My coleague's story

- before leaving after long day at the office final look at support cases (after official support hours)
- sev1 ticket logged an hour ago, noone called us (although should have; after support hours)
- angry manager calls and demands to get in touch with the client immediately (we're already after support hours, FTS should pick the case, not us)
- we reach out. Customer has business-impacting case
- after initial info gathering: some cert got expired, they got a new one and placed it in the app's directory. The app still does not work
- the first question we ask: "are you sure you have placed it in the right directory?"
- "yes, we are sure. No problems there" - answers a voice with indian accent
- noone finds the root cause for hours.
- It's already 1am
- someone from client's specialists comes up with an idea: "are we sure the cert is in the right place? Let's try to move it to the same directory the old one was in the first place"
- .................................................
- production is working again
- "Why didn't anyone from support suggest this?!?!"
- .................................................
- 2am. Case solved, manager is informed everything's allright now.
- In the morning we get yelled at by the manager bcz we supposedly missed a sev1 ticket and were incompetent during the conf. call

This reminds me why I stay away from support. And why I started hating people. And why I do not work with indians (our ways are too different for me to stay sane and not to kill anyone).

I actually do have something to rant about!

The people I've decided to work with... are complete and utter fools. They don't want to keep updated with new practices and merely talk about awesome stuff... Let me elaborate.

The first person is someone I spent really many hours just writing with, I've helped him build on his personal project, which has now become our project (which I've done most of the work on now). He keeps writing about things that aren't fucking relevant for the current task - furthermore, he completely refuses to use any type of collaboration software in order to keep an eye on tasks we want to, and already have completed. He likes Git but doesn't provide helpful git messages, sometimes even stuff like 'forgot this'.. never any freaking description of what's actually been done! Not even after agreeing it should be done, he just doesn't understand what a helpful message is apparently.
I might be a bit special regarding wanting to follow practices, but how the fuck do you make any amount of money by being so ignorant!? He was a WP 'developer' a while ago, and has since changed to JS and are using a framework which he doesn't understand - he can't even remember what the documentation states.

So why do I 'work' with him? He knows a lot of phrases he's read in books, blogs, and the likes. That makes him really inspirational and positive and he really wants to become successful(like me!). But over the last few months, I've realized how bad he is at programming - he doesn't know basic programming concepts and have a hard time applying any sort of knowledge to his programming. If it's not pre-built, he can't use it, not even if the documentation has specific examples. He barely grasps the concept of binding data to a variable. He wouldn't know how to access it again though, it's just for the sake of binding it to some existing functionality.

The other guy really likes his old style. He hired me to maintain some application. Which has turned out to be a hell of several small tasks he needs to be finished or reworked - with no clear definition of the task. Most of the time, he'll do some initial changes, show the changes to me, vaguely explain what they do (not what he's trying to achieve) and first THEN ask me to do these changes, most often in some files that don't exist (he uses the wrong filenames so I have to guess/ask where the changes need to be made).
To top it all off, old syntax is used and don't get me started on the spaces+tabs for indenting lines... Because I've already added a great ESLint+Prettier conf and everything should be nicely formatted according to pre-defined rules.
But he won't take the time to install some plugins in his editor and I'm left with sometimes buggy, badly formatted code (the code I have to make changes with!) - that's while he several times have agreed that I can do what I want and that he even questions his own ways when looking at my changes which he calls by-the-book.
So why the motherfucking fuck do I keep working with him?

Well, he keeps paying so that's really nice - I haven't been able to properly execute the bigger tasks(which pays more) though, due to a lack of information or some badly written code I couldn't quite figure out how works (at a glance).

He also keeps talking about these new projects he wants to make.. he even has these freaking papers with descriptions and data-structures and we converse really good about these new awesome projects. He also likes cryptocurrencies(which is an interest of mine he has inflamed quite a bit) and lastly, he seems like a genuinely nice guy who I'd like to spend some time with even besides coding and work.

So now I stand here - stuck with people that make me feel like a demi-god or something because I use a git style-guide and ESLint+Prettier with the Airbnb style-guide.

What should I do? I'd really like some remote work and have a desperate need for money... So much so, that I might even have to pick up a fulltime job, in order to save my sorry ass - all because I like speaking with people who just like the thought of programming...

I'm actually quite lonely with my thoughts and they are the two only people I've had some sort of relationship with - who has an invested interest in programming/dev... I really like that, despite having to follow their thoughts as they surely can't follow mine.

Please be my friend or give me some paid work lol.

Also, I've been moving the last couple weeks - those weeks has been the most stressful of my life and have not contributed to my overall wellbeing and relations with people... It's good to be back at the computer again and be reading some devRant though!

Oh the joy of multi-site working and design reviews in bigger corporations...

I try to propose if we could do it on-line with BitBucket commenting etc. Just put your comments there, we discuss it there, each in our own time, and get things closed.

But no. It's nicer to arrange 2-3h conf calls. So that we can really discuss items (and the reviewers don't have to do anything before the call). Nothing can be done beforehand. And the reviewers get to comment not only on design matters, but on system level things too. Like "I wonder if this would be better in place X". Well sure, maybe, but that's system level decision and would require architects etc. And all that work was done 2 years ago, we're supposed to now just check the source code (which you guys wanted me to change).

Ok, so I will arrange a conf call. Our time zones are not the same, so one guy is coming to the office when another is almost leaving. One wants to have Wednesdays meeting free. One has lunch at 11, another at 13. For fucks sake. Some guys have filled their calendar with meetings, most of them which they will not attend anyway, but Outlook shows them as "reserved".

So I spend my day trying to find a free spot that everyone could join. Half of the guys won't read the code and won't give any comments, but still need to be there. And then there are those comments saying "I'd like this variable name to be different" and "it would be cleaner if this was done like I do". Same people produce unreadable mess themselves, but somehow always manage to dodge all reviews of their own stuff.

These conf calls with time difference 😤