Stop f*cking calling me minority or part of a underrepresented group. Yeah I noticed I am one of the only women on a conference. I DONT CARE, I AM A PROGRAMMER NOT A SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE. Hire me for my work, not because you want you company to be more diverse.

We have a bunch of white people in human resources that are trying to hire "diverse" people because the company sets HR diversity targets. Which is an inherently racist way of hiring someone.

I am told to interview this guy who claims to have Angular experience. Before the interview I ask to see a form that he has built in Angular. He sends me a repo which is ripped off of an open source project and has the readme and git commits removed. A quick web search shows that it isn't his work. He shows up to the interview and I find out he is from a Southern African country. I deliberately ask some questions about code that I can see he didn't write that I prepared ahead of time. He lies to me and tells me all about how he wrote it which showed me that he has no idea what the code does. I tell HR they better not hire him because he was very comfortable lying to me, and I'm confident that he doesn't understand any of the code that he showed me. I do not trust this guy and would never choose to work with him. HR lady says "Ah okay."

Today he walks in with a big grin on his face. HR lady fucking hired this guy. I can see his monitors from my desk and he spent his whole first day looking at a soccer website on his second monitor. I call up HR, "Why would you even ask me to interview him if you refuse to listen to my feedback?". Lady tells me "You need to be open minded about diversity. Probably most of the things you observed were either cultural differences or language barrier." I tell her definitely not. He lied to me multiple times, and he took credit for other people's work." She tells me that they will keep an eye on me because I'm not being open to diversity.

Are you kidding me? This white lady is literally stereotyping me as a racist because I'm white.

So this fucking HR lady called me a racist because she decided to hire someone that we shouldn't trust. Then she put this asshat on my project. Now I have to be cautious about my position because HR is "watching" my racist ass. Even though I am literally the only one on the development team that is white and speaks English as my first-language. I called a team meeting before the on-boarding is over so I can tell the other developers what is happening. We restructured our code review process so that I will never give him feedback. Then when the time comes that he slips up the "diverse" developers will kick him out so I won't be reprimanded as a "racist".

This company that I work for is a special kind of stupid.

Coworker wrote a nice package and put it on Github, to share with other departments.

I link his package on our company Slack, mentioning a team, with text "What do you think of this one? Is it usable for you guys?"

Next thing I know I have to explain to an executive why I'm "posting pictures of seductive cartoon girls in company chat with disrespectful commentary"

It linked the Github profile picture of the developer in Slack. A fully clothed anime girl, nothing particularly lewd about it.

But I like stabbing back a bit, and confusing the fuck out of people in suits:

"Hate to say it, but a good majority of all the code the company runs on, is written by people known as weebs, who use their so called waifus as their GitHub profile picture. It is very common for open source Javascript packages, but since we recruited 50 extra devs it now also happens internally. It's not my thing either sir, but I'm afraid we have to embrace it... "

"But what about our female devs? What about Joanna, she's in your team? We have to think of diversity! Our investors are really in to diversity, we can't have a bro culture!"

"Sir, with all due respect, we have super diverse teams without even trying. The problem is... they're all millennials. They grew up on weird memes... and are probably ten steps further in embracing diversity compared to the rest of the company."

"Also, Joanna is the one who drew this particular picture. She's charging a €15 commission for profile pictures... Do you want one of your fursona, sir?"

"What is that?"

"Uh... nevermind. Let's... let's not go there"

Root interviews for a job

So I've been interviewing for fun lately (and for practice), and it's been going mostly well. This one company in particular looks interesting, and they seem to really like me. This morning was interview #4 with them; tomorrow morning is #5.

The previous interviews were pretty enjoyable, especially the last one where I interviewed with one of the senior devs who gave me his "grumpy old man rails quiz." He actually asked some questions I wasn't able to answer! (Mostly dealing with Rails' internals.) Also when showing me the codebase, there were a few things I hadn't seen before, so it's exciting that I'll actually be able to learn something if I sign on. We ended up talking for almost an hour past our allotted time, and we got along famously. He said he was very surprised I did so well on his quiz because most people don't. Everyone else I interviewed with so far has liked me and gave positive reviews, too.

I don't know if I want the job, but that's beyond the scope of this rant anyway. The real reason for this comes next.

My interview today was with the VP of engineering. It was more of a monologue, as he wanted to give me perspective to see if I actually wanted to work there, but it was still very much a monologue. He's an old white guy who seems to loves to drone, and he never seemed very happy when I responded, so I let him drone and drone. Good information though.

But he's very set in his ways in some regards, and two of them were pretty insulting. We never really talked about technicals, and he just assumed that since I wasn't old and graying that I was a junior dev. He said, and I'll quote: "We run a lean but senior team, so we typically only hire senior devs here. But the dev team is all old white men. There's no diversity in talent, age, sex, race, religion, etc, and I'm looking to change that." He made several more allusions to my more junior level, too. He made a lot of assumptions (like how I'm not comfortable with structure because I've been the only dev so often) and got annoyed when I countered them.

I realize he has no idea of my skill level -- even though he should if he was listening to his team -- but to just assume that I'm not talented because I'm young, and bloody hire me just because I'm female? I don't want to be your diversity hire, old man. 🤬

So I'm feeling angry.
I might still take the job because the it offers considerable benefits over where I'm working (despite being quite happy here), but it will absolutely be despite him.

Social let's-help-female-programmers warriors piss me off.

The other day a massive email thread at work on how women are misrepresented in tech and how we need to help them and how using words such as "guys" is intimidating and generally patronising shit like "let's advertise jobs on websites like femaleprogrammers.com instead stackoverflow because there's too many white males on stackoverflow."

99% participants in this topic were guys.
One girl sent a message saying she doesn't want to be helped and she wants to know she has been picked for her skill and not filling in diversity numbers.

...would you believe she has been schooled on problems women in tech face by those lads too.

Like "woman, please... we speak diversity here"

So annoying....!!

Working with different nationalities is interesting, and sometimes kind of bewildering. And tiring.

I've been working with an Indian dev for a little while, and while she's a decent dev, interactions with her sometimes leave me a little puzzled. She glazes over serious topics, totally over-sensationalizes unimportant oddities, has yet to say the word "no," and she refers to the senior devs as (quote) "the legends." Also, when asked a question by her boss, like "Are you familiar with this?" Instead of a simple yes/no answer, she shows off a little. Fair, I do this sometimes too, but it's a regular thing with her. Also, like most Indians I've known and/or worked with, she has a very strict class-and-caste view of the world. It honestly makes me a little uncomfortable with how she views people, like certain people belong in certain boxes, how some boxes (and therefore their contents) are inherently better than others, and how it's difficult or simply impossible to move between boxes. My obviously westerner view of things is that you can pick where you want to be and what you want to do, and all it takes to get there is acquiring the proper skills and putting in the required effort. I see no boxes at all, just a sprawling web of trades/specialities. And those legends she talks about? They're good devs with more knowledge than me, but only one, maybe two of them are better devs. I see them as coworkers and leads, not legends. Legends would be the likes of Ada Lovelace, Dennis Ritchie, Yukihuro Matsumoto, and Satoshi Nakamoto. (Among others, obv.). To call a lead dev a legend is just strange to me, unless they're actually deserving, but we don't work with anyone like Wozniak or Carmack.

Since I'm apparently ranting about her a little, let me continue. She's also extremely difficult to understand. Not because of her words or her accent, but I can't ever figure out what she's trying to get across. The words fit together and make valid sentences, but the sentences don't often make sense with one another, and all put together... I'm just totally lost. To be a math nerd, like the two conversations are skew lines: very similar, but can never intersect. What's more, if I say I don't understand and ask for clarification, she refuses and says she doesn't want to confuse me further, and to just do what I think is best. It's incredibly frustrating.

Specifically, we're trying to split up functionality on a ticket -- she's part of a different dev team (accounting), and really should own the accounting portion since she will be responsible for it, but there's no clear boundary in the codebase. Trying to discuss this has been... difficult.

Anyway.

Sometimes other cultures' world views are just puzzling, or even kind of alien. This Irish/Chinese guy stayed at my parents' house for a week. He had red hair, and his facial features were about 3/4 Chinese. He looked strange and really interesting. I can't really explain it, but interacting with him felt like talking to basically any other guy I've known, except sometimes his mannerisms and behavior were just shockingly strange and unexpected, and he occasionally made so little sense to me that I was really taken aback.

This Chinese manager I had valued appearances and percieved honors more than anything else. He cared about punctuality and attire more than productivity. Instead of giving raises for good work or promotions, he would give fancy new titles and maybe allow you to move your desk somewhere with a better view of your coworkers. Not somewhere nicer; somewhere more prominent. How he made connections between concepts was also very strange, like the Chinese/Irish guy earlier. The site templating system was a "bridge?" Idk? He also talked luck with his investors (who were also Chinese), and they would often take the investment money to the casino to see if luck was in the company's favor. Not even kidding.

Also! the Iranian people I've known. They've shown very little emotion, except occasionally anger. If I tried to appease them, they would spurn and insult me, but if I met their anger, they would immediately return to being calm, and always seemed to respect me more afterward. Again, it's a little puzzling. By contrast, meeting an American's anger often makes them dislike you, and exceeding it tends to begin a rivalry.

It's neat seeing how people of different nationalities have different perspectives and world views and think so very differently. but it can also be a little tiring always having to translate and to switch behavior styles, sometimes even between sentences.

It's also frustrating when we simply cannot communicate despite having a language in common.

HR made a day long inclusiveness meeting. About why there are so few women in the department. Basically the conclusion the HR rep was looking for was “toxic masculinity” and it was super uncomfortable.

The engineering teams couldn’t actually participate much because most of them worked on teams without any women and have absolutely nothing to do with hiring. The male engineers were trying to play along and give the right answers. We had to do flip charts and beak into teams and etc.

The HR kept singling out the same three women in engineering and telling the men to “shut up and listen to them”. The female engineers were like, “i don’t know. I don’t have much to say about it.” The HR rep continued to drill those three women to the point that it was uncomfortable.

The engineering hiring manager lost it before noon. He went to his desk and grabbed a stack of resumes. “You gave me a stack of 60 resumes. Looking at names only four applicants are female. Those applicants don’t have education or experience for engineering. If you want more female engineers in the office you have to put qualified applicants into the stack. Forcing these three engineers to talk in front of our department over and over and saying the men have to shut up is not making the workplace less toxic.” Then he told the three engineers, “This meeting is now optional for you three and you are welcome to do anything you want with your time.”

After lunch, all the female engineers went back to their desk and worked. The HR continued to shame the men in an angrier tone for the rest of the day telling everyone “how men can be” from personal experience because they were the ones now representing all women.

Eight bloody hours of that.

Team Lead: "Today we're going to discuss how we can be more inclusive with getting people on board with XYZ organization. StackODev, what ideas do you have?"

Me: "Uh. Not really sure. I mean, it's not like we're being 'exclusive' in any way. People can join the XYZ organization without any restraint or discrimination. They just sign up on the website and they're done. There are no litmus tests of any aspect of their demographics or beliefs."

Team Lead: "Yeah, but how do we make sure we're getting more of Wanted Group A so that it's not as much of Less Wanted Group B?"

Me: "Well, that's a different question, isn't it? That would maybe meet the diversity and equity goal, but wouldn't that defeat the inclusion goal? Isn't it 'exclusive' to put more effort into attracting Wanted Group A people and less effort into attracting Less Wanted Group B people? And at what point do we draw the line between creating an enrollment system that is diverse, equitable, and inclusive and one that favors Group A over Group B explicitly?"

Team Lead: "Why don't you shut up now and we'll get ideas from some other team members."

All this "political correctness" cancer spreading through the Python community at the moment over "master/slave" terminology has me wondering where will it end. When the pendulum swings will be have a pro-life movement opposed to pre-emptively killing processes? Will a branch of PETA form to oppose the taxonomic appropriation of reptilian names for the language as a whole? Are we going to need to find gender-neutral names for motherboards to avoid offending those who are offended by the oppressive digital binary? Will removing "mother" from the name motherboard invite 6th wave feminists to decry the influence of toxic masculinity in electronics? Do snake lives matter? Seriously, some people need to take a month off to go fuck themselves somewhere far far away and stop confusing "diversity" with "rampant idiocy".

I was recuited to do devops work for a client. The project started in late '14. Until mid '15 I was forced to just sit there and do nothing. And I mean nothing. The ops team needed my help but the project lead didn't allow that (endless discussions). Somewhere around the end of '15 I could start to work and quickly learned that I had to report to two leads that couldn't disagree more on what to do and how to do it. I also learned that the companies mentality is "Clean me but don't get me wet". So the ops team demands a lot but is really uncooperative with everything. So I am currently sitting between three grindstones and everything I do is worthless. Because nobody agrees with anybody and I cannot fulfill my job for which I have been hired: Make ops more efficient because they are drowning in manual work. My job is further complicated by the following facts: This company uses no standard whatsoever but their own. Thru this they have created a Rube-Goldberg-Machine. But they think their system is the greatest in the world and the only one that makes sense. Which makes automation pointless because it is not maintainable. They call it diversity and they say that it is the clear reason why automation is not for them even though they schedule meeting after meeting in which they discuss about how to automate things. But in general they do just block everything useful and sabotage my work. And behind my back they make me the reason for the fail. Every real decision is blocked anyway. Also the ops guys think they are the leetest in the world. And everything they invent is above and beyond. If you ask them why they have over 400 VLANs for example (in a company of unter a thousand employees) they stutter and stumble because they cannot explain their complicated shit. They also change their decisions like underwear. Another really "kewl" thing they just did: They hired a devops engineer and everybody loves him. During the interview he said that he has no prior experience with devops whatsoever and it will take him around six month to get started on the basics of devops. I could go on for hours here about the insanity of this company that in my opinion will cease to exist within the next 5 years, if you ask me.
Long story short I am getting out of there by the end of march and will be on sabbatical shortly after because I am burned out. And I mean burned out. Not like "Oh I am burned out". I mean really burned out, with health problems and everything. Another external guy got out here last month because of the same health conditions.

Diversity Support Tickets EVERY-FUCKING-WHERE
Because if you happen to be born a woman or you like men (or women or both or none - its up to you) you'll get that €399 ticket for free. Seriously? From when white straight man can afford to pay for the conference but a different skin, gender or sexual orientation cannot?
No hate - you do you, but from my perspective as a woman, I feel this is kind of unfair to all my male fellas out there.

Just a friendly reminder that when you hear one or more of the following:
- underrepresented
- identity politics
- *phobia
- toxic *ity
- cis* (though "cisco" is fine)
- diversity
- culture appropriation
- passive-aggressive
- patriarchy
...and other bullshit, feel free to not talk to that person ever again. You'll miss nothing. Always remember that their goal is not equality but power to oppress whoever have a different worldview.

If you fear twitter backlash, fear not. Political shit comes and goes, but the inherent value of what you do is here to stay and means something at all times.

To anyone who wants to judge me because of this — remember, what you have read above comes from a bipolar transgender bisexual rape victim.

Wanna attend the developer conference?

White and male? Pay half a grand.
Female? Black? LGBTQIA? You get a free ticket!

Seriously, how would they verify if you are gay?
It appears to me that it's easily exploitable.

Been reading devRant for a while now and I have to say I'm sad about the way the future of the software engineering looks like. Everyone seems to have a lot of hatred towards certain techniques and/or platforms and sad to say, but you are missing a lot.

I have been in the biz for around 15 years and have worked on Win, Linux, Mac, Unix, Symbian, Embedded etc. using all sorts of tools and languages and I must say it has taught me a lot and given diversity on my career and I hope you could also open your mind and start educating yourselves. Theres a world behind your bubble!

Peace and love!

!dev
!!politics (kinda)

Here’s a gem from our recent harassment and diversity training at work:

Speaker: “All of these things are protected from discrimination in California! Wow! It’s a huge list, isn’t it? Now let me ask you a question: is a single white male under 40 protected?”

Everyone: *crickets*

Fucking really?
After immediately jumping on all of the other speaker’s questions, you can’t answer this one?

And later, here’s another gem:

Speaker: “If you witness an employee harassing another employee outside of work and work hours, completely unrelated to work, should you report it? What if you ask the person being harassed and she says no?”

Speaker: “Always report it! While it’s not *technically* required by law, you must report it! Why? Because you have the same protections she would! And maybe it’s easier for you to say something than for her.” (Surprise gendering was her own addition)

Fair on that last point, but against the person’s wishes? Totally not cool. Maybe it wasn’t harassment, or you don’t know the situation. Heads up: you probably don’t. Or maybe it wasn’t a big deal at all, but you think it’s earth-shattering. But all that reporting it against someone’s wishes does is create drama and possibly legal trouble. And if it wasn’t harassment or the case goes poorly, you just created enemies for yourself, or for one or both of them if you’re reporting it anonymously, and possibly even ruined one or both of their jobs/careers by doing so. Good fucking job, asshole.

Snitches get stitches.

Am I the only one who thinks this type of "diversity hire" is absolutely wrong?

Worst coding interruptions are, by far, instant messages. Especially messages I don't care about. People who tag an entire channel when they shouldn't. The Diversity and Inclusion channel that everyone has to join that tags the entire channel, all 2000 members, at least once a day to share some blog post nobody wants to read. Other employees sending "Hi" to me and expecting an immediate response even though I don't know what they want yet. People who think Slack is an alternative to our support ticket system.

I am often tempted to just sign out for the day, but unfortunately some of the messages are actually important...

Companies: “We believe diversity is our strength. We don’t discriminate on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, ……”

*departments hire 90% women and 10% men*

Companies: “See! Diversity solved!”

People/companies talking about ooh we want gender diversity we want more female software developers, IT professionals etc

You talk the talk, do you know how to walk the walk?? Do you know how to deal with female engineers?

I am a hardcore engineer worked and studied majorly with men for years. I lead, managed teams had my own company worked as a consultant for years.

Then I got into the IT industry as developer later. I was completely against the idea of being female would make any difference or you would be treated differently.

Finally I had my own enlightenment and stopped resisting that idea.

Some treatments made me think what are these guys doing? Don’t treat me like your sister. I am not your sister. Don’t see the femininity or looks. I am not a Merrilyn Monroe to say oooh you are great you know soo much. I am not paid for that act, I do my job! It’s same as yours mate.

Don’t underestimate me or try to preach me as if I am a cute little girl. Don’t show off and boost your ego next to other guys.

Now I regretfully I agree the ladies ranting about male dominance and getting different treatment in IT.

I am literally trying to avoid red nail polishes or red lipstick god forbid. Maybe I should put some fake beard and a belly, loose jeans with an energy drink in hand. Here comes the expert IT professional, already ticking a box.

Honestly you are not taken seriously most of the time. If you are a guy then they are all ears..And those guys talk about they want gender diversity blah blah

You feel like a ghost when you express your opinion. You are not taken into account even when you have a comment or suggestion.

Even humiliated by a guy giving me a speech about how to be a good developer next to a manager. Look buddy I am not a yesterday’s child. I am at your age. I haven’t come to this position by jumping around picking flowers in a field. If I was a man, would you dare saying those to me? There could be a street fight coming.

LinkedIn selfie takers with body show offs putting ooh I am an IT recruiter as a female I got into IT. You can do it too. (don’t get me wrong I respect that achievement that’s good) but those girls get thousands of likes and applauses, you are working in IT for years people say they are seeking for. Your technical post doesn’t even get 20 likes. Your encouraging comment on a guy’s post isn’t even acknowledged. You are not even taken into account. Am I a ghost or something?

Honestly I don’t understand.

What do you mean by gender diversity? What do you want here?

Leave this gender bullshit. Look at the knowledge you don’t even know what equality means. It’s not having even numbers of genders. It is respecting knowledge and hard work regardless. Listening and acknowledging without judgement. Looking beyond male, female or others

Companies that say we want to have more females, you don’t come and knock on my door either. You are already stating a difference there. Attract with indifference don’t come and tell me you are a female we want more females here.

I’m telling you this sector is not getting proper gender equality for 25 years. Talk is there but mentality is not yet there.

I am super pissed off and discouraged today. I don’t even get discouraged that easily. Now I understand some women in IT talking about insecurities. I am on the edge of having one, such a shame.

Don’t come at me now I would bite!

This is my generalisation yes. Exceptions apply and how good it would have been if those exceptions were dominant.

Making ciri from the witcher upcoming tv series a black asian minority ( although she has has elf blood . Elfs are white not black ).

Master/slave controversy.

Introducing random gay movie scenes just for the sake of diversity.

What's next ? Making a documentary about linus torvalds with him being a black asian gay feminist ?

So I've been applying to jobs. I, purposely, have been putting down that I am female (since they all harp on diversity, I'd like to see if they even bother reaching out to me. Also anything to get my resume past the bots).

Spoiler alert - getting similar ratios to male counterparts, 100+ applications sent, maybe 4 phone interviews. No offers yet. Still made to do code challenges.

Well, I just found out where all that diversity hiring went to. Buddy of mine who works at a mid tier company said that they have a special program that onboards women into tech.

Specifically, women who have literally zero background in computers.

Teachers, social workers, etc. They get a week or so of some coding bootcamp and then get full time positions over more skilled applicants.

This infuriates me. I literally would be in a better situation to be hired had I not have had any technical background, taken this particular bootcamp and finally net the elusive entry level position I need.

And guess what? That move has antagonized the existing male employees who see that they have zero interest and zero competency instead of having an integrated workplace.

10/10 for incredible bullshit.

I've recently received another invitation to Google's Foobar challenges.

A while ago someone here on devRant (which I believe works at Google, and whose support I deeply appreciate) sent me a couple of links to it too. Unfortunately back then I didn't take the time to learn the programming languages (Python or Java) that Google requires for these challenges. This time I'm putting everything on Python, as it's the easiest language to learn when coming from Bash.

But at the end of the day.. I am a sysadmin, not a developer. I don't know a single thing about either of these languages. Yet I can't take these challenges as the sysadmin I am. Instead, I have to learn a new language which chances are I'll never need again outside of some HR dickhead's interview with lateral thinking questions and whiteboard programming, probably prohibited from using Google search like every sane programmer and/or sysadmin would for practical challenges that actually occur in real life.

I don't want to do that. Google is a once in a lifetime opportunity, I get that. Many people would probably even steal that foobar link from me if they could. But I don't think that for me it's the right thing to do. Google has made a serious difference by actually challenging developers with practical scenarios, and that's vastly superior to whatever a HR person at any other company could cobble together for an interview. But there's one thing that they don't seem to realize. A company like Google consists of more than just developers. Not only that, it probably consists - even within their developer circles - of more than just Python and Java developers. If any company would know about languages that are more optimized such as C, it would be Google that has to leverage this performance in order to be able to deliver their services.

I'll be frank here. Foobar has its own issues that I don't like. But if Google were a nice company, I'd go for it all the way nonetheless - after all, they are arguably the single biggest tech company in the world, and the tech industry itself is one of the biggest ones in the world nowadays. It's safe to say that there's likely no opportunity like working at Google. But I don't think it's the right thing. Even if I did know Python or Java... Even if I did. I don't like Google's business decisions.

I've recently flashed my OnePlus 6T with LineageOS. It's now completely Google-free, except for a stock Yalp account (that I'm too afraid to replace with my actual Google account because oh dear, third-party app stores, oh dear that could damage our business and has to be made highly illegal!1!). My contacts on that phone are are all gone. They're all stored on a Google server somewhere (except for some like @linuxxx' that I consciously stored on device storage and thus lost a while back), waiting for me to log back in and sync them back. I've never asked for this. If Google explicitly told me that they'd sync all my contacts to my Google account and offer feasible alternatives, I'd probably given more priority to building a CalDAV and CardDAV server of my own. Because I do have the skills and desire to maintain that myself. I don't want Google to do this for me.

Move fast and break things. I've even got a special Termux script on my home screen, aptly named Unfuck-Google-Play. Every other day I have to use it. Google Search. When I open it on my Nexus 6P, which was Google's foray into hardware and in which they failed quite spectacularly - I've even almost bent and killed it tonight, after cursing at that piece of shit every goddamn day - the Google app opens, I type some text into it.. and then it just jumps back to the beginning of whatever I was typing. A preloader of sorts. The app is a fucking web page parser, or heck probably even just an API parser. How does that in any way justify such shitty preloaders? How does that in any way justify such crappy performance on anything but the most recent flagships? I could go on about this all day... I used to run modern Linux on a 15 year old laptop, smoothly. So don't you Google tell me that a - probably trillion dollar - company can't do that shit right. When there's (commercialized) community projects like DuckDuckGo that do things a million times better than you do - yet they can't compete with you due to your shit being preloaded on every phone and tablet and impossible to remove without rooting - that you Google can't do that and a lot more. You've got fucking Google Assistant for fucks sake! Yet you can't make a decent search app - the goddamn thing that your company started with in the first place!?

I'm sorry. I'd love to work at Google and taste the diversity that this company has to offer. But there's *a lot* wrong with it at the business end too. That is something that - in that state - I don't think I want to contribute to, despite it being pretty much a lottery ticket that I've been fortunate enough to draw twice.

Maybe I should just start my own company.

Controversial tech rant begins here:

You know, I'm sure a lot of you guys know that it is pretty uncommon to encounter a woman who is who is into tech (and ranting about said tech). This has always made people question why. I personally feel like that is the case because those that do like tech, and those that don't just find a different interest. I thought that would suffice, but now Google and Microsoft are advertising their diversity programs. I was fine with all that until I was personally affected by it. I intended to apply for scholarships from Microsoft. They turned me away because according to them, they began giving them only to people who were "marginalized". That and their commercials trying to pressure young girls to join the STEM field. Again nothing wrong with women in the tech field, but now that this is turning into favoritism I have to fight harder battles to compete in the tech industry. Not only that, but now I read a study about their employment. Despite the number of people they turned away and the money they spent on these programs, thr companies STILL haven't become any more diverse, and from what it seems, their reaction lately has been to double-down and try harder. I just want an open, honest, and fair tech community. Has anyone else felt the affects of this situation?

Manager: We have a new equity survey from HR that is ABSOLUTELY MANDATORY. Anyone who doesn’t fill it out will be severely reprimanded for being against diversity in the workplace. We need this data in order to ensure we have the ABSOLUTELY EXACT ratio of EVERY minority so that we can show the people that we do not discriminate against ANYBODY for ANYTHING. One of the problems with hiring new people is that most people we want to hire turn out to be white and we are absolutely not allowed to hire any more white people because we are over the quota for white people. Now there’s a loophole to this, if that white person belongs to some sub-minority like they are muslim or gay or something like that it’s totally cool and we can show people we don’t discriminate on these things when making employment decisions!

Dev: That’s…not wh—

Mandatory Survey: Please select your sexual preferences and/or religion from the dropdown below.

Dev: jesus christ.

2nd day in new job. Random HR training blabbing about something (thanks God all remote so I just did things around house). Blabbing about diversity and other corporate brainwashing. Then she proceeds to say that if someone is introvert and doesn't like to interact with people then such person should look for work in some other company (wtf x1). Next in line her real life story how she yelled at her subordinates (wtf x2 who admits to mobbing xd ) but that's ok because she is choleric and people have to understand that different character types make their team better xD
I have a bad feelings about where this is going...

Absolutely hate these "moving up", "stairs of success", "we are so diverse!" stock photos all over the internet.

You feel like you are being subtle, fuck no. Unless your target audience is stupid as as fuck, this photos looks dumb and over the top. And what is up with this "diversity" all over the place? don't get me wrong, I am all for diversity. But learn how to apply it properly.

"Looks like we need a picture of a student. Oh no, we need to be diverse. Add 15 kids of 15 different ethincity in the same picture to make sure we looks diverse. Phew!"

And the animations. Holy fucking shite. Why is it that a cheap website immediatly means that your website needs to have 100 different animation in the front page.

Seriously, picture rolling from here and there. Text coming out of nowhere.Everything being squeezed and rotated. God damn it!

This is another reason I fucking hate these 1 click websites and shite like that. This fucking website was created with WiX and my God, it's a fucking nightmare.

Good news is client is recreating the website.

Interested in the "If 42 is the answer? What is the question?" diversity. 🤔

*me going to wikipedia*
searching for 42
buncha math stuff whatever
matrix sum... interesting 🤨
(is 42 maybe related to dimensions?)
*sees a lot of programs relations where 42 is considered magical in themselves*

"The ASCII code 42 is for the asterisk symbol, being a wildcard for everything."

*literally speechless* 😮

So my company hired this very old guy. The oldest developer I have worked with. I feel they took him just because of diversity.

Because he was absolutely incompetent.

Nothing he wrote ever worked, he got in conflict with everyone, made stupid jokes at meetings, asked the dumbest questions. His stories would hang for weeks, hopping sprint over sprint. Once he delivered something, his code had to be re-written from scratch. A code review couldn't even be applied as the code was worthless, so it just made sense to reassign his tasks to someone else and move on.

So after much drama he was let go. It was maybe two years ago and I recently connected with him on LinkedIn. He's changed four or more jobs since then. Prior to coming to our company he also job-hopped all the time (but most likely he was actually fired every time). His average job duration was like 6 months. Apart from that, he had a 20+ year stay with some government agency.

I fail to grasp how he ever gets hired anywhere with all the red flags. Over two decades with some govt agency (in my country they are all crap). Then change jobs every half an year or so. Then the asshole attitude. And finally, they probably never asked him any technical questions, because he knew nothing. Our interns who were just one month into the job were better by a WIDE margin.

Algo helps me to see the the whole thing. 😂

Today, at the Minnesota Developers Conference, has proven to me how big of a gap there is in gender diversity with technology. This realization came to me when I visited the men's bathroom to be greeted by a ridiculous line, and witnessed the lack of a line to the woman's restroom.

Firefox.

I ignored your update for ages.

Because half your dev base are retards circle jerking over a language made by a smug midwit marxist who believes in ceremony over productivity.

And then you go and autoupdate without my permisson. Didn't realize microsoft wasn't the only one that could push things on people like common rapists.

Went and pushed an update when I've EXPLICITLY turned down your update nagware hundreds of times.

And now ad block is disabled.

And I'm being flooded by bullshit.

And the 'patch' you released requires me to update.

Well jumping fucking christ on a pogo stick. Why didnt you just force update the whole god damn application you shit-for-brains firefox devs?

What, you thought I wouldn't fucking notice?

You thought, because microsoft did it, that this shit was cool, in 2019?

Like that bullshit you pulled as a 'tie in' for mr robot?

I would kick you in your fucking nuts if I met you.

Ps: Your fucking patch that you put out doesn't even fucking reenable extensions.

Incompetent dumbasses.

I'm moving to another browser with less 'diversity' in the dev team.

"Our company encourages cryptocurrency big data agile machine learning, empowerment diversity, celebrate wellness and synergy, unpack creative cloud real-time front-end bleeding edge cross-platform modular success-driven development of digital signage, powered by an unparalleled REST API backend, driven by a neural network tail recursion AI on our cloud based big data linux servers which output real time data to our Wordpress template interactive dynamic website TypeScript applet, with deep learning tensor flow capabilities.

Don't get what the fuck I just said? Udemy offers countless courses on python based buzzwords. Be the first out of 13 people to sell your soul and private information, and you'll get the first three minutes of the course free!"

I was inspired by the abundance and uniformity of modern data-selling startups. Despite being different companies, they have a lot in common: questionable ethics, lack of a real business model other than selling data, pseudo-approachable and friendly bullshit aesthetics, talks about dIvErSitY and eQuALitY. Now, I propose one more thing for them to have in common — this logo. I hereby announce it to be public domain now, free to use for all.

Just finished another conference call. Broken voices, confusing accents and awkward silences. How do you guys handle it?

Damn Google.

"hey my company I like diversity, and agree with our goal but think we are punishing people for voicing an opinion that we could accomplish our values of nondiscrimination using better methods"

Googles Response "we encourage diversity including diversity of opinions. All employees should be safe to talk about these things. Oh and FUCK you man you're fired we don't agree with you standing up and voicing a differing opinion"

I work in a very diverse team. I'm a white male, from the US and I have someone from Russia, one from China, and 2 from India. The best thing so far was a team building exercise, where we went to a AAA baseball game, and I got asked all kinds of questions, that of course seem strange to me.

How many pitches can the pitcher throw?
What happens if they hit it past the lines on the left and right?
Can they hit again if they strike out?

balancing school work between life and sport and programming is so hard. i mean, school is complete bs. what’s the point?

ffs it’s not *just* that im never gonna use the shit im taught, but that if it dont learn it, im punished. even in some classes (code.org), information that we’re taught is blatantly incorrect. either way, being able to find the foci or an ellipse and the latus rectum (hehe) of a hyperbola isnt going to make it easier when i get my job and just adjust css to my bosses’s specifications. i maintain a 4.0, and i fucking hate it. my friends are working hard, and getting into mit for racial diversity, while im doing just as much work, for what?

i want out. i really do. but this redundant thing called a degree is holding me back. i really want to have some way of proving my skills without a degree. i’m currently building a social media application i believe will take off, but frankly, i dont care.

take off or not, hopefully it will be enough to prove my skills. i’ve been working on this for two weeks now, and, well, that’s my story.

I am feeling little fucked up.
I talked to one of the female employees from my new company, I'll be joining next month.
She asked manager to hire a girl in the team, I know she casually asked but after knowing this, I know my interviews were surprisingly easy, I mean I know already that no one asked me to optimize anything... did the fucking hired me for diversity, pay is good, people are good, work is good but seriously if I'm getting hired for the fucking diversity my manager is going to have a good speech from me and I'll move from his team for sure.

Why?

I've been working like a mad woman in a startup for 3+ years now. They feel like 10. Or at least the tech stacks we went through.
Never, ever join a startup, regardless of compensation, unless you know you can emotionally and mentally recover from that startup failing as if it is yours, not your bosses. Otherwise, it's just a shitty short experience.

My long experience is shitty, but man. I don't know.Those who built google, wanted to make a search engine. Did they know they're gonna be good? NO. This is the result of them being good. They now have that great product that succeeds and is able to become a self-referential piggy bank. You cannot be a self-referential piggy bank based on a fucking belief and idea, and a bunch of VCs who already put money in you. You know why? BECAUSE GUESS WHO IS THE ONE RESPONSIBLE FOR SUSTAINING YOUR START UP NOW?

The bloods and passions of youth, that join your startup, thinking they can make a difference, and you just undermine them constantly thinking that no engineer can make a difference if they can't ensure compliance with your dumb funding strategy.

Don't even get me started on the fact that most people who work for startups, rely on either laziness or passion. It's like a bunch of kids in art school, whose professor doesn't like anything they make, but they still kinda like it hoping one day they leave and become artists themselves. Then they discover that this shit professor actually taught them nothing about creativity in the real world, and what it takes to push something out.

And, it finally fucking hit me.

The reason startups will never work in this year, and beyond, AND TILL I SEE A CHANGE IN ATTITUDE IN 10 YEARS.....

The market won't fucking allow it with the current strategy tech companies are a fan of: hire a bunch of passionate devs who wanna learn a tool through doing our unique work. Doesn't matter. DIVERSITY. THE UNION IS THE PASSION. That's dumb as fuck.
Why?
Here:

- Passionate people do not have to use passion as an incentive, the passion was there, and them getting their idea made or money is the incentive
- If you hire a passionate person - even if they are the fucking best - you just made their passion a tool, in getting your PRs done and shit epics scoped AT BEST, and so the tools you're teaching them to use are getting away with doing less impactful, productive, creative work.

I AM SO DEPRESSED.

Former classmate: Our alma mater is looking for alumni to participate in career day. Share what skills you need and the steps you took for your career path!

Me: Thanks for the invite. But I’m not a good role model for this.

FC: Why not? You’re a successful engineer!

Me: So I used my full tuition university scholarship on an art degree because I was too depressed after a long physical illness. Oh, and for some reason a lot of y’all assumed I went to a private uni when I went to the public uni. Then I went to graduate school immediately after and during a recession and ended up with tens of thousands in student debt. Then I did a lot of part time jobs before going to a shady coding bootcamp. I’m lucky to have encountered an advocate and a company willing to take me on as a junior dev. I’m pretty sure I was a diversity hire and I was definitely underpaid. I’m lucky to have moved on from there and to be thriving now. I’d tell the students to skip college (like I had considered) and go into a trade. And I’d also tell them a lot of life is luck and not just hard work.

FC: 😧

I'm fucking done.

I honestly can't see how developers like to work for years on a single project. Nothing on the side, just the one project. Fuck I'm a year in and I've already been pushing my patience.

After working on something for half a year I want some diversity, but every time I ask for it I get the "we need you doing this" card. I've asked plenty of times for my manager to find someone else to do part of my work, and every time I get the same thing. "We're looking for someone, don't worry". Yeah my ass you've been saying that for months and I still haven't seen a job opening.

Honestly, in a month or so I'm gonna tell my manager that I'm quitting soon, so he has some time to actually go look for someone. If he doesn't, not my problem.

For real though, the company is nice, people are chill, I'm just lacking challenge, and no matter how many times I bring it up, nothing's being done with it.

What will I do when I quit? I have no fucking clue, but anything's better than doing the same repetitive shit day in day out. Fuck it I'll probably go balls deep on my own projects for a few months, see if I can generate an income there.
If that doesn't work out I'll just go back to the life of sucking someone's dick for a monthly salary.

Since we’re adding new backronyms every day, I propose SIMPLE.

S - Spaghetti: write tapestry of code like a chef.

I - Interlinked: if the project has modules, they should all depend on each other (we are strongest when we can depend on one another).

M - Micromanaged: if the product owner doesn’t expect reports in the daily stand-up, do they even care?

P - Perplex: diversity for the codebase.

L - Lazy: Bill Gates once said “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job, because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it”, for example, without testing, collaborating with team members, or ensuring the feature works with anything else in the codebase.

E - Opinionated: because I believe E should stand for opinionated and everyone else will have to work around this with adapters. But E should mean Opinionated because Uncle Bab said so.

Disclaimer: I hold no grudges or prejudices toward [CENSORED] company. I love the concept of the business model and the perks they pay their employees. Unfortunately, the company is very petty, and negligence is the core of the management. I got into an interview for the position, of Senior Software Engineer, and the interview wouldn't take place if wasn't for me to follow up with the person in charge countless times a day. The Vice President of Engineering was the most confused person ever encountered. Instead of asking challenging questions that plausibly could explain and portray how well I can manage a team, the methodology of working with various technology, and my problem-solving skills. They asked me questions that possibly indicated they don't even know what they need or questions that can easily get from a Google Search. I was given 40 hours to build a demo application whereby I had to send them a copy of the source code and the binary file. The person who contacted me don't even bother with what I told her that it is not a good practice to place the binary in cloud storage (Google Drive, OneDrive, etc) and I request extra time to complete the demo application. Since I got the requirement to hand them the repository of the codebase, it is common practice to place the binary in the release section in the Git Platform (Jire, Azure DevOps, Github, Gitlab, etc). Which he surprisingly doesn't know what that is. There's the API key I place locally in .env hidden from the codebase (it's not good practice to place credentials in the codebase), I got a request that not only subscript to an API is necessary but I have to place them in the codebase. I succeed to pass the source code on time with the quality of 40 hours, I told him that I could have done it better, clearer and cleaner if I was given more grace of time. (Because they are not the only company asking me to write a demo application prior to the assessment. Extra grace was I needed)

So long story short, I asked him how is it working in a [CENSORED] company during my turn to ask questions. I got told that the "environment is friendly, diverse". But with utmost curiosity, I contacted several former employees (Software Engineer) on LinkedIn, and I got told that the company has high turnover, despises diversity the nepotism is intense. Most of the favours are done based on how well you create an illusion of you working for them and being close to the upper management. I request shreds of evidence from those former employees to substantiate what they told me. Seeing the pieces of evidence of how they manage the projects, their method of communication, and how biased the upper management actually is led me to withdraw from continuing my application. Honestly, I wouldn't want to work for a company where the majority can't communicate.

I don't profess to know the whole story, but what is it with the (what seems to me to be) overly-fragile, cry-bully mentality of the Node.js community and its various branches? The current mess is not the first time strongly opinioned, overly zealous loud-mouths have driven the ship.

Throughout the history of time, teams/groups of people have been made up of different characters. Some are nice, some aren't really and everyone has varied characteristics. There seems to be a drive to completely flatten the behaviour, beliefs and attitudes of any sort of gathering, and it makes me so mad. Some people are so obsessed with their ideas of equality, diversity, inclusivity and safe spaces that they can't see how negative and discriminating those attitudes actually are.

I fully accept that certain behaviours should not be tolerated and should be called out. And communities and societies will organically decide what those are.

But when you raise an issue, approach it like grown up and thrash it out to a resolution - don't throw your toys out of the pram and put on a real public show, targeting and scapegoating other individuals when you don't get your way! This is childish and narcissistic. If this is your only course of action, you should realise you haven't a strong argument.

I've ranted here before about how the mainly social media discussions on any subject drive us all to extreme ends. And this is just another example. It's wrong and narrow minded and not remotely progressive - the opposite of what those who should loudest claim to be.

For two projects, I have been in a solo work pattern, been a time bottleneck, and been irreplaceable on the projects. Four months ago I told management, "If anything happens to me these projects will be in trouble. I want to train a backup. I can't sustain this momentum. It isn't good for me, or for the success of these projects."

Four months later I still have no backup. They decided to diversity hire some new developers in the wrong area and now there is no money for a backup for me. I can't do all the work on both projects as a solo developer. I could have if I wasn't pushed into doing trial and error development on a poorly defined MS Dynamics API. Since the projects were behind schedule the customers lost confidence in the company to deliver. So the executives railroaded both project managers to save face.

Instead of addressing the development issues they did a bunch of other silly things. I got a job offer lined up and issued my resignation. That news absolutely exploded. After resigning my executive decided to say how awful I am in front of the customer in an attempt to save face for the company. The customer contacted the recently railroaded project manager and asks why. Former project manager tells customer, "You noticed how much faster the development of that part of the application went when he joined. You noticed how much better the quality of the project was. What do you think is happening? Do you think that a very good developer and an experienced project manager are to blame for the failures here?" So the executive is 13/10 pissed off because I may have accidentally struck a death blow for millions of dollars of business. I committed to taking care of the handover to the customer, and the company can't afford to get rid of me without completely losing confidence of the customer. The developers that I work with don't blame me at all and they are disgruntled that executive tried to character assassinate me and realize that it could have been them. I sense that I also may have initiated a developer mass-exodus. So the last few days have been the most stressful of my career but none of it is sticking to me because I followed all of the correct process.

You play stupid games you win stupid prizes.

Hiring is a complete BS. A combination of 4 hours in total interview + 7 day worth of assignment for a senior role. Stop giving them this immense power to push people around for free.

Most of this BS is run by leftist douchebags looking to just fill in diversity gender gap. Fucking bunch of retards and a waste of time.

Hello fellow developers!

I know this is devRant, but I don't know of a better community with such diversity of developers like you guys and I need your input.

I decided to go on a language journey. I come from a background of php/javascript and feel the need to expand my horizons.

I'm going to write the same app in each language to get the feel of it and become familiar with the syntax and language concepts.

Since I'm a web developer I'll focus mainly on languages used on the web like: Java, Python, Ruby, etc.. But I want to cover others as well, like Objective-C/Swift, C++/C#.

I'm having trouble figuring out what kind of an app would cover most of the ground. I know the basic guideline for this is a TODO app for web frameworks, but I
don't feel like writing a TODO in Swift or C# really cover what the languages are intended for.

I don't know enough about the environments yet to come up with a good idea.

I want something, that can be language independent but would utilize the power of each language in one part or another and is still simple enough not to require weeks of development.

Does anyone have a brilliant idea what that could be?

Creating something out of nothing and knowing there's people from all over the world using my creation. One last thing is the developer community is so rich in diversity, walks of life, experience...it's truly awesome to get to know so many people who all program.

Company Emails that tell you
who they are
what believe in.
How they were the market leaders since the stone age.
what their values are
what their holistic approach to life is. How they are diversifying inclusiveness to include diversity.
And how all of this bull shit ties into you being a ideal employee of the organisation
Just to get you to fill a damn form.

Makes me wish the next attempt at human extinction succeeds.

Obligatory subjective view from inexperienced eyes of a highschooler

I think it's evolving to be more beginner-friendly and more easily accessible. I'm seeing ppl roughly my age can program pretty well (ignoring the mandatory programming classes in highschool that stuff is just no (I know, we had this convo before but do hear me out, although it teaches fundamental programming in Pascal, the execution sucks ball because "mandatory")). I'm not saying we are on par with the in-industry devs, it's just we can code well enough to at least make decent small program/script.

With newer scripting languages that are easy to pick up and syntactically similar to English which is obviously Python, both objectively and subjectively, and its ability to be OOP without scaring first-timers of the what-the-blyn-is-this blank program (looking at you C#) people can be introduced to programming and programming concepts fairly easily and they can switch from Py to other languages with little to some hiccups, from my personal exp at least.

But then there's the "too much kiddies in the field" arguments I saw on dR (I think) a while back then when SO decided to better support newbies. To that, I can only say "Please give us a chance". We're completely oblivious to how the dev world work nor how you guys do your work so before you scold us on this, at least tell us how to work like you before you go on a 2-A4-page rant on how the industry is not as good as before and how it has degraded.

That leads to the problems of politics invading programming. We have it, I hate it, goddammit I wanna murder them. Linux CoC controversy is just...no. And then there's forced diversity in hiring (also ranted on dR a while back) and corporations pissing devs off to satisfy a minor group. I'll just shut up on this. No no no no no no no NO I'm not gonna. Not gonna.

Do correct me if I'm wrong though. I'm a less than a junior dev.

My decision whether to move to the US vs. the UK/EU will be primarily be driven by ability to attend rock/metal concerts and access to art/travel/culture/diversity.

If I am happy and living a stress free life (stress free == balancing stress with doing something that I love), then I'd be able to perform better with a clear mind and grow well.

Money has always been an output of my working with good ethics and high values.

I like being diverse in what I can program. I like software development, web development, networking programming, I’m starting to get into embedding programming and using lower level languages like C/C++ (I’ve used them before but not for anything practical) and I enjoy the diversity. It makes me feel good knowing I can extend my programming knowledge.

Also I like having project ideas lined up so I know what I want to do next. And if I don’t finish one I know is easy but I can’t figure out, I CANT MOVE ON! I have to finish it. It’ll drive me fucking nuts.

If you have enough of your own Spotify-playlists just try out their radio functionality.

It makes you actually appreciate playlists with less than 20 tracks for their diversity...

The code of conduct is a good thing. It doesn't persecute cis white men. All it does is tell you not to harass people on the basis of traits they cannot control. You say you only care about code quality and nothing else? There's a whole untapped market of talent from women and lgbtq+ people who stay the fuck away because of toxic communities. When you call people faggot it makes them not want to contribute to your codebase.
Linus stepped down of his own volition to try to become a more constructive voice. Heaven forbid the assholes have some introspection.

Hate it because it's vague. Hate it because it means anyone can be banned without evidence. Don't hate it because the assholes are finally being called on their bullshit.

Our entire grad program has just been cancelled by management because the intake isn't "diverse enough" - and this is after we've interviewed everyone, taken them through assessment centre days, and decided who we wanted to hire.

It's ok guys, you can waste hundreds of man hours of employee time, and shun all the great candidates who put time and effort in (some of whom were the very minorities they're trying to supposedly encourage) - as long as you do it in the name of diversity. Anyone disagrees, you can just call them a massive dick for apparently wanting an all white male workplace 😠

Who else hates weekly 1:1 meetings with managers? I’m the kind of person where if I have a problem or need to talk about something, I’ll do as much as I can first and then I’ll set up a meeting. No need to force it with a recurring meeting where we just reiterate the stuff we already discussed as needed during the week or, lacking that, engaging in small talk to fill the time. At this company, where I’m at in the hierarchy, and with me being a straight, white, old male in a team full of diversity hires, there is zero point at all to discussing potential promotion opportunities. We both know that’s not happening for anyone like me. If you want to have that discussion to keep up appearances, just put a gun in my hand and a round in the chamber and tell me to point it at my head and pull the trigger. Because we both know that’s what this world wants me to do and that is the only way I’ll be moving “up” anywhere in this universe at my age and with my “privilege”.

I have passed 3 interview levels including the coding test for a big telecoms company. After 2 weeks i get a 15 minute phone-interview in which I answered all the tech questions correctly and yesterday I received an email saying my application was unsuccessful. WTF...literally.

P.S.
I even said I was Bi-sexual in case they wanted diversity :D

Everyone that says it sucks because there is a new framework everyday, dude, you know that just because there is a new framework it's not a must for you to change your stack to it right? Also, you can find very valuable frameworks with this diversity

"This deal is an important step towards correcting a situation which has allowed a few companies to earn huge sums of money without properly remunerating the thousands of creatives and journalists whose work they depend on.

At the same time, this deal contains numerous provisions which will guarantee that the internet remains a space for free expression. These provisions were not in themselves necessary because the directive will not be creating any new rights for rights holders. Yet we listened to the concerns raised and chose to doubly guarantee the freedom of expression. The ‘meme’, the ‘gif’, the ‘snippet’ are now more protected than ever before.

I am also glad that the text agreed today pays particular attention to sheltering start-ups. Tomorrow’s leading companies are the start-ups of today and diversity depends on a deep pool of innovative, dynamic, young companies.

This is a deal which protects people’s living, safeguards democracy by defending a diverse media landscape, entrenches freedom of expression, and encourages start-ups and technological development. It helps make the internet ready for the future, a space which benefits everyone, not only a powerful few."

- Axel Voss, 2019

When a developer uses double negatives to fuck with you

`!!genderConforming`

I am having an introspective moment as a junior dev.

I am working in my 3rd company now and have spent the avg amount of time i would spent in a company ( 1- 1.5 years)

I find myself in similar problems and trajectories:

1. The companies i worked for were startups of various scales : an edtech platform, an insurance company (branch of an mnc) and a b2b analytics company

2. These people hire developers based on domain knowledge and not innovative thinking , and expect them to build anything that the PMs deem as growth/engagement worthy ( For eg, i am bad at those memory time optimising programming/ ds/algo, but i can make any kind of android screen/component, so me and people like me get hired here)

3. These people hire new PMs based on expertise in revenue generation and again , not on the basis of innovative thinking, coz most of the time these folks make tickets to experiment with buttons and text colors to increase engagement/growth

4. The system goes into chaos mode soon since their are so many cross operating teams and the PMs running around trying to boss every dev , qa and designer to add their changes in the app.

5. meanwhile due to multiple different teams working on different aspects, their is no common data center with up to date info of all flows, products and features. the product soon becomes a Frankenstein monster.

6. Thus these companies require more and more devs and QAs which are cogs in the system then innovative thinkers . the cogs in the system will simply come, dimwittingly add whatever feature is needed and goto home.

7. the cogs in system which also start taking the pain of tracking the changes and learning about the product itself becomes "load bearing cogs" : i.e the devs with so much knowledge of the product that they can be helpful in every aspect of feature lifecycle .

8. such devs find themselves in no need for proving themselves , in no need for doing innovative work and are simply promoted based on their domain knowledge and impact.

My question is simply this : are we as a dev just destined to be load bearing cogs?

we are doing the work which ideally a manager should be doing, ie maintaining confluence docs with end to end technical as well as business logic info of every feature/flow.

So is that the only definition of a Software Engineer in a technical product?

then how come innovations happen in companies like meta Microsoft google open ai etc?

if i have to guess as a far observer, i would say their diversity in different fields helps them mix and match stuff and lead to innovative stuff.

For eg, the android os team in google has helped add many innovative things in google cloud product and vice versa.

same is with azure and windows . windows is now optomissed to run in cloud machines when at one point it was just a horrible memory hogging and slow pc OS

for small companies, 1 ideology/product/domain is their hero ideology/product/domain .

an insurance company tries to experiment with stuff related to insurances,health,vehicles,and the best innovations they come up with is "lets give user a discount in premium if they do 5000 steps a day for an year".

edtech would say "lets do live streaming for children apart from static videos"

but Android team at google said , "since ai team is doing so well, lets include ai in various system apps and support device level models" ~ a much larger innovation as 2 domains combined to make a product

The small companies are not aiming to be an innovative product, they are just aiming to be a monopoly product. and this is kinda sad

I'm all for diversity in Linux, I like that there's multiple organizations, flavors, etc., but geez, troubleshooting a huge CMake project that breaks on Fedora and not on Ubuntu because of the way Python2.7 is installed is a real pain. :(

There should be a ***rant for every aspect of life, such as socrant (rants on society and politics), famrant (rants on how much family life (or to all singles out there, the lack of a family) sucks (or rocks) sometimes) and conrant (rants on all sorts of consumer products/services). Not to forget, the most important of all, trarant (traffic rant, about the rich diversity of stupidity among both drivers and pedestrians).

Not something that's happening. Just remembered a debate I had with a coworker from a long time ago regarding hiring and diversity.

Assuming there are two candidates.

Objectively one is slightly worse than the other (let's say 10%)

but the objectively better candidate is more of the same as your team (In terms of stack, gender, ethnicity)

Obviously if one is a lot better (say 30%) I'd hire the one that scores higher.

However, in this scenario (~10%). I think I'd hire the person that offers a different perspective even though they may be less talented.

My reasoning is the team needs someone that thinks differently and looks at a problem from a different box. Otherwise it becomes too easy for my team to go down a path that we like but isn't necessarily better.

What say you?

My best mentor was at my first tech job. I’m pretty sure he’s a big reason why I got the job. Not me specifically, but he advocated for hiring out of a bootcamp that represented minorities.

I was just out of bootcamp. I was very sure I was not prepared. No, this was imposter syndrome. As evidence, I was offered a lesser role than what I had interviewed for. I was pretty sure I was only hired because the company was trying to fill a diversity quota, they could get away with paying me less, and I would take training well.

He was assigned to be my mentor. He was very helpful with teaching me the team’s practices and overall tech practices. Mentoring is hard and he was great at it. He almost inspired me to mentor, but I know I’d be shit at it.

When I was job searching, he wrote my recommendation. He helped me in so many ways.

Anybody knows of any openings (remote /South Florida) for a competent junior full stack web/js dev? Im black AND international, so if you're looking for some 'diversity in the workplace', I'm your man

Don't stay to long in one project, change is good.

"Urban public space is a stage for viewing the field of graphic design in its diversity. A mix of voices, from advertising to activism, compete for visibility." - Ellen Lupton

I'm currently applying for an engineer role. The role is reasonably agnostic regarding specific skills which suits me well because I have a wide base and I like diversity, however they have said they are after more Java developers. Whilst I have programmed in Java and worked on Java projects I wouldn't claim any proficiency beyond amateur.

What sort of things should I really know about if the tech interview brings up Java questions? I'm not expecting them to but it would be foolish not to prepare for that eventuality.

I was talking to someone recently who organizes a conference and told me that some people complained that the speaker list wasn't diverse enough because he had only 2 women and no racial minorities. Apparently the numerous Asian (Indian and Oriental don't count), nor the the organizer who is in a minority. Only African (specifically black) counts a d's minority nowadays. We now have a world with I finite gender identities and only 2 races. 😰

I have a question. If a hiring manager wants details on some of your projects, is that normal? (I've had some ask, but never this deep and over the phone)

Example: UI/API/ALGO how they were implemented, which parts you implemented, what was accomplished, pacific tools, why are you proud of those?

Looking for diversity in projects.

It's for a job interview. I thought it was weird, but Maybe I'm over thinking. Before I email them back, I wanna see what u guys/gals think.

BTW this email is from the HR Manager, not hiring manager, so I'm just going off her word. "She said, He said" sort of thing.

Thanks!

Got an offer from some company, they seem nice and all and the stack is something I’m used to. But my issue is diversity, I went to their office once and I didn’t see any diversity whatsoever in the team, at all.
People underestimate the importance of diversity in a workplace, it’s surprising to see that even in 2021

We’re only random people living in random places, speaking random languages, eating random food, sleeping, studying and working random hours. Traveling to random points on a sphere.

Just random range is different.
Just random stuff happens on crossroads of two random dots and the entropy speed ups or slows down.

Nothing special at all.
Just a finite state machine iteration.

I mean the amount of effort we put into explanation of infinity is outstanding.

What if there is no infinity at all ?
What if infinity is just misunderstanding of our interpretation of the world around us. It’s just pixels, resolution, gaussian splatting, quantum state, you name it.

Hey man the world is flat. Just put it to the 2d space. How many space you need from a simulation perspective where your patient eyes can only see up to certain amount of light particles per second on a shitty lens.

Propose a world optimization techniques by slowing down subject perception, tiredness introduced. Compress memory, sleep introduced. Limit neurons, cpu power assigned. Deploy on cloud - put it to life. Exit 0 body failure. Exit 1 suicide. Kill -9 killed by tty from ip EARTH.X.Y

What you can do to make the world around this planet alive? Make it blink.

We developers are lazy and I believe that nature is even more lazy than us.

You think you’re going to elevator right now ? You’re going to the preloader. Looking at the window equals playing video from playback. Never goes live, just precomputed fsm. Cars, trains, airplains ? Preloaders everywhere. Highways to split traffic to cities and communication. The road and cities planning department is a matrix maintenance department. And don’t get me started about space.

Space is empty because it’s not even finished. So they put it all behind glass called milky way. You know how glass looked 500 years ago ? It was milky so it’s milky way so we don’t see shit.

If the space would be finished I’ll be starting writing this text from mars, finished it and sent from earth but no it’s light years guys, light years is not a second for a matter. Light year is a second of the the injected thoughts exchange only. Thoughts of the global computer called generative AI that they introduced on local computing devices called cloud.

Even the preloader system is not present, they left us with the one map and overpopulated demo. What a shit hole.I bet they’re increasing temperature right now to erase this alpha build and cash out. Obviously so many bugs here that his one can’t be fixed anymore. To many viruses.

Hope for 0days to start happening so we can escape using time travel or something.

I bet they cut a budget or something, moved the team to other projects. Or even worse solar system team got layoff off because we are just neurons that ordered to do it. And now we’re stuck in some maintenance mode, no new physics no new thoughts to pursue, just slow degeneration. I would pay more for the next run and switch to other galaxy far far away where they at lest have more modern light speed technology.

What do you think about it Trinity ? Not even worth wasting your time for that. No white rabbit this time.

I do not recommend this game at this stage of early access.
- only one available map despite promises for expansions over the years no single dlc arrived,
- missing space adventures
- no galaxy travel mode only a teaser trailers of what you can do in other “universes”
- developers don’t respond to complains
- despite diversity of species and buildings at first sight world looks to generic
- instead of new features bots with mind manipulation, AB testing and data harvesting was introduced
- death anti cheat mode installed