You can believe or not but it’s just one of those stories. It’s long and crazy and it probably happened.

A few years ago I was interviewed by this big insurance company. They asked me on linkedin and were interested. They didn’t specify who they were so I didn’t specify who I am either.

After they revealed who they are I was just curious how they fuck they want to spend those billions of dollars they claimed in their press notes about this fucking digital transformation everyone is talking about. The numbers were big.

I got into 3 or 4 phone/skype interviews without technical questions and I was invited to see them by person.
I know that it would be funny because they didn’t asked me for CV so they didn’t know anything about me and I was just more curious how far I can get without revealing myself.

They canceled interview at midnight and I was in the middle of Louis de Funès comedies marathon so I didn’t sleep whole night. I assumed they would just reschedule but then they phoned me at 8 am if I can come because they made mistake.

So at first talk I was just interviewed by some manager I knowed after 5 minutes he would be shitty as fuck and demand stupid things in no time because he is not technical. He was trying to explain me that they got so great people and they do everything so fast.

From my experience speed and programming are not the things that match. ( for reference of my thought see three virtues of a GREAT programmer )

So I just pissed them off by asking what they would do with me when I finish this transformation thingy next year. ( Probably get rid off and fire at some point were my thoughts )

Then I got this technical interview on newest gold color MacBook pro - pair programming ( they were showing off how much money they have all the time ).
The person asked me to transform json and get some data in javascript .

Really that was the thing and I was so bored and tired that I just asked in what ES standard I can code.
The problem was despite he told me I can do anything and they are using newest standards ( yeah right ) the “for of” loop didn’t worked and he even didn’t know that syntax existed. So I explained him it’s the newest syntax pointing mozilla page and that he need to adjust his configuration. Because we didn’t have time for that I just did it using var an function by writing bunch of code.
When he was asking me if I want to write some tests probably because my code looked ugly as fuck ( I didn’t sleep for more then 24 hours at that point and wanted to live the building as fast as I can) I told I finished and there is no time for tests because it’s so simple and dumb task. The code worked.

After showing me how awesome their office is ( yeah please I work from home so I don’t care ) I got into the talk with VP of engineering and he was the only person who asked me where is my CV because he didn’t know what to talk about. I just laughed at him and told him that I got here just by talking how awesome I am so we can talk about whatever he wants.
After quick talk about 4 different problems where I introduced 4 different languages and bunch of libraries just because I can and I worked with those he was mine.

He told me about this awesome stack they’re building with kubernetes and micro services and the shitty future where they want to put IOT into peoples ass to sell them insurance and suddenly I got awake and started to want that job but behind that all awesomeness there was just .NET bridge with stack of mainframes running COBOL that they want to get rid off and move company to the cloud.

They needed mostly people who would dump code to different technology stack and get rid of old stack ( and probably those old people ) and I was bored again because I work more in r&d field where you sometimes need to think about something that don’t exist and be creative.

I asked him why it would take so much time so he explained me how they would do the transformation by consolidating bunch of companies and how much money they would make by probably firing people that don’t know about it to this day.

I didn’t met any person working permanently there but only consultants from corporations and people hired in some 3rd party company created by this mother company.

They didn’t responded with any decision after me wasting so much time and they asked me for interview for another position year after.
I just explained HR person how they treat people and I don’t want to work there for any money.

If You reached this point it is the end and if it was entertaining thank YOU I did my best.

Have a nice day.

I can't help but be disappointed in the direction that technology has directed us into, especially social media.

While I love my girlfriend, she more often than not spends her time scrolling away at the dumbest shit on Instagram, Facebook, .. reels. Reels everywhere. And she's not dumb, mind you. She's an engineer just as much as you (presumably) and I are. Just in a different field.

When looking into it online and stumbling upon more than one study, I learned about the term it had been coined.. technoference. That's the constant interruption of social media into our day-to-day lives, and the dopamine kick it gives -- more so than IRL peers do. Why that is, being the digital equivalent to McDonald's, that's beyond me. But somehow it seems to be better, all while the content isn't even useful. It doesn't allow you to learn anything, to gain insights, or to explore things that could serve you in the real world. Cat videos and random shit that's somehow.. funny? Having pretty much completely disconnected from social media years ago, I seriously fail to see how.

Maybe us nerds in the 90's and early 2000's telling everyone else how we'd change the world and prove everyone who called us freaks wrong, disenchanted as we were (and probably still are), were the catalyst for this social disaster. We had the cognitive skills to do it, but not the social equivalent. I feel guilty... Even though I've always been part of a big tech resistance in some capacity, I still feel guilty. Because I'm one of those people with the skills of those who created this trash fire of a societal status quo. Everyone glued to their screens, 95% of the time not for work. Not even to aid one's ability to function in the real world. Just to combat boredom. All day, for many hours on end.

Where is it going to end? When will people realize the dystopia we got ourselves into? Will anyone but a few fight it? Would those who don't fight it even care?

Dumb ass management. Picked a different technology for us without consulting our technical team...

How tf does these even make sense?! That's a fucking sledgehammer and large metal chisel on fucking steroids. If your parents don't know what the fuck those are and realize they have nothing to do with fixing a relatively flimsy box (in comparison) they probably need more than their WiFi fixed, but since they managed to fucking raise you, I doubt they're that dumb. I get that parents might not always understand technology, but shit, at least respect the fact that they survived without the Internet, which you probably couldn't do...

Imagine if you will, a fictional world outside our own.

In this world, the requirement for getting a drivers licenses is 4 years of research into quantum mechanics.

- Was it interesting? Yeah.

- Did I learn it because I had to? Yup.

- Will I use the harmonic oscillation calculations of a particle when driving my car. Fuck no!

- Did it cost me an ungodly amount of money? It sure did!

- Will some dumb people still say it was useful because it is the minimum (fictional) barrier to entry for driving a car. You bet your sweet ass they will!!!

It was about as useful as any made up requirement, make-work, self-funding, circle-jerking, waste or time and money to feed the pockets of people who are too scared to do actual work so they teach, can be.

I paid all that money to be taught technology that was old when my mother was in school.

In the first year out of school, with only a $300 subscription to PluralSight some uDemy courses and hard work, I learned 100X as much as everything they put in front of me in school.

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School has its place.

Children who don't understand the importance of learning and need their hand help.

Adult children (some of which on on their 3rd or 4th degree) who also need their hand held.

People too afraid to enter the real world.

Doctors.

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I would do it again because it is the minimum requirement of entry, but thats nothing more than a bullshit make-work project.

Play their game as long as you need to. Keep your own game in mind. Don't drink the koolaid, just fake a sip. Then when the time is right, play by your own rules.

Peace

Some time ago a salesman tried to sell me a super revolutionary solution. He introduced it with "today everyone will tell you that in order to save money you must move your servers and IT infrastructure on the CLOUD (big emphasis on the word) but we offer you a different approach: 'the on premise cloud'"
😶"so, you're basically telling me to replace my local machines with other local machines?"
😎"you don't see the whole picture: It's the cloud but INSIDE your company"

Am I dumb and I didn't see the obvious technology leap he was offering me?

I remember a few months ago at my school we all had taken the Chromebooks (our county's OS of choice) out and put them on our desks. We were in science, and we needed to take screenshots of websites for some reason. "Everyone go to the chrome store," our teacher said, with a look-how-smart-i-am kind of look on her face, "search for the 'Awesome Screenshot Extension.'" Ugh. This was dumb. I reluctantly searched it up and upon bringing up the description and about to press the "Add to Chrome" button, when I stopped, and made a decision I would later regret. Now, I don't really like this teacher, and she thought she was so fucking smart for finding this shit extension. I raised my hand, and she walked over. "Uhh… I'm pretty sure you can just do Ctrl + shift + []|| to take a screenshot" I said. She was fucking dumbfounded. She yelled out "Class, listen up! [Let's call me 'Ben' for this story] Ben just found an alternative [she was trying to make her extension not seem entirely useless, even though she knew it was] way to take a screenshot. Just press Ctrl + shift plus that box with the two lines next to it. You can use my extension or the one Ben found. Whichever is easier [she damn well knew which was easier]." Three times in the span of the next five minutes she said "just a reminder… you can use Ben's way if you want" to the whole class. Everyone kept looking at me. A few minutes later, she called me up to the computer which was being displayed on the big screen in front of class. She said some people were having trouble, so then pulled all the attention on me to come up to the front of class and demonstrate a goddamn keyboard shortcut. She was running windows 8, and I knew it wouldn't work on her computer. I pressed a few random keys on the keyboard and said "uhh, I think it only works on their computers" she let me sit back down. She couldn't handle the concept that different computers run different operating systems. I sat down and the guy sitting next to me raised his hand. He said "you could use the 'snippet tool'" Yes. Some people can. But she can't. I stopped him from doing anymore damage on their small brains by saying "uhh, it won't work on the Chromebooks, so that won't help." I hate that teacher. At lunch my friend came over to me. He has the same science teacher as me. "You know what she's been saying all day?" I was confused. "What?" I said. He almost started to laugh. "All day she's [the teacher] has been telling everyone that you found this amazing new technology in the Chromebooks. [Most of the students were smart enough to know that I didnt] she was like 'Ben, from my 2nd period found this amazing thing'" End of story. And guess what? I still hate her.

Fuck you Intel.
Fucking admit that you're Hardware has a problem!

"Intel and other technology companies have been made aware of new security research describing software analysis methods that, when used for malicious purposes, have the potential to improperly gather sensitive data from computing devices that are operating as designed. Intel believes these exploits do not have the potential to corrupt, modify or delete data"

With Meltdown one process can fucking read everything that is in memory. Every password and every other sensible bit. Of course you can't change sensible data directly. You have to use the sensible data you gathered... Big fucking difference you dumb shits.

Meltown occurs because of hardware implemented speculative execution.
The solution is to fucking separate kernel- and user-adress space.
And you're saying that your hardware works how it should.
Shame on you.

I'm not saying that I don't tolerate mistakes like this. Shit happens.
But not having the balls to admit that it is because of the hardware makes me fucking angry.

Every single stakeholder in my company tells me that I should be working on something different, every time I talk to them. For example - we've got some issues, that I've ranted on previously. I go to my manager, and tell him that it's going to take longer than I'd hoped, because the author of this part of the codebase wasn't familiar with functional programming or OOP, didn't document anything, and just generally produced an unmaintainable, borderline indescribable mess. The next guy after him made it all so much worse, because they're both a couple of tryhard douchebags, and I hope they fucking die. For real. I hope fire ants are involved.

Anyway, getting carried away there, whew. So I tell my manager that we'd be further ahead just replacing the code, because it's only doing a couple of things, and should not be so complex. He says "cool, but what you really need to be doing is rebuilding this other thing." So I switch gears and work on that other thing until I hit a point that requires the input of another stakeholder. I go to talk to this guy, and all hell breaks loose "why are you working on that, this is higher priority", and I explain the sequence of events. Manager denies having said what he said, I look like an asshole, yet again. Then the old "this should be simple, just change this" from the dudes who don't know code, and don't want to know. I try to explain, offer to show them precisely why their "simple ask" is anything but, but they just start screaming about how they hate technology. Yeah, well me fucking too. I keep hearing about how much "job security" I have, but man I'm going to lose my mind at this rate. I have seventeen motherfucking things that are "emergencies", and as many fucking dumb ass unintuitive workflows to go through to get them changed. All on production, because this place is fucking stupid. Just let me discard this shitty legacy code and be done with it already. FUCK.

Thank fucking fuck it's friday. In about six, seven hours, my goal is to be so fucking wasted that I can't feel my face. Get drunk, play with the dog, install a new distro on the desktop, maybe play a little guitar (the guitar is normal sized. It's not a ukulele or anything). Perfect friday night.

"Technology, only as good as the dumb shits who are using it" - London has fallen

Dear BOSE, how can you make a "smart" speaker so dumb and complicated? Why require to use an app that needs frequent updates and takes up so much storage space for ... what exactly?
Dear Spotify, why not add features to the web player if your app does not run on older devices? Which native feature would your app need that is missing on iOS 13?
Dear companies making money due to the fact that some real artists make real music that real people love to listen to, how come your apps and gadgets always make me nostalgic about actual records and make me tune in to an actual radio station at the end of the day? At least you keep showing us not to rely on digital technology and rather go visit actual live concerts to listen to live music in the real world more often!

no matter how many books i read about a particular technology, if i don't read the official documentation ( no matter how large it might be ) of that technology, i always feel dumb and stupid

omg, I hate my managers who always make engineering design decisions, literally, my manager made shortcuts and decisions that I told him not to do, now we have to live with this shit. which can be fine, but then in 1:1 he tells me that I have a short-term vision, I am like hello you stupid piece of shit, don't you remember telling us what to do and we pushed back to you for all the dumb decisions you have made. my manager has no idea about technology and yet people listen to him for engineering decision, stupid.

Clients in software/technology sector are NEVER right. That's it I said it. Truth is they are as dumb as they come.

Graduated with an Information Technology degree and a friend of mine (who is from a non technical background) thinks I'll be working as a tech support. FML. Then later hits me up with a request to make an app for her startup. Just makes me realise people are so dumb.

Okay this is my first time posting on this site. I've browsed it (definitely not in class) and the community looks beautiful, so I'm going to just kind of slide in here. Anyways this is the part where I use my caps lock button and type lots of naughty words I guess...

<rant type = 'school'>
Our programming classes are fucking DISMAL uuugh... Okay so we have four technology classes: Tech Exploration, Coding 1, Coding 2, and Intro to CS (a 'high school' level class)... So this means a fuck ton of kids in programming classes, mostly because I WANNA MAKE MINCERAFT AND BE A KEWL BOI LIKE GAME DEV BUT I'M ALSO A FUCKING IDIOT AND WILL NOT LEARN ANYTHING YAAAAAAY but that's a mood and so there's a fucking tidal wave of dumb kids in these classes. So right we're dealing with like 80 kids per class period. Sorry if I'm repeating myself but there are a FUCKTON of students. Now, we have... wait for it... ONE FUCKING TEACHER. ONE. I fucking swear this district does not give a SINGLE SHIT about possibly THE SINGLE FUCKING MOST IMPORTANT SUBJECT WHYYYYYY... Okay so the teacher is kinda overworked as fuck lol. She can't really teach eighty kids at once so she mostly gives us exercises from websites but when she can she teaches us shit herself and actually knows a good bit about her field of study. She's usually pretty grumpy, understandably, but if you ask her a good question that makes her think you can see the passion there lol. So anyways that's a mood. Now at the other school it's even worse. They have this new asshole as a teacher that knows NOTHING about ANYTHING IT IS SO FUCKING REDICULOUS OH MY UUUUUGH... THEY STILL DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT A FUCKING LOOP IS LIKE OKAY YOU'VE BEEN TEACHING PROGRAMMING FOR A YEAR AND YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE TEACHING IT AT THAT DISTRICT SO MAYBE YOU SHOULD AT LEAST FUCKING TRY WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU... so he just makes them do shit from a website and obviously can't do half of the shit he assigns it's so fucking sad... I swear this district is supposed to be good but maybe not for the ONE THING I WANT IT TO BE GOOD FOR. Funny story: in elementary school once I wrote down school usernames for people I didn't really know and shared them a google doc that said "you have been hacked make a more secure password buddy" etc etc and made them the owner and these dull shits report it to the principal... So I'm in the principles office... Just a fucking dumb elementary school kid lol and the principal is like hAcKiNg Is BaD yOu ShOuLd NoT dO iT and I'm like how did you know it was me... so he goes on to say some bullshit about 'digital footprint' and 'tracing' me to it... he obviously has no clue what he's saying but anyways afterwards he points to where it says last change made by MY SCHOOL ACCOUNT... HOW DULL CAN YOU FUCKING POSSIBLY BE IT WAS FROM MY ACCOUNT THAT LITERALLY PROVED THAT I DID --NOT-- 'HACK' INTO THEIR ACCOUNT YOU DUMB FUCK. Okay so basically my school is a burning pile of garbage but it's better than most apparently but it's GARBAGE MY GOD... Please fucking tell me it gets better...

okay lol that was longer than I thought it would be guess I just needed to vent... later I guess
</rant>

How Microsoft expect anyone to develop using any technology they introduce with so many limitations.
Moi a Microsoft dumb enthusiast said to myself : hey dude you are a developer stop whining about the app gap bust a move create decent array of apps and release them, went into a full project management mode wrote requirements did sketches and some prototypes, time to execute.
1. first app: image files organizer, viewer , with some light editor capabilities and album creator after some work i came to discover that you don't have a proper file system APIs to show a folder tree view in my app "WTF" there are work arounds and dirty solutions but seriously? i can only access the stupid media folders created by Microsoft and that's it.
so i ditched the apps until uwp become a development tools with target audience other than kids who eat crayons, and while using "Edge" i thought to my self : "you know what dude extensions are cool and if you do something like a speed dial it would be awesome"
fire up my text editor started writing my extension to discover that:
"you cannot use localStorage from local HTML files".
moral of the story
MS is failing with consumers not because people hate MS but rather MS hates itself like no engineer over there said to him self this is fking stupid ?
other limitations :
no proper system tray access
no registry access what so ever
and i have started 2 days ago.
yeah Ms this is the main app gap problem the uwp sucks big time. compared to android Java which has a great access to every aspect of the device even apple provide better APIs for their systems.
if uwp is MS future then rip MS.
please i stand corrected if anyone knows better.

Who from fucking IBM thought that implementing hundreds of Constants for MQ WebSphere was a fucking Good idea, when half of them can't even be used with pcf. Even when they would be usable their Documentation is like horse shit you can't find anything in there without spending half of the day looking for an explanation.