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This is more just a note for younger and less experienced devs out there...
I've been doing this for around 25 years professionally, and about 15 years more generally beyond that. I've seen a lot and done a lot, many things most developers never will: built my own OS (nothing especially amazing, but still), created my own language and compiler for it, created multiple web frameworks and UI toolkits from scratch before those things were common like they are today. I've had eleven technical books published, along with some articles. I've done interviews and speaking engagements at various user groups, meetups and conferences. I've taught classes on programming. On the job, I'm the guy that others often come to when they have a difficult problem they are having trouble solving because I seem to them to usually have the answer, or at least a gut feel that gets them on the right track. To be blunt, I've probably forgotten more about CS than a lot of devs will ever know and it's all just a natural consequence of doing this for so long.
I don't say any of this to try and impress anyone, I really don't... I say it only so that there's some weight behind what I say next:
Almost every day I feel like I'm not good enough. Sometimes, I face a challenge that feels like it might be the one that finally breaks me. I often feel like I don't have a clue what to do next. My head bangs against the wall as much as anyone and I do my fair share of yelling and screaming out of frustration. I beat myself up for every little mistake, and I make plenty.
Imposter syndrome is very real and it never truly goes away no matter what successes you've had and you have to fight the urge to feel shame when things aren't going well because you're not alone in those feelings and they can destroy even the best of us. I suppose the Torvald's and Carmack's of the world possibly don't experience it, but us mere mortals do and we probably always will - at least, I'm still waiting for it to go away!
Remember that what we do is intrinsically hard. What we do is something not everyone can do, contrary to all the "anyone can code" things people do. In some ways, it's unnatural even! Therefore, we shouldn't expect to not face tough days, and being human, the stress of those days gets to us all and causes us to doubt ourselves in a very insidious way.
But, it's okay. You're not alone. Hang in there and go easy on yourself! You'll only ever truly fail if you give up.32 -
I did it: I built up another PC identical to my machine (https://devrant.com/rants/2923002/...) for my SO and installed Linux Mint for her, too. That had been my primary motive for an easy and stable distro in the first place.
Now that didn't come out of the blue. We were discussing the end of Win 7 already two years ago where I brought up my concerns with Win 10 - mainly the forced, lousy updates and the integrated spyware, and that I was considering Linux as way out.
I had expected quite some pushback because she had been exclusively on Windows since the 90s. However, I didn't sell Linux as upgrade. It's just that Win 7 is over, progress under Windows as well, and we're in damage control mode. Went down pretty well.
Fast forward three weeks - remember, first time Linux user and no IT-geek:
- it just works, including web, videos, and music.
- she likes Cinnamon.
- nice desktop themes.
- Redshift is as good as f.lux.
- software installation is just like an app store.
- updates work via an easy tray icon.
- quote: "Linux is great!"
- given this alternative, she doesn't understand why people willingly put up with Win 10.
- no drive letters: already forgotten.
- popcorn for upcoming Win 10 disaster stories.
- why do Windows updates take that long?
- why does Windows need to reboot for every update?
- why does Windows hang in that update boot screen for so long?
I'm impressed that Linux has come so far that it's suitable for end users. Next in line is her father who wants to try Linux, but that will be a story for tomorrow.22 -
Disclaimer: Long tale of a tech support job. Also the wk29 story is at the bottom.
One time I was working tech support for a website and email hosting firm that was in town. I was hired and worked as the only tech support person there, so all calls came in through me. This also meant that if I was on a call, and another one came through, they would go straight to voice mail. But I couldn't hang up calls either, so, sometimes someone would take up tons of time and I'd have to help them. I was also the "SEO" and "Social Media Marketing" person, as well; managed peoples' social media campaigns. I have tons of stories from this place but a few in particular stick out to me. No particular order to these, I'm just reminiscing as I write this.
I once had to help a man who couldn't find the start button on his computer. When I eventually guided him to allowing me to remote into his computer via Team Viewer, I found he was using Windows XP. I'm not kidding.
I once had to sit on the phone with a man selling Plexus Easy Weight Loss (snake oil, pyramid scheme, but he was a client) and have him yell at me about not getting him more business, simply because we'd built his website. No, I'D not built his website, but his website was fine and it wasn't our job to get him more business. Oh yeah, this is the same guy who said that he didn't want the social media marketing package because he "had people to hide from." Christ.
We had another client who was a conspiracy theorist and wanted the social media marketing package for his blog, all about United States conspiracies. Real nut case. But the best client I've ever had because sometimes he'd come into the office and take up my time talking at me about how Fukushima was the next 911 and that soon it'll spill into the US water supply and everybody was going to die. Hell, better than being on the phone! Doing his social media was great because he wanted me to post clearly fake news stories to his twitter and facebook for him, and I got to look at and manage all the comments calling him out on his bullshit. It was kinda fun. After all, it wasn't _me_ that believed all this. It felt like I was trolling.
[wk29] I was the social media and support techie, not a salesperson. But sometimes I was put in charge _alone_ in front of clients for status meetings about their social media. This one time we had a client who was a custom fashion-type person. I don't really remember. But I was told directly to make them a _new_ facebook page and post to it every day with their hot new deals and stuff. MONTHS pass since I do that and they come in for a face-to-face meeting. Boss is out doing... boss things and that means I have to sit in with her, and for some fucking reason she brought her boyfriend AND HER DAD. Who were both clearly very very angry with me, the company, and probably life. They didn't ever say anything at first, they didn't greet me, they were both just there like British royal guards. It was weird as fuck. I start showing them the page, the progress on their likes goals, etc etc. Marketing shit. They say, "huh, we didn't see any of these posts at home." Turns out they already had a Facebook page, I was working on a completely seperate one, and then the boyfriend finally chimes in with the biggest fucking scowl, "what are you going to do about this?" He was sort of justified, considering this was a payed and semi-expensive service we offered, but holy shit the amount of fire in all three of them. Anyway, it came down to me figuring out how to merge facebook pages, but they eventually left as clients. Is this my fuck up? Is it my company's? Is it theirs? I don't know but that was probably the most awkward meeting ever. Don't know if it comes across through text but the anxiety was pretty real. Fuck.
tl;dr Tech support jobs are a really fun and exciting entry level position I recommend everybody apply for if they're starting out in the tech world! You'll meet tons of cool people and every day is like a new adventure.2 -
I've been asked to work a Sunday next weekend; and like an idiot I agreed. Wasting a beautiful summer day inside designing software for a company to push more fast food product and contribution to obesity and diabetes in the world.
This is my life, and I hate it here. I hate this industry. In my 15 years, I once took off for 11 months and lived out of two bags through Asia and Europe. I spent 5 months with just a car driving across America. It's fun, but non-sustainable and I had to find a job afterwards both times.
I need a way out of this cycle. I need to contact professors and get letters of recommendation and get into a PhD program (I have a masters already), but finding the time after exhausting days at work is .. well .. exhausting.
The most I can do after work is go hang out with friends or do something, but if I come straight home, I just fall asleep. I'm tired all the time.6 -
TL;DR: shitty day, but stickers made my day
First off, I'd like to thank @dfox and @trogus for the stickers.
I had a really shitty day, It started off something like this. Usual day at University, faculty not teaching anything. Messed up shit with the girl I like very much, still not talking at this point. Pretty much downhill. Start teaching myself some Android, while this junior comes up me to be like 'please teach me this', ok sure. He fucking leaves the moment I start installing homebrew on his mac and says "you exploiting my mac", NO FUCKER I NEED A PACKAGE MANAGER TO GET PACKAGES YOU DUMB FUCK. Further, that day, come to know its half day and not going to learn shit. WTF! But still, I get attendance so it's good. I suggest going to this new cool place to grab lunch. the girl I like goes like this "Let's GO TO JAILLLLLLLLL, IT'S COOL PLACE TO HANGOUTTTTT" , LIKE. WHY THE FUCK YOU WANT TO HANG OUT AT A PLACE WHICH LITERALLY IS NAMED 'JAIL'. Fuck it, let's go. SO. FUCKING. NEGATIVE. PLACE. Food is ok, not good, ok. I'm fucked up and sad at this point because love of my life is hanging out with other people, I'm ended up in the shit corner of the world, with shit food. AND I HAVEN'T DONE ANY THING PRODUCTIVE.
But in the end of the day, I reach home. open gates see this parcel and I'M HAPPY AS FUCK. IT'S FUCKING STICKERS, OMG.
Seeing those stickers I realized I don't need to be sad anymore. Writing this post just to thank this amazing community and the members in it. I love you guys all, :) <3
3 -
Storytime!
I got a ticket near the end of the day, asking to install a printer on a computer. The branch in question was in a different time zone (I'm in US-Pacific [GMT-07] and the computer was in US-Eastern [GMT-04]). I figured I wouldn't worry about it; after all, I had other tickets to work on that were much higher priority.
The next day I come into work and immediately get a message from one of my East Coast coworkers, telling me that this branch is calling and asking how the printer is coming. I told him to tell them I would call them a bit later. I do a couple of easy jobs and then begrudgingly call the branch. I listen to the phone tree that they have (which requires two button presses instead of one in order to speak with someone) and finally get in contact with a person... only to have the call disconnect.
I call back and ask for the person who called in the ticket and then followed up, who had apparently gone to lunch. I informed the person that I was just going to install the printer and it would be good to go. This would be fine... up until she mentioned she needed scanning functionality.
Now I wasn't sure if the driver we have in AD is set up with the scan functionality, so I said okay, but that meant I would have to get the driver from the website. The connection to our branches are about 1Mbps, so even downloading Java updates (60-ish MB) take about 5-10 minutes on a good day. The file for this printer was about 700MB (thanks HP). So I went and did other stuff while that downloaded.
I come back after it finished and started the install process. Right away it asks to re-seat the USB cable. So I call the branch. The call disconnects. I call again. It disconnects. I call one more time, and finally get the person who called the ticket in. I instruct him to re-seat the cable. He does. The driver starts doing its thing. I tell him I'll call back if I run into any issues and we hang up.
The driver goes through the install process for about 20 minutes, stops at 99%, then fails. I want to restart the computer, just in case there's a conflict somewhere, but that would require calling the store again, so I put it off.
About an hour later I get a message from another East Coast coworker, telling me the branch is calling about the printer again. I was in the middle of another call and said I would call back later. I do. It disconnects. I call again, and get the person who called the ticket in again. I tell him I want to restart the computer, but wasn't sure if it was okay. He checks with the people using it, who says it's okay, so I reboot. I hang up.
Once the computer comes back up I start the install process again. It asks to re-seat the cable. Fuck. I don't want to call the store again, so I open notepad and say "Please take out the printer's USB connection from the back of the computer."
Three. Fucking. People. Saw it. They moved the window and one even tried to close it, but they didn't re-seat the cable. I opened another window, telling them to call me at my number. They didn't. I called them. Got disconnected. I called them again, finally got someone, told them to re-seat the printer cable again. They do, thank god.
I say thank you and hang up. Continue the installer. It stops at 99% again and fails. I reboot the computer; screw it, I'm just going to install the driver from Active Directory. Check Devices and Printers. It's installed successfully. Hallelujah!
I get the printer set up for the various programs they use and print a test page. I call them one last time; their phone system sounding like they were connected via an underwater line connected by tin cans. I get someone.
$me: Hi, I want to know if the printer has printed something.
$them (garbled): -et me shee... yesh, it -rint-d a *beezelborp*.
$me: Perfect, I'm going to close this ticket! Thanks, goodbye! *hangs up*
tl;dr - I hate printers -
In my last rant (https://devrant.com/rants/5523458/...) I regaled you lovely folks of how I had to diplomatically yet firmly defend my work/life boundaries during off-work hours for non-life threatening affairs (a frustratingly common occurrence), and concluded the thread by mentioning that I still had a job, but would make a note of my frustration of that for whatever exit interview happens.
Well, no need for those notes any longer.
I and half of the engineering force, along with several senior managers were laid off this morning in the form of a "mandatory on-site all hands".
I live and work in NYC. Several people took trains and booked rooms from as far away as Boston to be here (or at least I know of specifically two people who commuted up here on Sunday to be here for the "all hands"). I presume those people used their travel benefits to get here and back.
We were dismissed before the meeting even took place, and according to a coworker I became friends with (yes, despite my snarky comments in other threads, I *do* actually have coworkers I became friends with lol) who survived at least this round of layoffs, once the actual all-hands commenced, the company first disclosed the layoffs, then announced being awarded a major contract with the very client the entire org had been working on overdrive to win for the last nine months. He had already been looking for a new job and got an offer last Friday, had been mulling it over, but told me once we were off the phone he was calling them up and accepting. He had three people reporting to him, and lost two. Even he had no idea it was coming until one of his now-former subordinates asked him to come outside and told him they'd just been let go.
I knew going in to this startup that "it's a startup, anything can happen, just mind the gap". That's why I asked on numerous occasions and tried to get time with our CFO to ask about revenue and earnings; things that in my years at this place were never disclosed to the rank and file, I'm not a professional accountant or CPA by any means, but I did take a pair of corporate accounting classes in community college because I like the numbers (see my other rants about leaving the field and becoming a math teacher), and I was really curious to know how the financial health of the business was.
It wasn't so much a red flag as it was an orangish-yellow that no one ever answered those questions, or that the CFO was distant but not necessarily cagey about my requests for his time; other indicators were good while interviewing--they had multiple fully integrated, paying customers (one of which being a former employer from years ago, which aided me in having strong product familiarity during the job interview), but I guess not enough to be sustainable.
Anyway. I'm gonna use the rest of the week to be a bum, might get out of the city and go hang with friends Pittsburgh, eat some hoagies and just vibe for a while. I've got assets and money stashed up to float pretty easily for a while, plus a bit of fun money so losing the job isn't world ending. Generalized anxiety because everything is going to shit worldwide, but that quickly faded into the backdrop of the generalized anxiety I always have because existentialism or something like that.
Thanks for reading. Pay the teachers.5 -
*Furiously cracks fingers and starts typing*
When I first tried out mobile app development some weeks ago I found it pretty fun. Now when I have a internship with a company to create a Android app I was kind of excited. Now after just a week I don't think I will come back to Android development again. Android studio eats my RAM and made my computer hang itself, and the thing I despise the most is gradle! AS f**ks with my gradle also so now they are all gone and i'm trying to rewrite them by myself...
*Furiously tries to calm down*10 -
I'm just super disappointed in people. A lot of people flaky and not as good as I think they are. I tend to be an idealist, and I believe in helping others to do a net positive. But what I find is that people just don't give a shit about anyone else except for themselves. If it's even a slightest inconvenience to them they won't do it. You ask for one little thing despite you helping them out a shit ton, and they won't do it for you.
Also, I'm so tired of people who always come up to me and talk big game about how we should work on a project together. But when shit hits the fan and I say let's do the work they don't do anything. Or I have to drag them along to get anything started.
Yeah, everybody is out for themselves, but I wish we were more kind to others and learn to take a hit to our own convenience every once in a while.
But maybe I should just find a better group of people to hang out with and fuck you all to my current group of friends. JK.
I'm going for a run to clear my head. Hopefully after I come back I'll be in a better mood.2 -
The speed with which new JS frameworks come out, especially when you only just started to get the hang of the last one...
It gets really depressing when i start to wonder if it's just me who's too slow.2 -
The company I used to work for, despite me not working there contacts me to get a verification code because the crappy developer they hired can't change a couple settings on the apple website and add themselves as a developer.
At the start of this all, a couple months back I gave them the code out of courtesy, but at this point, as i'm heavily invested in the development stage of my actual job as a vr developer, I won't take time out of my day to even answer the phone for them.
But what really pisses me off is the person who contacts me, my assumbly best friend, who during the last 12 months has only called me for these codes, so work related shit or just personal shit and never to hang out or play games or generally what we used to do as friends before he got a job at that stupid company doesn't have the balls to tell his boss that i'm busy with my job, that maybe if payment was offered as an incentive that I would be happy to be contacted.
When I left that company I didn't setup anything to make it so they would have to contact me, all I did was add myself as a developer of their app. I also heavily documented everything I did, all the issues I faced and the workarounds I found, and everything including all login information needed to get things working, I went above just "developing" the app I added in all the credits to all work used in the app as partly to make sure we don't get sued for stealing someones work without the right credit.
I hate the fact that I worked for minimum wage and did all of this shit, but I never complained at all about things like the 1 1/2 hour travel time (one way I might add) to my boss, the amount of money I spent on public transportation, the little money left over that I didn't even spend and instead give to my parents.
They know nothing about how hard that year was for me, and if they want to get this code, my so called friend can come chat in person, in his off time and when I'm done working on my own shit and we can discuss terms because this shit is just not fair at all.5 -
This was at my first job, a site that sold magazine subscriptions during the dot com boom.
Times got rough during the bust. First sign, free snacks disappeared. Everyone started worrying, and checking fuckedcompany.com to see if we were on it. One day everyone's machines shut down, and someone walks around saying company meeting in the cafeteria. My Russian coworker asks if I have a screwdriver so he can liberate his hard drive. Go to the meeting. Most of the company is being laid off immediately. You have to hang around having interviews with your boss to see if you still have a job. I don't.
2 weeks later they call and ask if I'd like to come back. Turns out trying to run with 1 programmer wasn't working out for them. I go back.
First problem we try to tackle - the shopping cart is slow. We put in a hack SQL file to delete carts older than 1 week. Gets better. Then gets slower again. Rinse and repeat 2 times. Finally digging through the source in the perl folder (not what the main site was in) we find what scheduled job was supposed to do this. Dig in. What do we find out? sa_scheduled_tasks user account was deactivated, because only user accounts belonging to people who still had a job were left active.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuck. -
Rant time. Oh boi.
So, a bit of context: I am a university student in Greece and I have a desktop PC with elementary OS on it. When the unis closed down because of Coronavirus, I moved back to my parents', without my PC, only a usb stick with elementary OS installed on it. That was before the lockdown. My parents have a desktop PC and my old laptop, both with Windows rn. I'm only able to work using Linux, so I've been just popping that elementary OS USB stick whenever I needed to work.
All cool and good. Until the usb got full. It was a 16GB one after all. No biggie, I bought a new 64GB one from a well known Greek tech shop along with a webcam my mother needed. It was a LEXAR one.
They fucking took a week to transfer it. As if the closest shop to me was in fucking Germany. For context, the drawing tablet I bought from China the other day only did 2 weeks to come. During this time I could barely use Linux because my USB stick had only some 600MB free.
Ok, wtv I said to myself. I am a patient person after all. I received the USB stick, along with the webcam, in good condition, in their packaging. Alright. I dd'ed everything from the 16GB stick to the 64GB one and then I extend the partition. Everything works flawlessly. And it's faster too.
Next day, I boot up from it again. It boots up good. Nice, time to do some work. I open my editor. And it fucking freezes. The editor is not some VSCode or Atom or any of that heavy shit, it's just elementary OS Code. A very lightweight Gtk3 app. Strangely though, the rest of my OS (the dock autohide, eg.) Seems totally responsive. I try to open another app. No luck. Not even switching TTYs work. Good shit. I force shutdown my PC. I try to boot again from that piece of shit. And guess what! NO BOOT BITCH. Like, fuck you. I boot from my previous 16GB one. Linux won't recognize it. No /dev/sdc like I used to have. Ok, lsusb. Nope, nothing. I disconnect it and reconnect it, and lsusb. An empty entry appears.I run it a couple of times, and the it disappears again. I switch to TTY 2. I get read errors and usb error -71.
And I want to fucking explode
I call back to support for the warranty coverage. I wait for a good 10 minutes and a nice lady picks up. I tell her the issue. She says that the support team will call me for the issue this day it the next day.
I hang up.
It feels like some fucking prank. YOU MOTHERFUCKING TOOK SO LONG TO DELIVER MY SHIT. Not to mention that the shitty courier service they are working with wouldn't deliver the goods to my home because it's slightly out of town. AND NOW YOU ARE DELAYING MY WARRANTY RETURN? HOW THE FLYING FUCK DID YOU BECOME A WELL KNOWN TECH SHOP WITH SUCH SHITTY SERVICE?
IF YOUR BRAINS WERE DYNAMITE YOU WOULDN'T HAVE ENOUGH TO BLOW YOUR NOSES.
YOUR THE SERVICE EQUIVALENT OF A PARTICIPATION AWARD.
Foreigners' view of Greeks suddenly doesn't seem so unreasonable. Yes, we are fucking lazy asses. And we also hate that. We hate each other for that very reason. May this country not live any longer.6 -
!dev
Well, it's time for a personal thing today, because I was hit with some shit today that I'm still kinda shook about.
So, as a bit of introduction (I've mentioned these in previous posts before but whatever, not everybody sees everything): I'm currently a senior in high school and I'm in the school's band (neither are too related, but a bit of setup for this story). I've been talking to a girl lately and I think I like her. She's fun to be around, kinda silly, and just great overall. She makes me happy and I like it. Her name is Grace, her sister's name is Taylor (just to avoid confusion later)
In the school's band, we play at home football and basketball games. Today was a basketball game. Normally when there's a game I just stay after school because I don't want to go home and come back a couple hours later, plus I like to hang out with some of the other people who do the same thing.
Grace was staying after for the game too. I was talking to her in the band room, kinda flirting a bit (on an unrelated side note, she's ticklish). Someone comes in the band room because he wanted to practice a bit, to get ready for the game. She's going back and forth between the band room and somewhere else (not too sure where she was). At one point I left to get a drink, come back, she's sitting next to him, just talking. I join the conversation, and her sister (Taylor) comes in, to get ready herself.
I go over to talk to Taylor for a minute. She looks at Grace and the other guy, then looks at me and just says "separate them". To which I said "...what? why? how?"
Me and her go outside the band room and she tells me that basically the guy has been cheating on his girlfriend with Grace, and it's just hurting everyone involved, except him basically. His girlfriend doesn't seem to fucking care, and he's done it before with someone else. (The other person actually like vaguely mentioned it to me a long time ago, but I didn't really know what she was talking about until now)
So basically, dude's cheating on his girlfriend with Grace. And I like Grace. Honestly don't know what the fuck to do. I want to do something because whenever something's going on with Grace, her sister always trusts me to make sure shit goes right. Some times when Grace wouldn't eat, her sister would always talk to me and ask me to make sure she actually eats.
Fuck guys. This stuff has been on my mind for the past ~4 hours and I don't know what to do, or if I even can do anything about it. I just needed to get this shit off my chest.
Sorry for the long personal story. Some parts I didn't really articulate very well. Honestly it was more of me just getting everything into words.4 -
1/2 dev and a fair warning: do not go into the comments.
You're going anyway? Good.
I began trying to figure out how to use stable diffusion out of boredom. Couldn't do shit at first, but after messing around for a few days I'm starting to get the hang of it.
Writing long prompts gets tiresome, though. Think I can build myself a tool to help with this. Nothing fancy. A local database to hold trees of tokens, associate each tree to an ID, like say <class 'path'> or some such. Essentially, you use this to save a description of any size.
The rest is textual substitution, which is trivial in devil-speak. Off the top of my head:
my $RE=qr{\< (?<class> [^\s]+) \s+ ' (?<path>) [^'] '\>}x;
And then? match |> fetch(validate) |> replace, recurse. Say:
while ($in =~ $RE) {
my $tree=db->fetch $+{class},$+{path};
$in=~ s[$RE][$tree];
};
Is that it? As far the substitution goes, then yeah, more or less. We have to check that a tree's definition does not recurse for this to work though, but I would do that __before__ dumping the tree to disk, not after.
There is most likely an upper limit to how much abstraction can be achieved this way, one can only get so specific before the algorithm starts tripping balls I reckon, the point here is just reaching that limit sooner.
So pasting lists of tokens, in a nutshell. Not a novel idea. I'd just be making it easier for myself. I'd rather reference things by name, and I'd rather not define what a name means more than once. So if I've already detailed what a Nazgul is, for instance, then I'd like to reuse it. Copy, paste, good times.
Do promise to slay me in combat should you ever catch me using the term "prompt engineering" unironically, what a stupid fucking joke.
Anyway, the other half, so !dev and I repeat the warning, just out of courtesy. I don't think it needs to be here, as this is all fairly mild imagery, but just in case.
I felt disappointed that a cursed image would scare me when I've seen far worse shit. So I began experimenting, seeing if I could replicate the result. No luck yet, but I think we're getting somewhere.
Our mission is clearly the bronwning of pants, that much is clear. But how do we come to understand fear? I don't know. "Scaring" seems fairly subjective.
But I fear what I know to be real,
And I believe my own two eyes.
11 -
How to handle a company in which I work as a junior android dev for the past 7 weeks where there is zero mentoring?
I have 2.5 year experience in android dev and then I had a 1.5 year gap. I was looking for a company where I can get back on track, fill my knowledge gaps and get back in shape. So I accepted lower starting salary because of this gap that I had. Me and manager agreed that I will get a 'buddy' assigned and will get some mentoring but nope..
70% of my scrum team with teamlead are overseas in USA and I have just 2 senior colleagues from my scrumteam that visit office only once a week. Ofcourse there are other scrum teams visiting office daily but I personally dread even going to office.
Nobody is waiting for me in there. What's the point if when I need to ask something I have to always call someone? I can do it from home, no need to go to the office.
My manager dropped the ball and basically disappeared after first 2 days of helping me setting up, we had just two biweekly half-assed 1on1’s where he basically rants about some stuff but doesn’t track my progress at all. I bet he doesn’t even know what I’m working on. Everything he seems to be concerned about is that I come to work into office atleast 3 days a week and then I can work remaining 2 days from home.
I feel like they are treating me as a mid level dev where I have to figure out everything by myself and actual feedback is given only in code reviews. I have no idea what is the expectation of me and wether Im doing good or well. Only my team business analyst praised me once saying that I had a strong onboarding start and I am moving baldly forward… What onboarding? It was just me and documentation and calling everybody asking questions…
My teammates didn't even bother accepting me into a team or giving me a basic code overview, we interact mainly in fucking code review comments or when I awkwardly call them when I already wasted days on something and feel like I'm missing some knowledge and I am to the point where I don't cere if they are awkward, I just ask what I need to know.
Seriously when my probation is done (after 6 weeks) I'm thinking of asking for a 43% raise because I am even sacrificing weekends to catch up with this fucked up broken phone communication style where I have to figure out everything by myself. I will have MR's to prove that I was able to contribute from week 1 so my ass is covered.
I even heard that a fresh uni graduate with 0 android experience was hired just for 15% les salary then me. I compared our output, I am doing much better so I definetly feel that Im worthy of a raise. Also I am getting a hang of codebase and expected codestyle, so either these fuckers will pay for it or I will go somewhere else to work for even less salary as long as I get some decent mentoring and have a decent team with decent culture. A place where I could close my laptop and go home instead of wasting time catching up and always feel behind. I want to see people around me who have some emotional intelligene, not some robots who care only about their own work and never interact.6 -
Me and a couple of friends have this group on WhatsApp where we can share stuff that we do and maybe come up with new stuff to work on as well.
For giggles (honestly irritating to me) I'm gonna summarize some conversations on the group.
26/11
Me: Finally completed my first FPGA program, these devices are amazjng!
NO REPLY
28/11
Me: gonna make the Jacobs ladder thing today! Hope I don't get zapped
Anyone interested ?
NO REPLY
29/11
Me: hey here's a nice electronic circuit, try to analyze how this circuit oscillates (we're all ec 'engineers' well... soon at least)
NO REPLY
2/12
Friend: Guys creed 2 was amazing I don't mind watching it twice
F2 : Really? Why don't we go soon?
F3 : I'm in!!! What's the plan
F4 : how about tomorrow ?
....
3/12
F1 : Guys anyone have notes for X exam
F2 : here. {Link}
F3 : here. {Link}
F4 : how many of you are done ?
F5 : what are the important questions
(just a stupid aptitude test)
{Me} changes group title from X to Notes group
Let's give this another shot
6/12
Me: There's a conference on X technology by Y industry leader ..
Should we check it out ?
There's even a workshop on X
NO REPLY
Alright time to acknowledge my stupidity and my lack of brains for even belonging to this kind of social circle/COUNTRY
7/12
ME: New fortnite season is out
F1: woah it's crazy let's play
F2: already on it, client is updating
F3: are you shitting me? gonna get BROS laptop (i'm going to suck my brothers cock and take his computer)
F4: Hang on bro wait for me also call me on discord.
I hope you guys could stick through that. Well there's no crazy moral to this but if you're one of these guys just appreciate your friend for his efforts once in a while even at the cost of acknowledging your stupidity.
Also, words like BRO are instant triggers and I'll make sure I find you can kill you if you use it more than once every couple of sentences ( I have relatively high tolerance )1 -
I bought the new dell xps15 57 days ago and now it’s ducked (pun intended).
Last week the screen stopped working. I powered off and back on. Then I get a cpu failure light sequence.
I call dell. To my surprise they have given me next day support for free. The guy comes the next day.
He says he will come between 4-6pm. at 615pm he phones me and says he will be late. I hang out at work to wait for him.
Finally at 730pm he comes and doesn’t have a screwdriver for the laptop. So he leaves to go buy one. 8pm he comes back. It takes him an hour to replace the motherboard by which time I just want to check it works and then go home. It seems good and we both leave the dark office at 930pm.
The next day I notice the sound isn’t working. He also hasn’t closed the laptop properly and there is a dent on the right hand side.
Despite dell giving me next day support it takes a week for them to come back with a solution.
I now have to send it off to them and I’ll be a week without the laptop...
It was incredible when it was working. But laptops aren’t great when they don’t work!
Perhaps I should have got a Mac...4 -
!rant !dev
So, following up my last rant.
https://devrant.com/rants/2433162
I quit on Friday, this is what I said to my bosses.
"In the last week I had, 2 panic attacks, and I have 2 theories for this, one is that I have underlying psychological problems, the other theory is that we are under an impossible task, I choose to say now that I have to quit because I have psychological issues, but if you are willing to hear my other theory, that involves saying that meeting the deadline is not viable, then I can tell you that, so do want to listen that part?.
Bosses: No, we heard enough, we are going to have your contract terminated in order, and we will let you know when you can come and pick your paycheck."
So, that's them. Now about me and how I re-discovered GTD, or more precisely how I organized my whole weekend using taskwarrior with GTD, and why I think is going to be useful as a freelancer.
Before I feel good about telling you about my weekend I have to tell you a few things about myself.
I am a very impulsive person, I have a lot of energy in short surges, so I have to be able to maximize my activity when I'm in a surge, and I have to maximize my rest when I am not.
That's hard to do, it requires a balanced lifestyle, I am also very prone to being neurotic, and overwhelmed by the amount of stuff that I want to do.
And on top of that, when I am resting, I have surges of things that I want to have, do, or implement, it could be software related, as "Doing an app that will be the Uber of home services", to house improvements like, "I have to fix that leaking roof", and all the sort of stuff that happens in between hardware and software. That surge of consciousness doesn't allow me to have the proper rest that I need before I engage with activities again.
Because of this I have a very cyclic rhythm, with whole weeks burning my energy into doing stuff, and weeks resting doing very little and thinking too much.
Now about my weekend. Friday night I was browsing the web, and a thought came to my head. "The way you use your terminal, says a lot about your personality", and I got curious, so I searched for, "Show me your terminal", and found a post in dev.to to see all kind of nice terminal setups, from the very minimalist to very feature rich oh-my-zsh themes with plugins for git, aws and what not. One of these pictures really got my attention, a guy had set up his terminal to show him, how many task has he done in the day, and how many cups of coffee has he had.
So by investigating how he set up his terminal to show in the prompt the number of successfully completed tasks in the day, I found out that he was using taskwarrior, he was also kind enough to share the source code of his prompt setup, which I bookmarked to later incorporate that into my oh-my-zsh config.
After reading about taskwarrior, I also got a reference to GTD, I don't remember if this was one of those thoughts that I have and follow immediately, or if I read something that led me to a YouTube video summarizing GTD.
In the end, after watching that GTD video, I decided to give it a try to organize my life, and help me find a remote job, keep my house in order, plan my social activities as "hang out with friends", "visit mom and dad", and give the proper amount of attention to my GF, with whom I am deeply in love, and willing to spend the remaining of my years with her.
So my fist task was.
task add Ask for GF's parents blessing.
Which of course I have no intention of doing right now, but is one of the things that I will eventually have to do.
Then it started, I started adding tasks, and things to do, and go through the whole Capture phase of GTD.
Now it is a good time to write a small summary of what I think GTD is.
GTD is a life habit of organizing your life in todo-lists. And it was a very specific core method, that in the video summary that I watched was called CPR.
Capture, Process and Review.
Capture:
When you capture you just add your tasks to a bucket list.
So I took a notebook and started writing down everything that I wanted to have done. I also started to capture ideas as they came up to me, I did this by writing a telegram saved message in my phone, or directly adding it as a task in TW.
Process:
I read my telegram messages and put them into my task warrior list, then I started to organize my tasks into projects, breaking down every task that was not an atomic unit.
* And different projects started to emerge from this. One of them was project:Housekeeping.
And here's my screenshot of what I did this weekend, also the number of projects that I have, and all the things that I have to do in order to have what I think would be a very balanced, fun, and productive life.
You'll be able to see in the screenshot, that there's a blocked task, yes, tw allows you to organize dependencies too, so one task is delegated, and blocked by the delegation task.
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