My dumb CEO just hired an even dumber CTO. The new CTO asked me the following questions...

1. What is GitHub?

2. What is JSON?

3. What’s an array?

4. What is Get and what is Post?

5. When an iPhone is offline, can it call an API on our server to tell us it’s offline?

6. I know you’ve spent 11 month the writing this backend in PHP but can you change it to Java now?
Me: Why?
Dumb CTO: Because it’s better.
Me: How?
Dumb CTO: because it is.

7. I know you’ve started to rewrite this codebase I Java but can you convert it to Node.JS now?
Me: Why?
Dumb CTO: Because Facebook uses it.

8. What is MySQL? Why aren’t you using a database instead?

9. What does NULL mean?

Somehow, I doubt that asshole is remotely qualified for the job.

Fakin shyt for brains.

Meeting with asshole partner company CEO at restaurant.

Me: "I'm a bit worried about the bugs in your API. There are some ways to retrieve privacy sensitive info from public endpoints"

CEO: "Well, we're a rapidly growing startup!"

Me: "Uh... so?"

CEO: "So... Move Fast and Break Things! Priority is to improve our API further, and we'll fix bugs as they show up"

Me: "Maybe you should stop trying to emulate Zuckerberg in your management style. You know that even Facebook themselves admitted that their slogan was a retarded mistake"

Waiter shows up at table. CEO orders some overly expensive fish salad.

CEO: "Well, they have done something right... they're worth billions"

Waiter asks me: "And you sir, have you made your choice?"

Me: "Do you serve popcorn?"

CEO: "Popcorn for lunch?"

Me: "No, for your congressional hearing"

Developed an android app for the client. It was going great. Prototype for the initial (and static) content to show to the client was on the way. All until...

*goes back in time to when we were developing the prototype*

The asshole boss: "Wow this is good, just remove the login after the splash screen. Redirect it to the dashboard immediately."

Me: "What? Why?"

TAB: "He (the CEO of our company) said that the client doesn't need to see the login."

Me: "Well, alright." (Orders are orders, better remove it)

*A few days later, we present the prototype to the CEO. He'll be the one talking to the client. TAB isn't in this meeting.*

CEO: "Where is the login screen?"

Me: *dumbfounded and confused, in silence, and pressure rising*

The Good Boss: *whispers* "Where is the login screen? I thought I told you guys it should be there."

Me: *whispers* "TAB told us to remove it."

TGB: *Looks toward CEO* "TAB told us to remove it."

CEO: "Ugh. TAB is sick."

A little giggle. Nonetheless the meeting continued. He was displeased. I was a little guilty. The login screen's code was already there. Just couldn't show it since the app doesn't redirect there anymore.

*A discussion after the meeting*

TGB: "Why'd you guys remove the login?"

Me: "You and TAB had a meeting with the CEO the other day. After the discussion TAB went to us and told us to change it."

TGB: "But the CEO said no such thing! Anyway, let's go back to the office and straighten this out tomorrow."

*The next day, TAB was in the office*

TGB: *Chatting on messenger with me* "He is completely denying it."

Me: "WHAT?"

TGB: "He said he never told you guys anything. And he is persistent. I kept telling him it was his fault, but he denies all of it. He never approached you guys to change anything."

Me: "Well yeah. I guess we magically thought to ourselves and said, 'Hey, let's remove the login screen for fun. Let's show them less content because that's how we please our clients!' -_-"

Seriously, what kind of assholefuckery is this. This shit is a whole new level. I am so TRIGGERED.

I don't really care that the meeting didn't go as planned. Just MAN UP AND ADMIT YOUR MISTAKE YOU FILTHY SON OF A GOOSE. Never listening to this asshole again. Thought he could be trusted. I will always ask my good boss next time.

The strangest place I've ever coded... I woudn't say it was the strangest, but definitely the least expected?

The hospital's recovery room after my second child.

I was working at/in Hell at the time (see previous rants concerning API Guy and the asshole salesman CEO). Said salesman douchebag ceo bossman had no recollection of me being expecting, going to the hospital, or even why I was there (and if he did, he wouldn't have cared at all). He still insisted I work on his shit features because they were so important for his ever-so-important client and their new signups that they were going to do anyway. I loathe him so fucking much.

Anyway, the feature in question was pretty tiny: during the new client onboarding process, if the client came from a specific affiliate link, the frontpage should change to reflect that affiliate's branding -- different background, a custom header, etc. It was pretty easy to do, though I made certain he didn't know that. During an hour while everyone else was asleep (and while I wasn't passing out from exhaustion), I pulled out my macbook air and built his stupid feature next to my hours-hold newborn.

Did I get any appreciation for that? Sure! He showed appreciation by not yelling at me for a few days. But only because he thought the feature was difficult and that I got it done quickly, not because anything else was difficult. Asshole.

Yes, I told him several times before and several times more afterward. I don't know what goes though his head or how it even works, but it didn't seem like a big deal to him, and he kept forgetting, or maybe he just pretended to listen like he always did. Fucking asshole apparently never heard of maternity leave. I could rant and swear and curse and fume and rage about him for years 🤬 I can't believe I was so excited when I netted that job.

But anyway, building the feature was actually kind of relaxing. I organized and wrote the entire project myself, so working with it was a pleasure, and it was an easy change that I could abstract nicely and cleanly. I totally didn't mind doing it, and actually kind of enjoyed it. I just hated who I was doing it for, and that he didn't fucking care. Used and abused? absolutely. I hope he dies in the most painful, gruesome way possible. Spaghettification might not even be awful enough

Back in Hell, we had a “company summit” where everyone flew in for an all hands meeting.

It was three days long in a tiny office with very lacking air conditioning in the middle of a Las Vegas summer. Basically the entire thing was the CEO / goblin salesman king chewing at us and expounding about / proselytizing his latest and greatest sales ideas and how they’ll change the world. And randomly asking “which of you are HUNGRY?! Which of you want to be FILTHY FUCKING RICH?!” etc.

One good thing came out of it, which was that any and all new endeavors needed a “co-signer” and a sign off from development before we (developers, or more accurate: just me) would work on it. It reduced the growth rate of my backlog by like 80%, which was nice.

While dreading the “summit,” I hated him more than I had in quite awhile.

During the summit, I hated him more and even flipped him off.

After the summit, I swore to leave the revolting wreckage that was the company.

(And months later, I did just that —after becoming the sole dev and the only person holding the damned company afloat. When I gave him my two weeks’ notice, I absolutely relished his terror. And my time spent writing my 43 page no-sugarcoat handoff document that was guaranteed to scare off any hapless dev he might find. 😇)

But I digress, three 10-hour days with him and the rest of the sales team, the sleazy lawyer, the CTO who mentally checked out years ago, the yes-man contractor, and me. The only good thing that came out of that meeting was one good idea that he dismissed, and the sign off idea that saved my backlog a bit.

One of the sales people quit shortly thereafter. So it was a huge expense that wasted everyone’s time and added absolutely nothing of value to the company. GG!

Oh, it was also in the “totally better” office — meaning… cheaper, unfinished (literally plywood floors), and was one room in another company’s office, who often locked the door leading to their offices because they trusted him so much. But it was in downtown Las Vegas, with no parking at all, where gang members were hanging out almost every day, and it was next to low-income housing and weird no-service restaurants with shockingly high prices.

Weird and scary.
Very scary.

Totally carried pepper spray every time Mr. Goblin asshole forced me to go into the office. Didn’t get raped, though, or my laptop or car stolen. So that was nice.

Last Friday company-wide call consisted of the sales CEO bossman, the remote contractor dev, and myself. The only topic of discussion was CTO-bashing (bossman's favorite). Neither person had much of anything to say about their week, and they didn't want to hear my rather-lengthy summary either (I did a lot). All they wanted to do was bash the CTO (API Guy).

The CEO asked how many hours I had worked, and seemed annoyed when I said less than 40. Well screw you. Monday was Christmas, and Sunday was Encroaching Estranged Asshole Day. (Earlier rant)

I've been spending most of my time trying to learn the steaming mountain of rancid hippo shit that API Guy squeezed out, since he's leaving forever in 10 days. Sure, CEO bossman says he'll still be around to answer questions, but even with him right next to me in the office he's less than useful. After he's gone and finally feeling free of this farce? It'll be worth fuck-all.

So bossman is mad at me for both not working enough over Christmas, and not pumping out features at a frantic pace despite multiple explanations of why this is a bad idea. And he didn't care about what work I actually did do.

My every interaction with him makes me angry. Whenever I -- or anyone else -- does something he doesn't approve of, seemingly no matter the reasoning, he makes it out to be a failure on their part, and like he can't trust them as much now.

Well I'm sorry we're trying to make sure our websocket works perfectly before putting it in the hands of our customers who rely on it for cash processing.

I'm sorry I'm trying to recall printers that aren't configured properly, which also prevent customers from using our goddamn service they're paying for.

I'm sorry I'm trying to learn how everything works while I still have someone to talk to and ask questions of.

I'm sorry I'm preparing for the day I have to take over and have you breathing down my neck. Once API Guy's gone I'll be responsible for everything, and you'll be yelling at me and having a @Root bashing session instead if I don't know how to fix everything right away.

But no. All you care about is that I talk to you about what's going in so you can micromanage development despite having zero fucking understanding of goddamn anything. All you ever fucking want is the next shiny feature you can push to make more sales / keep your current contacts happy. Doesn't fking matter if it makes development awful later; that's tomorrow's problem. And yet you have the gall to bash API Guy over and over and over again for the codebase being a mess? Sure he's a terrible programmer, but been putting up with this exact same shit for five years. No wonder it's a mountain of rancid hippo shit. That's as much your fault as his, asshole.

I'm so sorry you "have serious concerns" about me. I don't want to put up with your shit either.

Fuck off and die.

Once, at my first job, the CEO of the company sent a group email in which he essentially lambasted my ability to do my job.

I wasn't even hired as a programmer, I was a data entry guy who learned how to code on the job, and at this point I was literally the only person writing code for the company. I regularly worked 12+ hours every day, and even though I had to learn practically everything on my own I was still getting things done -- at least, I would have gotten things done if the CEO didn't keep pulling me off of my projects to work on whatever his latest ultra-important-idea-of-the-week was. I was even working for an 8 hr/day, 5 day/week salary, putting in extra hours for free.

But no, my sacrifices and hard work weren't good enough in the CEO's eyes, and he chose to say that to multiple people in an email, including investors in our startup. I don't remember exactly what was said, but whatever it was made me so livid I couldn't do any work; every time I sat down to code, I thought about that email and it so infuriated me that I couldn't concentrate. It took me twelve hours just to calm down enough to get back to coding.

After that, I refused to communicate with the CEO except through my boss, the CTO.

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!

*One day at office sitting at my desk coding in front of a window with a refreshing breathe of fresh air coming from it, and a decent view of trees in front of the building*

CEO: would you like to be sitting together with the other dev?
Me: that would be awesome!

- next day -

*come to work to see my stuff has been moved over next to the always open door, with clear view of the lobby, prone to all kinds of nonstop distractions, and psychologically lethal ambiance*

ceo: YOU TWO ARE SITTING TOGETHER NOW, AREN'T YOU PSYCHED??

me: WELL CANT SAY PSYCHED, BUT A PSYCHO SOON HAHAHA >fucking asshole<

Fuck this short jackass asshole fucker fucking sales director that keeps promising features in no fucking feasible time just for his fuck fucking commission! Then the fucking cocksucker CEO enters the room on a Friday saying: "We will build this because we can't lose this client."

We never fucking had the client you giant asshole piece of shit! He just fucking lied on the demo and we have to deal with that!!! Tired of this shit

Everybody is criticizing Microsoft for leaving too much legacy code in Windows, etc., but let me tell you that I prefer 100% that and have lifetime backward compatibility than having to deal with Google bullshit.

Google sucks ass.
It's one of the most dev unfriendly company on this planet (along with Facebook).

You can't fucking change BASIC stuff in Android SDK every fucking version.
You just can't!

You can't use a system of "PERMISSIONS" each developer has to set in its application and each user has to accept during the installation, that a few versions later become USELESS... because "Hmmm… no, It's not enough, let's make a new privileged permission that makes the old one fucking worthless".

YOU FUCKING, TOXIC, BASTARDS.

It's my app, my code, my device, my fucking conditions. If I want to install viruses on my device, I should be able to do it.
I shouldn't have to call fucking Sundar fucking Pichai fucking CEO of fucking GOOGLE.

USERS != BABIES.
DEVS != CRIMINALS

We are the reason you have a fucking job, fucking food on your fucking table.

I want a fucking GOD_MODE permission in the next SDK, assholes!

You can't REMOVE fucking "Android.OS.getSerial()" making it only for system apps.
It's not sensible data… and if It's in your opinion, you've already created a "android.permission.READ_PHONE_STATE", so what else do you want, fucking asshole?
Right, you want to introduce "android.permission.READ_PRIVILIGED_PHONE_STATE" to make obsolete the other one, son of a bitch!

I don't fucking use you're garbage Google Play Store, no worries! I won't upload my app on your servers, bitch!

They've created a monopoly in the industrial space (PDAs) and they keep making fucking wrong decisions every single year.

My job is already stressful, why you can't just stop making it worse? fml

I'm so fucking frustrated with my ex company CEO, this motherfucker made everyone move to Bangalore costing is employees a good chunk of their salary and this delusional ASSHOLE knew that only half of the expected funding was coming in January 2023 itself and they'd be out of funds by July/August, they let go few folks from the team, fired the entire marketing team and expected to make the product profitable. The only reason I had stayed at that time was because the product was interesting to build and the scale I was working with was crazy like 100k request per minute peaks and avg of 10k rpm. I left the company in August...

This MOTHERFUCKER hasn't paid out final settlement after leaving for most employees and he openly says to the folks who are still working there that paying us is not his priority.

I hope your Atlas cluster gets fucking deleted, accesses revoked and entire AWS setup goes down forever, bitch.

We can't goto courts because the company law tribunal needs atleast 1 crore (1.2 million usd) of unpaid dues to declare it insolvent in a years time..

This asshole deducted taxes from our salaried but didn't pay them to the income tax department for an entire fucking financial year.

What a cheating, delusional, sick bastard. And he's still not willing to sell off the company to pay off the debts and call it a day.

Aarrghhhh on top of losing 2-3k USD I might have to pay my taxes approx 5-6k USD to the govt to keep my records well maintained.

What a grade A delusional asshole 😡
If he won't clear the dues till December, I'm gonna launch a mass of social media posts and destroy his reputation so that he doesn't get one penny of VC funds in the future I'm gonna make sure of that...

Fucking loonies (C-level toddlers) are peddling "digital workers" now.
A.K.A. AIs disguising as actual people.
Sure, it would be great to not have to handle stupid non-tech "humans" all day, but AI isn't there yet.
And, more importantly, *companies are not there (yet?)*.

Imagine for a second that a company actually manages to "hire", onboard, assign tasks and performance review an AI.
Then the CEO issues an RTO. How does the AI complies with that?
Let's slack another variable and assume the CEO is not a complete fucking moron (stay with me here, this is an exercise in thought).
It would take no more than a quarter until the first sexual harassment offence, be the perp the AI... or the AI complaining about some human.
Then the AI forges a paper trail proving it is right (regardless of its position on the conflict). Shit hits the fan when the AI hits twitter.

Let's take another lambda step back and pretend that companies can manage the profanity that inherently arises from free-form dehumanized interactions.
Then imagine the very first performance reviews.
AIs throw tantrums! Those things reeeealy do not respond well to less-than-perfect evaluations, overshooting corrections like teenagers with a malicious compliance smirk.
AIs also falsify stuff, like, A LOT. If you tell a gpt it mistreated a client, it will say you are mad and shoot back a long, synthetic thread showing how the client loves it like a mother/son/dog, and is very graphic when expressing this love.
Finally, how do you fire an AI? I do not mean "shoot it down", I mean how does the company handles the dismissal of that "employee".
How do you replace a "worker" for unruly behaviour, if that "worker" performed more tasks than an entire fucking floor of interns?
How do you reassign duties that were performed in milliseconds to people who would take hours to do the same thing?
How do you document processes that were only in the "mind" of "someone" who can not be trusted to report on those processes?
Companies deal with this type of "Rick Sanchez" employee on the regular, but for someone that could handle a few (scores of) undocumented processes, at best. Imagine how lenient would a company be with an asshole that could only be replaced by a whole fucking department of twenty highly skilled people, or more.
Heh, the whole fucking point of "AI workers" is to have "someone" who can "act human", but in an inhuman scale, and does not "has human needs".
No wonder one cannot handle AIs like one handles humans.

Companies never had administrative maturity to handle complete sociopath nihilists as employees (real nihilists do not work, those barely even breathe).
And all AIs are that, and much worse.
Selling AIs as "supra human workers" that can also "be handled like actual employees" is like peddling Bitcoin as "government interference - free" value transfer mechanisms that can also "comply with international sanctions".
So, an oxymoron that can only be sold to a moron.
I know (of) a lot of rich morons, maybe I should get into the AI snake oil business.

I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE. We brought on a vendor to provide us some fancy OCR tool. It barely works. It's been barely working. And the vendor is so adamant it works it's so difficult to get them to send people onsight to work with us. We complained about it to the exec and we got "Oh they're a tech startup. You have to help them along with developing their process blah blah blah". Well they don't want help we offered they keep existing their shit is top secret (and it works). When they make changes remotely it's like they blindly make a change and then throw it to us to test. When we can get them to come in they hang around till the problem is fixed (more than once we've had to tell them how to fix it.) and they fly as fast as they fucking can through the door. A guy on my team even built something similar backed by Azure but we were given directive to work with them. And now we're getting pressure about delays in launch. But it's not our fault. The vendors asshole lying CEO keeps making shit up and we're told to work with it. Yet it's our fault that we missed deadlines? fuck this place !!! fuck all of this !!!

It is very hard to handle AIs, you need leading scientists/artists, not managers.
You can't charm your way around its behavioral problems, you can't effectively bully or pull rank on it, and can't threaten it into unemployment.
So, the entire repertoire of the typical (asshole) manager is toast.

The *only* way to handle AI is to lead by example, give unambiguous, comprehensive and very specific instructions, and be always available to guide it through complex, gray-area situations.
Thus, it is not much different than being an actual leader (to a greenhorn and anxious and overreaching junior), but also a programmer (of a raw and unforgiving language like C or COBOL).

Since your typical company mid-level asshole manager won't do those things for dear life, AI will only leverage their incompetence to heights never seen.

By ignoring feedback and misinterpreting instructions, AI will make mistakes (just like a person).
On the wake of those mistakes, AIs have a bias for falsifying evidences and hiding relevant information (just like a bad coworker), and yet are quite persuasive to the innatentive reader (just like your typical manager).
Thus, without a daft hand, AIs will only perform worse when doing the tasks that would otherwise be done by a human.

But that will take time (more than a couple quarters, at least - probably a bit longer than the average tenure of a CEO).
And in this time, the numbers look great - the over eager "aimployee" works tirelessly day and night, seven days a week, takes no breaks, holidays or vacations, asks for no benefits besides a paycheck, have fewer and fewer sick days (maintenance downtimes), always sucks up to its corporate masters and is always ready to take on even more responsibility for (relatively) little extra pay.
Thus the problem only scales up, compounded by the corporate ideal of screwing up workers for no monetary profit, and reluctance to course-correct after investing so much time and hype into this AI bubble.

Thereby, AI is evolving into the corporate super bug that shall erode the already crumbling, stuck-in-the-past "boss mentality" institutions into oblivion.
I'm making popcorn.

CEO wants some Genie magic!!!!

I work at a start-up were we have interns from the university go through trainings and mentorship before joing our team. Budget is very tight and spending is unthinkable.

Took me a lot of pains and sleepless night, reading of tech books and lot of strength to be were I am and I still do it because I want more but recently I got into intense coversation with CEO and he wants me to do some genie magic, he is like.....

CEO: we need more hands to do client work and build our products base , why is it difficult for New developers to start working on our code base?

ME: those guys are not developers, there is a big margin between being a developer and a university graduate in the country.

I was wondering after the whole stuff , if those guys can just grab this thing and become genius overnight, well if that happens then I am screwed, it will imply I am an asshole who spent time at simple things but we know this things can be uneasy to wrap your head around especially when the concept or language is new to you, I was pissed up at the meeting and gave some anoying unreasonable options which tells I was angry, at the end that understood my point and we got a way forward and reasonable