Rant
Why do shithead clients think they can walk away without paying us once we deliver the project !!!

So, here goes nothing..
Got an online gig to create a dashboard.
Since i had to deal with a lot of shitheads in the past, I told them my rules were simple, 20% advance, 40% on 50% completion and 40% after i complete and send them proof of completion. Once i receive the payment in full, only then i will hand over the code.
They said it was fine and paid 20%.
I got the next 40% also without any effort but they said they also needed me to deploy the code on their AWS account, and they were ready to pay extra for it, so i agreed.
I complete the whole project and sent them the screenshots, asking for the remaining 40% payment. They rejected the request saying my work was not complete as i had not deployed on AWS yet. After a couple of more such exchanges, i agreed to setup their account before the payment. But i could sense something fishy, so i did everything on their AWS account, except registered the domain from my account and set up everything. Once i inform them that its done and ask for the remaining payment.
The reply i got was LOL.
I tried to login to the AWS account, only to find password had been changed.
Database access revoked.
Even my admin account on the app had been removed. Thinking that they have been successful, they even published ads about thier NEW dashboard to their customers.
I sent them a final mail with warning ending with a middle finger emoji. 24 hours later,
I created a github page with the text " This website has been siezed by the government as the owner is found accused in fraud" and redirected the domain to it. Got an apology mail from them 2 hours later begging me to restore the website. i asked for an extra 10% penalty apart from the remaining payment. After i got paid, set an auto-reply of LOL to thier emails and chilled for a week before restoring the domain back to normal.
Dev : 1
Shithead Client: 0

My employer is now under investigation by the government for illegal business practices. #blessed

Government applications meant to handle private data made in the laziest way using cordova. Hell yea. Bonus points for using the developers account with his first and last name as publishing company to put the app on playstore and not their own official one (not that they have one). Whats not to love. Cant wait to beautify that js to find out that the calls are http and not https.

My company is 8 days late to pay my salary.

The government (uae) recommended a 4.5 work week and my company hinted they wont abide by it

My company promised us bonuses and shares a year ago that we still didnt get

Altho we have been working remotely for 2 years due to covid, they are also trying to enforce going to the office...

Everything about the company is way too toxic

I want to leave ...

but all my applications get ghosted so i feel like a slave, its like i need this company otherwise im jobless. I haye this

So, update on the ransomware attack on the health ministry in Brazil: wasn't a ransomware.
They just rerouted the DNS.

Apparently they've been trying to issue a vaccination passport, and the federal government has been pissy about it. And now everyone appears as unvaccinated. What a fuckin coincidence huh

Brazilian health ministry got a ransomware attack this night.

Why? Not because every city is demanding you to show you're vaccinated in order to go somewhere. Because you have to show it using a 20+ year old system.

Don't get me wrong the UI is nice.
But the servers...

Well, at least I have a document where my shots are registered.

And good luck to us living in this country, where we're known for gorgeous cities (people too) but also for a government that earns 200k+ while working 2 days a week and can employee 40+ people for sitting there and do no fucking shit.

No wonder if you get bad news from here every now and then, it's all true.
The ministries are dumb.
The president is dumb.

And worst. People too.

People don't care. Because they don't know they are part of 94% of more than 200 MILLION that earns minimum wage and strive to live bc the country BUYS things that we ALREADY PRODUCE and have to put a tax to every product to compensate them paying 5x times more to buy in dollars.

Well,
At least I'm not depending on this sucker of government, never cared about it.
You guys deserve to collapse and become poor again

Well, now our problem with salaries and legal benefits is a governmental issue. ✊🏾

we are living in a very fucked up society.

- the poor is fantasize the minimum wages nd life supplies( aka more money) . they work and becoms the minimum wage worker.

- the minimum wage worker fantasize a little more comfort, better lifestyle and therefore works to become an average earning worker.

- the average earning worker is mostly happy in present but worries about the future and wants to save, so fantasise an above average income and works hard to become an above average earner.

now here gets everything messed up. the above average worker is supposed to be the ultimate position where you are not really required to upgrade yourself( previous ones were a real necessity for existence). however a person cannot stop here :

1. resources gets depleted , people get greedy, life happens , or just any big firm go crazy and increases the price of their goods. you were filling your stomach whole day for $1? boom, you can't afford a single meal in $1. so the above avg person has to compete with inflation

2. government gets greedy the moment they see you as someone earning more than average. boom, income taxes, tax slabs, "pay for what we gave you when you were poor, bitch"- tax . its an unwanted monthly expense that you can't , much like the offerings old people would do to the village's goon.

3. tempting offers that shuts down the logical part of brain (or rather makes the part have orgasm).

- "dude , you wanna earn 250 bucks? buy 10 burgers worth 50 bucks each for 25bucks each, and you saved 250 bucks!" "but dude, i can have a whole meal for $2?" "but dude , you won't be saving anything" "🧐😐😶" (aka e commerce and other coupons/cashback companies)

- "dude, bet 1000 bucks on this 5 letter image. there is a good chance that other people will also bet their money on it and then your 1000 bucks worth of 5 petter image will be worth 1500 bucls" " but what if they doesn't? do i still get my 1000 bucls back" "nah , you get wjat the market price pf your share price is" (meanwhile someone whispering from the govt :" minus the capital gain tax") (aka shares and investment)

- "hey dude, the 1000 bucks you deposited with me for safekeeping, i am only going to give 2% interest per month from the previous 5% and will also add additional charges, therby giving you a 0$ profit." "WHY? " "because i can" (aka the banks)

so in short, the above avg person can see that in the long run, every service, every deal is going to cost him an approx 20-60% percentage of the income he would ideally be making , so he wants to earn more and more in order to have a good number in his savings for his initial tension of the future.

so from above average to ultra rich, everyone is just running to get a better deal , where oftentimes the other people involved in the deal are getting more than what our above avg guy is earning

plus after a time, these deals are no longer a pain for us, rather we start liking them because that was their goal from the start: to get people addicted to involved in complex cashback/cash delay/cash growth deals.

and this becomes the stereotype rich lifestyle : investing in shares, taking loans, giving taxes/trying to find loopholes in taxes by investing somewhere else, buying unnecessary stuff for the sake of offers and deals .

and in between this stereotype lifestyle (portreyed by everyone from above average to ultra rich), sone factors of boasting and showoff comes from peer pressure/osmosis and then we truly embrace this stereotype by buying extra costly stuff and showing it off.

remember, the original goal of the above average common man was just to fill their stomach both today and tomorrow. his crime? he worried about tomorrow too

I’ve become so indecisive in terms of knowing what I want from my career.
All I know is what I don’t want (to end up a in management)

I’m definitely getting a new job and right now it looks like I’ve got 3 offers on the table

Option 1, a previous company I worked for. Still the same problems with the company there as before but the work was interesting and unusual. and my line manager was a good guy.
They have practically no legacy code.
Not much in the way of company benefits but they’re local and it would be nice to see friends again.
So feels like the pull to this is strong.

Option 2, a fully remote company that I’ve been referred to by an ex-workmate.
They’ve not even tech tested me because they’ve read my blogs and GitHub repos instead and said they’re impress. So just had a conversation with them. I feel honoured that they took the time to look at what I’ve done in my own time and use that in their decision.
Benefits are slightly better than option 1 (more hols)
But they’re using .net 6 and get a lot of heavy use on their system and have some big customers. I think the work is integrations to start with and moving services into docker and azure.

Option 3, even though I’ve got an offer from this one but they can’t actually explain the work until We can arrange a call next week (they recruit and then work out what team your in, but Christmas got in the way of me having a call with them straight away)
It’s working on government systems and .net is their least used stack so probably end up switching to Java. Maybe other tech stacks too.
This place has much better benefits than option 1 and 2 (more hols and more pension), but 2 days a week in office.

All of the above pay the same salary.

Having choice feels almost as bad as having no choice.
It’s doing my head in thinking about it , (even tho I might as well not think about it at all until the call with option 3 happens).

On the one hand with option 3, using a tech stack that’s new to me might be refreshing, as I’ve done .net for 10 years.

On the other hand I really like c# and I’m very good at it. So it feels a bit like I should be capitalising on that and using my experience to shape how the dev is done. Not sure I and I can do that with option 3, at least for a while.
C# feels like it’s moving forward nicely and I’m not sure I can say the same for Java or other languages.

I love programming and learning new stuff but so unable to let things go. It’s like I have a fear that c# will move on without me and I’ll end up turning into one of those devs whose skills are a decade out of date.

Maybe the early years of my career formed me in this way.
Early on I worked at a company where there was a high number of Cobol devs who thought they had a job for life.
But then redundancies came and many left. Of those who stayed they had to cross train to Java and they just couldn’t do it.

I don’t think the tech was hard for them, I think they were just so used to not learning that they could no longer adapt.
Think most of them ended up retiring after trying to learn Java for a few years.

Every single morning I despair. I can’t stand this job.
Why pay very highly and get very skilled people to have them working 4 to a support ticket. Doing the most mundane support tickets you have ever seen in your life (mainly updating client contact details)?
And why have such a rigorous recruitment process to get people’s in in the first place?

The company is pissing money away by working like this and all the new starters like me think it’s complete shit.
But the bosses and anyone who’s been here a while think it’s great. Company still is making loads of money so they don’t even care about it.

I’ve never met senior developers who have never worked on a greenfield project in their entire careers until I came here.

I can’t believe how I got suckered into this (was head hunted).

Does anyone have a feel for the UK contracting market right now?

I’m considering the jump but I think I’d have to be looking for remote only contracts because where I live has few opportunities ‘on-site’. Preferably c# / angular.

Is there much competition for roles or is there a shortage of skills in the contractors?

The thought of going into another permanent role that could be as bad as this genuinely keeps me awake at night.
I’m not sure I can go somewhere and then have it in the hands of managers to decide what projects I’m going to do and what tech it will be on.

At any big company there’s going to be tech debt as well as new work. So becoming perm now feels like it’s 50-50 whether or not a new job will just mean being put into legacy stuff for a couple of years or doing something that is actually good.

I’ve been talking various people about roles in government departments (multiple different departments are hiring) and because priorities change none the gov recruiters can guarantee what the work is that they’re recruiting for actually is.
Just that the the big recruitment push is to bring work previously done by consultancies back in house. Presumably because consultancies have been fleecing them.

I have decided that massive natural selection events are a thing with humans. When resources appear to be getting low a group of people will prepare and wipe out a large portion of consumers. The most straight forward way is to create a crisis and then offer the "only" solution. Make that solution a weapon and you are done. The masses gladly accept the solution. At all times appear benevolent. Silence dissenting voices swiftly. Make the dissenters look like nutters and publicly humiliate them and apply labels to them. Labels are effective because it creates pariahs. People like to not be singled out and called names.

What do you end up with? People who distrust government and the institutions. I don't know how this benefits the orchestrators (how to spell) of the genocide. Perhaps if the numbers are small enough they can just be rounded up and killed by force rather than coercion.

I get the feeling this approach has been used in the past. Like it has been at least tested on smaller scales. Maybe even on past civilizations. Did we learn to do this from space visitors? I wonder.

2021 has certainly been an interesting year. I used to think people were just stupid. This year has confirmed that for me. But I am not sure stupid is the right word. They are certainly book smart. Maybe naive is a better word. I pray and hope 2022 turns out better for people. Maybe they start seeing signs they have been lied to by people they trust. Maybe not. When you are in the matrix it is hard to see through the facade. The matrix feels very real, until it doesn't.

Dev Goal?: To not be murdered by the matrix.