#3 Worst thing I've seen a co-worker do?

A 20-something dev, 'A', back in the early days of twitter+facebook would post all his extracurricular activities (drinking, partying, normal young-buck stuff). The dev mgr, 'J', at the time took offense because he felt 'A' was making the company look bad, so 'A' had a target on his back. Nothing 'A' did was good enough and, for example, 'J' had the source control czars review 'A's code to 'review' (aka = find anything wrong). Not sorting the 'using' statements, and extra line after the closing }, petty things like that. For those curious, orders followed+carried out by+led by 'T' in my previous rant.

As time went on and 'T' finding more and more 'wrong' with A's code, 'J' put A on disciplinary probation. 'A' had 90 days to turn himself around, or else.

A bright spot was 'A' was working on a Delphi -> C# conversion, so a lot of the code would be green-field development and by simply following the "standards", 'A' would be fine...so he thought.

About 2 weeks into the probation, 'A' was called into the J's office and berated because the conversion project was behind schedule, and if he didn't get the project back on track, 'A' wouldn't make it 30 days. I sat behind 'A' and he unloaded on me.
<'A' slams his phone on his desk>
Me: "Whoa...whats up?"
A: "Dude, I fucking hate this place, did you hear what they did?"
<I said no, then I think we spent an hour talking about it>
Me: "That all sucks. Don't worry about the code. Nobody cares what T thinks. Its not even your fault the project is behind, the DBAs are tasked with upgrades and it's not like anyone is waiting on you. It'll get done when it's done. Sounds like a witch hunt, what did you do? Be honest."
A: "Well, um...I kinda called out J, T, and those other assholes on facebook. I was drunk, pissed, and ...well...here we are."
Me: "Geez, what a bunch of whiney snowflakes. Keep your head down and you'll get thru it, or don't. Its not like you couldn't find another job tomorrow."
A: "This is my first job out of college and I don't want to disappoint my dad by quitting. I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing. All J told me was to get better. What the fuk does that even mean?"
Me: "He didn't give you any goals? Crap, for someone who is a stickler for the rules, that's low, even for J."

Fast forward 2 weeks, I was attending MS TechEd and I was with another dev mgr, R.

R: "Did you hear? We had to let 'A' go today."
Me: "What the hell? Why?"
R: "He couldn't cut it, so we had to let him go."
Me: "Cut what? What did he do, specifically?"
R: "I don't know, 'A' was on probation, I guess he didn't meet the goals."
Me: "You guess? We fire a developer working on a major upgrade and you guess? What were these so-called goals?"
R: "Whoa...you're getting a little fire up. I don't know, maybe not adhering to coding standards, not meeting deadlines?"
Me: "OMG...we fire people for not forming code? Are you serious!?"
R: "Oh...yea...that does sound odd when you put it that way. I wish I'd talk to you before we left on this trip"
Me: "What?! You knew they were firing him *before* we left? How long did you know this was happening?"
R: "Honestly, for a while. 'A' really wasn't a team player."
Me: "That's dirty, the whole thing is dirty. We've done some shitty things to people, but this is low, even for J. The probation process is meant to improve, not be used as a witch hunt. I don't like that you stood around and let it happen. You know better."
R: "Yea, you're right, but doesn't change anything. J wanted to do it while most of us were at the conference in case 'A' caused a scene."
Me: "THAT MAKES IT WORSE! 'A' was blindsided and you knew it. He had no one there that could defend him or anything."
R: "Crap, crap, crap...oh crap...jeez...J had this planned all along...crap....there is nothing I can do no...its too late."
Me: "Yes there is. If 'A' comes to you for a letter of recommendation, you write one. If someone calls for reference, you give him a good one."
R: "Yea..yea...crap...I feel like shit...I need to go back to the room and lie down."

As the sun sets, it rises again. Within a couple of weeks, 'A' had another job at a local university. Within a year, he was the department manager, and now he is a vice president (last time I checked) of a college in Kansas City, MO.

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.

I got the booster shot yesterday but I'm pretty sure they injected me some psychoactive drug. I had the weirdest dreams - I was have in-depth arguments with my post-doc about complexity and deep learning, and I came up with 3 different directions for my research. Also my mom was singing Despacito in the background.
My arm is dead and I can't even connect cables on my beloved robot :(

!dev just posting here because i need to get this out. depressing post.

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april is going shitty for me and people around me.

1. the worst come when i lost my cat last Saturday. he was a healthy 1.5 year old boy. on Friday morning he slipped out of terrace door to god knows where. we looked around, called his name, he didn't come. he used to do this often, going away for sometime and return in a few hours, sometimes the next day. but this time he didn't returned .
in the night, my whole family was sleeping and i was watching webseries in my room. it was 2 am and i heard some animal growling voices. when i looked outside, some dogs were throwing some large thing left and right.
i woke my dad , ran there and saw that was my boy. his whole body was intact , but he wasn't even blinking his eye. he was warm, we thought he's alive, we rushed to hospital , but nope, he was dead for atleast an hour. i am in shock about what has happened.
ironically he has another brother who is still with us. just friday we went to the vet with his brother because his brother can't walk(from the birth) but him, he was healthy. all from being the size of a fist to a big healthy cat in 1.5 years, and in a day, gone. :'(

2. in the span of last 7 days, my father has recieved 2 calls about his aunts died. both of them were somewhat distant aunts, but there's a shock feeling nonetheless.

3. this uncle who is a nice family friend, his son committed suicide. he was a young , 26ish, thriving , some tech professional in media industry. they haven't shared the cause yet, but his parents are shattered.

4. my friend was so excited about this trip of his to europe/us . He's a great guy who gets great opportunities, and he was to participate in some eth/blockchain event in eu. his visa was yet to arrive for eu but he was pretty sure about it since he already have a very strong passport (3 us trips) . day before the trip , his passport arrives with a rejected visa.

5. another friend had a breakup after an 11 year relationship. this guy is awesome, last month we all went on an amazing trip that he planned impromptu because her gf had to give an exam on that touristy place.

i am feeling shitty and frustrated. every next news i hear, its something bad. hope this ugly phase ends soon

the environment in my home is very depressing (socially) . How can i change it?

this is not about being living in a small room with smells or something. this is about my family's social life and how it is impacting me.

living with mom and dad as a single child with extreme morals, moralist ideology and no/bitter relations is impacting me a lot.

i will try to cover some points that make us different from other people:

1. i come from a very nuclear family with my parents and me and no siblings. we have 2 cats though

2. we have always been poor and are still struggling. we don't a 4 wheeler, my dad closed his job to be a salesman and he doesn't earn enough for current expenses. we pay our bills from rents from shop and a room for rent on terrace. i am earning 5x my family now, so we are stable but being poor has always been a major impact for me

3. we follow this spritual philosopher/guru as our religion who preach good morals, various currently non existent ("but will be ruling the globe" ) practises and procedures . i am not much into them so i might explain them wrong, but from my 23 yo brain's understanding, some examples will be : extreme vegetarianism (no onion/garlic/egg) , no drinks/smoking , yoga, fasting, some communism/socialism philosophy, meditation , kirtana, etc

4. there is no love amongst my parents or their relatives. i don't know how we are living a loveless life. afaik , the relatives from both sides were bad and treacherous , they were the reasons for our struggles and now we hate them and they don't visit us.
among mom and dad :dad was never someone that mom loved, they just went with the family pressures, and since there was no way for mom to take a stand, she went with the hateful marriage, had me, they jointly struggled to keep me alive while hating each other and never even sleeping together, until i was a decent 23 yo earning by myself. they don't even have friends afaik.

5. cut to today, our lives revolve around not the love for one another but towards this stupid religion dictating the rules of our lives. there are 3 seperate rooms in which we 3 sleep, and mom dad gets into vicious fights on smallest of the things. i then jump in, trying to extinguish the fire by being even the louder voice. and end up hurting them and myself. at the same time , their bodies are now taking a toll : mom has some uterus/liver problems, dad is diabetic and one of our cat's legs don't work.

i just want to run away. i never had friends because they couldn't never relate with me, i didn't go to school picnics, didn't talked with girls, never got into discussions that people would find interesting.

i feel so seperated out from the world. i am an engineer by profession, i have a good number of people that knows me and respects me for my knowledge, but they end up mocking me for my social skills and different life rules when i try to be with them. and they are not at fault. i am the person that is the result of such a big messed up life.

their can't be another person on this planet that will be having a similar life situation, being loveless for so long. i don't see myself having a future at all : i am earning decent but what's the point?

i recently went to a trip with my friends. it was a fun little trip of 3 days. the people were : me, my friend of 9 years of friendship , my friend of 8 years of friendship, gf of the 9 yr friend and 2 stranger girls.
this was such an amazing environment for my brain : i never had a conversation with a girl for more than 10 mins. i envy my friends with gf kissing, going on trips , etc , but this.. this was awesome. the girls were chill , my 8 yof guy was a chick magnet and the setting was that he would woo the slimer girl while i would go with the short one. although nothing happened, i just observed how the guys and girls would talk and relate and how i am different.

it's my 2nd trip with friends, and its completely the same: i goto a trip, enjoy the best 6-7 days of my life, learn that i am very different from the world, that the world perceive of me as a very simple , naive person with limited social exposure, and that i have a very conservative beta male , moralist mamma's boy personna.

when i come home with these thoughts, i end up being angry , blaming them for this, because they are the ones who made me like this, weather due to their struggling life or just morals. and i end up being rude to them and being a sad regretful person.

i just broke my dad's phone because they were again fighting, being very loud and i wanted to end all this.

what should i do? can i change something? is it always going to be like this? who in this home can be happy with a shitty environment like this? will their be a girl that wants to see this mess by marrying me?