Manager: How come the intern does way more tickets than you?

Dev: Because you told me to only give him the easy ones since he either can’t do them otherwise or takes too long on the hard ones

Manager: Well how is he going to learn if we only give him easy ones?

Dev: That’s what I told you when you orig—

Manager: Assign him ALL of the hard tickets on your board immediately!

*Tickets closed per day drops significantly*

Manager: WHAT IS TAKING SO LONG ON THESE TICKETS!!!!!

Dev: …

Manager: You really shouldn’t be doing that

Dev: It’s in my job description

Manager: Yeah but you still shouldn’t be doing it.

Dev: Who should I hand it off to?

Manager: We don’t have anyone else to hand off that task to.

Dev: Ok, do I stop doing it?

Manager: 😡 Of course not, it needs to get done! I’m just saying you shouldn’t do it.

Dev: ???????????

Manager: Hey what was that that you closed on your screen just now?

Dev: That popup? That’s NVIDIA letting me know that a new driver for my GPU is available.

Manager: Isn’t that for video games?

Dev: I mean that’s the reason many people opt into having a GPU but It’s not the on—

Manager: You are NOT allowed to play video games on your work computer!

Dev: This is my personal computer. It’s just an older GPU I popped onto this computer since otherwise it was just sitting in a drawer. My work computer is out of commission.

Manager: Well where is your work computer? How come you are not using it?

Dev: …Because of that blue screen of death issue we talked about yesterday.

Manager: Ok but that doesn’t give you permission to play VIDEO GAMES on your *WORK* computer.

Dev: …

Manager: Hurry up and login, I don’t have all day

Dev: One sec I have to lookup my password for the system

Manager: How can you not remember your password? Everything requires it these days

Dev: I use a different password for each service.

Manager: Wow you really like to overcomplicate things. Just use the same one for everything like I do, it’s way more efficient!

Dev: …

Manager: You devs are constantly complaining about context switching, if you were on my level you would be able to multitask and switch from task to task without an— hold on I’m getting a text *tap* *tap* *tap tap* *tap* *send noise*

Manager: Right, what were we talking about again?

Dev: …

Manager: THE SERVER IS DOWN THE SERVER IS DOWN!!!!

Dev: Ok I’ll look into it

*5 mins later

Dev: Wow these are really strange logs, it’s like config values are being changed all over the place while I’m looking at it

Manager: Well I figured while you were looking into it I’d go i to the server settings and change everything I could find in order to try and get the server back up again. Two sets of hands are better than one, Is it up yet???

Dev: …No.

Manager: I THOUGT YOU SAID YOU’D LOOK INTO THIS. I NEED ANSWERS NOW. WHAT IS TAKING SO LONG?!?!?

Dev: …

Manager: This code you wrote violates the single responsibility principle!!

Dev: How so?

Manager: You have one function that you call in *MULTIPLE* places. That’s too much responsibility for one function! Functions should only have one responsibility!! Creeping the scope of a function beyond that is a TERRIBLE way to write code!

Dev: But why spin up multiple functions that all perform the same thing?

Manager: Well if a function has a bug in it and you use that function multiple places then that bug exists everywhere you use that function. If a function only has one responsibility then if it has a bug that bug will only exist in the single place it is called! You really should think first before asking questions like that.

Dev: …

Manager: Feature C doesn’t work

Dev: We never built feature C

Manager: Nonsense, I remember feature C clearly!

Dev: It’s still in the backlog

Manager: But we had many meetings about it

Dev: Never got put on the board

Manager: Feature C is very important!

Dev: It was never assigned to anyone

Manager: What could possibly be more important than Feature C?

Dev: All the other features you placed on the board and assigned up until now

Manager: Well I need Feature C done asap! It should be top priority!

Dev: Ok then next sprint add feature C to the board and assign it to someone

*Next planning session manager leaves feature C in backlog in favour of other tickets*

*2 days later*

Manager: What is the status of feature C?

Dev: You opted to leave it in the backlog

Manager: BUT IT SHOULD BE TOP PRIORITY!

Dev: …

Dev: Hey our current server is starting to chug a bit. Can I get approved for $1200 additional spend to double the speed?

Manager: *Sharp inhale*. We need this project to cost as little as possible, we really can’t justify spending any additional money for any reason right now.

*2 days later*

Manager: YOU ARE APPROVED FOR $100,000 TO IMMEDIATELY IMPLEMENT SOMETHING RELATED TO NFTs IN ANY OF OUR APPS. THE BUSINESS NEEDS TO EXPAND INTO THE METAVERSE ASAP IMMEDIATELY. I NEED AN ETA BY EOD AS TO WHEN THIS CAN BE ROLLED OUT.

Dev: …

Manager: So great news, we will also be building a new app this year!!

Dev: We only have 2 devs and we already struggling to maintain/build our current portfolio of applications. I don’t think we have the resources to support another.

Manager: Nonsense, this is a very small project management app that was requested by the CEO himself!

Dev: …We already have MS project, why can’t they just use that?

Manager: The executive team isn’t interested in learning MS Project, it’s way too complicated. They want us to build an internal version of MS Project one feature at a time so they can pick it up over time instead of getting overwhelmed with learning MS Project all at once. It also needs to have loads of customizable automation features so leadership doesn’t ever have to get “in the weeds” having to work with it. It needs to basically run itself!

Dev: …What about this is small?

Manager: Well that is the requirement.

Dev: …

Manager: Have you fixed the problem?

Dev: What’s the problem?

Manager: We’re not here to discuss problems we’re here to discuss solutions!

Dev: …

Dev: I think we should send Dev2 for some training and certification

Manager: We do not train people or have them certified. When you train people and especially if you have them certified they always leave the company for better offers so we no longer do that.

Dev: So the plan is to have a the company operated by a bunch of untrained uncertified people?

Manager: 😡 You are being disrespectful again

Manager: We do not identify as a tech company so don’t expect tech company salary increases this year

Dev: Well don’t expect me to bring a tech work ethic then

Manager: !!

Manager: I’m so sick and tired of you devs whining about technical debt and how it’s slowing down our progress, so here’s the deal. You have until the end of this week to eliminate all technical debt in the codebase. After that I NEVER WANT TO HEAR YOU COMPLAIN ABOUT TECHNICAL DEBT EVER AGAIN!!!

Dev: …

Manager: You can’t define an async function without using await.

Dev: Yes you can.

Manager: Well you shouldn’t, there’s no point!

Dev: Yes there is. It can turn blocking synchronous logic into work performed concurrently. In this case the perform—

Manager: It’s called async *await*. Async *AWAIT*! Did you hear the two parts to that? You shouldn’t ever have one without the other. THEY GO TOGETHER. Worrying about concurrency is for people who use callbacks which just goes to show how out of date your skills are. I’m reading a book on javascript and there are so many advanced techniques out there that I haven’t even seen you use ONCE!

Dev: …

*I looked at the book he’s reading, it’s from the < ES6 era… no wonder he doesn’t see me using any of those archaic patterns/hacks/workarounds…*

Manager: What’s taking so long on that PR?? It’s just some small styling adjustments

Dev: No it’s not you added an entire new calendar module that doesn’t work

Manager: Ok but besides that it’s just a small couple of css edits

Dev: You made styling changes in 50 files, half of which break our mobile responsiveness

Manager: Well then STOP talking to me and FIX IT if you’re so smart.

Dev: You also added a series of filters on a table in this same PR that cause th—

Manager: OK SO I GOT A BIT DISTRACTED THE FACT IS IT ALL NEEDS TO GET DONE SO IT DOESN’T MATTER IF IT’S ALL ON ONE PR SPLITTING THINGS UP INTO SMALL UPDATES IS JUST UNNECESSARY BUREAUCRACY AND IF YOU LIKE THAT THEN GO. WORK. FOR. THE GOVERNMENT!!!

Dev: …

Manager: How come the push to prod didn’t happen?

Dev: We told you at the scrum yesterday. To reiterate, our dev environment was crashing so it’s not safe to push to prod until that is fixed.

Manager: Ok well lets set a goal to fix that and push to prod happens today so that it guaranteed happens.

Dev: That was our goal yesterday and it definitely didn’t happen.

Manager: I AM AWARE OF THAT. The corrective action is that this time compliance with the goal is 100% ABSOLUTELY MANDATORY!!

Dev: We’ll do our best, can’t guarantee anything until we figure out what the nature of what is occurring on dev though.

Manager: NO. I AM THE BOSS. YOU WILL 100% ABSOLUTELY COMPLY WITH THIS. THAT IS AN ORDER. YOU WILL SUCCESSFULLY GET THIS UPDATE OUT TO PROD TODAY. ANYTHING LESS THAN THAT SHALL BE CONSIDERED INSUBORDINATION. I WANT STATUS UPDATES EVERY 15 MINUTES ON WHERE WE ARE AT WITH THIS.

Dev: …

Dev: Can I get you to send me that request in an email?

*Manager leaves the meeting*

// *****************************

Job search is ticking along. It’s tough going though because I currently make ~120k and the best offers I’ve received so far are all ~70k because “You only have 2 years experience so you couldn’t possibly have the skills to be worth 120k. You are are junior level developer and 70K is already overpaying for you. We can pay you more later™. No we will not give you that in writing”. Ah well, the hunt continues.

Manager: In ALL cases if someone uses vanilla javascript to do something instead of a library then that is a sign they are an ABSOLUTE BEGINNER!!!

Dev: …

Manager: In order to increase business resiliency we will be doing cross training this week.

Dev: What does that involve?

Manager: Everyone will do everyone else’s job for one day each. After this you will all be considered trained so that if anyone can easily fill in for anyone else.

Dev: …

Manager: We should do X with the database

Dev: That will cause issue Y

Manager: But I read an article that said that issue Y wasn’t a problem

Dev: It did?

Manager: Well it didn’t mention issue Y

Dev: …

Manager: Hey Dev I need to do QA on this PR.

Dev: That PR is not finished yet

Manager: Well do QA now anyway, that way when it is finished it can be merged in right away since QA has already been done on it. It’s a project management technique called “fast-tracking” and it improves efficiency.

Dev: …

Company: We were able to save a couple of dollars by purchasing an entire fleet of ipads instead of iphones through our supplier!

Dev: Our users walk around an industrial facility carrying things all day, how will they carry these devices now that they no longer fit in their pockets.

Company: We can get them backpacks!

Dev: …

Dev: did you at least buy protective cases for them?

Company: We have to save money! Don’t worry we told the users not to drop them. Plus none of the old iphones were ever broken so this is a non-issue.

Dev: The iPhones are in cases, they drop them quite a bit.

Company: Oh, well they shouldn’t be doing that!

** They proceeded to buy the cheapest knockoff cases I’ve ever seen. At least one ipad is smashed a week now, backpacks aren’t used because of lack on convenience. All this in the name of seeming to shave off a couple bucks for a one time purchase that didn’t even need to be made, iphones were working perfectly fine. Meanwhile there are glaring issues at the company getting ignored because they get themselves continually distracted by unhelpful pet projects that address things that are not broken and often make them worse.

Manager: We will be building a new app. THIS TIME EVERYTHING MUST BE ABSOLUTELY PERFECT, ANYTHING LESS THAN TOP QUALITY WORK WILL BE REJECTED!!

*Not even 2 days into the new project*

Manager: Ok that’s good enough, we can fix it later. Can you go quicker on the next feature? Just sacrifice a bit of quality so we get these tickets closed as fast as possible. I said we can fix it later. Getting tickets closed asap is top priority.

Dev: …

Manager: You know you really shouldn’t pay off your mortgage faster than you absolutely have to. It’s the cheapest money you’ll ever get!

Dev: I’d rather work towards being debt free. Besides my RRSP (401k) is already maxed out

Manager: RRSPs are a scam! TFSAs (Roth IRAs) are way better

Dev: My TFSA is maxed out too

Manager: 😡 You still shouldn’t pay off your mortgage!

Dev: …

Dev: (Watches user print out screenshot of maintenance app to do list, walk across facility to printer. walk across facility to equipment and check things off on paper, then walk across facility back to their terminal and copy the findings over.)

Dev: We made the app responsive so they could do that on a mobile device. Why are they printing?

Manager: Printers are cheaper than getting more tablets.

Dev: …

Dev: Can we at least get a printer at each terminal so they don’t waste so much time walking across the facility?

Manager: That’s too many printers to maintain. It’s easier to just have one.

Dev: …

Ah the day before launch of a new app. And right on schedule the businesses is attempting to completely alter their requirements including a COMPLETE OVERHAUL OF THE DATABASE MODEL TO ADDRESS AN ISSUE THAT HAS ALREADY BEEN FIXED. I wish they would share the drugs they are clearly on so I could also live in this dreamland delusion where you can turn something completely on its head right on the finish line and expect everything to go well.

Manager: Hey I think I have a solution to that performance we talked about last week

Dev: I already fixed it, it only takes 1 second instead of 30 now.

Manager: Ok but I’ve also figured out a solution. If we completely change the entire database model that one query could potentially be even faster according to my understanding of how databases operate.

Dev: I fixed it without the need for that, actually it was just a matter of better conc—

Manager: I think we should go with MY solution. Drop everything and restructure the database immediately! Be quick, as you know we launch this application tomorrow! Have an extra coffee today and just crush it out, don’t overthink this either just do it.

Dev: …

*During a walk around to check on the users*

Dev: *Watching worker laboriously dragging pallet jack with one wobbly wheel and another wheel practically seized*

Dev: Hey that looks broken, can’t you swap it out in the maintenance building?

Worker: If you do that management will give you one that’s worse.

Dev: …This fucking company

** Worker later threw out his back, company’s corrective action was to send out notice reminding employees to stretch before doing physical tasks

I can't figure out shit..
To be honest I created this profile just so I can write down somewhere what I am going through.
So, once upon a time I had graduated from college and went right into a corporate (has only been 2 years since). I was fortunate enough that I got assigned a project that was just starting, and even though I had no clue what was going on, I started doing whatever was assigned.
I initially worked in java and then finished all my tasks earlier than expected, so they switched me to another C++ project that builds on top of it.
Fast forward 2.5 years, I'm now the team lead of the CPP project and all my friends who were in the core team have left the company.
As usual, the reason behind it is shitty management. These mfs won't hire competent people and WILL ABSOLUTELY NOT retain the ones that are. I can feel it in my bones that it is time for me to leave, but fuck me if I understand what I am good at.
I have been able to handle all the tasks that they threw at me, be it java or c++ - just because I love logic and algorithms. I have been dabbling in ML and AI since 4-5 years now, but could never go into it full time.
Now I'm looking at the job postings and Jesus Christ these bitches do not understand what they want. I have to be expert in 34567389 technologies, mastering each of whom (by mastering I mean become proficient in) would need at least 6-8 months if not more, all with 82146867+ years of experience in them.
I don't know if I am supposed to learn on Java (so spring boot and stuff) or I'm supposed to do c++ or I'm gonna go with Python or should I learn web dev or database management or what.
I like all of these things, and would likely enjoy working in each of these, but for fucks sake my cv doesn't show this and most of the bitch ass recruiter portals keep putting my cv in the bin.
Yeah...
If you have read so far, here's a picture of a cat and a dog.

Client: Too many of our business processes take place on excel and paper! We need to modernize our business processes. Build an app that can do the main things we do with excel and paper in app form.

Dev (4 months later): Here it is

Client: Ok some of our users want to still use excel and paper so build the ability to print the app and export/import to excel so they can continue working the way they always have alongside our new app.

Dev: …

Manager’s PR Description: I made changes relating to a ticket which should work as expected. I also made various other changes as I saw fit, test whatever else I changed too.

Dev: …

Company Motto: “Business is simple, hire amazing people and let then do their thing”

Company Culture: You can’t do that!! It’s really hard and expensive to hire people with those skills! How would we replace you or save money by continuing to not give you a raise if you did that!?

Management: Our internal app must be 100% rigid so that we users follow predefined process flows exactly so no mistakes are made while also being 100% flexible so that users are free to go about their business in whatever way they feel is appropriate for their own unique needs. These are the requirements!

Dev: …

That feeling when you’ve got a reputation of preciseness etc, and the code you just submitted for review has so many silly little mistakes you just want to do that ostrich thing. Gosh, how can I suddenly suck at my job this bad?

Okay, the changes affect EVERYTHING in our codebase (a major change in core business logic), and there is no way I could’ve tested every possible case by myself without a decent coverage of automated tests - which we obviously don’t have. So yet another argument for it (damn management, won’t you listen?!)… but still, some of the mistakes found during code review make me seem like a complete idiot.

Manager : You really shouldn't be doing that

Dev : Its in my job description

Manager : Yeah but you still shouldn't be doing it.

Dev : Who should I hand it off to?

Manager : We don't have anyone else to hand off that task to.

Dev : Ok , do I stop doing it?

Manager : 😡Of course not , it needs to get done! I'm just saying you shouldn't do it.

Dev : ????????