then do it again until you whored yourself through the whole staff!
It’s like he got the mind swiper from Men in black at home. Every day he hits the reset button.
He had a week of just changing indentation on a html file. Why? Because he wanted to find his style.
Yeah his style
if(a==b){
console.log(a);
}
else {
console.log(b)
}
And to produce code like that it takes him atleast 4 hours of trial and error.
And at the same time he goes arround and boasts what a super good programmer he his and that he can do some project work for them.
How we found out? Because he started working in those projects during work time at the office and asked us how to do things.
And he does so like a complete bastard!
Broken sql query? “No that query is perfect as it is, it’s supposed to show no results! But, just in theory, if I wanted to show some results, what would I need to change?”
I’m so mad about it and pissed on a personal level because he goes around blames everyone and the world for his short comings5 -
Excuse me?!
You called me to encode this compliance document?
And I'll take care of the contents?
Just follow the format?
And must be submitted to central office/agency? Deadline is today?
Wait, do you know what time is it? It's fvcking 11:40AM PHT and office is only until 5PM.
I'm an IT guy. Your only developer, sysad, and you want me to do a management document? Am I regular like you? Wait, is that even a technical document? Wtf!
I was in the middle of coding and checking our server status when this high-rank employee from the Admin office called me and was told to do this compliance document what has nothing to do with me or even our IT unit. So yeah, this is how crazy some government office work here in PH.2 -
Nginx office being raided by police over copyright claims
https://zdnet.com/article/...
Rambler's official response to the Nginx search request:
Is it true that searches are related to a statement by Rambler Group?
We found that the exclusive right of the Rambler Internet Holding company to the NGINX web server was violated as a result of the actions of third parties. In this regard, Rambler Internet Holding has ceded the right to file claims and claims related to violation of rights to NGINX to Lynwood Investments CY Ltd, which has the necessary competencies to restore justice in the issue of ownership of rights. We do not comment on the merits of this case.
What exactly is the violation of the rights of the Rambler Group referred to in the statement?
We believe that the rights to NGINX belong to the Rambler Internet Holding company, which is part of the Rambler Group. NGINX is an official work, the development of which since the beginning of the 2000s in the framework of labor relations with Rambler was done by Igor Sysoev, therefore any use of this program without the consent of the Rambler Group is a violation of the exclusive right.
Google translation from https://t.me/thebell_io/431115 -
Story Time!
Tittle: About Larry.
Fun Game: Tell me if / when in this story you know the plot twist.
Setting: Years ago, non coding job.
I work with Larry a lot, Larry works remote. In technical terms Larry is senior to me and I escalate some technical issues that get assigned to Larry. I've never met Larry in person.
Larry can be hard to work with, but he's plenty good at his job and I don't mind his prickly side. Sometimes it takes telling Larry something a few times before it sinks it, but that's not a big deal. Sometimes it seems like Larry doesn't remember his cases entirely, but he has a lot of cases. Also Larry has good reason for how he works considering the land of scubs who usually escalate to him without any thought / effort.
Larry's escalation team is short staffed and they're trying to hire folks, but that's been like that forever.
So one day I get an email that Larry is going to be out of the office for a few weeks. Nothing unusual there.
My current case that I share with Larry sort of floats in limbo for a while. The customer is kinda slow to respond anyhow and there's nothing that I need Larry for.
Finally I get automated notice that my case has had a new escalation engineer. Laura. Laura is much more positive and happy compared to Larry. Understandably Laura isn't up to date on the case so we go back and forth with some emails and notes in the case.
The case is moving along just fine, we're making progress, but it's slow because of the customer's testing procedures. Then we hit a point where this customer's management pushes on sales for a solution (this customer's management is known for doing this rando like for no reason).
Down the management chain it goes and everyone wants a big conference call to get everyone up to date / discuss next steps (no big deal).
Now I really don't want to do this with Laura and throw her into the deep end with this customer, she doesn't have the background and I'd rather do this call with Larry & Me & Laura. Also according to the original email Larry is due back soon.
I start writing an email to Laura about "Let's try to schedule this for when Larry gets back."
Then I stop ... I don't really know why I stop but when it is a "political case" I want some buy in on next steps from management so I go talk to my manager.
-Plot Twist Incoming-
Long story short, my manager says:
"Laura IS Larry..."
O
M
G
I had no idea. Nobody told me, nobody told ANYBODY, (except a couple managers).
Back up a few months Larry apparently went to his managers and told them he was going to transition, surgery and all, in a few months.
Managers wondering how to address this went to HR and some new hire very young to be a manager HR manager drone logiced out in her bonkers head that "Well it shouldn't matter so don't tell anyone."
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!!??
Thank god I didn't send that email...
I did send an email to Laura explaining that I had no idea and hoped I didn't say anything stupid. She was very nice about it and said it was all good.
After that incident made the management rounds (management was already fuming about being told not to tell anyone) things came to another critical point.
Laura was going to visit the company HQ. Laura had been there before, as Larry, everyone knew her as Larry... nobody (outside some managers) knew Laura was Larry either. With nobody knowing shit Laura was going to walk in and meet everyone ...
One manager at HQ finally rebelled and held a meeting to tell his people. He didn't want Laura walking in and someone confused, thinking it was a joke or something horrible happening.
HR found out and went ballistic. They were on a rampage about this other manager, they wanted to interview me about how I found out. I told HR to schedule their meeting through my manager (I knew they didn't want my manager to know they were sniffing around).
Finally the VP in our department called up the HR head and asked WTF was going on / kind of idiots they had over there (word has it legal and the CEO were on the call too).
HR had a change in leadership and then a couple weeks later there were department wide meetings on how to handle such situations and etc.27 -
We are 2 people working as remote android devs for this startup in another country. 6 weeks ago a new person joined onsite to work directly in startup HQ. I'l refer to him as an newguy.
Last week we started new sprint (of 2 weeks) to work on a new feature.
Newguy was responsible for gathering all the specs and planning, so this is how our sprint is going so far:
Day 1:
We have 10+ tickets in jira (tickets have only titles) no one knows what to do and we don't even have specification. I started pushing everybody onsite to get their shit together. We NEED UX/UI specs, we NEED backend to be ready, or at least start working paralelly so that once wer'e done with frontend backend would be ready. I mean cmon guys this feature is already 70% done on iOS, why cant you send us the specification?
Day 2:
We had a meeting on Zoom and talked about missing specification and project manager promised to send us the specs. Meanwhile the idea of feature became clearer so I agreed with the newguy to start researching about best way to implement our solution.
Day 3:
We received the specifications. I provided my research for the feature to the newguy. Turns out the he knew about specification 4-5 days before.
Instead of sharing information with us, he decided to create his own library to do what we want to do and blatantly rejected my research input.
Now he showed his implementaton (which is shit by the way) and presents it as the only way to proceed forward. He offers for us to work paralelly with him on this (basically he wants to write library alone, and we are supposed to somehow implement and test it, but how the fuck we can implement if backend is not ready and library is just a bunch of empty interfaces at this point?)
I talked with one of the teamleads in the startup and told him that this is not the way things were being done here before and new guy is becoming a dictator.
Teamlead talked with new guy and found no issue. Basically newguy defended his sole decision by saying that he did research on his own, there are no libraries that do what we want and he knows better.
Teamlead tells me to STFU because new guy seems competent and he will be leading this feature. Basically from what I gathered teamlead doesn't give a single fuck and wants to delegate all project management to this new guy.
Day 5:
End of the week. New guy claims that his lib is done so we can start implementing properly. I tried implementing his lib but its fucked up and backend is still not ready.
Day 6:
Backend is still not ready, no one is doing anything just waiting for it to be ready.
Day 7 (Today):
Today(Backend is still not ready, no one is doing anything just waiting for it to be ready.
So what can I say? His plan was to probably prove his self worth and try to lead this feature by giving us information at last minute. At the point were we should start implementing instead of researching.
What happened? Motherfucker doesn't know shit about backend, has been notified about backend issues multiple times but his head was so deep up his ass with that new library of his that he delayed the rest of the team.
Result? 7 working days wasted. Out of 3 developers only 1 was actually working (and his fucked up code will have to be rewritten anyways). Only 50% of feature done. Motherfucker tells me that this is how we will work in the future, "paralelly". The fuck is this mate? If you would have worked on this feature alone you would have done it already now, but instead you wait until we remote devs will login and fetch you the test input and talk with backend guys for you? The fuck is wrong with you.
You fucking piece of shit, learn to plan and organize better if you want to lead the team. Now all that you are doing is wasting time, money and getting on everyboys nerves. Im tired of fucking spoon feeding you every day you needy scheming office politics playing piece of shit. Go back to your shithole country and let us work.
When I was responsible for sprint planning I figured out what to do before start of the sprint and remote devs were able to do week's work in 1-2 days and have rest of the week off. This is how it's supposed to be when you work with a remote team. Delegate them separate features, give them proper specs ahead and everyone's happy. Don't start working on frontend if you dont even fucking know when backend will be ready. It's fucking common sense.
Now I need to spoon feed this motherfucker who can't even get information while sitting on his ass onsite in HQ. Fucking hell.8 -
Ransomware has the effect to destroying data and my will to live.
I come in to work yesterday to see everyone panicking. We got hit by WannaCry. The boss is with IT dealing with it and sends all of us home. No biggie, since all of my work data is backed up on an offsite server.
I come back into work to still see everyone in a frenzy. I think they are still overreacting to the attack, so I go to my corner in the office. I boot up to see the Ubuntu logo, which is a huge problem, not for me of course, but for everyone else who can barely work Windows. I barge in on my boss and ask him why the fuck is Ubuntu on the PC's.
He replies, "I looked it up, Linux is not affected by viruses".
What the fuck is wrong with people? After I tell him to revert back to Windows because he's being a fucking retard, he goes ahead to send all of us home.
I can only hope he doesn't install Zorin or Elementary because I will quit.6 -
Today I took an empty Whoppers carton and put Hersheys kisses in there.
The shear hate and discontent has been a great source of entertainment for me and my office mate.
One guy picked up the carton, looked inside, and threw it down on the table and stormed out. He has been telling me to f-off since then.4 -
Remote work (for the software industry, at least) is PERFECT and I still haven't heard a single argument against it that could not be derived into one of the following explanations:
- the complainer is/has a terrible manager
- the complainer has a shitty house
- the complainer has a shitty family
- the complainer is a shitty person
Naturally I mean only real-adult healthy people who work in the software industry.
I will now list the complaints I have heard more often. All fit neatly in the categories above:
- "my family interrupts me a lot, require lots of attention and/or creates an environment I cannot work in" - in this case it is very irresponsible of the complainer to try and escape to an office. If the adults you live with cannot get by without you, how going to an office will help them? If you can't teach your children to behave, who will?
- "my house is noisy and/or uncomfortable" - move out! if you can go to the office, you can look for another place to live.
- "I need in person conversations to understand people / zoom meetings are a waste of time" - why? do you need the smell of other people to properly organize your thoughts? Yes, meetings are extra-shitty during the pandemic. But pandemics come and go and your terrible time management skills won't simply improve themselves. Learn to lead better meetings instead of blaming the medium.
- "I miss face-to-face interactions at work" - Those do not miss you. If you want to have personal conversations, do it *out of working hours* with consenting adults. If you want to have personal touch in work contexts, it is called "sexual harassment" and is a crime.
- "my employees / colleagues are not as effective without me breathing at their necks" - you are a terrible manager and leader if you can't inspire people in words only. Maybe even video.
My main point is, there is no argument against WFH. When people try to argue against it, they often actually mean "I don't like the pandemic". No shit. Life will be better after people stop dieing for breathing close to their friends and family. In the mean time, learn to organize your life instead of running away from it every day.
Have you ever been to love theatre? How many times? Have you ever seen a movie? How many?
Why so many more movies than live theatre? You think you would have liked the movies, and their price, more if it was live theatre? Would you have seen as many?
WFH is not perfect for everybody in the planet. But it sure is for the software industry.15 -
These ignorant comments about arch are starting to get on my nerves.
You ranted or asked help about something exclusive to windows and someone pointed out they don't have that problem in arch and now you're annoyed?
Well maybe it's for good.
Next comes a very rough analogy, but imagine if someone posts "hey guys, I did a kg of coke and feeling bad, how do I detox?"
It takes one honest asshole to be like "well what if you didn't do coke?".
Replace the coke with windows.
Windows is a (mostly) closed source operating system owned by a for profit company with a very shady legal and ethical history.
What on earth could possibly go wrong?
Oh you get bsod's?
The system takes hours to update whenever the hell it wants, forces reboot and you can't stop it?
oh you got hacked because it has thousands of vulnerabilities?
wannacry on outdated windows versions paralyzed the uk health system?
oh no one can truly scrutinize it because it's closed source?
yet you wonder why people are assholes when you mention it? This thing is fucking cancer, it's hundreds of steps backwards in terms of human progress.
and one of the causes for its widespread usage are the savage marketing tactics they practiced early on. just google that shit up.
but no, linux users are assholes out to get you.
and how do people react to these honest comments? "let's make a meme out of it. let's deligitimize linux, linux users and devs are a bunch of neckbeards, end of story, watch this video of rms eating skin off his foot on a live conference"
short minded idiots.
I'm not gonna deny the challenges or limitations linux represents for the end user.
It does take time to learn how to use it properly.
Nvidia sometimes works like shit.
Tweaking is almost universally required.
A huge amount of games, or Adobe/Office/X products are not compatible.
The docs can be very obscure sometimes (I for one hate a couple of manpages)
But you get a system that:
* Boots way faster
* Is way more stable
* Is way way way more secure.
* Is accountable, as in, no chance to being forced to get exploited by some evil marketing shit.
In other words, you're fucking free.
You can even create your own version of the system, with total control of it, even profit with it.
I'm not sure the average end user cares about this, but this is a developer forum, so I think in all honesty every developer owes open source OS' (linux, freebsd, etc) major respect for being free and not being corporate horseshit.
Doctors have a hippocratic oath? Well maybe devs should have some form of oath too, some sworn commitment that they will try to improve society.
I do have some sympathy for the people that are forced to use windows, even though they know ideally isn't the ideal moral choice.
As in, their job forces it, or they don't have time or energy to learn an alternative.
At the very least, if you don't know what you're talking about, just stfu and read.
But I don't have one bit of sympathy for the rest.
I didn't even talk about arch itself.
Holy fucking shit, these people that think arch is too complicated.
What in the actual fuck.
I know what the problem is, the arch install instructions aren't copy paste commands.
Or they medium tutorial they found is outdated.
So yeah, the majority of the dev community is either too dumb or has very strong ADD to CAREFULLY and PATIENTLY read through the instructions.
I'll be honest, I wouldn't expect a freshman to follow the arch install guide and not get confused several times.
But this is an intermediate level (not megaexpert like some retards out there imply).
Yet arch is just too much. That's like saying "omg building a small airplane is sooooo complicated". Yeah well it's a fucking aerial vehicle. It's going to be a bit tough. But it's nowhere near as difficult as building a 747.
So because some devs are too dumb and talk shit, they just set the bar too low.
Or "if you try to learn how to build a plane you'll grow an aviator neckbeard". I'll grow a fucking beard if I want too.
I'm so thankful for arch because it has a great compromise between control and ease of install and use.
When I have a fresh install I only get *just* what I fucking need, no extra bullshit, no extra programs I know nothing about or need running on boot time, and that's how I boot way faster that ubuntu (which is way faster than windows already).
Configuring nvidia optimus was a major pain in the ass? Sure was, but I got it work the way I wanted to after some time.
Upgrading is also easy as pie, so really scratching my brain here trying to understand the real difficult of using arch.22 -
First of all, a great channel to follow and where all this is from: https://youtube.com/watch/...
It listed a lot of open source news I missed myself and I'm sure others did too, for those that are too lazy to watch the video or open the description, I've stripped away the links and "X version got released" just to give an idea of what he covers.
------------------
GNOME and KDE announced they would work together on building better Linux desktops at Linux App Summit.
XRDesktop, a VR enabled Linux desktop, will allow you to use your Linux programs while wearing your VR headset.
Responding to the european commission's fines, Google announced that it would allow other search engines to be present at Android's setup.
Manjaro will allow users to pick between FreeOffice, Libre Office, or no office suite at all.
The Igalia team announced that they are working to make Pitivi compatible with Final Cut Pro X
Microsoft might be bringing its Teams software to Linux.
Martin Wimpress from the Canonical SnapCraft team gave an interview to TechRepublic, on Snaps
A discussion took place on how to improve Linux desktop performance in low ram scenarios.
A KDE vulnerability has been outed publicly before notifying the developers.
Nvidia has open sourced a bunch of documentation for its GPUs
Linux Journal announced they would cease their publication.
Kdenlive 19.08 has been released, bringing 3 point editing and a bunch of keyboard shortcuts
The Linux on Dex project now allows to run Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on a samsung smartphone.
According to protondb, we passed the 6000 playable games mark, out of 9 thousand for which users have created a report
GNOME Feeds has been released on flathub, a simple app to read RSS feeds on GNOME
The enlightenment desktop released its first version in 2 years, enlightenment 0.23.0.
Linux celebrated its 28th birthday
Microsoft announced that they would bring exFAT support to the linux kernel.
Thundebird 68 was released with an interface redesign
Collabora has published an update on their work on viglrenderer, a solution to emulate a gpu while using a virtual machine through Qemu.7 -
Not really a rant and not very random. More like a very short story.
So I didn't write any rant regarding the whole Microsoft GitHub topic. I don't like to judge stuff quickly. I participated in few threads though.
Another thing is I also don't use GitHub very much apart from giving 🌟 to repos as a bookmark. Have one hobby project there. That's all. So I don't worry that much. I'm that selfish and self concerned. :3
I was first introduced to version control system by learning how to use tortoisesvn around 2008. We had a group project and one of the guys was an experienced and amazing programmer unlike the rest of us. He was doing commercial projects while we were at our 1st and 2nd year. Uni had svn repo server. He taught us about tortoisesvn. He also had Basecamp and taught us how to use it as well. So that's how I learned the benefits of using versioning tools and project management tools. On side note, our uni didn't teach any of those in detail :3
After that project, I was hooked to use versioning tools. So until school kicked me out, I was able to use their svn server. When I was on my own, I had to ask Google for help. I found a new world. There are still free svn services that I can use with certain limited functions. That's not the new world; I found people saying how git is better than svn in various ways. It was around 2010,2011.
At first I was a bit reluctant to touch git because of all the commands in terminal approach. But then I found that there is tortoisegit. I still thank tortoisesvn creator for that. I'm a sucker for GUI tools. So then I also have to pick which git servers to use. Hell yeah, self hosted gitlab is the way to go man. Well that's what the internet said. So I listened. I got it up and running after numerous trial and error. I used it briefly. Then I came back to my country on 2012-2013; the land of kilobytes per minute (yes not second, minute).
My country's internet was improved only after 2016. So from 2013 to 2016, I did my best not to rely on internet. I wasn't able to afford a server at my less than 10 people, 12ft*50ft office. So I had to find alternative to gitlab which preferably run on windows. Found bonobo and it was alright. It worked. Well had crazy moments here and there when the PC running Bonobo got virus and stuff. But we managed. We survived. Then finally multi national Telecom corporates came to our country.
We got cheaper and faster mobile data, broadband and fiber plans. Finally I can visit pornhub ... sorry github. Github is good. I like it. But that doesn't mean I should share my ugly mutated projects to the rest of the world. I could keep using Bonobo but it has risks. So I had to think for an alternative. I remembered that gitlab didn't have cloud hosting service when I checked them out in the past. So I just looked into Bitbucket and happy with their free plans of 5 users and unlimited private repos. I am very very cheap and broke.
That's why I said I don't really care that much about the whole M$GitHub topic at the beginning. However due to that topic, I have visited GitLab website again and found out they have cloud hosting now and their free plan is unlimited users and unlimited repos. So hell yeah. Sorry BB. I am gonna move to cheaper and wider land.
TL;DR : I am gonna move to GitLab because of their free plan.4 -
The more I'm on here the more I remember all the shit I have had to deal with in the past.
Anyway, lets rant! I just moved cities after college to be closer to my family, I didnt have any work lined up at that stage but started job hunting the moment I was settled in, I did some freelance for smaller companies to stay afloat.
Eventually I got a job at this agency startup where "SEO" was there main focus, still very inexperienced they put me on frontend and data capturing but will teach me how to code using their systems in due time. At this stage I was getting paid minimum wage, but I was doing minimum work and it wasnt that bad.
A new investor bought 49% of the company and immediately moved into the office space to focus more on marketing (He was one of those scaly marketing guys that will sell you babies if he could get his hands on enough to make a profit).
This is where everything starts going to shit. He hires a bunch of "SEO Gurus", fills up the small office with people like sardines squished together. Development was still our main money maker at this stage, so there where 3 new more senior developers at this stage and I started learning a lot really fast.
Here are some of the issues we had to deal with:
1. Incentives - Great more money, haha! No, No, you where 5 minutes late so you only get half of the promised amount.
2. For every minute you are late we will deduct it from you paycheck (Did I mention I was getting paid minimum wage).
3. If you take a smoke break we will dock it from your pay.
4. Free gym membership to the gym downstairs, but you can only go once a week during your lunch.
5. No pay raises if you cant prove your worth on paper.
He on purposely made up shitty rules and regulations to keep us down and make as much profit as he could.
Here are some shitty stuff he has done:
1. We arent getting a 13th check this year because the company didnt make a big profit - while standing next to his brand new BMW.
2. Made changes over FTP on clients work because we where too slow to get to it, than blames me for it because its broken the next day and wants to give me a written warning for not resolving the issue Immediately. They went as far as wanting to fire me for this, gave me 1 day notice for meeting and that I can bring a lawyer to represent me (1 day notice is illegal, you need 5 days where I am from), so I brought a lawyer since my mom was a lawyer. They freaked the fuck out and started harassing me about this a week later.
3. Would have meetings all the time about how much money the company is making, but wont be raising our pay since no one has proven they are worth it yet.
4. Would full on yell at employees infront of the entire office if they accidentally made an mistake on a clients project.
One one occasion I took a week off for holiday, my coworker contacted me to ask a question and I answered that I will handle it when I am back the following week. Withing 2 hours my other boss phones me in a rage, "he is coming to fetch the company laptop from my house in 5 minutes, he will let me know when he arrives. Gives me no time to talk at all and hangs up - I have figured out what has happened by now so when he showed up he has this long speech about abandonment, and trust and loyalty to the company. So I pass him my laptop once he shut up and said: "You do know I am on holiday leave which you approved, right?", he goes even more silent and passes me back my laptop without saying anything, and drives off.
While the above was happening Douche manager back at the office has a rage as well and calls the whole office (25 people) to a meeting talking about how I abandoned the company and how disgraceful that is.
Those are the shitty experiences I can remember, there where many more like this. All of the above eventually led to me going into a deep depression and having panic attacks weekly, from being overworked or scared to step out of line. Its also the reason I almost stopped coding forever at that stage. I worked there for 2.5 years with the abuse.
I left 2 weeks after the last shit show, I am ok now and have my anxiety and depression well under control if not almost gone completely.
Ran into Douche Manager a few months ago after 9 years, the company got bought out and the first person they fired was him. LOL! He now has his own agency and is looking for Developers (They are hard to find he says), little does he know I spread his name far and wide to all and every Dev I knew and didnt know to avoid working for him at all costs. Seems like word of mouth still works in this digital age.
Thanks for reading this far!5 -
OMG you fucking little cunt!
Previous issue with this co-worker we hate eat other but can maintain minimal contact due to covid. Last interaction was actually nice, we joked a bit.
He teaches me how to do the build and ‘updated’ the confluence page. By update he striked through one paragraph.
Been doing these for week and now others what builds done all the time and since I am not an asshole they can approach me to do this but now I spend all
day long doing builds.
Work on a classified app so it has to
be burned on a disk, taken to a ‘secret machine’ and deployed. Takes about an hour and people are like. Can you rebuild it? I forgot to commit something?
So I updated the page to flush out the directions. Did not remove one thing only added things simple things like do a ls -lah in the dist folder to make sure the are built correctly. Things like check to make the symlink works, bolded words.
He was not at standup so I figured he was out of the office today and was going to ask him to review tomorrow.
Fucker goes in to make changes while I am making changes and doesn’t think to msg me telling me?
He is removing things and moving things which is fine just let me know! What a dick!!!!!
Screenshot of all the activity today, I am
in blue. I will spend all day watching the page to make sure I get the last fucking edit!
5 -
My experience two weeks into being married:
1. Any other couple can fuck off. We're the protagonists now.
2. My sleep schedule has done a complete 180. I start my day at 7 am now, previously it was 12 afternoon. I also sleep early at 10 pm now. I feel a lot better about this schedule tbh.
3. My wife has an office job, so I get my work done in peace and am able to wrap up my day early to make time for her when she gets home.
4. She's serious about investments, stock market, SIPs, Gold prices or whatever and actively puts money into those things. Good for me.
5. Going out with her is actually fun, because we plan our Sunday ahead of time. I used to scoff at other couples before, but now I get it. It may look cringy from the outside but not to me it doesn't.35 -
It's been two months since I've left my previous job, after 1.5 years. I never had the feeling my boss trusted his dev team, since he was checking up on us regularly, even though we had planned out a sprint and work for us was "clear". I say "clear", because every single feature on this project was pretty much half-baked, since they were just ideas our boss/PO (same person) on the spot and were labeled as "the next big thing" without every properly writing them out as user stories. Every demo came with a bunch of criticism, because features weren't implemented "as he imagined", because what do you know, the user stories weren't properly described anyway. Bringing that up as counter-argument also made him angry every time, so that didn't help much either. The launch of the platform was also postponed every time because of vague reasons, so that didn't make the project any more interesting either.
It took a while before I got sick of this of this pretty hopeless situation and toxic environment. Mind you, it was my first job since I graduated, so I was a bit naive thinking the working environment would improve and aforementioned company issues would be resolved over time. Eventually, I ran out of patience and motivation, so I finally bit the bullet and handed in my resignation letter.
From that moment, I at least had an end in sight, since I was still obliged to do my four-week notice period, which felt like an eternity. The borderline childish and sociopathic behaviour of my boss didn't make it any better (e.g. checking up on me even more, more mistrust, randomly accusing me of ruining the working atmosphere because I shared a meme with a colleague of mine and didn't involve him, going lunching with all of my colleagues but explicitly asking me to stay at work, ...). Being forced to work from home the last 2 weeks as part of the country's lockdown measures at least helped my sanity a bit, since I had the comfort of my home office and not the frequent "looking over your shoulders to check if you're still working".
By the last day of my notice period, I was bitter, exhausted, lost confidence in my skills and had completely lost my joy of being a developer. I had to physically meet with my boss one more time to hand in the company laptop. He thanked me for my service and said that we'd keep in touch. I hope I won't keep that promise (he made a lot of false promises before, too), because I'd rather never encounter him ever again. It felt like a huge relief to finally close the door of this bad experience behind me for good.
Now, 2 months later, I've got a new job and rediscovered my joy for coding, mostly thanks to the complete opposite of a toxic environment here, management which actually has respect and faith in me and a challenging but fun project. My mental state has made a complete turnaround compared to two months ago. I have absolutely no regrets of switching jobs. If only I had made that decision sooner.4 -
Let me tell you a tale, children. Of how one of the mostly ghastly, horrid pieces of software currently on this earth came to be in its current, pitiful state.
It all began on January 28th, 2015.
On that day, Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, sat leisurely in his office. He had just finished watching a live stream for a conference held by Facebook.
Minutes after the stream ended, he quietly sat in his chair, pondering over what was just shown.
The whole keynote was well done, he thought. But something about it just didn’t sit right with him. It was one specific line uttered by one of the keynote speaker that bothered him.
“React Native will help developers easily write code that will work on both iOS and Android”.
Out of all the talking done throughout that conference, it was that sentence, in particular, that stuck out like a sore thumb t Cook.
Those words began to echo in his head. “...Android”, Tim muttered to himself, gritting his teeth.
He immediately grabbed his Iphone from his pocket, and called the Technical Director of Xcode.
On the phone, the two discussed Xcode as it pertained to Facebook’s latest tool.
“Now, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t provide any support for React Native”, Cook told the director; “Just make it a bit more inconvenient for anyone using React, that’s all”.
The director thought his boss was nuts. Why on earth would you want to intentionally make using an IDE as painful of an experience as possible? But the technical director also knew that, more importantly, he wanted to keep his job.
“...We’ll do our best to make it a total pain in the ass to use React Native in Xcode”, the director told his boss with a shrug.
And so began one of the sickest jokes ever played on developers. A joke so twisted and cruel, it would make even the creator of PHP gasp in abject horror.
Who knew that someone would go out of their way to create an IDE that doesn’t even bloody work half of the time.
And don’t get me started on the absolute piss poor excuse for documentation this thing has.2 -
...What a day ,
"CTO new priority need this project started and completed ASAP."
Me: "What about my current project you wanted me to work on that was a high priority which took over Another project I was supposed to be working on?"
CTO: "This one is a higher priority than both of them"
Me: "ok sure shall get onto it".
PM: "A client has come in with an issue on another project I need this fixed now".
Team leader assigns me a bunch of tasks that need to get done which is ok but 5 people need me to get it done so they can do the bulk of their work.
Later for a side project CTO asks me to get a list together of things that are missing for this side project, about 60 seconds later he asks me to send him the email now - bare in mind nearly 300 assets I need to go through which are not organised so what the heck I just send him it mid sentence.
End of day get told that CTO wants me on yet another different project...
Each of these projects takes 4 months to get done. But arggggg... oh and then I hear that our new PM has decided to cut all project deadlines by half....
I am but a single person,
I just want to sit back and watch everything burn around me... But the company has a history of Scape goating people on failed project deadlines... Never a dull day in the office but tbh kinda like it. -
Wanted to have Samsung Dex for work, so I can run office on it and kick windows from my dual boot laptop.
Dex pad was on sale.
Bought it.
Brought it to work.
Work monitor doesn't have hdmi.
...
fuck. <.<
I'll ask the technician later if he either has a monitor flying around he doesn't need or an adapter or something.1 -
Why do bosses have to be such absolute bellends?
I have depression and ptsd after my time in the Army, which I was open with my boss about when I started.
It is more or less under control, but over the last month or so I’ve been going through a bit of a bad patch, and had a telling off at work about being late and using my phone too much. I’ve been doing everything that has been asked of me, but I hold my hands up and admit that I shouldn’t be using my phone (I have trouble concentrating at the moment so have a tendency to switch between things a lot like Work, emails, phone, emails, work etc. While at home I’ll have the tv on my computer and my phone switching. Between the 3)
So after my telling off and I’d calmed down a bit I sent my boss an email apology, saying I was going through a rough patch but that it isn’t an excuse and I will try harder to stop it from affecting my work etc.
She comes back with an email about she’s done this for me and that for me but she needs to see some output and wants to own some issues and see them to completion.
Now, I admit my output has been down a bit but I’ve spent the last two weeks working on some custom software that’s full of spaghetti code so it also requires time for me to get my head around it to understand what’s going on, and the guy who wrote it and is the one who knows exactly what it is that needs to be done only works 3 days a week and is only in the office for two of those, so makes it a bit difficult.
Anyway, I assume that she for got I am the person running the project (I use running in its loosest possible terms) to migrate us from SourceSafe to GitLab and if she’d bothered to look she would have seen every single piece of work that I’d committed over the last 2/3 weeks.
Luckily for me I know have to re-write all of the work I did in the last 2/3 weeks in one night.
Also because I, quite correctly, got told off I know feel like an absolute cunt, I’m getting marri d in 3 weeks and now I seriously feel like saying fuck it all and leaving everything and moving away2 -
When you want to resign to your full time job but you are having difficulty on making decision.
Reasons to resign:
1. They are giving tasks that are not related to web development such as data entry.
2. I can't see a good future ahead on this company. It feels like it doesn't have a goal to grow. The boss is not focusing on this line and instead she is focusing on her other businesses. The boss also has admitted that she can only give 20% of her time. We don't have new projects and challenging tasks.
3. 4 months have been passed and still we haven't receive the yearly salary increase. It should be effected on February.
Reasons to stay:
1. No salary deduction if you are late or didn't complete 9 hours / day. Sometimes I just work for 7 or 8 hours a day.
2. Office is just 30 mins away from my house.
3. When I don't have a task, I usually do my freelance project at the office secretly. So even though there are no challenging tasks at the office, my freelance project helps a lot.
4. You can play games with your friends when you feel exhausted or you don't have assigned tasks.
I recently received an offer from my remote part-time job to work full time 8-10 hours a day and the salary is twice higher compare to current one.7 -
My job environment is either fucked up or am too young to understand what a job life is.
I was hired to intern for a startup having 2 main bosses/founders . one of them is mostly administrative and comes to office daily. He sets some tasks and i have to complete them, as soon as possible or sometimes till a deadline. He has little knowledge about the complexity of wotk so usually he says "just complete it as soon as possible so we could release it" but we haven't pushed any updates since i joined (of course i have completed some tasks, but they are just not pushed to the release version)
The other one , as i ranted previously is a completely different story.I think he is an elder bro or senior of the other boss,but he is just a superman: dealing with the distributers, commanding the hardware ppl, discussing with the othr boss, handling the server and most importantly the guy who wrote all the code i am working on. So he comes extremely rarely(1 or 2 days / week) , tries to communicate with me , but is immediately diverted by some other call/person and goes away.
The problem is : am feeling a little helpless. They give me tasks and i start working on them with excitement .( I don't believe myself to be a terrible beginner: i have been learning/working on android development for past 1 year, i know my things. And even if i don't, i know how to search/debug and produce results) . So as usual, i start and try to apply my skills / search for things i don't / try to understand his large,overwhelming and confusing codebase and at the end am stuck at some point where i don't understand what to do next. Sometimes its a bug which doesn't seems to fix, sometimes its a thing thats in the codebase but i couldn't find or sometimes it's just something i couldn't seem to understand why isn't it working. At that time, I only wish that boss to be here and look at what and how i have done, if its a correct approch and how can we together take it to completion (or simply wtf am i doing wrong, see my shit and tell me) .
But again, the tech boss is busy or wouldn't have time to understand my problem in our short , incomplete meetings. But he or the nontech boss will definitely have the time to ask the sttus of project and pressurise for the "deadline" .
Like today, i was so stuck at this fucking one line error that i couldn't detect that i just messaged him that am leaving for home 3 hours early. He came running and for the first time in history gave me a complete undisturbed time. It was such a small mistake, but i wasn't able to catch on my own. But when i told him, he immediately caught , changed a single line and the code started to work.
I am feeling irritated. Is this all a correct environment?2 -
First day back from holiday.
CEO announces everyone the pandemic is over and everyone has to return to the office.
Talked about how good it is to come and crack a joke with a colleague and that they care about our wellbeing.
I have barely been able to even focus on work because of all the chaos in the company since the beginning of the year (many interviews for hiring new devs, company events, meet etc.)
Colleagues talking about the fact that nobody can work from the office given all the chaos in the projects and nobody will come because they can't fire us all.
I have to answer to an outsourcing company today for a new fully remote full stack .NET developer position for the same pay, but might be risky in terms of what I can actually deliver in terms of code.
What advice can you give me? Jump the boat or not?12 -
!tech
recently i have been realising that i am utterly lonely. their isn't a group of people in life (apart from my parents) who aren't either paid to be with me (i.e office colleagues) or i am paying to be with them (i.e gym) and its very sad.
i don't have any siblings. the relatives are on sour terms, so no one visit. my parents are mostly loveless and the whole family is just focusing on sustaining than living or enjoying. i recently had some arguments with my friends and now they too are not on talking terms. .
I am a 25 year old, short , somewhat chubby guy in the most boring and safe field with no interesting interests except an average guy stuff ( cars, stocks, tech, career, sports... things that guys usually discuss).
I have been told on face that my vibe isn't interesting and i can honestly accept that . i myself wouldn't want to be with someone like me. if you are girl, then i will probably be talking to you for 30 seconds of joke-cum-fun-cum-serious-cum-caring stuff( i usually have 1-2 lines of witty stuff prepared) before going all silent and boring you the fuck out.
the next convo will be followed by an even dumber sentence but i will try to end it with a geeky joke or reference and a small laugh prompting you to also smile or fake laugh. and if you did that, then i will be desperate to keep you laughing, but my sentences will keep on getting more dumber and boring until you leave and categorise me as the most boring idiot/ "nice guy" you met. ( and meanwhile i am at the mental stage where i love you as the most precious thing of my world and imagining kids and life with you)
I can't care for anyone. I have seen too much parent fights, empty walls, money issues to understand how to care for anyone . my life is focused and sad.
shall i go on giving chocolates to everyyone in office to be popular? shall i ask a random gorl on the stret for her phone number? shall i start strolling in the park and try to talk to people? honestly, if i were a girl and someone does this to me, i would be shit scared and creeped out than falling for that guy.
then how the fuck i land myself into someone who wants to be with me? do i even want someone to be with me? or is loneliness the only thing i want?
i feel pretty okay for the most part of the day in this loneliness, except at some weird times like when am eating a platefu9 of chinese alone in some shop, or at night when i lock the door of a 9x9 large room and realise that i am the only one here.
i was once excited to grow up and do grown-up stuff like drive a car, take a solo tour, goto vaccination in every few days, be adventurous . but that has changed . i did all these things when i had people in my life. i somewhat felt motivated to do those, seeing that there were people who wanted to be with me during/after these things and care about me. now it just feels pointless.9 -
Of course, I just swiped the wrong way on my fucking laptop trackpad and list everything I just typed. FUCKING MARVELOUS.
TL;DR: Teacher stopped me from being productive. Principal almost called cops on me. Nearly threw chair at librarian.
So I'm at school yesterday, and we have a presenter in 2nd hour, so naturally, I'm gonna be on my computer doing things for other classes at the same time. Efficiency. Teacher doesn't like it, I refuse to put the computer away telling her that I'll be more productive and still pay attention, which HAS BEEN PROVEN MIND YOU, but she ends up calling security on me and I get sent down to the principal's office.
I talk to him, and he says 'Yeah, I know it's in the way, but you have to follow the directive given by the teachers.' Fine, fuck it. Won't go to her class for third hour. (I have her twice in a row for two different classes.) Next day.
I walk in, asking her if she's gonna do the same thing she did yesterday, hoping that she realized her error and will fix it, but no. She says I STILL can't have the computer out. I'm sorry, do you not realize I have 6 other fucking classes, most of which are required to graduate, unlike YOURS, as well as a FUCKING COLLEGE CLASS TONIGHT?! She gives the ultimatum. 'Obey or leave.' Fine, I'll leave. I go to the principal's office again, he must have a stick up his ass or something today because he's not budging. We argue for a while and he gives a WORSE ultimatum: 'Obey, Go to the Library, In House Suspension, or I'll call the police.' What the actual FUCK MAN?! You're gonna call the POLICE on a NONVIOLENT STUDENT?! Are you fucking MAD? I keep trying to tell him that there's an easy solution to this, but as he's getting up to call the cops, I say 'Fine! I'll go to the library!' He follows me over to make sure I don't kill anyone on the way.
I slam the door to the library open, and when I walk in, the librarian is there at her computer, and she asks 'Where are you coming from?' 'Principal!' 'I need a pass-' 'Well, I'm sorry, I can't exactly get anything for you right now, I was just sent down here.' She says 'Either way, I need some kind of note or pas-' 'Listen, I'm not in the mood for any of this right now. Please, just leave me be.' She then tries to say something, but I cut her off quickly, 'Just back off and leave me alone right now. The more you push it, the more you're gonna make me want to throw this chair!' Imagine the volume just gradually getting louder on that last one. She quickly runs out and talks to the security desk or something, which is right outside the library door, but she's the only one who comes in, thankfully. I was expecting to be fucking dragged out for no good reason. I'm loud, not violent. I have no history of violence.
So yeah. Here I am in the school library, angrily tapping away at my keyboard, trying not to throw the entire table to the fucking moon. All because this broken-ass public school system has no idea how to deviate from the norm when it's actually productive and efficient to do so. And now, the obligatory:
FUCKING PIECES OF SHIT WHY DON'T YOU REALIZE THAT YOU ARE COMPLETELY WRONG IN EVERY SINGLE THING YOU ARE DOING YOU IDIOTIC SCUM-FILLED MEAT SACKS OF NO FORSEEABLE VALUE! FUCK!1 -
Prequel to my previous post:
I received an offer from a startup that did not meet the originally advertised salary range. In every other aspect this place seemed like where I'd enjoy working the most and each previous interaction made a very good impression on me. So needless to say this was quite a shock.
They immediately apologised and explained the situation. They only now started to expand to and hire from my location (which can be verified) and I would be the very first person from this location (seems true too but I could only really verify this after joining). They explained the salary range I had seen was for their main hub location (accurate too) and said that the recruiter who posted the ad did not adjust it to mine. I asked why tf they didn't notify me of this earlier and they said they are super busy with everything, are new to location based salaries and normally don't check the recruiters posts as it should be her work.
Now, even if this is totally true, it was an awful sudden shock and felt a bit like a scam - totally contradicting my previous impressions.
Here are a couple of other points that I'll just sum to save time:
- before seeing the job ad I had a *reasonable* salary expectation even lower than their actual offering
- on the ad, the bottom end of their salary range far exceeded my reasonable exp.
- the relative level of my position would be even higher up the range that I have seen realised would be top 5%
- having had seen the ad, I started to have an *ideal* expectation being the bottom of the range
- in first interview I told them my exp. is the bottom end of their range +- a bit
- I told this to a dev guy who has no fucking idea about this stuff and I don't blame him but he noted this down to higher management
- generally I have not been very precise of my expectation as previously I only had lower class dev jobs, this would be the first decent.
- Hence I have seen an enormously high variation in salaries offered to me so this advertised range whilst high seemed possible
Now, with all this in mind I posted here a question about what some of you would do in my position.
I received the following group of responses:
- it's a scam, bad place, run
- it's an intentional (common) trick
- people make mistakes like this esp. startups so find out if this is intentional or not
- just decide if their current offering is reasonable for the position and location, ignore the rest
- just decide if the amount is enough
- location based salaries are retarded, don't work there (I kinda agree and also don't)
- if they can afford the higher pay in another place they should have no prob. meeting the range
- it's more important that you'd enjoy it there if the pay is sufficient for general needs
- company culture is generally more important these days
- fuck recruiters and hr people (amen to that btw)
Here is what I did:
Regardless of whether I believe them or not I hyperfocused on the potential scam/trick aspect.
I told them that every other interaction with them was positive and would love to join them but this was a really bad impression and feels like they are playing with me. I made up some bullshit previous examples of companies trying the same trick on me (which obv. never happened).
Then I said that I think to resolve this they should invite me to their main office for a day (all interviews had been online) and if after that they are still not ok to offer me at least the bottom of the adv. range then we can part ways. Otherwise this should ensure both of us that we are a good match, etc.
They seemed to love the idea and said that I should go there for x till y (3 days) and if we don't hate each other by the end I'll get the amount at the bottom of the range and they apologised again about it looking like a scam, etc.
So thanks a bunch again to those of you who provided valuable input. -
Last week I wired up my home network (including custom modem and routers) myself, because the stuff my ISP wanted me to use was garbage.
Luckily Germany has "router-freedom" so ISPs are not allowed to force us to use their device to dial into the network.
I did everything myself, because the 'technicians' they kept sending me were just idiots who didn't know anything, considering the highly paid job they are doing. Usually they told me, to get the device from my ISP, because my "Router" (actually a business grade, standalone Modem by Cisco, to feed my Router) didn't even have WiFi ( lol ). Also all Technicians didn't arrive at the agreed date but at some other time. I wasn't able to wait any longer.
So I did it myself.
Consider me something more like a student of theoretical computer science. Not actually supposed to be experienced with hardware stuff.
The ISP is serving me with a DOCSIS 3.0 Network based on the television cable network in my city. For some reason they are providing the internet-access to only one socket in the apartment, which has a rather uncommon "WICLIC" connector. After having trouble getting an adapter for WICLIC to common coaxial F-Connectors (used by every DOCSIS-Modem), I made one myself.
After setting up everything (not that hard, once the connectors fit) my modem told me, that, while I'm perfectly connected to the ISPs internal Network, I still can't access the internet.
So I called the ISP...
After getting ranted at, about that what I'm doing is illegal and only certified employees are allowed to do this and I will break more, than actually do good and that I can't just connect my own "Router" (again I needed to correct her: Modem) I hang up the phone.
Also she accused me of hacking their devices because I'm not supposed to see my IP address... (My Modem told me on its web interface. I didn't even need telnet for that.)
I went to the ISPs head office, told the first desk as many technical terms as I could remember and got forwarded to something like the main technician.
He was a really nice guy. The only sane and qualified person I dealt with at this company. He asked me for my Address and Device Model, I told him my MAC and last internal IP, I had seen and he activated my internet access within a minute.
We talked a while about the stupid connector that ISP is using in the homes and he gifted me some nicer adapters to connect my modem to the wall.
Why do ISPs hate their customers that much?2 -
New dev guy in office, Does zero research when stuck in somewhere while doing a task. Goes around asking the team if they had done that before. Talks on the phone for like 10-15 mins with god knows who when he has a technical problem.
Doesn't even bother to do a simple debug before complaining about an exception in a service to the dev who wrote it (if he knows the dev who wrote it)
Interestingly, he marks the tasks he does in a google sheet in red, yellow and green rows that's shared with our tech lead.
Not that he bugs me or anything, but just thought i should share this here.6 -
So I work for an IT consulting firm (web development) and was hired by a customer 7 months ago for coaching Git, implementation of VueJS on the front-end and fostering teamwork with devs who'd been in their solo comfort zone for the last 15 years.
I asked for confirmation multiple times on whether they were sure they wanted to go through with a bigger investment in front-end. Confirm they did, multiple times.
After half the team's initial enthusiasm faded (after 1 month), the 'senior' of them who's worked there for 18 years on a single -in the end, failed- project got a burn-out after half a week of showing up (without doing actual work) from the stress, and started whining about it with management that has no technical clue whatsoever. This and other petty office politics lead to the dumbest organizational and technical decisions I've seen in my short 5-year career (splitting a Laravel app that uses the same database in two, replacing docker container deployment with manual ssh'ing and symlinking, duplicating all the models, controllers, splitting a team in two, decreasing productivity, replacing project management dashboards with ad-hoc mail instructions and direct requests).
Out of curiosity I did a git log --author --no-merges with the senior's name on the 2 projects he was supposed to help on, and that turned up... ZERO commits. Now the dept. hired 3 new developers with no prior experience, and it's sad to see the seniors teach them "copy paste" as the developer's main reflex.
Through these 7 months I had to endure increasingly vicious sneers from the IT architect -in name only- who gets offended and hysterical at every person who dares offer suggestions. Her not-so-implicit insinuation is that it's all my fault because I implemented Vue front-end (as they requested), she has been doing this for months, every meeting at least once (and she makes sure other attendees notice). Extra background: She's already had 2 official complaints for verbal abuse in the past, and she just stressed another good developer into smoking again.
Now I present her my timesheet for January, she abuses her power by refusing to sign it unless I remove a day of work.
Earlier this week I asked her politely to please stop her unjust guilt-tripping to which she shouted "You'll just have to cope with that!", and I walked out of the room calmly (in order to avoid losing my nerves). She does this purely as a statement, and I know she does it out of bad faith (she doesn't actually care, as she doesn't manage the budgets). She knows she wields more power over me than the internal devs (I am consultant, so negative reviews for me could delay further salary raises).
I just don't know how to handle this person: I can't get a word in with her, or she starts shouting, and it's impossible to change her (completely inaccurate technological) perception.3 -
We are all about structures, clean code and many other things that make our life easier, right?
Well... It's not all white and black...
As talked many times, projects can be rushed... Client budgets can be low at the start and only then grow...
Let me take an example:
Client X needs a tool that helps his team perform jobs faster. They have a $500 budget. So... Testing, clean architecture and so on - are not really a viable option. Instead, you just make it work and perform that task as needed. So the code has minimal patterns, minimal code structure, a lot of repetitive parts and so on.
Now... Imagine that 3 months pass by without any notice and clients are ultra happy with the product. They want more things to be automated. They contact developers and ask for more things. This time they have a bigger budget but short timeframe.
So once again, you ignore all tests, structure and just make it work. No matter what. The client is happy again.
A year passes and the client realizes that their workflow changed. The app needs total refactoring. The previous developer has no time for adjustments at this point and hires a new company. They look at the code and rants spill out of their mouth along with suicidal thoughts.
So... What would you do? Would you rant about "messy project" or just fix it? Especially since people now have a bigger budget and timeframe to adapt to changes.
Would you be pissed on such a project?
Would you flame on previous devs?
Would you blame anyone for the mess?
Or would you simply get in and get the job done since the client has a "prototype" and needs a better version of it?
---
Personally, I've been in this situation A LOT. And I'm both, the old and new dev. I've built tons of crappy software to make things work for clients and after years - they come back for changes/new things. You just swallow the pill and do what is needed. Why? Well, because it's an internal system and not used by anyone outside their office. Even if it's used outside the office - prototyping is the key. They didn't know if the idea would work or be helpful in any way. Now they know and want it done correctly.6 -
So I'm finally doing the job I was hired to do 2 years ago, with the promise of working 1.5 years ago, and scheduled to work 1 year ago as the project slips about a 1.25 years.
The project is on it's 3.5th year of a 3 year plan and based on the architecture of the project, the project architect started a degree in software architecture 4 years ago. In Latin. When his first language was Japanese and his second was Indian English while this was a US company. And his entire degree was in Lisp, PHP, and html, this project is in C#, and his professional background is in Fortran.
This is a man who is no longer on the project, not allowed to contribute or talk to us about the project, and what little documentation he left us is in Swahili translated from Korean via Google translate from the second year Korean language major exchange student from Russia who got really into meth and Telenovelas.
It is every version of MV* without the M and with every definition of * including some he made up and some that have only been proven to exist via machine learning algorithm written in SQL statements.
This project represents an implementation of the presentation tier of an n-tier application, yet attempts to reimplement the other n-1 tiers in html5 and the dreams of children.
The new lead is a former engineer that couldn't begin coding until he figured out how to map all of his variables to his former cars and girlfriends inclusively and learned his management skills from the big book of micro managers and that one time everyone else in the office was sick but the intern. Who now has a girlfriend whom he works 200 feet from so he isn't 100% thinking with his largest head. At least from observation.
Yet, I still can't bring myself to go be with the whales/become an accountant. -
I work remotely for a team that works together in an office, and this morning on the conference call a team member said
"one thing i think we need to do with this is stay on task, because while these things that have been added are cool we don't need to be doing anything not outlined in the MVC requirements"
Okay first of all -- this is a completely foreign technology to this team. It's not like I diddled around adding fancy animations and no function. The problem working in a new technology with an old mindset is assuming that it's going to move linearly from step 1 to step 2. And that drives me fucking insane.
- Progress in paid contracted work is done by staying on task.
- Progress in research isn't done linearly. You have to try shit -- and figure out what doesn't work.
I feel bad because I'll chime in and shoot down ideas with a fucking guided missile because I know the answer and I've done the fucking research -- I'm not a dick about it, but replying with a simple "no that's not possible, because of this or that", the call becomes silent for 30 seconds because I've shattered their understanding of the technology because nobody has taken the time to understand anything about how this thing works!!
So until they either listen to me, ask me, or learn the smallest amount to get on my fucking level, I'll keep progressing -- because whether the old world idealists like it or not -- that's my job.
Progress.
</ rant>14 -
So i started an (8 month) internship in January. Team of 4 (2 senior/mid level devs + boss) plus 6 or so other people in our other office overseas. Everything was going really well IMHO. Boss's feedback for halfway through the internship was good too.
First 4/5 months were great: loved the team, got feedback and help when i needed it, wasn't stuck doing support too much, etc.
This all changed when both the devs moved to our other office. My boss works from home a lot and has frequent meetings, so i hardly see him. I have a 1 hour window first thing in the morning if i need help from the devs overseas. After that im on my own.
If i get stuck, even on something very small that a more senior dev could explain in 2 minutes, I'm stuck either unable to work or figuring it out (wasting hours of time) for the rest of the day.
On top of this, since I'm the only one around in our office, im stuck on support every week which takes hours of my time usually. Last week support ate up most of my week, which put me way behind schedule on my other work. (That was an unusually busy week of support.)
Feeling incredibly frustrated right now, just wanted to get this off my chest.12 -
If any of you have been following my last few rants, you'll know I've been working on a project with a particularly difficult client, trying to meet wholly unrealistic deadlines with only one other developer.
The situation has reached the climax. The client had a call with our project manager and boss on Monday to discuss things. Despite them still not having paid a single bill since October, they've demanded the release date be moved to the 6th April. Apparently we'd agreed to release on this date, despite making no such promises, the (optimistic) deadline we were working towards has always been, since it was set about 2 weeks ago, the 16th April.
Apparently AWS migration won't take as long as we think it will, because the designers that do the CSS for this project say so, despite knowing nothing about the architecture of the requirements of the system once live (like if backups are required and what of).
The bottom line is that client is ending development with us the day after the project goes live to give it to their own in-house team. If they want us to work more after the date, they have to buy blocks of days.
To make things better, a large part of new functionality relies on an external API we can't even begin to do learning tests with, let alone integrate due to back-office errors on their end. They've had since Friday to give us our token, yet here we are.
Something tells me my holidays booked for for the first week of April are going by the wayside.4 -
"The Phoenix project" alternative ending:
Bill Palmer manages to avert disaster with heroic efforts, working 18 hours per day for weeks.
His wife files for divorce. He starts to sleep at office, next to the servers room.
At the last moment a huge hacker attack almost destroys everything, but he finally manages to announce that Phoenix is ready on time, security auditing passed and any kind of great improvements.
Steve, the CEO, calls him and says: "are you crazy? we put you on an impossible project with short notice to make you fail! All our investors have been secretly short selling our stocks, so now they are waiting a big failure to cash in. We also paid korean hackers to bring you on your knees. But you are really stubborn! "
All Phoenix Project is rolled back, huge shit happens, stocks fall, investors ripe great benefits. All IT is outsourced to an external company (owned by members of the board)
Bill is fired. His reputation tainted by the failure, he can't find job anymore. his technical skills and knowledge are out of date.
As he didn't have time to take care of divorce he has lost also all his personal wealth.
He writes a book about his experience, well, actually a rant, but the company sues him forcing him to pay more money.
In the final scene, police arrests him, drunk while trying to burn a server farm with matches. -
Tldr: no router, almost not work.
Ok I recently moved into a new house, and I signed a contract for an Internet line.
Problem is that the router has been sent at the ISP shop, where I was supposed to get it personally. But guess what? Covid emergency happened two days after, and the shop closed.
So, after spending two days calling customer service of both ISP and Postal office without being able to speak to anybody, I received a Sms saying that the pack was not delivered because the receiver was closed.
After some more unsuccessful calls to the same two entities I managed to find the actual shop's phone number, that was actually thw owner's house (he's working from home). I spoke to him, told the problem, and he changed the router destination to my house.
Today I checked the package status on the postal website and I saw that it seems that they tried every day, at 7:02 am, to deliver the bloody package again at the shop! I truly hope this was a bug on their tracking system. It's weird that the hours were always 7:02am, because the package delivery office opens at 8:30 am, so again I'm praying any existent and non-existent god that that's just a bug. I'm kinda tired of being stuck with my phone hotspot with limited GB and with ISP public routers with about 5Mbps.
I wish I had @netikras skills with router building.4 -
A day in the life of @C0D4
Yay it's Tuesday.....
So morning goes something like coffee, yea no coffee no @C0D4, get to the office, get busy with normal morning routine - run the almost automated scripts I have to run - delete the 100+ emails I don't actually need from last night, read the 2 I do care about - yea 2 freakin emails out of 117 🤦♂️
But what ever that's what outlook rules are for... except I actually have to glimpse over them all just in case something of mine broke.
Go get another coffee,
Start working through the days tickets - ok cool nothing major to worry about, let's get back to writing tests from yesterday.
Well fuck that was a bad decision, no matter what I do this little fucker won't pass, yet doing this process step by step, detail for detail, it works - no issues, but automate this fucker and it screams its head off.
So fine, I give up and go to lunch,
Come back... spend next 3 hours on this 1 problem... 1 FREAKING problem 🤦♂️🥴🤦♂️🥴🤦♂️
This thing has beaten me, and for no apparent reason - it just doesn't like running under a test scenario.
Would have given up hours ago, except its a vital piece of code I'm trying to cover 😑 of course it is.
Well somewhere in there I managed to do a deployment for another project and change a few things in there.
This week is starting to look like hell,
Yay hump day tomorrow!!!!!
That's something, the week is coming to an end.... right? Please.... right!!!5 -
!rant
So I have bought a new laptop and this time instead of straight up booting linux I had an idea of giving micro$oft a try, so I have decided to use only their services for 2 weeks.
To be honest, I really did not expect windows to use do much cpu and hdd during updates and background tasks, but after a day it was ok and windows feels snappier than during my last encounrer (maybe cause the new hw?).
I was even so dedicated that I started to use cortana and I have to tell, that she is dumb as fuck, since she fails to understand even the basic tasks and if u want something advanced, she refers to the next update. But boy, tell her to open Visual Studio and she asks if you want VS Code or Visual Studio, which seems great. But my response was 'Code' then she insisted that I said Coke. Im like OK, Im not native english speaker, lets try Visual Studio Code, where she told me that there is no such thing and Spelling VS - Code ended me in bing search for Unesco :/
I really want to like Cortana, she has nice name, nice history, but she is like that A girl from class, who looks gorgeous, has great voice, but then u reallise that she just eats a book before exam and after that she is that dumb basic hoe.
I also gave a shot to Bing and Edge. Bing is something between Google and DuckDuckGo, since it gives you a liiitle less results from search history, yet if you want to find something in different language its even possible to tell you that what are you trying to find does not exist.
But I have to tell, that I like Edge and I mean it. Like... Its fast and has some good features, like pushing all your open tavs away, so you can open them Later. It also does not have that stupid ass feature that lets you control tab from left to right, not by chronological order, so you wont end up in infinity loop of 2 tabs. And even if people make fun of M$ trying to convince you to use Edge by being too aggresive. God go on edge and try to use some Google Service(You still dont use chrome?!).
I also tried to play with .Net core and I have to tell that against java they are a bit further. I liked some small features, but what I just simply loved was rhe fucking documentation. You basically dont need google, sincw they give you examples and explain in a human way.
What I didnt quite get was the 'big' Visual Studio. Tje dark theme to me feels strange(personal and irrelevant). Why the hell I do need to press 2 shortcuts to duplicate line?! Why is it so hard to find a plugin to give me back my coloured brackets and why the fuck it takes like a second to Cut one line of code on a damn i7?!
Visual studio Code was something different. It shows how dark theme should be done, the plugin market is full of stuff and the damn shortcuts are not made for octopi. So I have to recommend it ^^.
I even gave a shot to word and office as a whole and fuck I never knew that there are so many templates. It really made my life easier, since all you need to do is find the right one in the app, instead of browsing templates online, where half of them are for another version of your text editor.
Android Launcher was fast, had a clever widget of notes and the sync was pretty handy to be honest so I liked that one as well.
What made me furious was using the CLI. Godfucking damn what the fuck is ipconfig?! :/
Last thing what made me superbhappy was using stuff without wine and all of the addional shit. Especially using stuff like Afinity Designer and having good looking apps in general. I mean Open source has great tools l sometimes with better functionality. But I found out, that what is pleasure to look at, is pleasure to work with.
To Summarize a bit.
It wasnt that bad as I expected. I see where they are heading with building yet another ecosystem of It just works and that they are aiming at professionals once again.
So I would rate it 6/10, would be 7 if that shit was Posix compatible.
I know that for Balmer is a special place in hell... But with that new CEO, Microsoft at the end may make it to purgatory..5 -
Teaching advanced IT topics like programming or system management has become much harder in only about five years, because many 20 year olds do not know how to effectively work with the file system. I don't blame them: the Microsoft Office applications nudge you strongly towards storing everything in the Cloud (saving files locally requires extra clicks), and on Windows, the folders C:\Users and C:\ are almost hidden in he respective dialogs (open file, save file). Same on macOS. Students also keep loosing files. This used to be an excuse for not doing the work; nowadays, you're able to find the files on their systems by using appropriate tools (e.g. `find`, installed with Git Bash on Windows). And don't get me started on touch-typing... hell, those kids were fast ten years ago with a proper keyboard! Now they're fast with their smartphone, but painstakingly slow on an actual keyboard.8
-
I think another intriguing job asides programming is engineering (*for some*). A week has past and I've been on the hike assisting my beloved brother on his contracted engineering job while I am less occupied. The job is based on 🗼Tower analysis and It's quite risky as you'd have to climb up to 56 meters high just to take readings of antennas, and fix some other stuffs. The only thing I find intriguing about this job is his love for it, funny enough he also thinks I love the job too and I guess I'm guilty for his thoughts (*Sorry bro, I love the job for you not me*).
With my little experience so far on my *new brotherly job* I noticed the most hectic task isn't going up and down the tower taking readings but at the end of all operations, he'll have to gather the values and snapshots he took while on the tower to prepare reports on msword & excel for the other buttwags at the office (or home I guess)
then archive and sends via mail. Seeing this lengthy process I was forced to ask why he wasn't using any reporting tool like Jotforms or any other equivalent and I was willing to look up some recommendations for him, his reply was: "I'm already used to this form of reporting, its what I was trained with and what the company provided, nevertheless a friend of mine suggested something of such weeks back but I would have to pay monthly fee for its usage which is quite on the high side and I don't think I'd prefer that."
Sounds convincing but not enough, okay here is another deal: You use an android phone right? and at my office we work on system automation (*basically does not know what I do for a living probably thinks I'm a hacker the illegal one*), how about i design you an android app for you to capture the tower data and a PC software for you to auto generate the msword & excel reports, I can get this ready for you in less than 5 nights (*I've got less task on my desk, and was willing to take the timeout to prepare the solution that he needed, all I needed to hear for a kick start was an "Okay" just to be sure he wants it*) I suggested and re-assured but up to this point he still declined my offer and is willing to stick with his current reporting pattern (*Me died*).1 -
Has to be writing.
Not exactly a better dev, per se, but close enough.
I used to read books and imagine all sorts of possible scenarios to different events. One day, after replaying the Mass Effect series, I began to think about alternate ways to end it. Opened Libre Office and started hammering away. 10 minutes later, I had an outline. Never actually finished that story, but the spark was there.
I began noting down outlines and creating structures for interesting games and books; that soon carried over to my work. Before and after every meeting with my boss, I'd have outlined how the meeting was going to go, and how it actually went. Gave me a sense of order.
This in turn helped me be a better manager (I work with a team of 9), and I tell you guys, it couldn't have come at a better time. I had been promoted quite suddenly, and had been fucking up quite a bit at the start.
I had my shit in order. My team was happier and more efficient. My boss was happy. I was given bigger goals and tighter deadlines. I fucking loved it.
All this, from writing some fanfiction. (there, I said it!)
P. S: I stared at this for a solid minute, still not sure how it all came together.1 -
So I'm pretty sure that when I went all in to Apple's Siri shitfest and turned on "Hey, Siri" that I had to accept some kind of privacy notice or some shit. Essentially, being an iPhone user and turning on that service, I've agreed to allow them to listen to me.
But what about the guy who sits next to me? Are his rights to privacy being infringed because my phone can also hear him? If so, who is the one infringing? Me or Apple?
Apple is just an example, but imagine if someone has an Echo in an office or a Google Home. Or what if you're unknowingly standing next to someone with a Google or Apple device that's always listening?
I know my old Android phone had picked up people at the grocery store before. I never turned on "Ok Google" but I used the speech to text of the keyboard a few times. When people showed how you could go see what Google had "heard", I was surprised to find how many OTHER people it picked up.
Anyway, just some thinking. -
Just happened today!
So since this morning we've been trying to get our website ready for UAT deployment Monday next week, even though we only were told of it yesterday. Since we had some critical merge conflicts to unscrew on our dev branch for promoting to UAT, we sent a warning to everyone on our hipchat group
Dev team: @all please don't commit anything to the repo for an hour or so while we get the branch good for dev and uat build
Tech lead: ok
That should be enough warning, right? Surely our tech lead, who has been piling up our scope creep trying to please our stakeholders, understands well enough not to do a single goddamn thing on our repo until we sort it out, right?
Nope.
10 minutes later our tech lead pushes several changes that not only break our builds but also remove all our configuration transformations. I just stormed out of the office to avoid sending her on a one-way ticket to slapsville and fuckyoutown. Geez goddamn louise. -
!rant from a support guy
I was tasked to migrate an Exchange 2003 server (yes, those are still used) for an upcoming Office 365 deployment. There are no direct upgrade path from one another, as far as we know
My task was to export PSTs from mailboxes. Great, a native tool exist for that in 2003 (exmerge). But only for less than 2 GB mailboxes because ANSI/Unicode! Half of our mailbox busts that limit. Oh, it seems Exchange 2007 has a PowerShell command for exporting to PST as well! But pre-SP3, that command relies on a local installation of Outlook on the server (DAFUQ), and has been superseded by another "standalone" powershell command. So I install a bogus Windows 2012 server only for that purpose, with Exchange Management Tools (which, by the way, is bundled with the Exchange installation setup and REQUIRES to have IIS installed on the target machine. Also, if you install ONLY the Exchange 2007 Management Tools and wish to uninstall them afterwards, you can't because the uninstaller wants me to select an Exchange Role to remove, which are all unchecked in my tools-only setup). Never worked, and Google-fu says that the newer Exchange 2007 New-MailboxExportRequest command seems to have removed Exchange 2003 support.
So i'm back to installing a pre-SP3 Exchange 2007. Then the older Export-Mailbox powershell command whines about 64bits and 32bit incompatiblity-- actually I ***HAVE*** to have the whole OS/software stack 32bit ONLY. Don't ask me why!
Some article I found says I could fire up an XP virtual machine for that, I go for Win 7 x86. "Sorry, Microsoft Exchange won't be installed on a workstation environment because reasons." All right then, let's go for an old Windows Server 2003 x86. Have you tried to boot this up in an Hyper-V environment where mouse and keyboard support for Windows Server 2003 are apparently optional? No keyboard AND mouse events sent to the guest machine at all.
* Sigh *, let's use a Windows Server 2008, but WATCH OUT! Microsoft has discontinued x86 support on their W2008 R2 release, so non-R2 for me. Even then, mouse event wasn't sent until I installed guest additions.
After all, export-mailbox ended up working, but that costed me two days of banging my head against the wall. (Oh, and I take internal calls inbetween as well...)
And that's why I aspire to be a programmer. Thank you for nothing, Microsoft!4 -
So about that job offer (https://devrant.com/rants/3654950/...)
After a weekend of deliberation, I’m going to turn down an offer with a roughly 40% raise to my current salary and the opportunity to work with a language I rly like. Sounds crazy, eh? Maybe it is, too.
However, while the raise woul’ve been great, the job itself sounded interesting enough, and I didn’t think I’d pass on such a chance, I do value my current position, colleagues, the atmosphere at the office, the way - while a little underpaid - we are taken so well care of as employees by our management. It does make for an environment where going to the office and doing your job is a joy.
I think the company I work for rn has more to offer for me, and I have more to offer to them. It’s not my time to jump the ship just yet.3 -
One of our team mates is based out of the US office. We are physically distant, but after our manager's departure, we lost touch because our scope of work was different.
Me and two other team members work closely with each other from India and dude is alone, working out of the US.
Super smart, very polite, and a fun person to work and be with. Even when our interaction was less, I learnt so much from him.
Since, I am facing some challenges, I decide to use it as an excuse to connect with him for a coffee and also seek his guidance because he is senior to me.
Some things he mentioned,
1. Our new line manager asks him to do things on spot with no heads up. He has to drop everything and complete the ask.
2. Often times, poor guy, is asked to join meetings on immediate basis. Even while he is having his lunch.
3. He never got support from our new manager. Infact, based on the conversation, I realised that the manager supports me more.
4. He is facing same, if not more, issues with tech. And he didn't have any guidance on how to handle the issue.
5. A lot of times he is facing process and system problems which he isn't able to solve because the org culture is that of working in Silos. And he doesn't get any support from manager.
6. Tech has clearly pushed him back when he asked for help and other teams never respond to him.
My man was still smiling bright and was looking things from a positive lens that all of this is interesting and adds to the learning experience which will be valued when we decide to move on from this job.
These are the people who inspire me. Smiling in the time of adversity.
Even when he had his own challenges, he was ready to guide me and hear my frustrations. I offered him help and will make sure to stay connected so he doesn't feel left out and alone in the team only because we don't work together in physical space.
One thing I have learned over time is, while I am facing problems, someone out there is facing more and difficult problems then me. I always tend to blow up my problems out of proportion then what they actually are.
I am the dumbest person that I know and mark my words, I'll die because of my empathy. I wish I could help my team mate in any possible way.2 -
I need your thoughts on a privacy related matter. I find this fact being very provocative.
So, at work we use Gmail:
Person AB has email AB@company.tld
Person ABC has email ABC@company.tld
How is it that when you send an e-mail to AB, that ABC sends back a god damn Out-of-office, without ABC being in either To, CC or BCC?
I reckon that the mailbox AB is owned by said company, and ABC is the owner of all those accounts. But shouldn't the contents of such mailbox still be private in some regard? (At least until AB isn't in the company anymore?)
It's funny, as a customer said she got an out of office from ABC, while solely sending one to AB.. I noticed this a few weeks back, and I'm rather infuriated by the fact that there's a possibility that every e-mail AB reveives, also ends up in in ABC's box.
🤔13 -
So the contract for this big project with a client has some interesting content in it. I'm not sure if I can sign this in good faith.
Because I seem to be lacking guard dogs and a receptionist at my home office. Maybe I could build a force field for them.
And I'm not really looking forward towards having all my friends sign a document every time they visist.
5 PHYSICAL SECURITY
5.1 Adequate physical security perimeters (e.g. fences, walls, barriers, guards, gates, electronic surveillance, physical authentication mechanisms, reception desks and security patrols) shall be implemented to safeguard Information and information systems.
5.2 Supplier shall have a documented visitor policy and all visitors must be identified, registered, logged, and accompanied by an employee from Supplier.2 -
one more time, I proud of my team and MD too.
XYZ is our office boy. He completed his BSc IT from 3rd Grade college due to family condition and lack of knowledge, he has to work as an office boy.
So my team decided to teach him web development. We are starting it from very basic. We get total 1:30 hours of a lunch+snack's break so each one of us will give 1-day to teach him but It is not free. We will need good coffee in this deal. Our MD like this idea and promised us that once we gave him a green signal. He can do his first internship here. -
Update about my boss:
I was early too judge. Maybe still early to form an opinion.
But dude seems pretty level headed. Yes, he is agressive. Yes, he has weird way of complicating things.
But I got to learn things from him. I earned his trust, just like I did in the past with other managers. He is confident about my performance now. He gave me space to ramp up and pushed me to limits.
But now, Floyd is settled. Maybe with time, I might get occasional unpleasant interactions, but those are part of every job.
However, we as a society decided to be in agile mode. Fix a problem and the solution gives rise to another one.
The business head of my pod is going crazy over the deliverables.
They were surviving for years with a product manager. Everything was driven by tech without any research.
And now when I am in, they want everything to be done yesterday.
We spent some decent amount of time on strategy and it turned out to be good. Now they are questioning that why ain't I delivering?!
It's been a week we finalised the strategy, let me get some space and time to structure and plan the execution.
Business heads are pretty nice and level headed people. Just that I don't understand the sense of urgency. I get it that my pod often has to deal with fire fighting given the nature of the business, but holy fuck! Stop pressurising to deliver everything together on a war foot.
They are like, we'll ask for more resources. But whose gonna tell them that 9 women cannot deliver a baby in 1 month.
I need time for discovery and research. Without that, don't expect impact.
As the only PM space, leading the entire vertical, how can I even focus on multiple initiatives?
I really miss my previous life of my first company. It's exactly an year when I left them and I changed two companies since then.
My learning and earnings sky rocketed, but WLB took a toll.
I miss the time when I could finish my work in an hour and did whatever the fuck I want while at work like browsing new topics to learn, exploring places, attending events, connecting with people, making social posts to learn, finance as a hobby, yada yada..
These days, I feel too burned out. Not that I am worried about job stability, because I trust my skills.
But more due to the fact that I have to constantly focus on work for the time I am in office. No free space or time to collect myself together, process things, and focus.
This leads me to thinking about work (read processing office discussions), at home too.
I cannot enjoy music. Feels like a load.
I no longer attend events or meet people after work. No more wasting time on the internet.
And most importantly, I am not bored anymore. I miss being bored. I miss living a boring, mediocre lifestyle.
I miss doing my side projects and polishing my portfolio site ten times a day, because I got nothing better to do.
I used to spend time learning right grammar and why American and English words are different and which to use where.
I miss spending time of Google Maps exploring borders and remote regions.
Weekends fly by. No hobby to pursue. No free time.
I miss the days when I had nothing to do and I was bored and I could do anything.
I used to be always happy. Because no responsibilities. I used to be always up for a meetup. I used to be available for a phone call.
Now it's nothing but work which is surely exciting and some foundational learning with good enough money, but I miss my time when I used to get bored because I had nothing to do.5 -
During the course of my career I've stumbled on like 6-7 people I've worked with and it was really great. Every now and then we meet up and chat how it'd be great to form a team again and work on something (we're all in different companies atm).
Lately we've been mentioning that even more and are considering whether to start working on a product/find clients and form an agency/join some other company.
We have experience with both outsource and products. Our profiles range from development, design, marketing, UX, HR, PM.
Any road we take has pros and cons. We're least fit to start on a product because we'd need more profiles, have to figure out finance and would probably have to work alongside our current jobs.
I've been thinking of writing a joint letter when I hear a company is opening up an office in our city. When that happens, usually whole teams are formed and most of the profiles I mentioned are needed.
Do you think that's even possible? Is there another way we're overseeing? Have you heard of or attempted something similar?
Any advice is truly appreciated.2 -
!tech #off_my_chest
when I look back to the earlier years of my life, I see nothing but loneliness. I had no friends in school, people didn't sit with me, only a few people barely talked with me and it was a mess.
I used to blame my parents for it: I thought they isolated me in a lot of areas which lead to hampering my growth and relations.
However, I recently got a taste of my old days and realized the root cause of the problem: DISEASES.
I used to be a very weak and sick child. I had extreme cough so much so that i will go on coughing for 1 min in every 2 mins. Cough hasn't touched me in last 10 years, but recently i caught cough again and it lead to a whole lot of revelations.
I currently have a good social network. I have one friend from past 10 years with whom I used to goto the park every day. I took off this park routine for 2 days citing sickness and he was worried. So once I felt better on 3rd day, i went to the park with him. While walking I again started coughing (albeit very less), but I could notice his expressions. he wanted to just get out of this whole situation. Next day, he didn't even bothered to message, and when i did, he started making excuses.
I had another group of home friends, who are so close to me that we went for snacks at any random time on any random day. Last year i went onto 3 road trips with them. but last weekend they straight up declined meeting me saying get better first.
---------------------------
I don't blame any of my friends or parents.
no one wants to be around a sick person, thinking that if the situation worsens, then the ill guy might need help that they couldn't provide, and if the situation went out of hand, then they would be the one to blame. And it's not just my illness, I think this might apply to anyone with an illness or a disability. everyone treats them as liabilities or time ticking bombs
Everyone wants to be in a homogenous group of healthy people with no one having any life problems so everyone could enjoy a movie life.
Guess what? THAT'S NOT HOW LIFE WORKS!!
People are at different stages of life in terms of age, knowledge, power, health, and finances. in a group of 5, if people come together to watch a movie, there maybe 1 person who is giving away his evening's dinner money for affording the tickets. another might be missing out on her sick grandma or office work just to be part of this one gathering for 3 hours.
And regarding ill people, we are not your responsibility once we are out of our patient bed!
I understand that I might need my friend's help in calling my parents or an ambulance if the situation worsens, but isn't that normal for healthy people too? what if 2 guys are walking on the street and one is hit by a car? won't the other call the ambulance?
And suppose My friend is not able to the help I needed, would I blame him for it?
NO!
Absolutely no! It was my decision to go out and meet people even when sick even if it was a risky move. Life only goes forward if we take risks. But if it backfired, then the instance where he was not able to help would be much less significant than the instance where i decided to get up and go out. That would be the only major blame area and the only person to blame would be me, myself!
The sick is just an inconvenience on people's souls, that's it.
--------
This whole experience makes me so worried about my office and professional situation. I am an excellent engineer working from home and this WFH has helped me keep my cough from worsening while working in a professional capacity.
But our office is shifting to WFO and that is a concern.
1. being in a different state, and working in office takes so much attention and focus that i often forget eating lunch or going to washroom. idk how i will treat my sickness if i got sick there.
2. being in home, i can do my work without bothering other people with my cough. at office, people will want to sit away from me and that ewould be not possible. eventually i would be forced by people to take leaves to "get better" as am bothering everyone
3. if i don't get "better" soon, which is there definition of being healthy enough to come to the office without any sickness (even though my illness doesn't hamper my efficiency), they will fire me .
i am royally fucked. even when i get better, WFO will always have a negetive factor like this. for cases of self illness, family illness, parents illness, if you are not being an 'office' slave (just being the 'work' slave isn't enough), you won't get the money4 -
So, I decided over the weekend that I would move my entire dev environment to Linux. No Windows on the laptop and only as a backup boot system for my home PC. I wanted to wean myself off of Linux as only being a VM and move to the full blown desktop.
I can only describe my experience to that of having your first kid: lot's of crying and joy at the same time.
Things I've learned:
1. The install is amazingly painless. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth work straight out of the box no configuring needed.
2. OH MY GOD THE CUSTOMIZATION. Rocking Arc Dark theme on Gnome3 = EVERYTHING IS
ALWAYS DARK MICROSOFT WHY IS THIS NOT A THING.
3. Getting Java servlets to work has been hell. I gave up trying to get them to work in eclipse and moved over to IntelliJ. More trial and error before I can figure out why tomcat won't fucking work in eclipse but it's fine in IntelliJ.
4. The UI and overall work flow has been improved after getting past the learning curve. Gnome3 is way better from when I tried it out 4 years ago.
5. Vim has a steep learning curve but I am starting to understand the net benefits of it. It'll probably be a solid month before I get good with it.
6. Loosing Microsoft Office has been a little bit of a challenge but their suite is online so....meh. I do miss Visual Studio though, and am still looking for an adequate replacement for C++ and C# development.
Overall it's been a challenge but I think it's been a net gain. Now if only I could get the whole sys-admin team to use it. ;)
12 -
I think the following is all in my head, or I am heading towards an office rivalry situation between my tech lead and me.
characters :
me : a no nonsense android guy who is sometimes very blunt when requested for unwarranted demands. i am also realising that i have been a bit too arrogant, as i come up with a lot of counter questions too fast (not related to story tho)
tech lead : an android guy who has been android dev for a total of 4 years (same as me), 3 of them in current company and somehow got promoted to TL
story: I find this guy to be too much political, delegating a lazy bum, and i kinda called him out in public , once during a discussion where other folks were also kinda calling him out and another time when we were having a small meeting of 3 people. he in turn has taken some actions (like giving me a lower kpi, not giving me appropriate data for doing some work and then asking about it in public, casually ignoring my leave requests) which looks he is taking out a revenge.
at first time i called him out in a discussion where everyone was getting against his havit of giving buttery responses to his boss (who occasionally joins our standups) . he says "we are on track" while we are already dependent on him to provide data/decisions.
he then says to us to do it faster , and when the work does not get completed ( because how it could be, without him doing his job), he blames it on devs.
i called him out on a similar but different topic of him making last moment task additions when we are already on brim with our planned tasks.
on second time i called him out on him not looking into the current task enough as he was expecting me to take decisions on my own.
the decision was about how a screens ui will be populated and there was no api payload available that would match the ui . i created 2 mock api jsons which would appropriately load that screen but was not sure if the 2 apis would be enough for the screen and wondered whete some missing data will come from?
this task is a long one, nd i did took a decision, but he should had validated them to make sure we are on track. the issue came when i took some questions to him and instead of answering them , he blamed on me not being mature enough to work without the data!
All things aside, I am on my weary ends with thins guy. He is my boss and holds incredible powers over me, but he is incredibly incompetent and his habits of delay, delegation and blaming is making my work life worse. I don't wanna leave this job too, because as much as i hate it, its currently one of the major names in industries and giving a solid power to my resume -
A couple of weeks ago my manager asked me to stay in the office for 3 hours more (after a full 8 hours there) because he had to go to a client and
1. I'm doing an interim + thesis for my graduation in that company so I'm not a real employee there
2. I did that project because it was slightly related to my thesis
3. Nobody else was available due to another project (he, the same manager, hasn't assigned the roles for weeks and now everybody has to work overtime because it's late)
4. I had an exam the following week
5. He should have gone after lunch and asked me to be available in that time frame but he disappeared and came back at the end of the day
I literally escaped with "I've an exam next week and I'm gonna miss the bus. Bye bye" -
Question to all linux users:
tl;dr MS office alternate for linux?
I am planning on switching from Win to some linux distro. But I hesitate bc I don't know what I should use instead of MS office or how I could still use it. I am searching an office suite that has a rather comprehensive UI, is stable, can be used offline and is compatible with MS Office since I still have to use it in school.
What do you use or would recommend?5 -
working at an MNC is like dating the hottest girl in campus. everyone stares at you, but only you know of the tantrums and the expenses that you have to take.
Every random aunty and uncle I come across gets a wide smile on their face when i tell them my company's parent company name. i goto this temple , and there, one uncle was introducing me to his wife "meet X ji's son , he is at Y company" .
previously when i worked at a startup, most of the time , people were like "huh? what does this company do?" and when i would explain them how our DBs are sending billions of notifications and interaction each second, they would be like "oh , so you work at IT" , YES DUDE, YOU WANNA GIVE YOUR DAUGHTER'S HAND NOW?
And this mentality is sick. i loathe the place where i currently work. i loved my previous org and now am just here coz my mom is too scared to let her son live in a different state.
The only reason a person works in a company is money and WLB. Indian service based MNCs don't give a penny more than basic industry standards. and when they want their employees to be available 2 days a week + x number of days when any CEO , ED or other sugar daddy is coming to office, you get an idea of the shitty Work life balance.
my previous company was a b2b startup, it always paid me more than industry standards and we had wfh until a notification came to enforce hybrid working bh end of 2024. till now not a single person from my team has relocated. All i had to do was to *plan* for living in a state and my mom got cold feet :/
i think so much about my future. i earn decent, so i wanna spend it to live and grow.
i wanna go party at friday nights and go on night outs. i wanna meet this cute school crush at anytime after office and don't worry about the 9 pm curfew. i wanna go look for a new home in a different area and get out of this parking hellhole. i wanna prepare for exams and do a hugher studies from aborad.
everything needs money and growth mindset. money makes money and i am trying to earn every minute. but a chained mind cannot fly . a non growth mindset will not let you evolve. and someone needs to tell it to people who control my every . fucking. action
i have seen people switching from one big name to another. i personally feel that you are just too comfortable in the environment of big names and deliberately ignoring the smaller names which are doing the actual build fast and break reality stuff. reward is proportional to risk and if you are okay with just attributing to a big name, then that's on you20 -
A certain person deserves nothing better than the signs of the tires of a full-speed heavy truck tatooed on her face (even though, I admit, it could be an improvement to the overall aesthetic). Especially when she wants to push the office (1 week before the vacations and with no real urgency, while there a tons of other jobs that are way more urgent) to modify one by one some field in the data of 5500 customers only because SHE (and only she) has a bonus, when everything could be solved with a fucking simple sql update and we only need a simple approval for that from the company of the project management software. All of this while she spends the time planning her own vacations in internet, or complaining about EVERYTHING, including the colour of the icons of her pdf reader (30 min complaints about a stupid icon). Responsible my ass.
-
I started working for a startup as Server Administrator/ System Integrator beside university to get some dollars with easy work and nice people.
((I Know two of the C*Os so I got a had feeling with this. Besides the upcoming story I'm still really happy with my position and career chances here. God bless my Department which has the most funny/rude guys, love you.))
tl;dr:
Guy fakes his Skillset and fuckup whole department, can´t do most of his basic tasks. I had my first and hopefully last interaction with this bastard.
Heres how everything started:
I was more and more involved in the leading processes and decisions.
Heard about a story where and why the whole dev-department was kicked out of his position because they were crappy developers. And cant just believe the stories they told me about the former Dev-Lead
Now I met the former "Development Lead"
I was brought in because we in the IT wondered why he would like to share his local machine password with colleges. After some questions he came out with the Reason.
He is doing home-office for some days a week now and wants his colleges to be able to start his "software". (already confused by that)
The "better IT-guy" in me offered help for automatic deployment CI/CD stuff so that they can use it as an inhouse service.
BIG OOF incoming:
"The code is not in git because I wanted to clean it up before"
"My IDE is the only place where my PHP crap work is running"
"The 'PHP-software' is to complex for this"
My Lead and I were completely speechless,
I understand the decision to kick this "dev-Lead" from the lead position down to a code monkey/ script kid.
Now I´m thinking about getting my Hands on the Lead position after my exams because if such bastards with no clue about basic stuff, no clue about leading, no clue about ci/cd, no clue about generic software stuff get the job I would easily be the "good IT-guy" with more responsibility/ skill.
Now I sit here, hate people that fake their skills and set back work of colleges for multiple months and never asked for help or advice.
And the little "Bastard Operator from Hell" in my just wants to delete all his files, emails account during a migration to completely demotivate the person who failed to be responsible for a team nor their projects.5 -
Sometime last year I had an internship at a small company.
Test servers weren't a thing, and after local testing, it would go to production with a backup of the files that we would put back as soon as we notice something was broken or off.
We used symfony and sonata admin was part of the bundle.
One day, boss asks me to show all the items in a table on the admin page instead of 30 rows.
Me being good guy intern say "sure no problem" so after finding the magic number, I set it to 0 instead of 30.
I gave my work reviewed by my supervisor (senior dev there) and he approved it.
I try to upload the file over FTP. No permissions.
Ask the other dev what it's about, his response: "no idea"
So he tries, fails and decides to try SSH.
Somehow, after fiddling for 20 minutes with ssh, we managed to upload the file.
As soon as we did we hear a scream from the boss's office, we refresh the site, and no matter what page we went to, all we saw was white and the logo of the company in the top left corner.
So this time, we fiddled around with ssh to restore the file for 20 minutes.
Finally succeed all goed back to normal.
A little while later, we call a meeting with the bosses and ask to rewrite the website, BAM, we get approval.
We said "two weeks tops", well that lasted 3 months.
In the end bosses are Uber happy with the work and everything ended well.
Also, development speed has multiplied. -
Kudos to Fedora for the 32 workstation release. It works as advertised on Lenovo laptops (even the new ones) OOTB, no issues.
Caveats: It's Wayland with Nvidia graphics disabled and has no fingerprint support, but that goes with the territory. Still an arch adherent personally, but it makes the office engineer laptop story significantly easier. -
Hey guys. I am in a situation where I need to decide wether to take on a new project or not. And if not, how to turn down that client so that I would not burn any bridges. So I need your opinions on this matter in order to make the final decision.
To make things clear heres some background info. 10 months ago I quitted my fulltime position in another EU country and went back to my own home country. 10 months forward till today and I have my own ltd company which currently has 5 projects. Its doing pretty well money wise. All projects combined, I already earn more then I ever did and I need to work max 10 hours a week since all projects are remote projects so I dont waste time on useless meetings and etc. However I dont feel fulfilled or challenged anymore because surprise surprise doing well paid projects doesnt guarante your sense of fulfillment.
So I noticed that I have lots of spare time which I spend diving into rabbitholes with hobby projects. I decided that its time to scale my company and take on more projects and maybe even hire more people.
So I started searching for other projects I could work on (prefferibly remote projects or flexible ones where I could come in 2-3 days a week in office and work remotely rest of the week). Reason being that I am already out of sync with fulltime position lifestyle and I am totally result oriented, not punch in my hours and go home oriented.
For exampleIf i get my weekly tasks I prefer to do them in 1-2 days (even if it requires doing double shifts which rarely but happens) but then I want to have rest of the week off. Thats how my brain works and thats how Im wired. I cant stand fulltime positions especially in enterprise bigger companies where I come in and do maybe 2 hours of actual work everyday because of all useless meetings and blockers from backend/etc. Its soul crushing to me.
So I posted linkedin ads and started searching for new clients/projects. One month ago I went to an interview for an android project in a startup.
The project looked interesting enough. Main task was to rewrite their android app from java to kotlin. Apparently their current current app was built by a backend developer who wants to focus solely on backend.
So during the interview they showed me their app which was quite simple frontend wise but not so simple backend wise from what I was able to figure out.
Their project lead (also a backed guy) asked me my estimation of price and completion of task. I told them maybe 2-3 months to do everything properly.
Project lead was basically shocked because all other candidates told him they can rewrite the app from java to kotlin in 2-3 weeks. I told him that everything is possible but his app quality will suffer and for a better estimation he would we would need to sign an NDA so I could evaluate the costs. So we ended the interview.
After that we kept in touch for one month (it took them one month to google a generic NDA and sign it digitally with me).
So heres the redflags I noticed:
1. They dont respect my time. Wasted 1 month of my time and after signing NDA gave me 2days to estimate their project and go to a meeting and give them detailed info about what I can offer. I thats not a brain rape then I dont know what it is
2. They are changing initial conditions we talked about. We agreed on rewriting the codebase and be done with it. Now they prefer a fulltime worker who would be responsible for android app as his own product. So basically project lead was not able to find a fulltime dev so now hes trying to convert me (a company owner) to his fulltime worker.
3. Lack of respect. During the interview he started speaking in his own native language to me with some expression (he seemed pissed off at that moment when he switched languages).
4. Bad culture fit. As I said Im used to relaxed clients and projects where I dont need to be chained to a desk a monitored and be micromanaged. I mean lets sign a contract give me access to your codebase and tell me what to do, I will produce results and lets be done with it.
5. Project lead is a backend guy who doesnt understand how complicated android apps can be. No architecture and no unit tests are in his frontend app. He doesnt care about writing proper app since he ships it in his own device so he doesnt need to worry about supporting custom devices or different api levels of android and etc. But not having any architecture? Cmon.
So basically I am confused. Project lead needs a fulltime dev but hes in contact with me in hopes that I would sign a fulltime contract. But how I can work fulltime if all what I can see are redflags?
Basicaly I thinkthis was a misundersanding. Im searching for fulltime remote projects and hes offering fulltime inhouse projects. Project lead never outsourced so hes confused as well.
As you can see decision is already basically made to turn him down, I just need to know how to tell him to fck off in the most polite manner and thats it.6 -
During my commute to home from office, I got an idea about an app that I really needed and it could be built easily. And I couldn't wait to get home and start building it ... I was super excited...( You know the feeling when you are so clear about what you are going to do that you start to think in code )
Now it has been half an hour since I am stuck on this error , looking at my screen , pulling my hair while sitting on a chair in the posture of a f*cking question mark! Thinking about why I did I even choose to do this for a living , I could have sold vegetables and be happier.
This is just beginning of my career , is this how I am going to spend rest of my life?14 -
The company I'm contracted to have just realised they're a tad behind with product delivery after the Development Manager and his second in command left. Leaving two contractors and one junior member of staff to deal with the backlash of "wtf is going on with x product why is it not delivered?".
Company: "Ok we're going to need to do overtime, you guys will be willing to work overtime on weekend and nights, right?"
Me: "What's the rate?"
Company: "It's day rate is that going to be an issue?"
Me: *mutes phone to pmsl*
Company: "We're all up against it so we all have to help out"
Me: "Not interested in a day rate for overtime, thanks"
Company: "Your holiday you have booked in two weeks time, can it be moved?"
Me: *laughs* "No I won't be cancelling my holiday to work"
Company: *salty as fuck now* "Well the question needed to be asked"
Me: "I'm not cancelling a holiday I have paid for to make up for a lack of planning"
I come in the office today and Mr Company has fucked off on a three week holiday!1 -
so... either its justified and i should be reporting for harassment or i am overreacting to a water cooler talk, please help me decide next action:
we are in morning standup zoom call. boss (AVP) comes, jokes about who's birthday is coming next month, no one says a thing, then i joked Gandhiji's. his reaction : "ugh bro why do you always have to ruin the friday mood?" and I also laugh "well..." topic changes.
^--- this part is all good. he is AVP, He rarely joins the call and is a cool fun (but strict) guy. the problem happens in a side teams chat room
so we have an "emotional support android" group. we just named it that to prevent scrutiny, its really just a group where everyone is usually ranting and bitching. however it just includes us android devs.
so while i am making this joke in teams, one guy messages there about what a stupid statement that was + 2 abuses (hindi abuses, there translation would loose the impact)
i am all in for bitching and everything , but i felt bad for this. this group does include the word "android" and android folks, some of which are not even here. if this was a personal chat, i had ignored it, but i am trying to make a name as a dev and this undermines my statements in general.
furthermore this guy is 6 months old in team and i have been here for more than 1.5 years. he is 2 years older than me, but we are always cool and we often help each other in tasks
I am angry for the public humiliation and feel like reporting to my TL, HR or even the AVP. he is not even realising that he hurt me. actually the office environment has gone so toxic that the tl is herself threatening and scolding for every basic things and we are all but bitching to each other about it. he is mostly my guy, always taking my side and i take his, but i feel like my dignity is being impacted
or am i stupid to get hurt at this?14 -
I’ve become so indecisive in terms of knowing what I want from my career.
All I know is what I don’t want (to end up a in management)
I’m definitely getting a new job and right now it looks like I’ve got 3 offers on the table
Option 1, a previous company I worked for. Still the same problems with the company there as before but the work was interesting and unusual. and my line manager was a good guy.
They have practically no legacy code.
Not much in the way of company benefits but they’re local and it would be nice to see friends again.
So feels like the pull to this is strong.
Option 2, a fully remote company that I’ve been referred to by an ex-workmate.
They’ve not even tech tested me because they’ve read my blogs and GitHub repos instead and said they’re impress. So just had a conversation with them. I feel honoured that they took the time to look at what I’ve done in my own time and use that in their decision.
Benefits are slightly better than option 1 (more hols)
But they’re using .net 6 and get a lot of heavy use on their system and have some big customers. I think the work is integrations to start with and moving services into docker and azure.
Option 3, even though I’ve got an offer from this one but they can’t actually explain the work until We can arrange a call next week (they recruit and then work out what team your in, but Christmas got in the way of me having a call with them straight away)
It’s working on government systems and .net is their least used stack so probably end up switching to Java. Maybe other tech stacks too.
This place has much better benefits than option 1 and 2 (more hols and more pension), but 2 days a week in office.
All of the above pay the same salary.
Having choice feels almost as bad as having no choice.
It’s doing my head in thinking about it , (even tho I might as well not think about it at all until the call with option 3 happens).
On the one hand with option 3, using a tech stack that’s new to me might be refreshing, as I’ve done .net for 10 years.
On the other hand I really like c# and I’m very good at it. So it feels a bit like I should be capitalising on that and using my experience to shape how the dev is done. Not sure I and I can do that with option 3, at least for a while.
C# feels like it’s moving forward nicely and I’m not sure I can say the same for Java or other languages.
I love programming and learning new stuff but so unable to let things go. It’s like I have a fear that c# will move on without me and I’ll end up turning into one of those devs whose skills are a decade out of date.
Maybe the early years of my career formed me in this way.
Early on I worked at a company where there was a high number of Cobol devs who thought they had a job for life.
But then redundancies came and many left. Of those who stayed they had to cross train to Java and they just couldn’t do it.
I don’t think the tech was hard for them, I think they were just so used to not learning that they could no longer adapt.
Think most of them ended up retiring after trying to learn Java for a few years.8 -
New office stories during the emotional turmoil...
Story 1: The creepy fuck
So being unaware of the fact that I was connected with this guy on LinkedIn already.
Ron walks upto my desk and greets me on my first day on floor. Weird, but whatever.
I politely interact, because gotta make friends and create my following to get shit done.
The next day, randomly comes asking for a laptop sticker and I am like WTF! He is like sticker was an excuse, I just wanted to say Hi!
👀
Day 3: same random creep shit. Talks about personal topics and invades personal space uninvited.
Day 4: Keeps starring at me while I ignore and judges me evidently with stupid suggestions on how to exist without being asked for.
Fuck this guy.
Story 2: The classic case of Dunning Kruger effect
So I get introduced to my tech team today and everyone start piling on me to guide them on decision making. The CTO creates a Slack thread with me and Co-founder asking me to get things moving on priority.
The co-founder shut him out right away. Fucking hilarious.
But, a retard starts schooling me on how to use Slack. Lmfao.
Me being polite, said I'll follow.. dude starts bragging on how he wrote company policy to get everyone on Slack yada yada..
To be honest, the Slack experience is beyond broken based on what these idiot has setup.
He literally opened my Slack and responded to the CTO thread.
That's where I got pissed. I upfront told him that hey! Calm your tiddies down. I know how to use Slack. I have used it since it was in the beta.
I have been in much much mucy bigger orgs and places more well structured than what you have here.
I told him on his face what the flaws where and how I felt a downgrade from where I am coming from.
The look on his face was priceless and he started sweating. Lol
Never again he'll school anyone.
I mean I understand if you are humble and genuinely guiding a new hire. But being cocky unnecessarily and shoving things down my throat without yourself knowing shit or know about the other person is purely asshole move.
Anyway, I am still upset about the scam. Fuck this world.5 -
!tech (sorta)
I am a 24yo Software Engineer guy and had just started working professionally 2 years ago, and most of my work life went in WFH due to covid. Before that, my college was also near to my home, so i have never left my home for more than a few hours to do studies.
Life had went pretty smoothly so far but now I see a lot of hurdles coming into my path . i am 24 and don't have a license for even a 2 wheeler. I don't have a good idea of my own city (but fortunately it has a great infrastructure , so i know how to travel via public transport to anywhere easily). mainly I don't know how to live alone.
The worst thing currently happening for me is that my company is transforming from WFH to WFO. The office is in a different metropolitan city which is crazy expensive and short on space. I already am uncomfortable with the idea living on my own but the thoughts of sharing a room/bed with some other guy and having my savings cut from 90 to 50% is worse.
i am hopeful that the financial hit will not be that bad as appraisals are coming, but this picture of hustle is scary. will i indulge into bad habits (drinking, gambling, smoking)? will i loose my health? would i need to wash my clothes and cook my food everyday? would i even have time to think and watch some web series, video tutorial? would i cut cost everywhere? every thing is scary. the market is also very bad right now, i am not getting any interviews even after applying to many places.
how do you prepare yourself to live away from home? Also , how do you prepare your family to live away from you?
(for 2nd question, i am a single child of a nuclear family with rarely any relatives or friends. my parents , especially my mom have been super involved in my life and we both have an exteem8 attachment to each other. i have recently started going away for short trips and travels, but she gets super emotional and concerned on thinking about me living and managing things on my own , away from her)5 -
Ok I don't know what ticks managers off about working from home.
I live an hour away from the office and my team (i.e. The whole company) consists of 3 people, INCLUDING ME. And we all work on different projects. So what's the point of even going to the small room with cubicles AKA the office? No, there aren't really any "learning from my colleagues" crap; we work on different stacks. Plus we're all juniors. Oh yeah, haven't I mentioned that? WE HAVE NO TEAM LEAD OR EVEN SENIORS. The CEO has a tech background and he communicates with us directly and discuss the requirements etc. BUT HE LIVES IN ANOTHER FUCKING CONTINENT. So, again, what's so bad about working from home in my case? My manager doesn't like it for some reason. -
So. My new machine at work has decided that running visual studio is too hard and our build script has decided that building vcxproj files is too hard. And our one sysadmin for our team of 100+ is the only one allowed to fix it.
Luckily I have an old box that *only* takes 45 minutes to run our build, a hangover, apparently I am going through early manopause because it is hot as fuck in this office, and today is the day that everyone wants to loudly ask every question ever.
I guess what I am saying is I blame everyone else for my bad decisions and project them into my you-me instead of focusing on my me-me. Also I really don't want to talk to the S.A. He is difficult. -
>start new job, not very professionally experienced dev
>spend couple of months working on a feature that is supposed to be an MVP kind of thing, be rushed to finish and told to cut corners because it's "just an MVP", still lose sleep and have relationship suffer (and ultimately ruined) as I try to not lose deadlines created by the boss with questions like "you can have this done by <very soon>, right?"
>frontend created by fellow developer is a garbled mess of repeated code and questionably implemented subpages, frontend dev apparently copies CSS from Figma and pastes it into new non-reusable React components as envisioned by designer, I am tasked with making sense of the mess and adding in API consumption, when questioning boss what to do with the mess I am often told to discard stuff that the frontend dev has made and just reuse his styling; all of this on top of implementing the backend feature that a previous developer wasn't able to do
>specs change along the way, I had been using a library as a helper in some part of the original feature, now the boss sees that and (without further testing the library) promises CEO that we'll add that as a separate subfeature, but the performance of the library is garbage for larger inputs and causes problems, is basically shit that might not have been shit if we had implemented it ourselves, however at this point CEO has promised new feature to some customers, all the actual sense of responsibility falls upon my hands
>marketing folk see halfway done application and ask for more changes
>everything is rushed to launch, plenty of things aren't implemented or are done halfway
>while I'm waiting for boss to deploy, I'm called up to company office by CEO, and get new task that is pretty cool and will actually involve assessing various algorithms and experiment with them, rather than just stitching API calls and endpoints together, it involves delving into a whole new field of CS that I never had the opportunity to delve into before
>start working on cool task, doing research, making good progress
>boss finally deploys feature I had been originally implementing
>cut corners of original boring insane feature start showing up, now I have to start fixing them instead of working on cool task, however the cool task also has a deadline which is likely expected to be met
I'm not sure if I'm having it bad or not, is this what a whole career in software development will look like?6 -
A question on corporate reality, let me know which person is doing it right :
Person A is a young enthusiastic nd curious fresher who has joined an amazing company where there is a team of seniors above him.
They ask him to work on a project, give him some guidelines which he is able to quickly grasp and come back with an output (because he loves learning and working on it and challenges himself to do it quicker than before)
This goes on and on, the new guy is giving his 100%, but company realizes it and starts expecting more of him, his 100% is not satisfactory enough, he is expected to give his 110% . He is now feeling the pressure but still liking it (because he likes learning) even though it has started to effect his personal lifestyle. He no longer has time for friends and even codes during his nap times, but still believes that he's in his prime and its okay for him to grind wheels for a better future
-------------
Person B is a lazy ass half hearted fresher who's good with public relations. He knows he can do a work in 1 hour, but still does it in 2 hours and do it bad.
He is giving his 50% and seniors know it but still are expecting to get just 70-80% out of him because of his charming and cool personna.
He's cool, now dating office girls, actively partying and is now people's favorite and living a lavish life with equal salary as that of the person A.
Who is living their youth correctly?9 -
First rant! I'm currently on my first actual dev job and I've been learning a ton, doing extra studying/side projects in my free time and office environment is decent with good colleagues!
BUT
1) I'm getting paid about half as much as someone on my level (education and experience considered) - partly my fault, but thought experience would outweight the shit pay, now I'm really starting to question this bullshit
2) I'm away from all my friends, and by the end of my contract, 90% of them would have graduated... Have no friends outside of work where I live, and any social life I had, died when I moved
3) My work project is fucking tedious and could be flipped upside down to be of actual use, but no, company can't change how they've done things for the past 1000 years. But who gives a flying fuck about junior's suggestions, I haven't got decades of experience to back my ideas, plain logic and industry feedback isn't enough
4) Programming 24/7 for months is doing no favours to my hobbies, as I'm either too tired to do anything, or I don't have the time
5) The piece of shit library that I HAVE to use (because alternative has no support, lacks basic documention, the usual...) is built so that any automation that my project is meant to provide, is next to impossible to achieve, so day-to-day I'm just spitting in the wind as I'm slowly falling behind schedule
Quitting isn't really an option, as I'd have to find a job with significantly higher pay, really quickly to benefit from leaving... which is next to impossible
So here I am, stuck between frustration with aspects of my life and being contempt with other half (the learning and programming as a career)...
Is this something that will stay with me throughout my career/life? Or is it simply a shitty-entry-level situation out of which I'll grow out of?5 -
Hey guys,
I need your advice about deciding wether to work as a freelancer for a startup or no.
So this French startup is couple years old and they decided to build a team in my country. I went to the interview few weeks ago and we discussed the projects, details, potential salary and everything seemed great.
Couple days ago I received a service contract from them and now I need to decide to work for them or no.
Plan is for them to come to my country, rent an office and I should go there and work for them.
The salary that they offered is medium level and they will not have any legal entity in my country. However it’s not a problem for me since I have my own LTD company so I would pay salary on my own.
However there are some cons:
My team members are being hired as freelancers, however salary is defined with a daily rate instead of hourly and we are allowed to work maximum 20 days a month. It is not clear how many hours a week/month they will expect us to work and at this point I’m afraid to rock the boat with my questions. I understand that I shouldn’t receive any health insurance, sick leave pays, vacation days, home office, pension contributions and so on. But it’s so weird that they pay per day instead of per hour. It screams with unpaid overtime.
Payment time is 30 days after invoice has been sent. So If I started working from September 01, I will send them invoice at September 30, then I will work all October and will receive my money only around end of October. Working 60 days to receive my first salary doesn’t seem nice.
Notice period is 30 days. Which is fine on my end since I can be completely free after initial notice. But in their case if they want to fire me I guess they will simply not give me any work to do and since I’m charged per day I won’t be able to send them any invoice. No employment safety, which means if after 2-3 months they don’t have anything to do I can get royally screwed. But it’s startup nature I guess?
They don’t provide a laptop to work with. I’m lucky since I have a laptop for developing mobile apps, and they said they will at least provide office to work in and a monitor.
All this situation is sending vibes of "we want to save money so we came to your country for cheap labour and now we gonna exploit you"
What complicates matters is that my sister will be working with me and It’s her first job. They agreed to pay her a decent salary and even be flexible with her studies. However this deal for me does not seem too great as I will be receiving mid level salary with no benefits that I would otherwise get.
On the other hand maybe I'm just overthinking this I can just try it out for few months and see where it goes.
Any thoughts?6 -
We have about 12 standing desks at the office for people who say they /need/ them.
I only ever see two people standing.
One guy is standing every month for a few days, and sometimes for the whole month.
The other one, where a whole team moved for so he can have his standing desk, has his desk up high every day but is sitting on a high stool in an unergonomic way, slouching forward.
All the other people just don't use it ever.
Plenty of people who want to actually use it don't get the opportunity.6 -
Rubber ducking your ass in a way, I figure things out as I rant and have to explain my reasoning or lack thereof every other sentence.
So lettuce harvest some more: I did not finish the linker as I initially planned, because I found a dumber way to solve the problem. I'm storing programs as bytecode chunks broken up into segment trees, and this is how we get namespaces, as each segment and value is labeled -- you can very well think of it as a file structure.
Each file proper, that is, every path you pass to the compiler, has it's own segment tree that results from breaking down the code within. We call this a clan, because it's a family of data, structures and procedures. It's a bit stupid not to call it "class", but that would imply each file can have only one class, which is generally good style but still technically not the case, hence the deliberate use of another word.
Anyway, because every clan is already represented as a tree, we can easily have two or more coexist by just parenting them as-is to a common root, enabling the fetching of symbols from one clan to another. We then perform a cannonical walk of the unified tree, push instructions to an assembly queue, and flatten the segmented memory into a single pool onto which we write the assembler's output.
I didn't think this would work, but it does. So how?
The assembly queue uses a highly sophisticated crackhead abstraction of the CVYC clan, or said plainly, clairvoyant code of the "fucked if I thought this would be simple" family. Fundamentally, every element in the queue is -- recursively -- either a fixed value or a function pointer plus arguments. So every instruction takes the form (ins (arg[0],arg[N])) where the instruction and the arguments may themselves be either fixed or indirect fetches that must be solved but in the ~ F U T U R E ~
Thusly, the assembler must be made aware of the fact that it's wearing sunglasses indoors and high on cocaine, so that these pointers -- and the accompanying arguments -- can be solved. However, your hemorroids are great, and sitting may be painful for long, hard times to come, because to even try and do this kind of John Connor solving pinky promises that loop on themselves is slowly reducing my sanity.
But minor time travel paradoxes aside, this allows for all existing symbols to be fetched at the time of assembly no matter where exactly in memory they reside; even if the namespace is mutated, and so the symbol duplicated, we can still modify the original symbol at the time of duplication to re-route fetchers to it's new location. And so the madness begins.
Effectively, our code can see the future, and it is not pleased with your test results. But enough about you being a disappointment to an equally misconstructed institution -- we are vermin of science, now stand still while I smack you with this Bible.
But seriously now, what I'm trying to say is that linking is not required as a separate step as a result of all this unintelligible fuckery; all the information required to access a file is the segment tree itself, so linking is appending trees to a new root, and a tree written to disk is essentially a linkable object file.
Mission accomplished... ? Perhaps.
This very much closes the chapter on *virtual* programs, that is, anything running on the VM. We're still lacking translation to native code, and that's an entirely different topic. Luckily, the language is pretty fucking close to assembler, so the translation may actually not be all that complicated.
But that is a story for another day, kids.
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I work in a small office (about five people) and probably once or twice a week, we will do a group order of delivery/take-out for lunch. I’m the most junior at the company, and often I end up asked to place the lunch order, so I put it on my personal card and have everyone pay me back. All of my other colleagues are quick to ask how much they owe and reimburse me, but on the occasions where my CEO joins the lunch order, he has never paid for his food or even offered to do so. I honestly don’t think it crosses his mind to wonder who paid for the meal, and I have a sneaking suspicion it’s often because my other colleagues simply pay for him. (I have another sneaking suspicion it’s because he’s a white man who has had a great deal of wealth his entire life.)
After the meal there’s always a conversation, initiated by my colleagues, in which everyone ask me how much they owe. We are in an open office space with our CEO, but he seems to be entirely oblivious to these conversations. I would love to be able to simply Venmo charge him, but alas he has made it clear that he is “anti-Venmo” (what?).
I’m feeling very bitter that he is in a position where he doesn’t have to think about the cost of a $14 salad, and frustrated that my other (wealthier) colleagues are all willing to eat the cost to avoid asking him to pay. He knows how much I make, but how do I gracefully make it clear that he should be expected to reimburse me like everyone else (and ideally, should do so without being prompted)?4 -
today has been one of the worst day of my life
- the parking situation went out of hand : i bought a new car 2 days ago, nd since last 2 days i have been just taking it out to practice for 1 hr in morning with the trainer. today one of our pesky neighbour took this opportunity and parked in our spot. i had to call my friend in the early morning to get it parked in a place far away from home . my new car is parked in an unsafe place , just because the neighbour wants to make me mad 😭
- office announced that since cto is coming, you must do wfo fod next 2 days. our office is tuesday nd Thursday, now i will have to go on friday too. plus our team lead is coming, so next weekend is going to be 4days wfo. they are giving random surprises, why not just tell us that its full wfo?
- one of our neighbour's bike got stolen in plain sight. our road is usually having a lot of people going around whole day, as its opposite to park. nd those neighbours have a hon ground floor, so they are almost always outside. we have installed a camera just 2 days ago, nd that caught the incident live. i am 100% sure that if my car had been parked here today, then it would have been my car 😭😭😭
- we friends went for a night stroll in my car. the car was mine, but my friend was driving it as he's experienced. we stopped at a food joint. i took the key from him for sometime because i was having fun playing with it . then when we were heading out, our key was gone!
i almost had a mini heart attack. my friends were not messing up with me. fortunately the restaurant had cameras , so we requested for cctv footage. in the footage we found that i accidentally put the key in the restaurant menu. and that fucking guy had taken away the menu!!!
imagine if he had given that menu to someone else 😭😭😭. our car would have been gone in a moment, as we were not even seeing the car from the window. imagine if the restaurant didn't had the fucking cameras 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
life fucks super bad in a moment of truth10 -
I don't know how post works in other countries, but seems the most retarded way to work is in mine.
When an item you have ordered arrives to local post(no ups, acs) the post sends you a small paper that says that you can go and pick the thing you have ordered.
So today i come home from a morning meeting about a programming job as a university student, which made me feel good and see that paper has arrived. The item i ordered is a programming book.
Well, getting excited since i waited about 2 weeks, i get it and go to the post office. After waiting almost 1 hour my turn comes. I go to pick it and the employee tells me COME TOMORROW TO PICK IT UP.
YO
YOU FUCKIN SUCKERS, IF IT'S MEANT TO GET IT TOMORROW DONT FUCKIN SEND ME THAT FUCKIN PAPER WHICH WRITES THAT MY FUCKIN ORDER ARRIVED TODAY.
LOSING MY TIME BECAUSE YOU ARE FUCKIN RETARDED AND THE SAME WILL HAPPEN TOMORROW. AUTISTIC FUCKS. I'M GONNA GET THAT FUCKIN BOOK AND SMASH YOUR HEAD WITH IT -
I'm stuck in a really difficult spot in my office and I'm not sure if I should start looking elsewhere. Tldr; there's no defined hierarchy or career path in the web department leaving no position to be promoted to.
We've got 2 offices with now 150+ employees and for the last 2 years I've basically inherited the responsibilities of an IT manager. Planning and deploying our networks, firewall config, VPN setup, keeping users' systems functional, track equipment, order/setup systems for new employees. All of this in addition to my original job description of web developer, which has basically turned into maintaining client WordPress sites while the other developer builds sites.
I've spoken to our CTO (my supervisor) about how much time the IT stuff actually takes and some of my suggestions for the future to make sure we protect ourselves and future proof our systems the best we can and one of my suggestions was that we needed to create the IT manager position because he is usually in meetings or building out API integrations. He's behind the idea, or at least says so to me, but leadership doesn't believe it's needed because we "manage just fine as it is" (this does require 60 hours a week of work along with much automation that I wrote/built). But we're trying to open a 3rd office which means another 50+ employees and systems to manage as well as more websites as we sign more clients.
My pay has never been satisfactory where I am and based on the maximum raise each year it would take me another 10 years to make what I would like (that's calculating without cost of living increase) but they claim this is because I lack a formal degree (self taught). I love most of the people I work with, don't really have an issue with any of them (outside that they're stupid but that I can let that slide if they're trying), and they work with me and my health issues which cause me to miss significantly more office time than I would like. I've been here for 4 years and I've learned a lot but I don't feel like there's any upward mobility here. The only position I see in my department above me is the CTO (or possibly the new PM but that's not a position I want) and he's not going anywhere, and I firmly believe we need someone who can full-time stay on top of our infrastructure before we expand further.
I fantasize occasionally about leaving and finding something else, and there are plenty of opportunities online that I appear qualified for which pay more, but I worry that I'd be trading in something that really isn't all that bad for something that sucks and the only real perk is more money. I'd hate to go somewhere else and start back at the bottom again and have to prove myself yet again.5 -
part 5/n
me vs my job at mnc laggards
Do these laggards even know how virtual meetings work?
meeting 1: an induction meeting from 10am-1pm . one day ago, the supposed manager of me called to say that he will be in office after 10.30, so i should come after that. so ofcourse i missed the call from 10-11.30 as i was commuting. one would expect the meeting to be recorded but nope :/ .Also, the 1 hour session that i somewhat attended consisted of an old guy telling how he has been doing these inductions for last 10 years in this company and how company takes its code of conduct with utmost sincerity (wtf?? tell me the employee benefits you dinosaurs 🤬)
meeting 2 : a meeting describing the softwares, from 2.30-3.30 . no fucking person is leading the meeting and 10+ people are just sitting their with their mics off!!!
also sidenote: microsoft teams and outlook can go suck its own dick if it has one. one of the shittiest piece of shit i have ever worked with. People find them so complex that they instead have unofficial whatsapp groups for official communication.
And guess what : YOU CAN'T FUCKING CREATE THEIR ACCOUNTS IN ANYTHING BUT LAPTOP!!
And when whatsapp comes into the fucking work life, you can expect an RIP to the P of my life 😭😭
-----
previous rants:
https://devrant.com/rants/6543145/...2 -
Me vs my job at mnc laggards
part 7/n
height of fucking bureaucracy. i feel like being in a government office.
i started my first day with these assclappers on 29th. after somehow managing the 3 crappy days of mental torture, i enjoyed a decent weekend and today i am back to the hellhole office, only to find my laptop BECOMING A KITCHEN TABLE! am unable to access any software, read any mail, attend any meetings!!!
What could be the cause? oh the good old incompetence!
So they have this shitty SAP portal that needs to be logged in everyday from the office VPN to mark an atendence. if an attendence is not marked for 3 days, it disables access the id to access all the fuckin systems, even the ones you are supposed to use to fuckin communicate with!
And guess who was not able to access the shitty SAP portal and had written 4 emails on friday to different HR bitches? UMM, MEEE!!!
I guess I need to take up this new shitty habit of keeping every email/phone number/id/fucking blood sample of every person i meet, because the fucking system can log out anyone at any fucking time!!!
The above crap combined with the fact that they work from a we-fuckin-work where you can't get a decent isloated phone booth for more than 30 mins, i am soon going to burst, and burst bad
--------------------------------------------------------
previous crap :
https://devrant.com/rants/6553736/... -
i need some advice on how to deal with office culture. i am a covid graduate and this is my first wfo job. it is technically hybrid but quickly turning into full time office, and there are several examples of scenarios, where i am not only feeling just frustrated, but hurt and retaliation.
my whole team is in a different city except 4 of us : pm, sr ios dev, me(android dev) and a sr android dev. in our office, there are 50 more people , but i rarely need to contact anyone except my team from another city or these 3 folks. also, we 4 are new joinees like just joined in last 2 months.
so let's discuss the problems.
1. there have been very shitty decisions that are leading to loss of everyone just because a few are unlucky. here's an example. on may 1, international labor day, we 4 had a leave showing. but it was not showing for other people. maybe because ourbleave calender was aligned to other city or maybe coz we are new, idk. but someone told the boss of manager, and he mailed to us that there is no leave :/ wtf
2. another news: our is shifting from we work to another co-working space. it is being heard that office will be now 3/5 days instead of 2/5 . when we joined, it was showing 3/5 days in our hr portal, but hr assured that it is 2/5 days. and we would still go 2/5 days only. but like that holiday scenario, people are buzzing and talking, and they might end up getting our 2/5 culture tonget fucked too. this is very stupid, since i am wasting 4 hrs everyday travelling.
3. let's talk about the snakes in the 4 ppl group. the ios dev and manager are sweet looking girl snakes. ios girl is the meek snake and pm is the wicked snake. once i discussed with ios girl about how we need to rush every morning at 8 am to reach office as our standup is at 10. i told her that i would raise this matter in standup and when i did, she was just mum as fuck. didn't even voted a fucking yes when the boss said "ok let's have a vote on it" . i mean man what the fuck are your scared of? the boss won't kill you bitch for clocking 30 mins late
4. the other snake is pm. i am pretty sure she was one of the people for which that leave was not showing and she informed the boss's boss. day before that i told her jokingly that once i leave the office, I won't be opening my laptop and since today it was decided that tomorrow is the holiday, I am unreachable and therefore enjoying the vacay due to lack of latest info.
the bitch fucking whatsapped me to say that she got a call from boss that tomorrow's a working day. it would have been the perfect fucking leave.
I am pretty sure a lot of people are hating me for leaving so early too. i oeave at 5pm , as i have to be at gym by 7. also 1 minute past 5 and i would be travelling in a jam packed metro, so yeah, no thanks. but this bitch is definitely telling my boss about this.
5 finally the biggest snake is this *cough-cough* "sr" android guy. dude's code is so shittu and hacky, i can sense that he didn't tried to understand the class and just added a function at any place he felt fit. he also is a schemy bitch, as he has somehow convinced noss to let him wotk just 1/5 days in wfo.
but i didn't cared about him much until now. yesterday i sent a link regarding latest Android dev update in the official channel as a fun read, and his reply was "probably should have seen theeynote yesterday" bitch it wasn't even mentioned in that keynote! i just checked its summary after his message, but then it was too late to retaliate.
and now that i see, he always tries to be smug and cool. not that i care, roast me all you want in front of your crush, I won't mind, but if you're trying to show people that am not an able dev, then buckle up bitch, either you or me are counting last breaths.3 -
!dev
So, few people who know what shitstorm I've been through, considering that I've cut off all social media except Reddit and devRant.
I am one of those hotheads who will rebel against anything which is even slightly wrong or unacceptable so after my twitter incident, I've been thinking to change my behavior and attitude, which has caused me and my best friend problems and I let him down and embarrassed and I think he also gave up on me but more to that later (or maybe I've covered it up in my last rant). The point is I want to improve myself, grow myself and for the sake of that I've quit free-lancing, and took a mildly great opportunity in a meteor js based company, I like their office, I join within 2 months (2 months till my support period ends), also I've become quite a twitter addict so I had to shut down my old account.
But I have an idea to learn about the corporate environment and raise voice against them, which in my eyes is an action that should be needed.
Somewhere down the line, I wanted to achieve my dream i.e. to get my doctorate degree, I was so obsessed about it. But frankly speaking, I've given up on that too.
So. yeah, cheers to a new life
var life = new Life(); -
Began working on an old project at work today. It has been about 6 months since I last touched it and 10 months since I began working here. No one that works here knew how to get the project running on anything other than one specific computer in the office...i work remotely. So instead of remoting in I finally figured out how to run it on my computer!
*crash*
Turns out it only runs on vista.... -
How difficult is it to decide for your own future?
It's a month that I'm in total panic 'cause of a difficult choice I have to make about my job.
I really need some external opinions and points of view from other developers, maybe more experienced than me (I'm a medium-junior JS developer).
The situation is as follows:
1) I work as a Frontend Web Developer for a wonderful enterprise-like company with 100+ employees, where the individual rights are fully respected, there are no whatsoever pressures and there is a peaceful paradise-like atmosphere most of the days. I also love my teammates, which is something rare because I often dislike other humans.
2) I received a proposal from a Fintech startup, which required me a long time to complete a complex programming test they gave me. They look all very young, modern, fast and passioned about their job. But they are only living with bank's investments and are not producing any money at the moment. Also, I don't know if Fintech will be a successful field in the future.
3) I received another proposal, from a Healthtec startup this time, which has a lovely mission in the medical field, has received millions of investments, it's gaining some KK net each month but has a team of only 2 developers (3 with me if I accept). I know one of the developers and I remember he had issues of not getting paid months ago.
What's the problem with the first company? I totally dislike the product we are building, the development stack (fully Microsoft-based), the company's view (they still sell and think about software like in the 90's) and how the repository is managed. Everyday there are huge problems that end up blocking the frontend work and the final product is super ugly and works only if you know all the quirks behind it.
It's an old-fashioned desktop app with inside Chromium which should execute some components like graphs, tables, forms and shit like this. Every component is configurable through a property editor which is an utter giant mess of collapsed menus. I also suspect that the company's main business model is based on the difficulty to use this software (because they sell licenses and courses to use it).
There are no modern UX/UI concepts applied at all, nor they seem to care about it.
Each time I propose something there is a huge chain of approval-waiting that end up in a stale mate.
Also, it's useless to show my frustration about all these issues because I count very little in a so populated office.
------------------------------------------------
TLDR: I need to choice if staying in a Enterprise Microsoft-based and old-fashioned company, but in which the atmosphere is paradisiac or accept the risk to work for a Fintech or a Healthtec startup.
------------------------------------------------
What would you do if you were in my situation? What's for you the most stable field in the future?
Many thanks for the attention!6 -
!rant
My home pc has developed a sudden issue and wont boot up anymore.
Stays stuck on the POST phase and am unable to get into BIOS , just stuck with a big asus logo and a message to press
F2 or Delete to get into BIOS but the system seems frozen as the keyboard lights are on but unresponsive while the
Mobo reads an error code A2
( the manual claims that to be an IDE error although am using only SATA)
Unplugging all usb doesnt change anything.
Unplugging all other sata ssd ,hdd and disk drives except the os drive changes nothing.
Unplugging the os drive results in the system complaining about no bootmgr
(As expected), that allows me to at least look at the BIOS but there doesnt seem to be anything wrong or out of the ordinary..
Booting from a live cd works fine
Booted from a pc boot repair tool and plugged in the os drive into one of the hot swappable sata ports shows me the all the files still there and accessible , check disk revealed nothing wrong. Can't plug in the os drive pre boot as that locks everything up again)
Tried to boot with a windows cd then do a start up repair but plugging in the os drive into the hot swappable sata doesn't work since windows can't see the drive.
Tried to swap the os drive with another one of exact same model filled witb random files resulted in no boot mgr error as expected
Struggled a whole weekend to fix it but alas no progress
Ah and the OS drive's warranty ran out 2 weeks ago 😑
Mobo asus p9x79 deluxe
Os ssd samsung 840 250 gb
No changes in hardware for the last year
Or so
No BIOS changes in over a year
I did notice some odd files like 0002Found
On the os drive when i was using the boot repair live cd tool, will bring the drive to
The office where i can get my hands on an ssd sata to usb caddy and take a snapshot of The files there for you guys to see.
Any ideas ? 😞5 -
The following piece of advice will be for those aspiring for an IT service desk position:
When companies are looking to hire service desk agents, they're primarily looking for socially skilled people with strong communicative skills, rather than primarily technically skilled people. When I first joined the IT world, I went on different interviews for that position and across all of them there was one truth: all the interviewers were eyeballs-focused on my social and communication skills and a mere thin layer of technical skills was required (depending on how technical the service desk). In fact, I immediately got aggressively dismissed twice for two of those when I filled in a Myers-Briggs personality test according to my Sheldon-type personality (selfish, condescending etc). Conversely, when I applied for a new position and I faked that test into answering everything focused positively on the social aspect, I was an immediate top candidate.
Here's a definition from the ITIL Foundation course, chapter Service Management: Because of how lateral the function of the service desk has become today (not only used to solve technical issues, but also company-wide issues), the most important and valued skills when hiring a service desk agent are fully focused on empathy and soft skills and none of those are technical skills. This is because the service desk has people that are the front window of your company and thus you can't make social mistakes as to protect your company's reputation. That risk has to be minimized and you need the ideal people. The people who in fact solve the technical problems are behind a back-office and they are contacted by the service desk agents.
In the beginning, when I did my first service desk job, I also thought: "Oh, I'm going to have to convince them I'm this technical wizard". In the end I got hired for being able to explain technology in human language and because in the interview I successfully communicated and explained ideas to both the team manager and the CEO, not because I knew what goes on inside a computer. This is a very important distinction.
My friends have also been in service desk positions and ironically they were the most successful when they were empathetic slimeballs (saying: "of course, anything for you" while not meaning it, constantly making jokes), rather than people with integrity (those got fired for telling the customer they were wrong while being unfriendly).
I hope this helps.8 -
tests boy
- balding in his late twenties
- thinks that React is a framework
- favorite book is either 1984 or fight club
- came to IT to make an impact but obviously lacks determination to do so. Prefers not to think about it
- doesn’t know why and for what he wakes up every morning. Stopped thinking about it 7 years ago
- has a girlfriend that doesn’t allow him to penetrate her, only hugs and cunnilingus
- already forgot how does a blowjob feel like
- when it’s too hot in his room when he tries to sleep, he gets up and opens the window, and after that he doesn’t want to sleep anymore, and tomorrow is a yet another working day
- unexpected slack message sound he hears when not at the office triggers his fight or flight response
- still salty about CSS vertical-align: middle not instantly centering the element vertically
- just like 5 years ago, every day he thinks that after he learns That New Thing, he’ll begin The Real Life, and his current career state is temporary
- loves to say “it’s not my job” but only says that if absolutely sure that he won’t be reported for that
- uses vscode
- thinks he’s an engineer1 -
i am so fucking conflicted right now. seeing my fiture getting ruined in front of my present eyes. Life always gives me a chance to jump out of a ship that's about to fucking blow , i took it the first time, but this time i missed it for bravery ( and stupidity), and now am sinking alongside this fucking ship
my first job was amazing. decent work, sometimes a lot and sometimes too less. i would learn new things ,interact with people, handle a lot of fuckups . at one point i felt like looking for another opportunity , got one giving 50% hike , so i jumped the ship and sent a resignation letter. the noitice peripd was less, so i enjoyed my days applying to other ships. got even a better offer with 100% hike, so from one boat to another to now a literal cruise.
later i got to know that my original company got bankrupt and fired 85% staff. the next month the company that gave me the first offer layed off 30% staff.
now the waters are tough and my cruise is also getting impacted. but instead of firing, they are asking us to come to the office permanently. their office is in a fucked up place: you need 8$ just to breath the fucking air there. its the city of blood and money. and you will be giving away both things there.
my brain got split into 2 parts after this announcement: my stupid self was still considering this while my sensible self started applying for jobs. my stupid self was thinking that this is a great opportunity to leave my fucking nest of a home , where i am liv8ng woth my parents for last 25 years, and learn to live alone. clean utensils, cook food , wash clothes... i wanted to live the life the harsh way.
but life still took a pity on the fool that j am and gave me an opportunity. an opportunity to work with a big brand who hasn't done any layoffs in their 40+ yrs of existence (but also known for giving shit increments)
the offer was just a 40% hike but it was near my home. i could be in office in 1 hr in less than a dollar a day and still earn more than what am earning now.
plus my notice period is now 60 days , so who knows what other offer i could have got in those 60 days ( when i would keep my profile with a big green "immediately available to hire" circle on me.
however this time i didn't jump the boat. i asked them for a bigger raisez they declined and my stupid self was more than happy.
now the company has started to send mails regarding relocation and yepp the cruise is sinking , atleast for me. if i was savingsx in this company, my savings would become x/8 if i go to that city. in the new offer it would have at worst remained x.
and that's not even half of what's bothering me. i had accepted the money loss in exchange of what that city and my company had to offer : a chance to experience WFO, a chance to live life like a mature man and not a kid in his mom's house ,and a life full of hurdles and strangers.
however i always like to keep an emergency fallback mechanism on me , for if things don't work out. I don't wanna go depressed and cut my wrists there, I don't want people to hurt me so much that I can't recover. i want to run away from that wreched city the moment i start to loose the battles there and the city starts taking over me.
but what the holy fuck? my company's notice period is 60 days, and my rented room's security deposit is 6 fucking months? i will be giving 6 months of deposit + 1 month of brokerage + 1month of rent on the first day i put my steps on that wretched land after travelling in a 100 dollar flight! where am i supposed to get this much money?!
and okay, somehow i manage this. say i did an 11 months agreement, paid the fucking 8 months of rent at one go and simply started living a shitty life there. in month 2 i break down and wanted to implement my escape mechanism. it would go like this : i will suck up and try to live for rent free for next 6 months. but wait, THAT'S NOT FUCKING ALLOWED!! iam supposed to get my security AFTER 11+1 MONTHS!! why not freaking adjust it in my rent?
I can't think straight . 6 months of security deposit has blown my brain. i am regretting anything and everything. I can't think of my roommates situation, home safety, room location, whatever the fucks we think while looking for a room . all i can think is ...WHY SO MUCH MONEY NEEDS TO GO AT ONCE!?
FUCK1 -
oh dear the stocktaking i did (maybe am still doing? don't know whether it's done yet🤷) with my dad for his little shop😩
his pc/office skills had begun with microsoft excel (he taught me how to use a pc all together) ... and have stopped there. Excel for almost everything. To be fair, he uses PCs like a normal user and isn't of that metier, ok fine🤷.
but when i saw the table he uses, which he copied over the years from the previous versions (still ok), i quickly found out that his table entries were written by him FOR HIM. it was very hard for me to help him (he tells me the article he sees in his storage, i have to include, so i look it up in the table and do stuff) as he had nicknames for his articles that only he associated with😐.
next he prints out a list a company has given to him where he buys some products from, which is ordered by id number ... my dad works with the correspnding names instead so of course all product names are random😑, so every time i need a price for an article he has to scan every list item. you've guessed it, n² search😪😒.
i tell him multiple times to call the company and send him a list in alphabetical order but he refuses as "we've almost finished" ... 🙄 (i'm not allowed to ask for him, as the company will only talk with the responsible one😑)
so I'm tied to a pc, talking to my dad over phone, who has to walk around and has to help me very often to find the article he's meaning to, at the end, do a n² search to add all the prices....😩
I absolutely want to help him automate things for sanity's sake🤔😅
install databases, connect via internet, connect to companies databases for up-to-date prices etc., make some desktop/web app/i don't know for fast access and boom...
and i don't even know where to start and where to find the time for it and whether it's even all possible😅🤔😐🤷 -
hey peeps, 2 questions:
1. do you know about some kind of firewall/antivirus for pc that can just allow the user to accept/block an internet request , like no root firewall does for android.
I have been using that simple, beautiful piece of open source for last 2ish years. The way it sends a notification when an app tries to make an internet request(even in the background!) has helped me detect and remove so many viruses.
2. i am thinking of doing a factory reset on my windows. My laptop came loaded with win10 and office , and i don't have the keys for it( it shows a special partition having some backup of window i guess?). So i had a couple of thoughts:
- will my office get removed?[i don't want this]
- I created several other partitions( d,e,f,p) would they go back as a single C drive?[doesn't effect me as long as i can create them again]
- the languages and modules i installed via cmd(java/python/ruby/pip modules/git/etc), would they also get removed? [i really want that]
- i am probably thinking this won't happen, but is their a possibility that the recovery partition that my windows came with, would also get removed[ i don't want that]7 -
me vs my job at mnc (not laggards anymore) part 8/n
so... 13 days has past and now i know somewhat about the "system" and coming to terms with it. maybe this is my first time working from office (in hybrid mode) or maybe i have worked with startups that provide some great delicacies in the name of work culture, i.... have some things that i like and dislike.
like :
- once the initial disastrous onboarding was done and i had access to most of the tools, resources and people i needed, i looked into the codebase to much of my relief. it is verbose and shitty, but like, filled with good latest shit . all the the latest architectures, libraries, etc will keep me on toes for next 3 or so months and i will get a hang to being an awesome blazing fast android dev (the thing which i was in my first job and which got seriously impacted in my 2nd job)
- no one is batting an eye as i join the office at 10 am and leave by sharp 5 pm (although i highly doubt it will go unnoticed. official timings are 9-7 and i will have to learn some politics to deal with it. the 7-9 slot in mornings and evenings are highly crowded ,brain bursting periods )
- wfo is 2/5 days
dislike :
- they are killing me with jira :'( . instead of using story points, they want us to put time estkmates and add hours to that estimate each day :/ this sucks, i hate opening jira more than once a week
- my senior seems like sly guy. he's 1 or 2 years older than me, but with better experience in both tech and politics. previously we both got a task and he was able to finish it on Friday while i was not able to complete it on weekend as well as today. turns out he was buttering our (cute) PM, going bro code with TL and got to know which task will be smaller. and even after that today he was just sitting idly doing all the buttering / dude-ing every imp person and i was also distracted/ laughing at his antics. need to learn how to deal with that guy and infact become that guy
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previous : https://devrant.com/rants/6566426/...1
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