Some empty-headed helpdesk girl skipped into our office yesterday afternoon, despite the big scary warning signs glued to the door.

"Hey, when I log in on my phone, the menu is looking weird"

"Uh... look at my beard"

"What"

"Just look at this beard!"

"Uh.... OK"

"Does this look like a perfectly groomed beard"

"Uh... it's pretty nice I guess"

"You don't have to lie"

She looks puzzled: "OK... maybe it could use a little trimming. Uh... a lot of trimming". "I still like it though" she adds, trying hard to be polite.

"I understand you just started working here. But the beard... the beard should make it clear. See the office opposite to this one?"

"Yeah"

"Perfectly groomed ginger beards. It's all stylish shawls and smiles and spinach smoothies. Those people are known as frontend developers, they care about pixels and menus. Now look at my beard. It is dark and wild, it has some gray stress hairs, and if you take a deep breath it smells like dust and cognac mixed with the tears caused by failed deploys. Nothing personal, but I don't give a fuck what a menu looks like on your phone."

She looked around, and noticed the other 2 tired looking guys with unshaven hobo chins. To her credit, she pointed at the woman in the corner: "What about her, she doesn't seem to have a beard"

Yulia, 1.9m long muscled database admin from Ukraine, lets out a heavy sigh. "I do not know you well enough yet to show you where I grow my unkempt graying hairs... . Now get lost divchyna."

Helpdesk girl leaves the scene.

Joanna, machine learning dev, walks in: "I saw a confused blonde lost in the hallway, did you give her the beard speech?"

"Yeah" -- couldn't hold back a giggle -- "haha now she'll come to you"

Joanna: "No I already took care of it"

"How?"

"She started about some stupid menu, so I just told her to smell my cup". Joanna, functional alcoholic, is holding her 4pm Irish coffee. "I think this living up to our stereotype tactic is working, because the girl laughed and nodded like she understood, and ran off to the design department"

Me: "I do miss shaving though"

I fucking love people like this.

Yesterday I met a 'friend' who I hadn't seen in a very long time. Just a guy I used to know tbh but let's call him Friend anyway. After a while in the conversation this happened...

*Friend doesn't know I have a degree in CS*

Friend: "WHAT?? YOU LIKE PROGRAMMING? NO WAY! ME TOO!"

Me: "THAT'S AWESOME! You've been programming for long?"

Friend: "A little over a year now. I know almost all languages now. C++, C#, Python, Java and HTML. Still a couple left to go. Once you're on the level I achieved programming becomes really, really easy. How long have you been programming?"

Me: "Almost a decade now"

Friend: "Damn dude you must know all languages by now I suppose?"

Me: "I've been mainly doing C++ so not really haha"

Friend: "I can always help when you're struggling with one language. C++ is pretty easy tbh. You should learn others too btw. HTML for example is pretty important because you can program websites with it"

Me: "Yeah... Thanks... So... What project are you working on right now?"

Friend: "I'm making a register page for my very own forum. The only problem I have is that PHP won't save the login details"

Me: "Hahaha I know the feeling. MySQL?"

Friend: "What?"

Me: "What do you use to save your data"

Friend: "Just a txt file. It's easier that way."

Me: "Hahaha true. Who needs safety right? *smiles*"

Friend: "Actually it's 100% safe because only I can see the txt file so other people can not hack other users."

Me: "Yes! That's great! Cya!"

Friend: "I'm working on a mmorpg too btw! I can learn you to make games if you want. Just call me. Here's my number"

Me: "Alright... Thanks... Bye!"

*Arrives at home*

*Deletes number*

I do not make this up.

I can understand that someone who isn't in the CS industry doesn't take it too seriously and gets hyped when their "Hello World" program works.
I'm fine with that.

The thing that really triggers me is big headed ass holes like this. Like how much more like a absolute dickhead could you possibly more act? Fucking hate people like that.

Stop using progress bars on your résumé/CV!

Back when we were looking for people to join us, we got hundreds of résumés in the mail and online, and I saw so many of them using these progress bars to indicate competency in a particular skill or programming language.

Yknow what that says to me, and to my colleagues?

"Yeah, I'm ok at this, but I'm even worse at THIS"

Your résumé is about selling yourself!
We don't want someone who's '68%' in Photoshop or '82%' in JavaScript. We want someone who knows they're good at what they do and knows they can learn if they need to.

You might feel like you're being 'big headed', but that's what a good resume SHOULD be! Sell yourself to be as if you're the solution to all of my problems and you might just get a job!

Rant over.

!rant

I would like to present you the story that I tell everyone who is afraid of expectations, stressed to impress interviewers etc. Story about how I got my first job.

A little of backstory:
I always was good with computers, not like expert, but good. Of course parents were against giving me admin rights, so I just played games or such. When time came to choose my path throgh life, I've chosen to go medicine-related way, and chosen high school with such profile. I did my exams terribly, cause I never cared about marks, so I applied to uni for Information and Communication Technology course. I've learned basics of coding there, much stuff I don't really need right now, but in the end it was the best choice I've made.

With that way too long prologue...

I had to do internship for my uni and decided to try and find some year earlier. There was a lecture about multiplatform coding held by company my uni had partnership with. I've filled a questionare and few weeks later they invited me for assessment - event where they will choose who is good enough.
Of course I didn't believe in my chances to win an internship (1st place got full time job). There were 3 stages:
- solo coding (C/C++ own implementation of list)
- group designing (UML and presentation according to specification)
- interview (talking about code from stage 1, some questions, theory)

I failed 1st stage miserably... so I decided to don't give a shit and bravely presented our group project. A guy asked why we did not included a thing on UML, so I told him that it was not in specification - he was suprised but took it as big +. We "won" that part. When it came to interview... I was myself, cool headed, admited when I don't know things.

I thought that was it.

Few weeks later I received email - they invited me for internship.

They put me into Python project, language that noone in our trainee team knew. Told us 2/4 will be hired. At first I was not interested, wanted to finish my degree. But they convinced me. Now I'm here +2 years.

I am aware there are not many companies like that. Here, the people matters - you don't have to know everything, as long as you are getting along with others.

My tip for you though is: BE YOURSELF, NO MATTER WHAT THEY SAY 🎶

And I wish us more companies like that.😉

I fucking hate Google, but made the decision to use it as my primary search engine once again.

Reality dictates that I have already adopted it for well over a decade via searches since AllTheWeb existed along with owning enough Android devices to choke a twelve headed dragon whore.

But, here's the main reason: You.com and DuckDuckGo are so dumb as fuck, they might as well be Ron Jeremy's MySpace page.

You.com, for instance, is "completely customizable" by adding un-customizable "apps" without any control over the content it spews into your SERPS.

Neither seems to have interest in no longer padding results with shit you'd take a knife to. At least Google allows me to block those pages or sites from being seen again.

If you happen to live on Planet Earth (which currently seems to exclude 86.8% of the human population) you've been tracked before you even knew what "Big Brother" meant.

If you're looking to safeguard your security, buy a goddamn sword and time travel to remove the Zuckerberg timeline from existence.

Here is a story about 5 years of my life.
My studies had little to do with web. I did embedded systems (architecture and software) but quickly realized that I couldn't see myself living my life in my homecoutry and that my degree would be worth little to no more than shit elsewhere in the world. That was on my 3rd year in uni.
I liked coding so I decided to pursue computer science, then web development. For that, your degree mattered little.
From then on, when I wasn't in class I was doing some coding.
This allowed me to get short (2 months) internships in Mobile and web development, 4 in total.
Doing so I had made it so that my professors would allow me to do my graduation project in web and mobile dev. That project having ended, I secured a long (1year and a half) internship in Mumbai India doing web for a big consulting company. Having finished that I headed to Belgium for my current job. All with having no to little financial resources except what I could come up with.
"I'm proud of all the efforts it took to make it" is what I think sometimes but what is it that I made? I realized my first objective which is to be on the international job market, but now that I genuinely love software I realize that I didn't really make anything I can be proud of working as a consultant. And having worked on many things but not a lot on practically anything, it's getting hard to do something else.
I'm hoping for devranters insight on how I should proceed.

In my latest interview. It's the first in a overly morose process that includes many.

Me: So, about the scope of responsibilities...
Interviewer: <translated from fart noises> "we're a dynamic company"
<translated again> do any shit some big headed brass asks of you

Me: it involves many meetings?
Interviewer: <dismissive fart noises>

Me: Is it for an open field project or an ongoing structure?
Interviewer: We have many ongoing projects, and you allocation may be changed dynamically <so, fart noises>

Me: about the salary...
Interviewer: <Extra-stinky-fart noises>

...
It went on for an hour, never an straight answer. Not even for the name of the company.
...

Me: Have you noticed that, even that you are interviewing me, I'm the one asking all the questions?
Interviewer: <actual fart> yes, you really seem to have the knack for it!
Me: ...
Interviewer: so, any more questions?
Me: Yes. Are you flammable? <actual quote>