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1. I wish that people start taking back their device ownership. Right to repair is an extremely important thing. Like that Nexus 6P that I've recently repaired by jamming another battery into it, now it's at 110-ish% health according to AccuBattery. And it cost me.. €10 or so? All the while if I wasn't able to get in there, it would've been a €120 paperweight (and that's not even considering the €300-ish (? Someone please fill me in on that) price it retailed at back in 2015 when it was a flagship).
(edit the so many'th: according to https://express.co.uk/life-style/... the base model was apparently £449 at release, haven't been able to verify it though.. point is, a paperweight at such prices would've been quite a bummer, I mean for me it was even one given that it failed a mere few months after purchase for €120.. €40/m for a phone ain't nothing :/)
Right to repair is an extremely important thing, and the ability to do so shouldn't ever be impeded. Users should become able again to service the devices that they own.
2. I wish that people start caring about their privacy again. Google and Facebook and the likes are large companies, but at the end of the day, that's all they are. Large companies. And they're hungry for your data, not because they're selling it, rather because they're collecting it to an extent which they shouldn't. Over at DDG (https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckg...) they explain a very much viable alternative revenue model pretty well. Additionally, there's several tools which you can use to limit the amount of data that's being collected about you. These include but are not limited to Firefox, NoScript, ad blockers (I personally use uBlock), a trustworthy VPN (ideally one of your own), and Tor.
3. I wish that software would become less inefficient. It really pains me to see that applications with functionality that could be implemented in a couple of MB at most come at a size of several hundreds of MB. 1% efficiency, even the inefficient as fuck tungsten light bulbs weren't that awful!!! Imagine what could be done with all the hardware we have available nowadays, if every piece of software would be around 80% efficient as is a common norm in electronics. Just looking at Linux which is still in many ways convoluted, modern desktops with a couple hundred MB of RAM usage? You've got it! So why can't OS's like Windows (although I have to say, huge improvements have been made there over the last few years) and browsers like Firefox and Chrome be more like that? I really don't understand.
There's several more wishes I have of course, but those are the most important ones.. hopefully I'll be able to see at least one of them come true during my life.10 -
I'm trying to sign up for insurance benefits at work.
Step 1: Trying to find the website link -- it's non-existent. I don't know where I found it, but I saved it in keepassxc so I wouldn't have to search again. Time wasted: 30 minutes.
Step 2: Trying to log in. Ostensibly, this uses my work account. It does not. Time wasted: 10 minutes.
Step 3: Creating an account. Username and Password requirements are stupid, and the page doesn't show all of them. The username must be /[A-Za-z0-9]{8,60}/. The maximum password length is VARCHAR(20), and must include upper/lower case, number, special symbol, etc. and cannot include "password", repeated charcters, your username, etc. There is also a (required!) hint with /[A-Za-z0-9 ]{8,60}/ validation. Want to type a sentence? better not use any punctuation!
I find it hilarious that both my username and password hint can be three times longer than my actual password -- and can contain the password. Such brilliant security.
My typical username is less than 8 characters. All of my typical password formats are >25 characters. Trying to figure out memorable credentials and figuring out the hidden complexity/validation requirements for all of these and the hint... Time wasted: 30 minutes.
Step 4: Post-login. The website, post-login, does not work in firefox. I assumed it was one of my many ad/tracker/header/etc. blockers, and systematically disabled every one of them. After enabling ad and tracker networks, more and more of the site loaded, but it always failed. After disabling bloody everything, the site still refused to work. Why? It was fetching deeply-nested markup, plus styling and javascript, encoded in xml, via api. And that xml wasn't valid xml (missing root element). The failure wasn't due to blocking a vitally-important ad or tracker (as apparently they're all vital and the site chain-loads them off one another before loading content), it's due to shoddy development and lack of testing. Matches the rest of the site perfectly. Anyway, I eventually managed to get the site to load in Safari, of all browsers, on a different computer. Time wasted: 40 minutes.
Step 5: Contact info. After getting the site to work, I clicked the [Enroll] button. "Please allow about 10 minutes to enroll," it says. I'm up to an hour and 50 minutes by now. The first thing it asks for is contact info, such as email, phone, address, etc. It gives me a warning next to phone, saying I'm not set up for notifications yet. I think that's great. I select "change" next to the email, and try to give it my work email. There are two "preferred" radio buttons, one next to "Work email," one next to "Personal email" -- but there is only one textbox. Fine, I select the "Work" preferred button, sign up for a faux-personal tutanota email for work, and type it in. The site complains that I selected "Work" but only entered a personal email. Seriously serious. Out of curiosity, I select the "change" next to the phone number, and see that it gives me four options (home, work, cell, personal?), but only one set of inputs -- next to personal. Yep. That's amazing. Time spent: 10 minutes.
Step 6: Ranting. I started going through the benefits, realized it would take an hour+ to add dependents, research the various options, pick which benefits I want, etc. I'm already up to two hours by now, so instead I decided to stop and rant about how ridiculous this entire thing is. While typing this up, the site (unsurprisingly) automatically logged me out. Fine, I'll just log in again... and get an error saying my credentials are invalid. Okay... I very carefully type them in again. error: invalid credentials. sajfkasdjf.
Step 7 is going to be: Try to figure out how to log in again. Ugh.
"Please allow about 10 minutes" it said. Where's that facepalm emoji?
But like, seriously. How does someone even build a website THIS bad?13 -
Have you always been missing ads in CLI applications? Have you been wondering how to bring such modern browsing experience to CLI? NPM has solved this problem, it has CLI ads now!
https://github.com/standard/...
However, the are already people who spoil this great new experience with CLI ad blockers:
https://github.com/kethinov/...26 -
Root has a deadline
I've been working on this CCPA ticket for awhile. Admittedly too long, but I'm new to the codebase and it's fucking sprawling. There has also been a lot of back-and-forth on the ticket.
Anyway, I've had a few blockers, such as how mailers work, the legal copy, where to put a admin-facing link to the dashboard, how to build the jira integration (and its creds), etc.
Quite awhile ago I asked Mr. Product, "Where should I put the ccpa dashboard link?" To which he responds: "I'll get you the answer today!" Awesome. Except he didn't. That day came and went without a peep. So, the next day I ask again: "Where should I put the ccpa dashboard link?" To which he responds: "I'll get you the answer today!" And that day comes and goes, too. I ask again, and you guessed it: "I'll get you the answer today." Repeat ad nauseam.
I also asked about the Jira integration and credentials. I got about the same treatment as above, but with a tiwst: they tell me to talk to / continue to bug Mr. H instead. Except Mr. H had been on PTO for weeks. Every time I ask, they keep referring me to him. A little over two weeks later (yesterday), I finally got a response from him. Yay! I was preoccupied with finishing the dashboard (which wasn't in the original ticket for some reason) so I didn't get a chance to look into it yet. After asking his boss three times, Mr. Product also finally (!!!) gave me a response on the link placement today, too! Though not directly: he discussed it with said boss in a group chat that I'm a part of, but never tagged me or told me directly. So, now I know where to put it (I think), but I have no idea how that area of the site is built (it's dynamic based on domain, login, and roles), so adding it will still be difficult.
The best part:
Today during standup, some lady I've only rarely seen before attends the meeting, doesn't say anything until the very end, and then announces that everything must be code-complete by tomorrow for release, and then promptly signs off.
For fuck's sake. I've had blockers on this for weeks, and now I need to finish it by fucking tonight?
I still don't know how to build the mailers (because translations and formats), nor how to actually send emails using them. I don't know how to modify the footer (dynamic, complex), how to add the admin-facing link (dynamic, complex), nor how build a Jira integration (haven't even looked yet). I just got unblocked on two of these fucking today. and it needs to be done and code reviewed by tomorrow?
No bloody way.
Maybe I should go back to my previous job. 😡18 -
Please. Hear me out.
I've been doing frontend for six years already. I've been a junior dev, then in was all up to the CTO. I've worked for very small companies. Also, for the very large ones. Then, for huge enterprises. And also for startups. I've been developing for IE5.5, just for fun. I've done all kinds of stuff — accessibility, responsive design (with or without breakpoints), web components, workers, PWA, I've used frameworks from Backbone to React. My favourite language is CSS, and you probably know it. The bottom line is, you name it — I did it.
And, I want to say that Safari is a very good browser.
It's very fast. Especially on M1 Macs. Yes, it lacks customization and flexibility of Firefox, but general people, not developers, like to use it. Also, Safari is very important — Apple is a huge opposing force to Google when it comes to web standards. When Google pushes their BS like banning ad blockers, Apple never moves an inch. If we lose Safari, you'll notice.
As for the Safari-specific bugs situation, well… To me, Safari serves as a very good indicator: if your website breaks in Safari, chances are you used some hacks that are no good. Safari is a good litmus test I use to find the parts of my code that could've been better.
The only Safari-specific BUG I encountered was a blurry black segment in linear gradients that go from opaque to transparent. So, instead of linear-gradient(#f00, transparent), just do linear-gradient(#f00f, #f000).
This is the ONLY bug I encountered. Every single time my website broke in Safari other than that, was for some ugly hack I used.
You don't have to love it. I don't even use it, my browser of choice is Firefox. But, I'm grateful to Safari, just because it exists. Why? Well, if Safari ceases to exist, Google will just leave both W3C and WhatWG, and declare they'll be doing things their way from now on. Obey or die.
Firefox alone is just not big enough. But, together with Safari, they oppose Google's tyranny in web standards game.
Google will declare the victory and will turn the web into an authoritarian dictatorship. No ad blockers will be allowed. You won't be able to block Google's trackers. Google already owns the internet, well, almost, and this will be their final, devastating victory.
But Safari is the atlas that keeps the web from destruction.22 -
A tip to tech folks from my personal xp.
If you fuck up and make an impacting mistake in your company, like taking PROD down, noone is going to fire you on spot. Assign some more mandatory trainings - maybe. So you'd be more careful next time.
See, it's not worth getting rid of someone who made a mistake. You should be seated down and insisted to fix it. If you don't - then they might consider firing it. If you do fix it [with help or alone] - you become a more valuable asset to the company as you prove you are responsible for your actions and you take it seriously. You show that you can clean up your own shit and you don't need a babysiter next to you.
If you simply make a mistake and they replace you with someone else, that someone else is likely to be unaware of your mistakes and is doomed to repeat them. It's just bad for business.
Ofc if you making mistakes becomes a tendency rather than an exception, it's also a red flag for the business.
Don't get too laxed! And always answer for your shit. Never hide a fuckup - always alarm about it asap so that corrective actions could be taken by respective organs of the company while you are fixing it.
Come up with an action plan, announce it. Estimate resources you need [like help from others] - announce that too. Update concerned parties every half an hour or so about the status. If you find you need anything else while fixing it or you come across some blockers/delays/change of impact - always announce asap. Do avoid false alarms and disinformation.
// inspired by someone's rant today7 -
GDPR: great law, except for those who use technology (JS blockers, tracking protection, etc etc) to fight other technology (cookies, trackers, etc etc). Welcomed by the general public, but for content publishers it is a royal pain in the ass. Because did the EU provide non-legalese explanations as to how to become compliant? Of course they didn't. Why would they? But of course lawyers jumped on it like it's the best thing in the world. "GDPR-experts".
Now, article 11 and 13 again. Copyright law taken to ridiculous levels, impossible to implement, except for maybe Google, Microsoft and Facebook. Anyone else? Of course not. Again, a lot of money has to be involved with it. Does anyone want this thing? Of course not. And why the fuck is this still a thing even?! Did direct lobbying to the EU Parliament members a few months ago not teach them anything?! Senile pieces of shit. Should those old fucks really be able to decide about the future of the internet?4 -
Other PM: We must fix the database performance issues now.
Me: We can't. We're still only halfway on the dependency chain to tackle this and honestly, even if the dependency chain would be fulfilled, I'd leave at least 2 weeks monitoring the production after the changes were rolled out before we further poke around.
Other PM: This is taking far too long. And whaddya mean by dependency chain? Why was I not informed about this?
Me: *sigh* like in every meeting in the last weeks: the dependency chain are the current open blockers before we can proceed with the database changes. We've talked about this _at length_... Especially why these blockers exist.
Other PM: No, we need to start now. I've _examined_ at the blockers or "dependency chain" as you call it.
(Examined.... He opened on his currently streaming laptop, which was connected to the active beamer, the mentioned ticket with a detailed blocker ... And quickly scrolled. Yeeah. Warmonger...).
Me: I'm very tired of discussing this. But since you are already presenting us the ticket, read out the referenced meeting notes... We explained it in great detail.
Other PM: Why? This is just a waste of time!!!!!!!
--
Yes. This happened. Other PM was my nemesis.
In this meeting were 2 PMs (Him, Me)… I think 5 - 7 devs... And we were sitting in this meeting since 2 hours at least. Everyone was angry...
After this "manifesto of intelligence"… I simply left the room, followed by a few devs.
And yes. Other PM did this on a regular basis....5 -
"xkcd.com is best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4.0 or below on a Pentium 3±1 emulated in Javascript on an Apple IIGS at a screen resolution of 1024x1. Please enable your ad blockers, disable high-heat drying, and remove your device from Airplane Mode and set it to Boat Mode. For security reasons, please leave caps lock on while browsing."
Best part of the site honestly1 -
Google cripples ad and tracking blockers: In January, Chromium will switch to Manifest V3 which removes an essential API in favour of an inferior one. As usually, Google is being deceitful and touts security concerns as pretext.
That hits all Chromium based browser, such as my beloved Vivaldi. The team argues with their own browser internal blocker, but that's far worse than uBlock Origin. One of Vivaldi's core promises was privacy, and that will go out of the window. The team simply doesn't react to people pointing that out. They're fucked, and they know it.
So what now? Well, going back to Firefox because that will include the crippled new API for extension compatibility, but also keep the powerful old one specifically so that ad and tracking blockers will keep working. Google has just handed Mozilla a major unique selling point, and miraculously, Mozilla didn't fuck it up.26 -
So we ordered a piece of software from external software house becouse I was low on time and we needed it asap.
So. Long story short, their software was bugged as hell, they deny all the bugs and they have their BDD that they done and anything we say about it like "feature XYZ is broken on firefox" they will deny it "becouse it wasn't on BDD" or "let's get on call" (in which +- 6-7 people participate from their side and we of course have to pay them for this...)
So they fixed like 20% of bugs (mostly trivials/minors) Application is fairly small scope. You have integration with like 3 endpoints on arbitary API, user registration/login, few things to do in database (mainly math running from cron).
They done it in ASP so I don't know the language and enviroment so can't just fix it myself.
2 days ago (monday) they annoyed me to point where I just started to break things. For starters I found that every numeric input is vunrable to integer overflow (which is blocker). I figured most of fields are purefect opportunity to XSS (but I didn't bother to do JS... anything but not JS...). I figured I can embed into my name/surname/phone (none validated) anything in HTML...
So for now we have around 25 bugs, around 15 of them are blockers.
They figured it's somehow our fault that it's bugged and decided to do demo with us to show off how perfectly it works. I'm happy to break their demos. I figured I will register bunch users that have name - image with fixed/absolute position top:0;left:0 width/height 100% - this will effectively brick admin panel
Also I figured I can do some addotional sounds in background becouse why not. And I just dont know what to put in. It links to my server for now so I can freely change content of bricked admin panel.
I have curl's ready to execute in case they reset database.
I can put in GIFs or heck, even videos, dosen't really matter. Framework escapes some things for them so at least that. But audio/image/video works.
Now I have 2 questions:
- what image + audio combo will work the best (of course we need to keep it civil). Im thinking finding some meme with bugs or maybe nuclear logo image with some siren sound
- am I evil person?
Edit:
I havent stated this clearly:
"There is no BDD that describes that if user inserts malicious input server should deny it" - that's almost literally what we get from them....11 -
the internet was so good before corporate interests took everything over and made it garbage
before you found real people, instead of shills
real hobbies, instead of someone wanting to sell you knockoff shit by pretending to have information on your hobby
real information, instead of stupid politics which pretend information doesn't exist and keep changing Wikipedia pages or brigading forums with spam or reporting websites or servers as violating rules to remove innocent people and ruin their shit
before you could find tools and use them
and there were no ads
even when there were ads they were just banner ads where you got free iPods and maybe a virus
but they didn't subscribe you to their service monthly and then play psychological tricks on you so you couldn't cancel
even when the popups came we had popup blockers, and the web browsers were on our side and made the feature widespread and viewed the popups as malicious, and now the world's biggest ad company serves the most popular "open source" browser and is in a war against usability because they have to display their brain malware ads to you or else
and you'd get excited to get an email, instead of annoyed it's more fucking corporate spam you don't want from a random website that required you to give your email address so you could've bought a trinket for your friend Bob's birthday that one time and now their subscriber list keeps "forgetting" you unsubscribed
phones have a billion sensors but the app stores are so infested with bullshit none of it matters
it's all rot
everything is starving and making your life worse
we used to do so much with so little
and now we have so much and leave it all on the table to throw poop at each other
don't forget that brigade science tells you nostalgia is you remembering something to be better than it was. be gaslit. webpages disappear now, too. they get changed. archive.org has the records, and got DDoSed the other day. I knew this day would happen. everyone who lies would love for there to be no archives, no records. to burn the modern books5 -
Last week I sent a pic of Nestle Crunch chocolate to my friend in Whatsapp. Today he told me that he got an ad in Instagram for Nestle Crunch!! Holy crap!
We were trying to figure out how did it happen because we never discussed about the chocolate other than that image. Then I realized that Whatsapp and Instagram was owned by the same fucking company - Facebook!!!
I've stopped using Facebook, Instagram for a very long time and I have ad blockers on every electronic device I touch. So I never understood the gravity of people losing shit over privacy, until today. This indeed is creepy and it hit me real hard. I'm now reading all rants with "privacy" tags and methods to harden my devices to repel from those buggers.10 -
Best way to get rid of popups and Adblock-blockers:
Just disable JavaScript.
Tested working with Forbes.8 -
A coworker during scrum today: "Last week, I worked on the new feature. Also, I have an announcement for everyone: I'm going through a divorce so I moved in with my parents and will be working remotely for a while. I have no blockers...except for the divorce."1
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Attendance at the daily standup [related to a project that hasn't even started yet] is mandatory!
What did you work on yesterday?
An unrelated project.
What are you working on today?
An unrelated project.
What are you working on for the next 3-6 months?
You guessed it: An unrelated project.
Any blockers?
This is interfering with an unrelated project, but when Agile says "jump", you say "how high?"!4 -
Aaaaaaaargh!! Fing ashole!!
I got a major blocker reported, tried to connect to client, two of the user accounts were locked out because some genious used the last months password too many times.. FUUUU!! This happens almost every month!! FU! I go to the support dpt to check WTH is with those user accounts and got told the VPN is fucked up anyway so I will not be able to connect in any casr (disconnecting, bad transfer rate, it has a flue or prebirth cramps...whatever...). Ok, I ask if anyone notified our network admins and theirs.. And in response one guy mumbles something... I asked really really pissed off (due to the seriousnrs of the situation, we have max 8h to fix blockers and must check what is going on in minutes) if he is talking to me and answering my question or just talking to himself. He then a little bit more audiably said: we all are unable to work, you are not the only one with this problem & if you have a solutio... I already stormed out. Yes, everyone has problems connecting, no not everyone has a fucking blocker assigned to them!! Mayor malfunction on our system is not the same as archiving old processing data!!!
Simple yes or no question: did anyone notify our network admins & client's network admins?! And client's management that we have technical problems and cannot check the blocker situation immediately?! And I get a mumbling incompetents guy response... OmFG yes, I have a solution for you!! Go and jump of of the terrace!!4 -
Day x stand up meeting scheduled for late evening:
Manager: so, what's up?
me: fixed two bugs, analysis going on for another, having a couple of blockers, but nothing out of the ordinary.
Day x + 1 stand up scheduled for morning:
manager: what's up?
me: *repeats pretty much the same stuff, with some updates on the analysis
manager: but this is what you told me yesterday.
me: but there haven't been any working hours between our two conversations.
manager: your efficiency is questionable.
me: *thinking about my happy place with a clenched jaw2 -
Joined a new team at work 6 months ago. Immediately set upon by a useless PO who was somehow set in her ways while still being around 30 years old. Absolutely refused to change the broken team dynamic or processes in any way whatsoever. Made terrible tickets, never did refinement on tickets so they were always missing stuff and constantly blocked. Generally unlikeable and difficult to work with, incompetent at her job and resolutely refused to change literally anything to make the team function better.
She finally leaves after 6 months and the team dynamic changes immediately. Suddenly we are improving our processes, getting stakeholder input, refining tickets, taking reasonable amounts of work in a sprint. We have discussions without her butting in and getting frustrated when you bring up legitimate concerns. No longer do you have to tiptoe around and appease her ego if you want to point out the obvious flaws in the work she drew up or even just examine it from a technical perspective.
It's insane how much things can improve once you shed the dead weight of people that are just determined to be difficult and won't budge an inch to change their ways. Good riddance.4 -
This is long rant/story:
My manager conducts sync-up meetings regularly. The idea is to sync up all developers on current state of work. He does’t conduct stand-ups. He doesn't have time for it. He rather discusses on individual basis if we are blocked. The rule of the sync-up meeting is NOT to discuss any blockers or problems but simply explain each other what we are doing and how we plan next.
Sometime ago, the manager brought up and explained a new way of working in the sync-up meeting. At this point, a new developer in the team was absent due to sickness.
Today, there was a sync-up meeting and the manager started to question the new member about the newly introduced way of working. He was unaware of it and the manager never communicated this important information via email or any mode of communication available.
So, the conversation goes on as follows:
"Manager": — "Why didn’t you complete your task as per the new way of working?"
"Employee": — "Well, I've no idea. Am I supposed to do? I’ve been working as usual like any other"
"Manager": — "We have a new process and you have failed to follow it, so we’re late in delivering your work"
"Employee": — "I’ve already finished my work on time. I've raised a pull-request this morning"
"Manager": — "It doesn’t matter, it is not merged to main branch and so we can’t include your work in the release"
"Employee": — "I’ve no idea about the new process"
"Manager": — "Haven’t you asked around about what happened from previous meeting"
"Employee": — "Yes, I have. I was told which tasks were handled, but nothing about a new process"
"Manager": — "Aren’t you interested to learn it?"
"Employee": — "Why won’t I be interested? I was on a sick leave and I have no clue what happened here"
"Manager": — "What’s happened is past now, let’s not focus on it"
"Employee": — <Dumbfounded>
The Employee felt ashamed in front of everyone. He did his job but it didn’t pay off.
…. After an hour … the Employee had a talk with the Manager
"Employee": — "You shouldn’t have pointed me out in front of everyone. It made me feel real bad. You should have emailed this information if its important for the team."
"Manager": — "I have no idea what you’re talking about. When did I say so? I think you’ve a bright future in the team. You should be focusing on doing better things."
Employee goes back to work. A minute later, the Manager sends a PowerPoint screenshot of the process in the group chat.
**The Process**
It's about delivering release packages based on priorities defined by client. Each release package is a set of work items or requirements. Individual developers are assigned to work items. They are expected to deliver on planned delivery timelines in order to consider a work item into a release package.1 -
My director has started a new thing. We all have to tell what we did the previous day, what we are planning to do in the current day and if there are any blockers.
Good thing, right?
The only thing is that all these things are already plotted on the sprint board. It’s right fucking there in front of our eyes.
So what do we do? Just reiterate what is already written there. Fuck my productive life.6 -
Customer to me: "This should be right aligned, not left aligned. We need a fix on this 10 year old version, it's a blocker we can't do any work without it!"
Me to customer: "No. Not a blocker, minor change. We'll look at it next minor version."
Customer to boss: <repeat above>
Boss to me: "This is a blocker, check out the code and fix it today!"
FUUUUUUUUCK!
Minor stylistic changes are not goddamned fucking blockers!
I call this the "Jump; No; Boss Jump; Fuck!" effect.2 -
What a week... I feel like I am on here ranting more than usual.
The Marketing Director and Project Manager keep telling me to let them know when I am stuck on tasks so they can unblock for me, but I FUCKING DO. I don't understand why they keep telling me to speak up, because I use multiple channels to tell those who are the blockers that I need an update.
I add comments on my Monday.com tickets and @ the relevant people, I send MS Teams chats to them, we even have a daily standup where I mention that I am stuck, as well as a OneNote daily update that gets sent to management where I mention that I am stuck and tag the people who need to help me out.
I have been stuck on a task for two sprints, which should have taken me a couple of days to do.
I really feel like I'm talking to brick walls, am I that unimportant? This is supposed to be "agile scrum kanban blah blah blah sprints story points people over process bullshit". I hate it. Y'all are doing it wrong... Fuckin robots.
I need a fuckin drink, thank God it's Friday.7 -
This is the first time I've been on a project with a developer that is incredibly slow. Almost an entire month has passed, and this particular developer is still working on a story. In fact, it's the only story the devs picked up.
I work for a consulting organisation, and this particular developer and I are the only ones engaged on this project.
I am also the senior developer. I have tried numerous times to help speed things up by suggesting if there are blockers to hit me up so we can get it resolved.
At this point, I'm not entirely sure what to do. Should I report this back to the company I work for, or should I shut my mouth and say nothing because it isn't my problem?3 -
So this might be a very long post , but i am sure most of you can relate to it .
So , the year end . Time of joy and appraisals right?You have slogged your ass off the entire year and are expecting amazing ratings.Then boom , your piece of shit sadist manager starts of his review by saying 'there are worrysome things to discuss' after not saying shit for the entire year . I am pretty new to corporate , in fact 1 year old , still managed to handle devops for a team of 130+ , majority of whom have no work apart from playing a blame game and indulging in cheap politics. I mean , bro , I am literally your son's age , i dont see the point in playing this cheap shit with me.On top of that this sadist and borderline piece of shit manager has the audacity to say that I did not raise any blockers , while I have CCed him in every fucking mail possible.How big of an a****** can you be bro?
I counter his points for 40 45 mins straight ,leaving him stuck without words for solid 10 to 15 seconds many times during the 'review meet'. This guy is in the same place working on the same shit code , which 90% of this community can't even think of. Every thing is bloody manual and apparently ' I should have tried to streamline the entire f**** process' . Cool bro , why not open a startup while I am at it ?
Then this piece of poop gives me a rating which is just above the inconsistent performer bracket :) .
I just dont get the points what do these people get by giving shit ratings and not even having valid points to back up their fuck all arguments.This guy , throughout the duration of the call did not say 1 (bloody 1 ) good thing about my efforts. Past context is majority of the smart people who were literally running their pods single handedly , were under him and were fed up with not getting hikes and appraisals.Apart from me ,everyone resigned and left with hikes as high as 50% (LOL right).
But I have a year of experience and its really difficult to perform well in 4 rounds of bs compititive coding rounds, after which I get the generic ' oh you did well bro but we are moving on with other candidates' (FFS) .
I pray that even my worst enemies don't get such managers and I hope he rots in hell.
Amen and sorry for the cussing :) -
As👏F-ing👏Usual👏...
I have wasted a whole day of productivity to an issue that was solved with 1 keypress7 -
I feel like premium content should be available via paid (ad-free), free (ads), or through web user small scale crypto mining, at the users discretion obviously.
I don't get why we have to have these ad blockers and ad creators trying to one up each other. The *option* for low-performance crypto mining while on the page would be cool to have as a choice.3 -
- have/share an agenda as soon as possible
- each talking point should identify a problem. Make a list of strategic questions answers to which would make it perfectly clear what and by whom has to be done to resolve them.
- plan meeting duration according to the list of questions. Make sure you meeting room reservation gives you enough time
- take notes
- be prepared for a need for another meeting(s), if during that meeting it comes clear that:
> more/other people need to be engaged
> some things are not clear and need more investigation before going further
> you have run out of time
> there are other problems tgat need to be worked out and it might cobsume too much time to do this in a current meeting
- do not turn the meeting into a chat. It's counter-productive, tiring to the listeners and a waste of time
- do not try to cover many topics. The less, the better. Unless they are very tightly coupled.
- do not invite people you do not need or there is a very slim chance you will need.
- only schedule meetings when the situation needs to be DISCUSSED among multiple parties
- that being said, do not schedule meetings when it's more convenient to communicate otherwise, like email, chat, etc.
- after the meeting make a summary and send it our to all the participants. They might reply and clarify if you have misunderstood smth or missed some important point.
- during the meeting assign tasks to each other. Verbally. Make notes. After the meeting reflect them in jira, rally, wtv.
- while assigning tasks nake sure the assignees have no blockers to work on them and make sure they understand what, when and how should be done. Some tasks might be dependedt on each other, work the sequence out.
- while assigning tasks ask "for ETAs. They might be as silly as 1-hour-to-2-weeks, but they still let you know what to expect.
- offer your assistance to the task assignees if they need any while working on their tasks
- work on your language, grammar, syntax, etc. Reading texts with typos/mistakes is repelling
- be a leader, an authority everyone is looking up to. Not a boss.
- avoid saying NOs. Be more of a "do we really need this; can we do this some other way/time; I can't promise anythibg but I'll see what I can do about it" kind of person. -
devRanters beware! In-browser JavaScript crypto mining is becoming a thing.
https://coin-hive.com/
I found
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/...
Which will block browser coin miners on Chrome for now. Other ad/script blockers might work (though not always guaranteed).
Currently, these miners don't limit their CPU usage (and neither does the browser) so it's not great for your PC use.
If implemented correctly, like only using for a few seconds or for captchas/link shorteners (as suggested on the Coin Hive site), this could be a nice alternative to ads. But there is a guarantee that many will start using this unethically and not even tell users, nevermind that they'll do it for the entire session of the site.
Add Service Workers to the mix and it's a bag of trouble.13 -
i recently realised that youtube is the single most addictive app for me.
- it has reels that doesn't impact your usual video. reels is already a very addictive feature, but having this ability to watch many 1 min videos without losing my current video's timestamp, the search feed, the history and the home feed, it makes a great way to spend 1 hour on a 10 mins video
- it's AI is world class and recommends videos/channels that are full of content that i would watch
- it has a butt load of content.
- vanced/ ad blockers makes it possible to watch videos without ads, so makes the whole experience more grappling.
i spent 3-4 hours on it each day and another 2-3 hours during work. when it's not open as a tab on laptop, its open in my mobile.
youtube feels like a very nasty, evil product as i realise all this.
do you people feel the same about youtube? any detox tips?9 -
Tried an ad blocker for the first time yesterday. Well what do ya know? Websites I use will not let me access them unless I turn it off. I KNEW something like this would happen. When they were first coming out a few years ago, I said to myself "If everyone is going to be blocking ads, how will we be able to go to these sites for free?"
I expected the worst. I thought they'd put free websites behind a pay wall, much like ad-free mobile applications I would make. Thank GOD that didn't happen. This system is a lot more fair in my opinion. I'm just glad they don't do the same with popup-blockers. Then we would have an issue.
In all seriousness, as annoying as some websites are with their trashy, misleading, or fake ads, they (kinda) have to be there in order for devs to make money and for consumers to be somewhat happy. That is why I personally will not use ad blockers.6 -
So today I started looking at an old project (site/api tester) I backlogged due to various blockers.
I started remembering things and after setting up the testing app, I realized it depended on an extraction app that I wrote before that. And this reminds me of the whole start of all this testing stuff going back more then a year ago.
It sorta felt like I just took the cover off a hole? And then remembered how deep it goes.
And thankfully I left myself documentation... Though took me a while to find and still looking... (tracing from 1 project to another) -
When other teams don't do their work well and block my work I have to play VR games all day.
Damn them!
I've reached a level where even without Quest2 on I see in 3D... even when I'm looking at 2D things (e.g. devRant's rants)
Damn them!1 -
Hello Team, Good morning.
Yesterday I was working on posting a quality rant but couldn't come up with something good. I browsed around other people's rants and started shit-posting in their comment section. I also put multiple hits on the ++ button on funny comments.
Today I will continue on coming up with a quality rant. No blockers, thank you. Rest of the day, I will be browsing other ranter's rants and mess around in their comment section.
Let me know if anyone needs something from me and feel free to reach out.
Thank You.7 -
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 -
My company did a test on how many of our users use ad blockers on our site. I was expecting way more, but only 5% of people actually use it... That's really surprising to me.
Has anyone else experienced similar numbers?4 -
After closely working with Product Managers for almost 3 years, I'm starting to get how to make them understand tech blockers.4
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I remember someone ranted about something and there was a comment about ad blockers that was pretty good, in that it let you control what ads to watch so you could _bancar_ your favourite creators but don't be bombarded with shiet...
I can't find it. :(( Does anyone have any recommendation? Maybe one of them will be the one that comment talked about.
It was crossbrowser too, and maybe for mobile?1 -
Might get on the hormone blockers and see if any Women in Tech programmes will save me from job hunting hell.8
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I wish I could get our technical lead fired for incompetence. No transparency about deadlines (it's always "Oh and we need it today"), always overpromises to business ("I told them you can deliver this in two days" - we estimated a week's worth of work), and she never documents anything except through email (she never uses Jira, which we use for our task logging - we end up creating the tickets ourselves, which she never reads or updates either when there are blockers she needs to address).
Dozens of retrospectives later trying to find a solution to her poor organizational skills have failed to produce anything remotely close to an answer. She just stubbornly refuses to change or improve. I'm at my wits' end just dealing with this on a daily basis to the point I can't wait to clock out and go home.
It's a Friday tomorrow. I intend to slack off and just put in a couple hours of work because fuck her and fuck this company and its inability to fix itself.1 -
When you stare at the task list and all you see is blockers cause your clients can't get their shite together.
... Fuck it , time to learn something. And charge some one to do it.1 -
Don't you love the neverending sprint?
You know the one that just inherits all the tickets from the last one? Each sprint packs on new cool features but along the way bug tickets come in for code you haven't even touched or wrote and you deal with them because they are blockers.
before you know it, sprint is over and ok to the next one. I'm pretty sure that is how this is supposed to work right?1 -
Today I got 3 fucking calendar blockers from HR for interviews next week. All 3 positions are "principal developer" and I'm still intermediate. I bet my ass they don't even know half of the shit I know... *smh*2
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I personally hate that ad blockers block analytics software, specially since (as by the law) users must give consent before it collects data, several options exist to opt-out, and they are not f'ing ads.
I've been thinking to set a cron job to fetch analytics.js regularly and serve it locally as, let's say jquery-4.0.js, and screw it. What's your insight about it, fellow frontend devs?8
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