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Big client, sells products in 30+ countries.
Tries to generate newsletter subscribers, so asks for a system to send a coupon upon subscription.
2 days later, client calls in panic. “We have too many subscribers, our marketeers say it’s a bot issue, can you do something?”.
Checked the data, checked analytics, turns out there’s a lot of referral traffic from freebie-sites, no sign from a bot issue.
Called the client back, “sorry, but there’s nothing you can do about that, you wanted your newsletter to become popular. Not you’re the victim of your own success”.
Client: “can we add captcha?”
Me: “why would you want to do that? You don’t even have a bot issue”
Client: “to make it harder for people to subscribe”
I tried to talk som sense in their heads, but after 3 times I gave up and implemented the damn captcha. It’s still there, doing nothing but annoying thousands of people, including me...7 -
Not one feature.
All analytics systems in general.
Whether it's implementing some tracking script, or building a custom backend for it.
So called "growth hackers" will hate me for this, but I find the results from analytics tools absolutely useless.
I don't subscribe to this whole "data driven" way of doing things, because when you dig down, the data is almost always wrong.
We removed a table view in favor of a tile overview because the majority seemed to use it. Small detail: The tiles were default (bias!), and the table didn't render well on mobile, but when speaking to users they told us they actually liked the table better — we just had to fix it.
Nokia almost went under because of this. Their analytics tools showed them that people loved solid dependable feature phones and hated the slow as fuck smartphones with bad touchscreens — the reality was that people hated details about smartphones, but loved the concept.
Analytics are biased.
They tell dangerous lies.
Did you really have zero Android/Firefox users, or do those users use blocking extensions?
Did people really like page B, or was A's design better except for the incessant crashing?
If a feature increased signups, did you also look at churn? Did you just create a bait marketing campaign with a sudden peak which scares away loyal customers?
The opinions and feelings of users are not objective and easily classifiable, they're fuzzy and detailed with lots of asterisks.
Invite 10 random people to use your product in exchange for a gift coupon, and film them interacting & commenting on usability.
I promise you, those ten people will provide better data than your JS snippet can drag out of a million users.
This talk is pretty great, go watch it:
https://go.ted.com/CyNo6 -
Where do I even start?
Personal projects?
So many. Shouldn't count.
Unpaid game dev intern?
Unpaid game dev volunteer?
Both worthwhile, if stressful. Shouldn't count either.
Freelancing where clients refused to pay?
That's happened a few times. One of them paid me in product instead of cash (WonderSoil, a company that [apparently still] makes and sells some expanding super potting soil thing). The product turned out to be defective and killed all of the plants I used it on. I'd have preferred getting stiffed instead. Their "factory" (small, almost tiny) was quite cool. The owner was a bitch. Probably still is.
Companies that have screwed me out of pay?
So many. I still curse their names at least once a month. I've been screwed out of about $13k now, maybe more. I've lost track.
I have two stories in particular that really piss me off.
The first: I was working at a large robotics company, and mostly enjoyed my job, though the drive was awful. The pay wasn't high either, but I still enjoyed the work. Schedule was nice, too: 28 hours (four 7-hour days) per week. Regardless, I got a job offer for double my salary, same schedule, and the drive was 11 minutes instead of 40. I took it. My new boss ended up tricking me into being a contractor -- refused to give me a W2, no contracts, etc. Later, he also increased my hours to 40 with no pay increase. He also took forever to pay (weeks to months), and eventually refused to pay me to my face, in front of my cowokers. Asshole still owes me about $5k. Should owe me the the difference in taxes, too (w2 vs 1099) since he lied about it and forced me into it when it was too late to back out.
I talked to the BBB, the labor board, legal council, the IRS (because he was actively evading taxes), the fire inspector (because he installed doors taht locked if the power went out, installed the exit buttons on the fucking ceiling, and later disconnected all of said exit buttons). Nobody gave a single shit. Asshole completely got away with everything. Including several shady as hell things I can't list here because they're too easy to find.
The second one:
The economy was shit, and I was out of a job. I had been looking for quite awhile, and an ex-coworker (who had worked at google, interestingly) suggested I work for this new startup. It was a "reverse search engine," meaning it aggregated news and articles and whatnot, and used machine learning to figure out what its users are interested in, and provided them with exactly that. It would also help with scheduling, reminders of birthdays, mesh peoples' friends' travel plans and life events, etc. (You and a friend are going on vacation to the same place, and your mutual friend there is having a birthday! You should go to ___ special event that's going on while you're all there! Here's a coupon.) It was pretty cool. The owner was not. He delayed my payments a few times, and screwed me over on pay a few more times, despite promising me many times that he was "not one of those people." He ended up paying me less than fucking minimum wage. Fake, smiling, backstabbing asshole.
The first one still pisses me off more, though, because of all the shit I went through trying to get my missing back pay, and how he conned me every chance he got. And how he yelled at me and told me, to my face, that he wasn't ever going to pay me. Fucking goddamn hell I hate that guy.8 -
A few weeks ago I stepped onto the grounds of lovely Canada. Back then - coming from Europe - I was surprised. Free WiFi everywhere without all the bells and whistles of creating an account and such.
Well ... at least I thought so ...
Today I went to a location where they actually charge you for their wireless services - fair enough the coverage area is pretty huge - and provide you with an access coupon. All good my optimistic me told me but once the login page loaded...
There are a lot of things about UX I could rant about but let's put that aside. The coupon came from the office where they KNEW all your contact details but it required you to create an account with all of them again to redeem the coupon.
Not only that but it asked for things like the phone number - obviously asking for a Canadian landline number since hell who uses mobiles anyway with numbers longer than ten characters?! - and even though it had a nice country selection it kept the states field there even when selecting a country that doesn't have states ...
Oh, and on a regular phone screen (which would be the target user for WiFi on a campground I suppose) the input fields for state and zip were occluded by the margins of the input rendering the content invisible.
And if that weren't enough after creating your account they made you watch an ad as if the personal data and the 4$ you paid them wasn't enough for the lousy 400 KB/s you get for 24h ...
Gets better though! After creating the account they display your password to make sure you remembered it ... over a non-secured WiFi network ... and send you an email afterward ... password via unencrypted mail via an unencrypted WIRELESS connection ... not that it protects anything that would matter anyways you can just snoop the MAC of your neighbor and get in that way or for that sake get their password but oh well ...
Gosh, sometimes I just feel the urgent need to find the ones responsible and tell them to GTFO of the IT world ...
Is it just me feeling like this about crappy UI/UX design? Always wondering...2 -
fucking hostgator!
go suck a cock you developers!
everything from their payment system to their support is crap.
a few days ago, i purchased a website from hostgator, with a year of hosting during black friday weekend. i had obtained a black friday coupon code that entitled me to roughly $160 off its usual price. that said, i filled out the registration form and clicked the 'checkout' button.
right after i clicked it, i saw i forgot to put in the coupon code, and pressed the back button on my browser. then i put in the code and proceeded with checkout.
guess what?
those MOTHERFUCKING GREEDY ASS BITCHES charged me TWICE, one with the coupon and one without.
i contacted customer support and told them what happened after waiting about double the time i was supposed to be connected to support.
of course, they asked for my fucking "security" pin over the customer support live chat (totally not ironic).
they sent a confirmation email, and cancelled the payment without the coupon.
then ONE FUCKING DAY LATER, I tried to connect to my website.
MY SITE WAS FUCKING SUSPENDED.
die in a hole.
i contacted customer support once more, and after explaining the story, I had to wait four to eight hours.
i'll see how it turns out tomorrow.
die in a hole hostgator🖕
12 -
Things to do in today
1. Go to post office
2. Send post
3. Go to CVS
4. Buy drink
5. Go to movie theater
6. Watch movie
7. Come back
8. Go to phone store
9. Buy something
10. Go to supermarket
11. Buy supplies
12. Go to McDonald's
13. Use coupon valid til today
14. Run back home befor parents come
15. Act normal14 -
I briefly worked for a fucked up company that had been bought by a coupon company that had outsourced a project to India
The code contained such gems as
If (Booleanvar ==true)
Among many other little things and some really big ones and was a web project written in vb9 -
Look, I get that it's really tricky to assess whether someone is or isn't skilled going solely by their profile.
That's alright.
What isn't center of the cosmic rectum alright with the fucking buttsauce infested state of interviews is that you give me the most far fetched and convoluted nonsense to solve and then put me on a fucking timer.
And since there isn't a human being on the other side, I can't even ask for clarification nor walk them through my reasoning. No, eat shit you cunt juice swallowing mother fucker, anal annhilation on your whole family with a black cock stretching from Zimbabwe to Singapore, we don't care about this "reasoning" you speak of. Fuck that shit! We just hang out here, handing out tricks in the back alley and smoking opium with vietnamese prostitutes, up your fucking ass with reason.
Let me tell you something mister, I'm gonna shove a LITERAL TON of putrid gorilla SHIT down your whore mouth then cum all over your face and tits, let's see how you like THAT.
Cherry on top: by the time I began figuring out where my initial approach was wrong, it was too late. Get that? L'esprit d'escalier, bitch. I began to understand the problem AFTER the timer was up. I could solve it now, except it wouldn't do me any fucking good.
The problem? Locate the topmost 2x2 block inside a matrix whose values fall within a particular range. It's easy! But if you don't explain it properly, I have to sit down re-reading the description and think about what the actual fuck is this cancerous liquid queef that just got forcefully injected into my eyes.
But since I can't spend too much time trying to comperfukenhend this two dollar handjob of a task, which I'd rather swap for teabagging a hairy ass herpes testicle sack, there's rushing in to try and make sense of this shit as I type.
So I'm about 10 minutes down or so already, 35 to go. I finally decipher that I should get the XY coords of each element within the specified range, then we'll walk an array of those coordinates and check for adjacency. Easy! Done, and done.
Another 10 minutes down, all checks in place. TEST. Wait, wat? Where's the output? WHERE. THE FUCK. IS. THE OUTPUT?! BITCH GIMME AN ANSWER. I COUT'D THE RETURN AND CAN SEE THE TERMINAL BUT ITS NOT SHOWING ME ANYTHINGGG?! UUUGHHH FUCKKFKFKFKFKFKFKFUFUFUFFKFK (...)
Alright, we have about 20 minutes left to finish this motorsaw colonoscopy, and I can't see what my code is outputting so I'm walking through the code myself trying to figure out if this will work. Oh, look at that I have to MANUALLY click this fucking misaligned text that says "clear" in order for any new output to register. Lovely, 10/10 web design, I will violate your armpits with an octopus soaked in rabid bear piss.
Mmmh, looks like I got this wrong. Figures. I'm building the array of coordinates sequentially, as a one dimentional list, which is very inconvenient for finding adjacent elements. No problem, let's try and fix that aaaaaand... SHIT IM ALMOST OUT OF TIME.
QUICK LYEB, QUICK!! REMEMBER WHAT FISCELLA TAUGHT YOU, IN BETWEEN MOLESTING YOUR SOUL WITH 16-BIT I/O CONSOLE PROBLEMS, LIKE THAT BITCH SNOWFALL THING YOU HAD TO SOLVE FOR A FRIEND USING TURBO C ON A FUCKING TOASTER IN COMPUTER LAB! RUN MOTHERFUCKER RUN!!!
I'm SWEATING. HEAVILY. I'm STEAMING, NON-EROTICALLY. Less than 10 minutes left. I'm trying to correct the code I have, but I start making MORE dumbfuck mistakes because I'm in a hurry!
5 minutes left. As I hit this point of no return, I realize exactly where my initial reasoning went wrong, and how I could fix it, but I can't because I don't have enough time. Sadface.
So I hastily put together skeleton of the correct implementation, and as the clock is nearly up, I write a comment explaining the bits I can't get to write. Page up, top of file, type "the editor was shit LMAO" and comment it out. SUBMIT.
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Also hi ;>5 -
rant/!rant
So I just started working at the beginning of January and I have no fucking clue about anything especially Web development.
But now I have a week to figure out how in the world I am going set up a workflow for some secretaries so that the higher ups get a printed coupon with a password on it, so they can log into our WLAN via a captive portal that I also need to set up.
I am thinking about a website that takes a list of names and settings (probably excel or smt) passes them to the WiFi management softwares API and then generates some PDF file for download that just needs to get printed.
Did I mention that I have no Dev tools (I have notepad, yeah the one without ++), no test environment, no prior experience and no clue how to do it?
But somehow I love this challenge and am glad that my colleagues don't send me to get coffee but let me work.
Am I insane?4 -
In the mid-2010s, we barely had any apps in our native language and popular coupon and review sites were lackluster in our neck of the woods.
So me and some old uni colleagues got together to make a WhatsApp based "wtf is going on right now and right around here"
think Groupon meets yelp meets Google maps meet trending topics. The idea was that local business would post deals and events and people would comment on it giving stars on real time, with geolocation. So you could see what was going on right next to you, and business owners only needed WhatsApp installed to post new topics.
We... failed to go viral. That simple. Things get frustrating when infinite no-questions-asked venture capital is not available.
Then me and the other founders got very lucrative jobs in former British colonies and that was it.
This idea might still work nowadays, but it would be reeeealy hard to navigate around Whatsapp's terms of service.
Good luck to anyone who might want to try.3 -
For those that have the need to compare files and folders often, Beyond Compare 4 is currently 20% off. http://www.scootersoftware.com
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Hm... Sounds familiar and works pretty well I think? 😀
Imagine a local pizzeria is seeking a $200,000 bank loan to expand its business. Usually, if a bank accepts, the loan is provided with interest. This is a risk for the pizzeria, because if it can’t pay back the loan with interest, the business could suffer or close altogether.
There are other options, though. Imagine instead if the bank offered the pizzeria a $100,000 loan, and required it to raise the rest within the community, selling coupons in a local currency. A $100 coupon might be worth $120 in pizza, for instance. This scheme could help the pizzeria raise the extra funds.
In general, the bank’s risk in offering the loan is also decreased. Customers themselves help a business grow, making it even easier for the pizzeria to repay the original loan.
The pizzeria can now expand without being burdened by huge interest payments, and is confident that the community is eager to support its growth. Customers, in turn, are rewarded by a 20 percent discount on pizza!6 -
Until today
Get the pycharm annual subscription for 30% off!
Head to this link
https://jetbrains.com/pycharm/...
Disclaimer: I am not endorsed with Jetbrains s.r.o. or DSF in any way. -
So the other day i paid for the sitepoint/mapt bundle since i was eager to learn to setup a website i bought awhile back.
Yet buying from mapt seemed to have been a waste of time, first off no comfirmation email just a tiny pop up on their website, the website seemed a little poorly setup since for one i wasn't even aware i had access to all their content.
Afterwards i never got a coupon for site point which was something i was looking forward to, i used mapt stuff before and two of the ebooks that i spent lots of time invested into had issues that basically stopped me half way, thus wasting all of my time.
I emailed on friday about this coupon, and finally getting one on monday i created an account used the coupon and guess what "this coupon has been used already"
WTF is this shit?
So all in all the irony of a fucking website that has content to create websites from scratch and probably including automated emails to alleviate all of these issues that has yet to use any of these things!
I'm still in the middle of customer support trying to get a working coupon for the other half of the bundle i paid for. The hilarious thing is they want an order number from me, which i don't have at all due to no automated email for order confirmation. I guess i wait yet another two days to get crappy response.2 -
!dev, !sponsored
It takes a fair bit for me to enjoy an online course, let alone want to recommend it.
if anyone is looking at using their "free" time learning something new during these troubling times, i would go look at the Packt Courses.
@whocares suckered me in the other day, and i have to admit, i dont regret it.
https://devrant.com/rants/2441665/...
So with that i would actually say to anyone wanting to get into:
- Java
- Python
- Go(lang)
- Data Science
- C++
- Ruby
- Clojure
- PHP
- webDev (html, css, javascript)
then checkout these workshops.
https://courses.packtpub.com/pages/...
or
https://courses.packtpub.com/enroll...
you can actually enroll into all of them using the free coupon, so theres that ☺
one down side is the lack of dark mode, but im sure we all have browser extensions for that.2 -
At my work we have this most generous benefit, free lunch and one hour lunch break. There's one little catch though, our lunch coupons only apply in one of two restaurants. Which one, depends on weekday. Mondays and Thursdays we go to this worthless place called Kvarter 5. Today our one-hour break was a complete waste of time as the food never arrived. GRRRR!!! I get grumpy when I'm hungry! :( I waited patiently for 50 minutes and then gave up, demanding my lunch coupon back, and had lunch at Sagulthai (thai buffet, tasty food, ready to grab with no need to wait). Some of my colleagues staid until the food eventually arrived. They told it wasn't worth the wait. The salmon was burnt and the chicken salad rather bland. Heck no, from now on I'll skip free lunch two days a week. There are so many better restaurants in town, like all of them2
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Hi Devs.
Does anyone has the bootstrap theme, DashKit from themes.getbootstrap.com, or has a coupon code I can use the get some dollars off the purchase price?
I urgently need to use the template.3 -
Hello devrant,
Need guidance about QR code based coupon system.
In my restaurant I sale few food items. My 50+ customer bought food daily (on delivery). They are asking me for coupon system like I sale one sandwich for half 30 INR , they bought 3-4 per day.
So they can buy coupon of 100 sandwich on every delivery my delivery boy will scan QR code of customer and their sandwich count will decrease accordingly.
This will apply for every food item.
Can you suggest me current software for this.1 -
!Dev
I'm looking to rent apartment and I'm baffled by this very weird potential scam.
The landlady wants me to pay the security deposit and the first month's rent using a recharge coupon of a prepaid cash card called Transcash. This is in France btw. But she tells me that she shall provide me the agreement and key on the spot of transfer of the coupon. She also asked me to click a picture of the coupon and send it to her when I buy it as a proof that I'm genuinely interested in renting the place and her trip (she claims to live in another city) will not be in vain. Looks clean but my instincts are screaming that this is a scam. But the only scenario I can think of is them beating me up and stealing the coupons from me instead of giving me the agreement and keys. If it is a scam, I really want to know how they plan to execute it.8 -
How can I adjust the size of coupons as using a plugin really giving me a tough time to do things fastly. I am having so many issues while adding coupons and adjusting them in editor manually. Is there any other way to do this? I can show you YouTube TV coupon page (https://mesheble.com/youtube-tv-pro...) as an example in which I have added coupons manually and it really takes lot of time. Furthermore I can't adjust the coupons size. Can anyone please help me out to incude coupons in other way?
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