Fuck open office spaces.

A few months ago I landed a super sweet job as a senior full stack developer, mainly going to work with their Python microarchitecture. The company pays well, has a sweet balance between freedom and responsibility, 30 days vacation etc.

During the recruiting process they walked me around the office that was super cozy with 14 devs in on large room and 10 people from marketing in another. They also mentioned that they would move and merge office with operations and customer service (around 100 more people) in a few months.

Life was good in the old office, I thought that this is the company where I will work for a looooong time.

Now we are in the new office and its fucking shit. No walls or FUCKING CEILINGS between departments. Right above my head there is balcony with customer service talking loud as fuck 24/7. Everyone that is not a developer is just so fucking loud.

I have to use earplugs AND earmuffs to get silence, or blast my ears with way to loud music. Every day around lunch I'm completely done mentally.

I know I'm extra sensitive to noise because of my ADHD, but seriously who the fuck thought this was a good idea?

All the devs have told our boss what needs to be done. If they listen i don't know. In the meantime I will start looking for a new job....

Living in a tiny house and having a remote-only job (and no lappy) means I get the wonderful, lovely privilege of working in my bedroom... with my 18mo (who will not leave me alone), and my girlfriend (who won't fucking leave). It's positively great!

Blasting music is often not enough to drown out the sound, and certainly does nothing for getting hit with toys or screamed at to get picked up, so I get basically nothing done during the day. And that's presupposing I'm not begged to run errands/go to lunch with her, both of which take precious hours. (She won't take the baby out alone, so she's always here unless we find a babysitter)

At least it's quiet after 9pm, so I stay up coding for as long as I can. But 18mo's wake up super early, and the girlfriend prefers to stay in the room until I'm up... so even with earplugs I don't get enough sleep. A monster a day and a bottle of Tito's vodka a month is all that keeps me sane.

Why can't I just be fucking left alone to fucking work? I'm our only goddamn source of income.

It's no wonder we're fucking broke.

And to make matters worse, I'm being downsized... and considering the above, I doubt I'll be able to land a new job. 😡

Sometimes when I code, I plug in my earphones and listen to music, focused, in zone.

* I let everyone think that.
** I actually don't listen to anything.
*** Keeps the buggers away!

Hololens development forced me into Visual Studio after spending years doing Unity development with MonoDevelop in MacOS.

Why haven't anyone told me to switch sooner! Thanks to Visual Studio + ReSharper, my brain farts turn into a coherent code almost automatically.

I hate that I need MacOS for the iOS development and Win 10 for Hololens. Running Win 10 on Parallels kinda works, but it is a compromise. Developing without headphones/earplugs is out of the question if you don't want to go deaf.

I wan't all the tools for a single OS so I don't have to maintain multiple computers and even more importantly travel with multiple laptops. Just love the security check question "Do you have any electronics with you? Please put it into the container." - "Could I get a couple more containers, please..."

Today, a freelance javascript developer at my office told me that he designed a new website for one of his customers. I was intrigued that he is also designing and was very interested.

He showed me some images and I asked how he designed it. I thought he would come up with Figma, Sketch or whatever software, but he showed me the AI prompt.

I told him that he did not design it, but AI did that, prompting AI is not designing. He did not agree and rephrased it as "I made this".

After I said "But if I go to a bakery and ask for a cake with some nice decorations, and the baker is making that, I did not make the cake". He angry said, "You don't understand AI," and put his earplugs in and isn't talking to me since.

Prompting an AI is not creating. The AI/computing power with it's context is creating your stuff..

Today I was debugging some shitty code left by unknown developer whos linkedin account is dead and phone number left in contact card calls local pizza house.

I knew it qould be hard so i've made myself comfortable, gathered 5 redbulls and other items that diabetes people would kill for eating again.

After around 10 minutes i was already frustrated but i kept the pace. "Who is the best, little devie, you!" - I fooled my ego to keep up and shut up.

After around 10 next minutes my attention span has ended. Limbic system started injecting some hormones into my brain, but I remained silent.

First two energy shots were applied. I felt like hero again. Two minutes after I was debugging through some library that was written fo java and found out that it ahots some natives to a c lang lib called "mypreciouslib".

Oh flock, how can i debug it if ita compiled , I cannot do such things, Me be only junior dev. I started swearing, but silently.

Started ollydbg to see what is inside livrary, i searched through but i couldnt match anything it was like mess stirred with fecals of an elephant.

So I opened aida pro " with vitamins" cause obviously, our pm says "but you write in java right " so we dont need those tools right ? Fuck no.

Aida was better at least i could find some funcions calls, but hey, the progress. I was swearing out loud, with earplugs in. And by the time I've sweared all the things in company i got a reminder.

"Hey -insane- stop swearing, the children are here."-sayys pm, it is some kind of " family and work " shitfuck day.

So i asked them: " why wouldnt you buy this fucking tools for programmming for us , you wouldnt have to hear me fucking swearing" . then i realized that , colleagues in room heard all of it, and one of them, total fuckface buttlicker(dev without bit of knowledge) started something like "you are wrong, see how good our software is sellling". Pm was like smiling like he thanked him for buttlicking again. Not to mention he is officially retarded and i know his password to all our services cause he is so smart to put it into text file and then have sharing files in windows turned on.

The other one told aloud, that we would be much better with some debugging tools that are better than fucking eclipse if we have to work without code.

PM told us that he will arrange a meeting. At that point I didnt care any longer. I just fired myself, fuck them.

Please saint Stallman give me hope and joy of programming from my teenage years. Uhhh..

My former co-worker was sitting right next to me and one day he bought Das Keyboard. He was so kind giving me a pair of earplugs.

Fuck this shit! Roommate just barged in at 3:30AM, his gf in tow. They went to bed like I am not here and he is snoring like a chainsaw. I never understood how can she sleep next to him while he snores like that. I have earplugs and active noise cancelling headphones on. I can still hear that motherfucker loud and clear. How the fuck is she not awake?!

But more importantly, 50% of this fucking room is mine, what makes him think he can just have his girlfriend over while I am here is beyond me. Like, sure, if I am not here go ahead but when I am here I would like some privacy, I guess the plank wall that I made in the middle of the room is not an obvious enough clue that I want privacy and I don't want to be disturbed :-/

Can't wait to have enough proof of his bullshit to get the block manager to throw him out.

Edit: To add to the snoring problem: I had a girlfriend who would snore, less than my roommate but still loud enough that I was awake the whole night when I went to sleep at her place... I HATE SNORING ... And when I went home for some holidays and my brother snored even for a second I kicked him off of his bed (because why not, he is an asshole to me like 99% of the time - and so am I to him :D //sibling love//)

If you ever have noise sensitivity like me, use bluetooth headphone with active noise cancellation(wh1000xm4 is cool) during the day and wax earplugs during sleep.

That combo saves my sanity.

"Old Person" (noun):
Someone who refuses to wear earplugs, headphones or other personal hearing aid audio devices while demanding, but not paying attention to, a living room television set on the loudest possible volume.

I keep earplugs in underneath my headset when I expect E-meetings to be less than interesting use of my time, which it usually is.
What's your little secret to surviving a day?