Join devRant
Do all the things like
++ or -- rants, post your own rants, comment on others' rants and build your customized dev avatar
Sign Up
Pipeless API
From the creators of devRant, Pipeless lets you power real-time personalized recommendations and activity feeds using a simple API
Learn More
Search - "motivation who?"
-
So... This company was in trouble. They hire me to help fix things and build this nice new stack to get rid of their old legacy monster application.
I'm there for three weeks when one of their top investors storms in. Apparently they are turning less profit than they told me during my interview. (Yeah, it is one of the things I always ask, even thought I don't always get an answer).
So this investor/shareholder guy starts on this motivation speech which is basically a veiled threat that "we" need to do better.
Obviously he doesn't know anyone in the room other than the boss. And it was apparent, at least to me, he also has 0% knowledge of anything related to software development. The boss doesn't look to happy about having to let this happen.
Then the guy turns to me. He points his finger at me and demands to know how failing so badly makes me feel...
So I answered truthfully... "I've only been here for three weeks, so I don't think I've been failing too much, yet. Now, how long did you say you've been throwing money at this failure without getting the return you wanted?" Emphasizing the "you" by pointing right back at him.
That doesn't shut the guy up, but he does bring his "motivational" speech to a rapid close.
He doesn't bother saying goodbye when he stormed out again, not even to the boss, who looks a lot happier at this point.
Apparently the guy pulled this stunt every couple of months (or weeks, if he was bored enough). After this encounter, he apparently had enough of trying to "motivate" us developers. We I didn't see him again in the 2 years I worked with the company after that.
I got a pay raise the month after. Apparently that was totally unrelated to this incident... 😙🎵11 -
The university system is fucked.
I've been working in this industry for a few years now, but have been self taught for much longer. I'm only just starting college and I'm already angry.
What does a college degree really mean anymore? From some of the posts I've seen on devRant, it certainly doesn't ensure professional conduct, work ethic, or quality (shout out to the brave souls who deal with the lack of these daily). Companies should hire based on talent, not on a degree. Universities should focus more on real world applications or at least offer such programs for students interested in entering the workforce rather than research positions. A sizable chunk of universities' income (in the U.S. at least) comes from research and corporate sponsorships, and educating students is secondary to that. Nowadays education is treated as a business instead of a tool to create value in the world. That's what I signed up for, anyway - gaining the knowledge to create value in the world. And yet I along with many others feel so restricted, so bogged down with requirements, fees, shitty professors, and shitty university resources. There is so much knowledge out there that can be put to instant practical use - I am constantly shocked at the things left out of my college curriculum (lack of automated tests, version control, inadequate or inaccurate coverage of design patterns and philosophies) - things that are ABSOLUTELY essential to be successful in this career path.
It's wonderful that we eventually find the resources we need, or the motivation to develop essential skills, but it's sad that so many students in university lack proper direction through no fault of their own.
Fuck you, universities, for being so inflexible and consistently failing to serve your basic purpose - one of if not the most important purpose on this earth.
Fuck you, corporations, for hiring and paying based on degree. Fuck you, management, for being so ignorant about the industry you work in.
Fuck you, clients, who treat intelligent people like dirt, make unreasonable demands, pull some really shady shit, and perpetuate a damaging stereotype.
And fuck you to the developer who wrote my company's antipattern-filled, stringy-as-all hell codebase without comments. Just. Fuck you.17 -
This is a follow up on my previous rant https://devrant.io/rants/815062
I confronted her again.
I was told that I am useless and worth noting to this world, worth more dead than alive.
I was told that I will never get anywhere in life, and that the time I have spent watching Elon Musk interviews (amongst other ones, I do this for fun) is fucking useless, as I will never get anywhere ini life. Only low-life pieces of shit such as myself deserve nothing apparently.
I had to organise a place to stay with my family, but I couldn't for a week. I slept on the floor outside my workplace, and bathed at friends.
I have moved out, had to go get my own place. I have nothing, but I have my motivation back. I have my coding behind me, I have my motivation, I have my mind clear, and I have plans for the future.
I plan to fucking make a name for myself, and fuck everyone who has a fucking issue with it.
Will distribute the app sometime.
Fuck people who fuck you around.27 -
Story time! Promised this, so making good on the promise. Eh-hem.
Misunderstandings [A slice of life short play that actually happened]
Dramatis Personae (anonymized, bc of course):
Moi ........ me, myself and possibly some lint
Robert ..... co-architect
Daisy ...... line dev
Lisa ....... also line dev
Prologue: the beginninning
[A project is starting up, new devs are coming on, including the two individuals who drive this story.
Daisy, of Indian origin, an exceptional dev and lovely person. Mother, wife, very conservative by upbringing in her early 40s.
Lisa, also exceptional dev, lovely person. Mother, also wife, self-made immigrant with liberal views derived from personal pride and self-bootstrapping]
Enter the office, We introduce everyone, off to a nice start, everyone is happy and excited to be working on [large bank project].
Lisa and Daisy form a friendship of commonality, they have similar backgrounds by all appearances and similar concerns due to children the same age and shared employment. They seem to become fast friends and things proceed normally for some months. Smooth sailing, all is well.
The fuse is lit.
Scene: Lunchtime gossip
[Robert, middle 40s architect adjacent Moi, also architect, age is my own damn business [old, so very old].]
Robert: "So, it seems like Daisy and Lisa are getting along great."
Moi: *snerfs a little, almost chokes on enchilada* Yes, yes they are, It's nice to see...
Robert: *eyebrow, having learned to read my expressions* "Aaaaaaand..."
Moi: "I adore both of them, but they are primarily friends because they don't actually understand most of what the other says"
[Lisa has a thick Taiwanese accent, Daisy has a standard northern indian accent. Never the two shall meet]
Robert: "Are you sure, they seem to have a lot of conversations?"
Moi: "Positive, you weren't at lunch with the three of us. They're polar opposite in terms of values, it'll be fine so long as that never comes up"
Robert: "I'm not even digging into that"
Moi: *flan*
Sizzle.
Scene: This is bat country
[More months pass, everything is fine, project is humming along nicely, save a few blips of personality conflicts. Moi takes a vacation. A gas station, somewhere in the middle of Wyoming, a snowstorm, a sports car full of luggage]
*phone rings*
Moi: *looks down, sees it's Robert, eyebrow raises, answer* What's on fire?
Robert: "We had to let Lisa go"
Moi: "Ah, they finally understood each other."
Robert: "Yes..." *deep sigh*
[Fade to flashback]
Bang.
Scene: The office, Lisa's desk
[Daisy and Lisa are discussing non-descript conversation. Daisy broaches the subject of Lisa's past divorce and being a single mother]
Daisy: "It must have been hard, how did you manage?"
Lisa: "I had my daughter, she was my motivation. We made it here, I met my current partner"
Daisy: "That's good! It is so hard, coming to something new. I could never imagine leaving my husband."
Lisa: "He left us, we weren't important, I don't want to marry every again"
Daisy: "Surely you do though? Marriage is great for a woman, my parents found a great husband for me."
Lisa: "Haha, lucky you. Most indian marriage is like prostitution."
[At this moment, Daisy's demeanor takes a nose dive. Whatever was actually said, what she heard was, "Indian marriage is prostitution"]
Daisy: *tears begin pouring down her face, she flings herself back in her chair, head shaking violently she screams* "I AM AN HONORABLE WOMAN!"
[Daisy runs out of the room, straight to HR. Lisa sits there, stunned, not really understanding what just happened or the consequences]
Scene: Back in bat country
[Robert finishes the story, the emotions are a mixture of hilarity at the absurdity of the situation and frustration in the work void it has created]
Moi: "Satan, well. Fuck me. Fuck us. Fuck. Is Daisy alright, is she at least staying? We can't lose two devs at the same time."
Robert: "She got a few days off, she seems fine now, but she's... yeah, I never laughed so hard"
Moi: *double facepalm* "Yeah, the word choice was a bit outrageous. It's not like we didn't know it was coming. I'm going to get back on the road."
Robert: "Alright, enjoy yourself, I'll try and prevent any other forest fires."19 -
Sooo, in my 5 years of high school, I had 5 different IT teachers...
Now, in Italy Highschool goes from 14 to 19 years old, I started programming some days after becoming 13, and "programming" classes begin on the third year, so I had quite a headstart on my classmates...
Now, for the third year, I had an awesome teacher, he noticed I was ahead and... Bored, so he gave me some extra stuff to study, he's the only teacher I've learnt anything from, it was awesome, very stingy with grades, but getting a perfect score with him was so satisfying.
Fourth year, the new guy was old, very old, at least 70, his lessons were just him talking about how programming was when he was young.
But then... During the second half of the fourth year I changed class due to bullying under a teacher's advice, and HE happened...
My new IT teacher, one of the most ignorant, awful people I ever met...
He's literally the reason I only went back to that school once, because another teacher needed help with a course...
One day I made the HUGE mistake to say that his "while(i <10000000000000);" wasn't very efficient for making a delay, because it didn't free the CPU, and since then:
- I never got more than 7 out of 10 at his tests
- He insulted me in front of the whole class
- He sabotaged the oral part of my final exam, shouting that he hated D'Annunzio when he saw he was in the literature part of my thesis (needed him to connect to WW2, and the Memex, that then allowed me to start talking about PCs and programming, my thesis was about the influence of lisp on modern programming languages), loudly chatting with other teachers when I was trying to keep calm (a teacher who knows me quite well, and was there to see my "performance" thought I was going to snap at some point), distracting the english teacher when I was exposing the english part of my thesis and pressuring the commission to give me 99 instead of 100 out of 100
So yeah, he almost made me hate the only thing I'm good at, undervaluing my work and my skills, undervaluing and humiliating me as a person, and I think that if I meet him again I might spit on his face...
So yeah, my biggest "programmer enemy" was a person that then did everything in his power to make my last year and a half of highschool hell
Now I can gladly say that with the help of my tutoring, some of my university colleagues are starting to appreciate programming, and my engineer friends ask for my help when they need advices about their code, and it's giving me motivation to keep doing it and becoming a better programmer to keep up with their expectations4 -
Story time. My first story ever on devRant.
To my ex-company that I bear for a long time... I joined my ex-company 3 years ago. My ex-company assigned me and one girl teammate to start working on a brand new big web project (big one - two members - really?)
My teammate quitted later, I have to work alone after then. I asked if someone can join this project, but manager said other people are busy. Yea, they are fucking busy reading MANGA shit everyday... Oops, I saw it because whenever I about to leave my damn chair, they begin chanting some hotkey magic and begin doing "poker face" like "I'm doing some serious shit right here".. FUCK MY CO-WORKERS!
My manager didn't know shit about software development, and keep barking about Agile, Waterfall and AI shit... He didn't even fucking know what this project should look like, he keep searching the internet for similar functions and gave me screenshots, or sometimes they even hold a meeting of a bunch of random non-related guys who even not working on the project, to discuss about requirements, which last for endless hours... FUCK MY MANAGER!
I was the one in charge for everything. I design the architecture, database, then I fucking implement my own designed architect myself, and I fucking test functions that I fucking implemented myself based on my fucking design. I was so tried, I don't know what the fuck I am working on. Requirement changes everyday. My beautiful architecture began to falling off. I was so tired and began use hack fixes here and there many places in the project. I knew it's bad, but I just don't have time to carefully reconsider it. My test case began becoming useless as requirements changed. My manager's boss push him to finish this project. He began to test, he start complaining about bug here and there, blaming me about why functions are broken, and why it not work as he expected (which he didn't even tell my how he expected). ... I'm not junior developer, but this one-man project is so overwhelmed for me... FUCK MY JOB!
At this time, I have already work this project for almost 2.5 years. I felt very upset. I also feel disappointed about myself, although I know that is not all my entire faults. The feeling that you was given a job, but you can not get it done, I feel like a fucking LOSER. I really wanted to quit and run away from this shithole. But on the other hand I also want to finish this project before I quit. My mind mixed. I'm a hard-worker. I keep pushing myself, but the workplace is so toxic, I can feel it eating up my motivation everyday. I start questioning myself: "Is the job I am doing important?", "If this is really important project, didn't they should assign more members?", I feel so lonely at work... MY MIND IS FUCKED UP!
Finally, after a couple months of stress. I made up my mind that no way this project is gonna end within my lifespan. I decide to quit. Although my contract pointed that I only need to tell one month in advance. I gave my manager 3 months to find new members for project. I did handle over what I know, documents, and my fucked up ultra complexity source code with many small sub-systems which I did all by myself.
Well, I am with a new employer right now. They are good company. At least, my new manager do know how to manage things. My co-workers are energy and hard-working. I am put to fight on the frontline as usual (because of my "Senior position"). But I can feel my team, they got my back. My loneliness is now gone. Job is still hard, but I know for sure that I'm doing things on purpose, I am doing something useful. And to me that is the greatest rewards and keep me motivative! From now, will be the beginning for first page of my new story...
Thanks for reading ...12 -
it's funny, how doing something for ages but technically kinda the wrong way, makes you hate that thing with a fucking passion.
In my case I am talking about documentation.
At my study, it was required to write documentation for every project, which is actually quite logical. But, although I am find with some documentation/project and architecture design, they went to the fucking limit with this shit.
Just an example of what we had to write every time again (YES FOR EVERY MOTHERFUCKING PROJECT) and how many pages it would approximately cost (of custom content, yes we all had templates):
Phase 1 - Application design (before doing any programming at all):
- PvA (general plan for how to do the project, from who was participating to the way of reporting to your clients and so on - pages: 7-10.
- Functional design, well, the application design in an understandeable way. We were also required to design interfaces. (Yes, I am a backender, can only grasp the basics of GIMP and don't care about doing frontend) - pages: 20-30.
- Technical design (including DB scheme, class diagrams and so fucking on), it explains it mostly I think so - pages: 20-40.
Phase 2 - 'Writing' the application
- Well, writing the application of course.
- Test Plan (so yeah no actual fucking cases yet, just how you fucking plan to test it, what tools you need and so on. Needed? Yes. but not as redicilous as this) - pages: 7-10.
- Test cases: as many functions (read, every button click etc is a 'function') as you have - pages: one excel sheet, usually at least about 20 test cases.
Phase 3 - Application Implementation
- Implementation plan, describes what resources will be needed and so on (yes, I actually had to write down 'keyboard' a few times, like what the actual motherfucking fuck) - pages: 7-10.
- Acceptation test plan, (the plan and the actual tests so two files of which one is an excel/libreoffice calc file) - pages: 7-10.
- Implementation evalutation, well, an evaluation. Usually about 7-10 FUCKING pages long as well (!?!?!?!)
Phase 4 - Maintaining/managing of the application
- Management/maintainence document - well, every FUCKING rule. Usually 10-20 pages.
- SLA (Service Level Agreement) - 20-30 pages.
- Content Management Plan - explains itself, same as above so 20-30 pages (yes, what the fuck).
- Archiving Document, aka, how are you going to archive shit. - pages: 10-15.
I am still can't grasp why they were surprised that students lost all motivation after realizing they'd have to spend about 1-2 weeks BEFORE being allowed to write a single line of code!
Calculation (which takes the worst case scenario aka the most pages possible mostly) comes to about 230 pages. Keep in mind that some pages will be screenshots etc as well but a lot are full-text.
Yes, I understand that documentation is needed but in the way we had to do it, sorry but that's just not how you motivate students to work for their study!
Hell, students who wrote the entire project in one night which worked perfectly with even easter eggs and so on sometimes even got bad grades BECAUSE THEIR DOCUMENTATION WASN'T GOOD ENOUGH.
For comparison, at my last internship I had to write documentation for the REST API I was writing. Three pages, providing enough for the person who had to, to work with it! YES THREE PAGES FOR THE WHOLE MOTHERFUCKING PROJECT.
This is why I FUCKING HATE the word 'documentation'.36 -
My anxiety is kicking in again.
I want to build something meaningful outside of work but my mind is blank, I have no ideas to implement, and whenever one pops up in my head, I DDG it, I find that there's someone who already built something similar and I lose all interest.
I want to code, but I'm tired of solving fictional problems.
I miss being excited to learn a new tech, since I know I would ditch it if I can't find anything to build with it.
This is causing me to lose all motivation to code and learn, I really hope this is just a phase 。゚・(>﹏<)・゚。17 -
"Mature codebase"
"Our entire team are senior devs"
"Almost everyone that worked on the project is still here and available, so nothing's lost! We can ask whatever we need to."
You would think this would mean the code was clean and easy to read, and you could ask the person who wrote it for help. But. no. It's kinda the opposite.
Here's an example:
I'm trying to write a mailer, and I have no freaking clue how to get it working. I talked with two of the more senior devs, and both assured me it was very straightforward, and then walked me through the quite complicated mailer structure and got lost. The first pretended not to, but glazed over a few holes in his tour, and said I could figure the rest out. The second one ended up admitting that he's totally unfamiliar with it -- his last commit on a mailer was from about 8 years ago -- and doesn't know how to get it working anymore.
So, I'm on my own.
I wrote a super basic mailer for debugging (no idea if/how it actually sends a mail, but I think I can construct one?). But whenever I call the mailer, it gets run twice? Somehow? Apparently I need to start a bunch of daemons to get that part of the system to work. Which is cool because they don't work fresh out of the repo. Got some further help, and now my ostensibly working code throws errors for an undefined var that i'm not even using, and to make it easier: without a backtrace. joy! There's so much inheritence and extending and including going on that it's going to take me hours to track this down. ugh.
I'm keeping my paystub in front of me for some desparately needed motivation.13 -
My third paper got accepted, doing localization with this cute baby in the picture. Had a lot of fun collaborating with a good friend of mine from ETH.
My advisor declines every request I have, and then ignores me most of the time. No wonder the motivation in the lab is lower than the Dead Sea.
I have no words to describe how much I hate every second of my existence, but simultaneously I refuse to change my toxic circumstances so I have only myself to blame. Cheers.17 -
Why are we still having degree vs autodidact arguments/debates?
It's fucking 2018, who gives a flying fuck how you learn?
Stop giving a shit about how people learn and give a shit about their abilities and skills.
I'm tired of people from both sides (people with degrees and autodidacts) acting like they're better than the other. Stop being arrogant cunts.
Some people have the self control and motivation to teach themselves.
Congratulations! That's fucking awesome.
Others don't and could use a structured environment like University to motivate and encourage them.
Hey it happens. At least you're trying.
My god. Just stop with this shit already. It's annoying and unnecessary.
If you made it this far, how's your week been going?26 -
Give everyone a chance
If someone in your company/workgroup doesn't know something basic that you might take for granted, don't undermine them and mock them.
Everyone has to learn and it just breaks morale and motivation.
Be humble and think that you're not any kind of God and think that you wouldn't like the same thing happening to you.
People who mock others for not knowing stuff just piss the shit out of me.
Be humble guys4 -
Taking IT classes in college. The school bought us all lynda and office365 accounts but we can't use them because the classroom's network has been severed from the Active Directory server that holds our credentials. Because "hackers." (The non-IT classrooms don't have this problem, but they also don't need lynda accounts. What gives?)
So, I got bored, and irritated, so I decided to see just how secure the classroom really was.
It wasn't.
So I created a text file with the following rant and put it on the desktop of the "locked" admin account. Cheers. :)
1. don't make a show of "beefing up security" because that only makes people curious.
I'm referring of course to isolating the network. This wouldn't be a problem except:
2. don't restrict the good guys. only the bad guys.
I can't access resources for THIS CLASS that I use in THIS CLASS. That's a hassle.
It also gives me legitimate motivation to try to break your security.
3. don't secure it if you don't care. that is ALSO a hassle.
I know you don't care because you left secure boot off, no BIOS password, and nothing
stopping someone from using a different OS with fewer restrictions, or USB tethering,
or some sort malware, probably, in addition to security practices that are
wildly inconsistent, which leads me to the final and largest grievance:
4. don't give admin priveledges to an account without a password.
seriously. why would you do this? I don't understand.
you at least bothered to secure the accounts that don't even matter,
albeit with weak and publicly known passwords (that are the same on all machines),
but then you went and left the LEAST secure account with the MOST priveledges?
I could understand if it were just a single-user machine. Auto login as admin.
Lots of people do that and have a reason for it. But... no. I just... why?
anyway, don't worry, all I did was install python so I could play with scripting
during class. if that bothers you, trust me, you have much bigger problems.
I mean you no malice. just trying to help.
For real. Don't kick me out of school for being helpful. That would be unproductive.
Plus, maybe I'd be a good candidate for your cybersec track. haven't decided yet.
-- a guy who isn't very good at this and didn't have to be
have a nice day <3
oh, and I fixed the clock. you're welcome.2 -
System.out.print(“My life sucks so bad”);
*Started a new job in january - no motivation to study in school.
*Girlfriend dumped me after 5.5 years (she met an awesome co-worker to hang with) - i had to move out with all my shit and find a new place to live.
*Losing friends who i made when i was with her.
*No motivation to finish any of my projects.
*Had christmas and new years with her - shittiest of all years.12 -
Just blowing off steam with y'all. It will sound confused, but it's just all of my depressive thoughts mashed up in a rant.
So, here I am.
Surrounded by incompetent professors who are unable to point me in the right direction, that rarely even know what they are 'teaching'. In a moment of total loss, that has been lasting for months. Totally lost my motivation and my will to pursue a career in IT. All I do is game, eat, sleep, repeat. I am exhausted mentally. When I get back from school, I can't think of anything else but to relax and do nothing. I am frustrated. I care about becoming a programmer, but I can't find my inner strenght. School draws all of my strenght and willpower away from me, and therefore I get distracted very easily. I just do not know what to do anymore. I want to keep going, but I am stuck, unable to do so. "Perhaps this is just not for me" is what keeps resounding inside my head, but I do not truly believe it. I just wish that all of this stress would just disappear, and allow me to do what I care about. I need help to find the needed focus to continue.21 -
Had an awesome day at work got so much coding done, made an awesome well documented class for a Countdowntimer class in Android.
Was looking forward to getting home and using my motivation to continue coding my game when I got home.
Then get to the bus stop and it's packed for the Adele concert, I saw a poster okay thats good only buses are packed (I then take a train, I live pretty far from work) I get to the train station and the shittiest system has been setup,
Where people pack on the train that goes to the last stop south for the Adele concert that isn't even near the last stop!
One of the platforms aren't even being used and the trains that got partway south are tiny as hell for the rest of the people that don't want to go to this concert.
For one thing who thought it was a good idea to setup such a shitty system? Why not have one train go straight to the damn concert area and continually use that one platform and for the rest of the people have the trains running as normal?
Nope let's make a shitty system that doesn't work well.
Top it off have concerts on a Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.
Dumbasses.
Now I get to wait in town doing absolutely nothing and losing the little time I have to code on my game.6 -
I am mentally burned out from web development.
Physically I'm fine, but it's getting more difficult each day to open my laptop and write code, documentation or do code reviews.
Web development just seems so meaningless, where my day to day job has me trudging through one web form after another. I'm sick of implementing business logic on the backend and tired of listening to the product owner bitch about users who are demanding.
My productivity has fallen to the level where I'm feeling guilty for spending my time on nothing!
Don't give me advice, I know I need a change of scenery.
I just need to find the motivation to work on another hiring test which has nothing to do with the actual job.7 -
how to become a true scum master:
- formulate jira tasks for your inferiors as vague as possible, best they don't make any sense
- before sprint start, ask the subhuman being to estimate storypoints, and if they say they can't really tell with this description and choose the highest estimate, say "okay, let's estimate it to one sprint length", so they can actually work on it within one sprint (which makes total sense)
- if the scum dares to question the content of the ticket and begs for more details, be like teflon and give no useful answer at all. if they continue asking for a meeting to discuss the ticket, tell them to have a meeting with a coworker about it (who also has no clue). don't be available for them because you have more important stuff to do.
- bully them during daily standups that they didn't create clear subtasks from this task and criticize them because you have no idea what they are doing. tell them they are having performance issues and suspect them to sit on their lazy asses all day.
- criticize the team in general for bad performance, bad item tracking and never say something nice, to make sure everybody loses even the last bit of intrinsic motivation for the project.
stay tuned to learn how to make yourself a skull throne out of those filthy dev smartasses ^.^7 -
I'll repeat what I wrote in an answer in another rant because I think it made a good story (I just realized it after writing it :p) :
I met a guy in my school who was the best of the school : I mean, he jumped over the first two years of the school (and he started from scratch, he never had programmed before).
I went to ask him how he got enough motivation to make all the two years projects in one and he told me something that made me understand why he was so good : "I'm fucking lazy, so when I code, I code something that I would use for a very long time, tools that will be useful in next projects".
By doing this, all he had to do in end-year projects was to assemble what he already had done to make the program. He had perfectly working tools that were awesome. So, he never had to work more than 10 hours a week after doing this.4 -
My dad, who doesn't know shit about programming, but knows absolutely everything about perseverance and motivation.2
-
Worst exp. on a collab/group project?
Had a few, here is one.
Worked with a dev team (of two devs) in Norway to begin collaboration on providing a portal into our system (placing orders, retrieving customer info, inventory control, etc)
They spoke very good English, but motivation was the problem. Start the day around 10:00AM...take a two hour lunch...ended the day at, if I was lucky, 4:00PM (relative to Norway time). Response time to questions took days, sometimes weeks. We used Skype, which helped, but everything was "Yea...I'll do that tomorrow...waiting on X....I have a wedding to go to, so I'll finish my part next week."
I didn't care so much, I had other projects to do, but the stakeholders pounded me almost everyday demanding a progress report (why aren't you done yet...etc..etc.)
The badgering got so bad I told the project owner (a VP) if he wanted this project done by the end of the year, the company would have to fly me to Norway so I personally push things along.
When real money was on the line, he decided patience was warranted.
A 3 month project turned into 9, and during a phone meeting with the CEO in December
O: "Thanks guys, this project is going great. We'll talk again in February. Bye."
PM: "Whoa...what! February!"
<sounding puzzled>
O: "Um..yes? It's Christmas time. Don't you Americans take off for Christmas?"
PM: "Yes, but not until Christmas. Its only December 12th. Your taking the whole month of December and January for Christmas?"
O:"Yes, of course. You Americans work too hard. You should come over here and see how we celebrate. Takes about a month so we can ease back into the flow of things."
<Jack is the VP>
PM: "Jack wanted this project completed by the end of the year, that is what everyone agreed to."
O:"Yes, I suppose, but my plane is waiting on me. Not to worry, everything will be fine."
<ceo hangs up>
PM: "Oh shit..oh shit..oh shit. What are you going to do!?"
Me: "Me!?..not a darn thing. Better go talk with Jeff."
<Jeff is the VP>
J: "This is unacceptable. You promised this project would only take a few months. I told you there would be consequences for not meeting the deadline."
PM:"But..but...its not our fault."
J: "I don't care about fault. I care about responsibility. I've never had to fire anyone for not meeting a deadline, but .."
Me: "Jeff, they are in Norway and no one is working this project for the next two months. You've known for months about them dragging their asses on this project. We're ready to go. Services have been tested and deployed. Accounting has all the payment routing ready. Only piece missing is theirs."
J: "Oh. OK. Great job guys. I guess we'll delay this project until February."
<leave the office>
PM: "Holy shit I'm glad you were there. I thought I was fired."
Me: "Yea, and that prick would have done it not giving a crap that it's Christmas."
<fast forward to Feb>
O: "Our service provider fell through, so I'm hosting with another company. You guys know PHP? Perl? I don't know what they called it, but it sounded so cool I bought the company."
PM: "You bought what? Are we still working with Z and B?"
O:"Yea, sort of. How's your German? New guy only speaks German."
PM: "Um, uh... no one here speaks German"
O:"Not to worry, I speak German, French, and Italian. I'll be your translator."
PM: "What? French and Italian?"
O: "On my trip to France I connected with a importer who then got me in touch with international shipper in Italy. I flew over there and met a couple really smart guys than can help us out. My new guy only speaks German, J only speaks French, and R speaks Italian, Russian, and a little English. Not to worry, I'm full time on this project. You have my full attention."
We believe the CEO has/had some serious mental issues, including some ADD. He bailed within the first month (took another vacation to Sweden to do some fishing) and left me using Google Translate to coordinate the project. Luckily, by the end, the Norwegian company hired a contractor from England who spoke German and hobbled together the final integration.3 -
In the Ruhr area (Germany) we have some very old, very strange words with strange meanings. One of those words is ‚Prutscher‘.
A Prutscher refers to a person who does things but never gets a good result, due to lack of knowledge or simple carelessness. Most of the time, Prutschers are people who are interested in certain subjects and often work in the related jobs, but who lack the motivation to properly train themselves, learn what there is to learn and to always keep up with their technologies .
Here are a few examples I've stumbled upon so far in my career:
- Developers in their 60's who read a book about PHP 25 years ago and decided to become a software developer. Since then haven't read anything about it. Who then now build huge spaghetti monoliths for large companies, in which they prefix every function, every variable and constant with their initials and, of course, use Hungarian notation.
- People who read half a fucking tutorial about <insert any fancy js framework here> and start blogging/tweeting about it
- Senior web developers who need to be told what the fuck CORS is and who can't even recognize CORS related errors in their browser console.
- People who have done nothing else for 18 years than building websites for companies on Wordpress 1.x and writing few lines of PHP and Javascript from time to time. Those who are now applying as a frontend dev due to the difficult economic situation and are surprised that they are not accepted due to a lack of experience.
- Developers who are the only ones working on Windows in the team and ask their Linux colleagues for help when Windows starts bitchin.
- People who have been coding for 30 years, have worked with ~42 languages and don't know the difference between compiled and interpreted languages in the job interview.
- Chief developers at a large newsletter-publisher who think it's a good idea to build your own CMS (due to a lack of good existing ones, of course).
- Developers who have been writing PHP applications for multinational corporations for 25 years and cannot explain how PHP is executed. They don't even know what the fucking OPcache is, let alone fpm. FML
- People who call themselves professional developers but never ever heard of DRY, KISS, boy-scout rule, 12-Factor App, SOLID, Clean Code, Design Patterns, ...
- Senior developers wondering why the bash script won't run on their fucking Windows machine.
- Developers who consider Typescript to be a hindrance and see no value in it.
- Developers using ftp for deployments in 2022
- Senior Javascript Developer applying for a job and for whom Integer is a primitive data type in JS.
- Developers who prefer to code without frameworks and libraries because they are only an unnecessary burden/overhead and you can quickly code everything up yourself.
- Developers who think configuring their server(s) manually is a good idea.
You fucking Prutscher. What you have already cost me in terms of work and nerves. I can't even put it into words how deeply I despise you. I have more respect for the chewing gum that has been stuck in my damn trash can for the past 3 years than I do for you guys. You are the disgrace of our profession. I will haunt you in your dreams and prefix every fucking synapse of your brain with MY initials.
As a well-known german band once sang in a very fitting song: I wouldn't even piss on you if you were on fire.
If you recognized yourself in one of the examples here: FUCK YOU!29 -
As a developer, I constantly feel like I'm lagging behind.
Long rant incoming.
Whenever I join a new company or team, I always feel like I'm the worst developer there. No matter how much studying I do, it never seems to be enough.
Feeling inadequate is nothing new for me, I've been struggling with a severe inferiority complex for most of my life. But starting a career as a developer launched that shit into overdrive.
About 10 years ago, I started my college education as a developer. At first things were fine, I felt equal to my peers. It lasted about a day or two, until I saw a guy working on a website in notepad. Nothing too special of course, but back then as a guy whose scripting experience did not go much farther than modifying some .ini files, it blew my mind. It went downhill from there.
What followed were several stressful, yet strangely enjoyable, years in college where I constantly felt like I was lagging behind, even though my grades were acceptable. On top of college stress, I had a number of setbacks, including the fallout of divorcing parents, childhood pets, family and friends dying, little to no money coming in and my mother being in a coma for a few weeks. She's fine now, thankfully.
Through hard work, a bit of luck, and a girlfriend who helped me to study, I managed to graduate college in 2012 and found a starter job as an Asp.Net developer.
My knowledge on the topic was limited, but it was a good learning experience, I had a good mentor and some great colleagues. To teach myself, I launched a programming tutorial channel. All in all, life was good. I had a steady income, a relationship that was already going for a few years, some good friends and I was learning a lot.
Then, 3 months in, I got diagnosed with cancer.
This ruined pretty much everything I had built up so far. I spend the next 6 months in a hospital, going through very rough chemo.
When I got back to working again, my previous Asp.Net position had been (understandably) given to another colleague. While I was grateful to the company that I could come back after such a long absence, the only position available was that of a junior database manager. Not something I studied for and not something I wanted to do each day neither.
Because I was grateful for the company's support, I kept working there for another 12 - 18 months. It didn't go well. The number of times I was able to do C# jobs can be counted on both hands, while new hires got the assignments, I regularly begged my PM for.
On top of that, the stress and anxiety that going through cancer brings comes AFTER the treatment. During the treatment, the only important things were surviving and spending my potentially last days as best as I could. Those months working was spent mostly living in fear and having to come to terms with the fact that my own body tried to kill me. It caused me severe anger issues which in time cost me my relationship and some friendships.
Keeping up to date was hard in these times. I was not honing my developer skills and studying was not something I'd regularly do. 'Why spend all this time working if tomorrow the cancer might come back?'
After much soul-searching, I quit that job and pursued a career in consultancy. At first things went well. There was not a lot to do so I could do a lot of self-study. A month went by like that. Then another. Then about 4 months into the new job, still no work was there to be done. My motivation quickly dwindled.
To recuperate the costs, the company had me do shit jobs which had little to nothing to do with coding like creating labels or writing blogs. Zero coding experience required. Although I was getting a lot of self-study done, my amount of field experience remained pretty much zip.
My prayers asking for work must have been heard because suddenly the sales department started finding clients for me. Unfortunately, as salespeople do, they looked only at my theoretical years of experience, most of which were spent in a hospital or not doing .Net related tasks.
Ka-ching. Here's a developer with four years of experience. Have fun.
Those jobs never went well. My lack of experience was always an issue, no matter how many times I told the salespeople not to exaggerate my experience. In the end, I ended up resigning there too.
After all the issues a consultancy job brings, I went out to find a job I actually wanted to do. I found a .Net job in an area little traffic. I even warned them during my intake that my experience was limited, and I did my very best every day that I worked here.
It didn't help. I still feel like the worst developer on the team, even superseded by someone who took photography in college. Now on Monday, they want me to come in earlier for a talk.
Should I just quit being a developer? I really want to make this work, but it seems like every turn I take, every choice I make, stuff just won't improve. Any suggestions on how I can get out of this psychological hell?6 -
Ok, so I'm one of the new folks here, and spent some time looking around.
And I've read so many of you write about levels of insanity at work that just baffles me.
Why do people do that to themselves? And no, I don't mean you sales-manager, or your boss who hired the wrong kind of dev, I mean YOU.
You are a developer, currently the market for devs is so large you can literally pick your jobs. And if you don't know how to find a new job, just Google (easy mode, search on LinkedIn) a company which specializes in recruiting, there are tons of them, and they will gladly search an employer for you.
Don't get stuck in a job that sucks - you will kill your motivation, and you deserve better.3 -
Before I became a Computer Engineer, (actually, this job is where I learned I loved programming) our manager would pull us into a team motivational meeting.
Except she was a bit of an airhead, so her idea of motivation was having a sing-song and listing our favorite movie quotes.
It was even funnier because there was lots of drama surrounding "how she became our manager," and one of our teammates felt as though she should have gotten the job.
Anyway, none of those were the most ridiculous meeting.
The most ridiculous meeting was when the VP of marketing came to town from Florida to address the brewing drama.
In this meeting, all of my teammates suddenly had the delusion that we were in a union and thought they were protected from getting fired. They threw our manager under the bus. I was the only one who could see that he was there to see if our department was worth saving. They thought they were going to get rid of our manager by shitting on her, but they were just confirming his suspicion that there was a bunch of bullshit going on all around.
So I approached the VP after the meeting, and long story short, I was the only one who got through layoffs with a job offer in Florida a couple weeks later.
I didn't take it, because by that time I decided I wanted to go to school for Computer Engineering.1 -
I have had this job for 2 years - my first real job. It has been very very stressfull for the last 6 months and it feels like everything is falling apart in the company. It's a small work place with only 6 people in total.
A week ago my boss wanted a meeting and I got a feeling on what the subject may be. I was right about my thought. I was being fired because he feels like everything is falling apart mainly because of me. Though, I don't feel the same way, I think more it's the whole team that failed.
But the most weird part. I'm getting fired, I then have 3 months left, though, he says that I can in those 3 months show my value for the company, and if he thinks that I again have value, I can stay.
Who the hell fires an employee and right after says, you can stay if you prove your value? I don't really feel welcomed here anymore.
My motivation have drastically fallen the last week and I'm just sinking more and more. Maybe it's a good thing to get away and get a new job that values me and doesn't stress me the hell up.
I've been the only developer for over half the time here and I can feel that.
I just had to get out with this, so thanks for reading my small rant about my shitty life :)8 -
My life didnt go as smooth as i expected. Everything happened as expected, i knew what going to the uni requires, i knew everything...
But i didnt accounted for my mental health. Since forever i have thought that im lazy or something like that, that i can do everything i just have to do it. Oh how wrong was I. It went from my projects being frozen for a long time due to lack of motivation to neglecting important living activies. Even my health suffered a bit. Everytime i failed, even the simplest task no matter why i always felt even worse. Even the most basic tasks were unimportant for me. Even some minor tasks that i failed gave me huge guilt. Not to mention that my family wont help me with my mental health at all, (they cant see what is realy happening they always think im lazy) (but maybe they could fucking figure out that being sad liteary for years is bad). My contact with friends is limited, im always scared to go or more often scared to ask is they have time to meet because they are ALWAYS busy...
So that was my life, alone, against people who were demanding (and my mother who thought that her hard work was everything i needed, but no. Money, food and clean house isnt everything that human requires to propely function!). Now I have scheduled a meeting with the specialist, i hope the uni has better ones than the other ones i had. I hope he will help me and i will get out that life downwards spiral.5 -
So at the moment I'm developing a RESTful API for an internal project at work and I'm starting to learn and understand about HTTP status codes.
So I started incorporating proper response HTTP status etc, but my co-workers don't understand what any of it means. They think that just sending a JSON response is enough with any messages should be enough. I think this mindset stems from people who just do simple AJAX calls in JavaScript just to get or store data.
It's these kind of developers that I find are lazy or have no motivation to improve themselves, which is disappointing.5 -
i don't think that i'm having a burnout but i think that i'm maybe not so far away from it... several people, including friends, my therapist and also a colleague, told me they see me at risk of sliding into a real burnout.
i've known this for longer that i have a crappy work life balance. the habit of making work the most important part of my own life. thinking about work even in my private time, when i fall asleep, when i wake up in the night or in the morning. the tendency to think about problems, plans, coworkers, not being able to quit work mentally. the idea that i have to prove to everybody at work that i'm awesome. the feeling that, after a work day, i'm just "waiting" at home for the next day, in idle mode, so i can continue working on a problem (like a bug) that's occupying my whole mind. and at the same time, feeling totally empty after work, having no energy. i've lost interest and quit several hobbies in the last two years that once were important for me. and i think one important reason is that i didn't have any mental energy left to deal with that.
another factor for this development was also the pandemic for sure, because for some time, i had no real social life except for that at work.
but more important is probably that i find my job most of the time really fun and am highly motivated. i have the tendency to say yes to everything and to really commit to and own the problems that are handed to me. (right now, however i feel like there's not much motivation left)
then again there is the feeling that what i do is never good enough, i have little self confidence in my own abilities as a software engineer. there's a big discrepancy between how i myself perceive my work and how other people do (not only at work). on a rational level, i know that what i do is at least "good enough", otherwise i wouldn't have this job, and i wouldn't receive this amount of positive feedback from people. but it's hard to really deeply understand this thing, when there are deep-rooted beliefs like "only perfect is good enough" or "your colleagues will be disappointed and get a negative idea of you (and something bad will happen), if you don't give your best"... and there's also this idea that i have to be this super nerdy person who also codes in their free time, reads IT magazines and stuff, because only then i will fit this stereotype of a software developer, and only then i can be taken seriously and be good enough. no matter if this is fun for me or not.
anyway, right now i'm at a point in life where i'm realizing all this not only rationally, but with full emotional impact... :/ my life feels like it's gone stale and empty. i've lost creativity, warmth and human connection and that hurts a lot.
i'm trying to change my life.
one thing that really helps me right now is to talk with people who have (made) similar experiences. can you relate? if yes, how do / did you address those problems? i would really appreciate to hear your stories...6 -
Alright. This is going to be long and incoherent, so buckle up. This is how I lost my motivation to program or to do anything really.
Japan is apparently experiencing a shortage of skilled IT workers. They are conducting standardized IT skill tests in 7 Asian countries including mine. Very few people apply and fewer actually pass the exam. There are exams of different levels that gives you better roles in the IT industry as you pass them. For example, the level 2 or IT Fundamental Engineering Exam makes you an IT worker, level 3 = capable of working on your own...so on.
I passed level 1 and came in 3rd in my country (there were only 78 examinees lol). Level 2 had 2 parts. The theoretical mcq type exam in the morning and the programming mcq in the afternoon. They questions describe a scenario/problem, gives you code that solves it with some parts blanked out.
I passed the morning exam and not the afternoon. As a programmer I thought I'd be good at the afternoon exam as it involves actual code. Anyway, they give you 2 more chances to pass the afternoon exam, failing that, you'll have to take both of them the next time. Someone who has passed 1 part is called a half-passer and I was one.
A local company funded by both JICA and my government does the selection and training for the Japanese companies. To get in you have to pass a written exam(write code/pseudocode on paper) and pass the final interview in which there are 2 parts - technical interview and general interview.
I went as far as the interview. Didn't do too good in the technical interview. They asked me how would I find the lightest ball from 8 identical balls using a balance only twice. You guys probably already know the solution. I don't have much theoritical knowledge. I know how to write code and solve problems but don't know formal name of the problem or the algorithm.
On to the next interview. I see 2 Japanese interviewers and immediately blurt out konichiwa! The find it funny. Asked me about my education. Say they are very impressed that self taught and working. The local HR guy is not impressed. Asks me why I left university and why never tried again. Goes on about how the dean is his friend and universites are cheap. foryou.jpg
The real part. So they tell me that Japanese companies pay 250000/month, I will have to pay 60% income tax, pay for my own accommodation, food, transportation cost etc. Hella sweet deal. Living in Japan! But I couldn't get in because the visa is only given to engineers. Btw I'm not looking to invade Japan spread my shitskin seed and white genocide the japs. Just wanted to live in another country for a while and learn stuff from them.
I'll admit I am a little salty and probably will remain salty forever. But this made me lose all interest in programming. It's like I don't belong. A dropout like me should be doing something lowly. Maybe I should sell drugs or be a pimp or something.
But sometimes I get this short lived urge to make something brilliant and show them that people like me are capable of doing good things. Fuck, do I have daddy issues?16 -
So I enventually spent 2 years working for that company with a strong b2b market. Everything from the checkouts in their 6 b2c stores to the softwares used by the 30-people sales team was dependant on the main ERP shit home-built with this monstruosity we call Windev here in France. If you don't know it just google and have some laugh : this is a proprieteray FRENCH language. Not french like made by french people, well that too, but mostly french like the fucking language is un fucking french ! Instructions are on french, everything. Hey that's my natural language okay, but for code, really ?
The php website was using the ERP database too, even all the software/hardware of the massive logistic installation they had (like a tiny Amazon depot), and of course the emails of all employees. Everything was just handled by this unique shitty and so sloooooow fucking app. When there was to many clients on the website or even too many salespeople connected to the ERP at the same time, every-fuckin-piece of the company was slowing down, and even worse facing critical bugs. So they installed a monitor in the corner of a desk constantly showing the live report page of Google analytics and they started panic attacks everytime it was counting more than 30 sessions on the website. That was at the time fun and sad to observe.
The whole shit was created 12 years ago and is since maintened locally by one unique old-fashion-microsoft dev who also have to maintain all the hardware of all the fucking 150+ people business. You know, when the keyboard of anyone is "broken" cause it's unplugged... That's his job too. The poor guy was totally overstressed on a daily basis and his tech knowledge just saddly losts themeselves somewhere in the way. He was my n+1 in a tech team of 3 people : him, a young and inexperimented so-called "php developer" who was in charge of the website (btw full of security holes I discovered and dealed with when I first arrive at the job), and myself.
The database was a hell of 100+ tables of business and marketing data with a ton of specific logic added on-the-go during years. No consistent data model or naming. No utf8. Fucked up relations that ends with queries long enough to fill books. And that's not all, all the customers passwords was just stored there uncrypted. Several very big companies and administrations were some of these clients. I was insisting on the passwords point litterally all the time, that was an easy security fix and a good start... But no, in two years of discussions on the subject I never achieved to have them focusing on other considerations than "our customers like that we can remind them their password by a simple phone call if they lost it". What. The. Fuck. WHATTHEFUCK!
Eventually I ran myself out of this nightmare. I had a few bad jobs already, and worked on shitty software already. But that one really blows my mind (and motivation for a time too). Happy it's over.1 -
!dev Employers (or, well, HR) are so judgmental. Every time, they try to burn you with their judgmental torch and ask in a very judging manner: "Ohh, I noticed your life between years x and y wasn't perfect. How do you explain that?" (e.g. having a year off due to depression).
Here's how I explain it: life has its ups and downs; chaos is a fact of life. People aren't going to be perfect. If you're looking at a candidate that has a near-flawless path, then I don't think it's worth hiring that person because their motivation and work ethic are likely different from a seasoned go-getter who struggled and worked years to become good at their field.5 -
Hello winter depression. I showed up at work at 3pm. I should write a concept for restructuring our IT department. But I'm surrounded by people who have the misconception that design is just making things pretty. And they laugh at the idea to conduct user interviews to improve the situation. It's expected that I finish this until two weeks. Because thats when my contract ends. Job hunt starts again. I lost my motivation for everything. Let me be 😕4
-
For all my friends here who have known me for years can easily notice there has been a drastic change in me.
I used to be confident. That shit was hollow but I used to laugh in the face of fear. I was ignorant and that ignorance fueled a lot of the much needed confidence.
Over the years, I learned a lot. The more I know, the more I realised how much I don't know. And for all that I know, I have to use the brain power to retain and implement it, else it rusts.
This image is of my 2021 goals that I drafted last December. Wasn't able to achieve the first, the last and the art one. But surely got myself surrounded by some of the smartest people I have ever worked with.
Now they have rightly said, be careful with what you wish for.
MY CONFIDENCE IS SHATTERED.
I feel dumb. Constant imposter syndrome. While I am learning every moment and there is no measure to it, I feel incompetent to an extent that I have started questioning how did I even reach this far?!
While, yet again I am the youngest in my team, my manager is bit micromanaging and agressive with OKRs/KPIs and tech team isn't very supportive creating constant friction (something I never faced with developers in my life because devs are my best friends), I fear how much more time will I take to ramp up in this new job and feel confident enough to tackle things on my own without constant nudge from leadership or different teams?
Or is it just that I have burnt out firefighting and lost the motivation I had?
After all, what does this all even mean?10 -
So first of all merry delayed Xmas and of course wishing you all a happy new year.
Now...
I always loved designing and coding, yes I actually like it, I must be absolutely mental or something.. I finally after pushing myself through hours upon hours of courses, finishing most within 15% of the allotted time, and doing more then was requested, I finally found a job, related to front-end development. You might think "Gee; good for you buddy, you filthy commoner.." Well; it didn't last all too long, I basically after nailing the interview process got my first day there within a few days, now I am absolutely stoked and my nerves are shot, plus the 4 cups of coffee aren't helping. I literally was so nervous to do well on my first day, that I slept for only one hour, literally one bloody hour.
I get into the office where I am greeted by an amazing laptop, I mean high-end gaming 360 no-scope all over the place gaming. I sit down and start on getting all my tools ready to go (they let us use whatever IDE we wanted, which I thought was amazing) after getting my IDE and the plugins and all the emails/Slack etc setup, I then get told to get a Dropbox account. I assumed the Dropbox account was just there to share things quickly with the designers, we would obviously be using Git right?! Well; no not exactly, actually not at all - we all used the Dropbox account of one of the bosses, I swear everybody pushed and pulled stuff all the time, a copy of the boss's passport was in there as well, and they had projects from and up to 3 years ago, still in there... It took my Dropbox 3 bloody hours to grab as much as it could to actually allow me to get started...
I then to my absolute dismay notice that I would be working on a prefab of a prefab, basically the only thing I would be responsible for, is to adjust the animations and aligning elements.... Aligning and animations.... Fine, I guess it could be worse right? Started going along with it, using a framework that I never heard of before, till like a good 3 days before starting there called "Greensock" which is amazing I must admit, could've helped me allot on my solo-projects. Problem was; we had designers who wanted things, that just looked plain horrible, it was never 'on-point' so to say, maybe it's just me being a perfectionist but it just looked wrong.
Finally got it done after struggling with the prefabs and what not, then the day was almost over and I finally got to go home, fortunately dodging the drinking that was occurring around 4 in the afternoon in the middle of the office, it wasn't beers or anything of the sort - but hard liquor along the lines of Wodka and straight up Gin. I fortunately had a personal issue I had to attend too, so I got out of there before things got too crazy and they went out for dinner stumbling all over the place.
Well this wen't for a few more days (minus the drinking), with 8 being the exact number of days and my grievance list only kept growing. I was for one a junior-developer and thus with them knowing was supposed to get training from our lead, however; that never occurred instead said 'lead' would leave early or be completely absent on most days, leaving me to mess around with prefabs that did my head in, with no comments nor any indication what it did or should've done, I spent hours just adjusting one line of code at a time to see what would happen.
Eventually they told us to work from home only, so I did - did a project here and there and then got told they wouldn't keep me on board any longer, stating I was too inexperienced and they didn't have enough work (which was a load of bs) and that I lacked "office experience" whatever the heck that means, I was always sociable and hell I ever cracked people up, kept a neat and orderly list of things that needed doing, I even contrary to most commented on my code, so the next poor sod wouldn't be going through 'try by error' hell that I wen't through.
Either way; I currently have been feeling absolutely wrecked in terms of motivation, that job would've solved my financial situation and allowed me to finally do what I wanted to do. Instead of doing some random dead-end job each week or month, I would've had a steady income and something I could've built on.
But to add some positivism to this endless and too long of a rant... I'm currently going through a boot-camp and doing a small Linux based course on the side, this little thing isn't going to hold me back; yeah it will be tough, but then again most things don't come easy..
Thank you for reading and I hope you have allot and I mean allot more luck on your first job.5 -
Hello devRant fellows, I have a question for those who avoid Google products...
What are your main motivation behind the decision of not using any (or almost any) Google product?
Respectful-for-everyone analogy:
Google is meat, you are a vegan and your non-vegan friend asked you why to start being vegan?
I'm going to highlight the word -friend- because I'm looking for constructive, argumentative, educational and respectful answers.30 -
In my case, low motivation is usually caused by askholes who bitch about broken AF code, which ALWAYS turns out to be theirs, infected with their own idiocy.
Definition: ASKHOLE
- A Person who constantly asks for your advice, yet always does the opposite of what you told them.
Pretending I'm in back-to-back meetings & general avoidance (when possible) seems to work. -
!dev
This thing is eating away at me so just shut up and listen.
I have started applying for this uni for PhD (don't judge me) and for that, I will need recommendation letters, right? So I emailed two of the people who have already agreed to write me recommendation letters, to confirm the details that I'll give the said uni to contact them. Emails were sent out on Thursday. It's now soon to be Tuesday and I haven't heard a thing back. And this is abso-fucking-lutely killing me!!!! (There's still another to be emailed but he's a bit high and mighty and I'll email him after I get feedbacks from these two about my motivation letter and CV.)
Like, when you know my whole future depends on a single email of yours, saying that I'm a good PhD candidate (and oh boy, that is a joke; considering that I'm applying for literally one of the best unis in this particular subject in the whole world... I'm well over my head, aren't I?) why would you keep me standing on one leg just to confirm your contact details? I mean I know I'm overreacting a bit considering the deadline is yonks away, but still, urghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.8 -
Guys should I quit my CURRENT job ? I feel like I should find another job because of the following reasons
a. I suck. I know I can't complete the task given. The task given is to build a trading bot. I can't complete it because of my incompetent trading knowledge and i find it difficult to understand trading logic and I tried my level best even paying someone to private tutor me but the tuition fees are too high and I still don't understand. Btw I am from a web development background
b. It has been 3 months in this company. I feel like I am not doing anything. I feel like a loser who has been eating free salary without contributing anything. Sure I have managed to write few strategies on pinescript.
c. I dread everyday to even do anything. I use to feel accomplished in my previous job. Nowadays I cant hope to feel like a complete idiot.
d. I don't have the motivation or fire that I use to have when I was a web developer. I just hate looking at code nowadays.
e. Algo Trading is too difficult for me. I don't feel like I am progressing anywhere.
f. Nobody in my company knows how to build a bot or have any knowledge on this.
g. Python dataframes , plots, charts bores me to death and I am really no interested to even look at it.
I am just so frustrated as I am typing this and I am becoming tired and exhausted to go to work everyday because everyday I am so clueless on what to do. You need at least some idea where to go to but I don't. Everyday I feel like a complete clueless moron.9 -
I'm just finishing my bachelor's degree in computer science in Germany. I love programming, especially for Android. I am working on a really cool note-taking app for my bachelor thesis and I love. A few weeks ago I started looking for jobs, I thought this would be easy. Why is this not easy?! Does no company need help with developing an app?!?! I googled jobs and opened the first few pages on the browser then I chose a city in Switzerland because I read that's where developers make the most money. Then I had to write a CV, what the fuck am I supposed to write in the CV?! So I wrote what languages I had dealt with during my studies and I wrote that I now speak German English and Hebrew. I had to upload the CV for EVERY SINGLE COMPANY and sometimes I had to write a cover letter for a companies I don't even know much about. WHY IS THIS SO ANNOYING!!!
I'm the last few weeks I've been getting emails rejecting my application, such a waste of time. I would love to work with people I'm just so bored sitting at home all day without much motivation to program alone, I need company and a company to pay me. I've already wasted a few months and I just can't believe that the market is so terribly organised. I could be getting so much work done, all I need is people who are a little bit motivated! I'm just so frustrated that everything works so slowly in this market...I even tried looking online for people who just want to talk about programming Android apps, NADA I just couldn't find anything... Well that's it if you have a job offer for me just hit me up I'll do anything...tiny.cc/chagai is where you can find my contact information I will literally consider even working in North Korea I just don't care where I work..60 -
So just babbling my shit down here.
(Tldr : i am a crazy guy who followed my half slept brain, went onto a stage , gave some kind of motivating , stammering talk to a large group of professional strangers, enjoyed that day with a red embarrassed face and just got my first pic of me speaking on stage and that is so awesome !)
Last Saturday i went to a gdg meetup and i embarrassed the hell out of me.
I went there with just 2 hours of sleep from the previous night.
After a few talks there comes a guy who is taking some time to install is setup and the host calls for lightning round session ( ie he asks if anyone from the audience would like to share something about their product or something).
I am a fucking nutt guy. I can explain something to you nicely in a hacky way as long as i have done enough work on that and you speak my native language.
But giving a talk on English stage, hell no! I stammer, mix hindi with English and start speaking werd shit.. And that's what happened.
I don't know what went into me but as some guy went to the stage and talked for 2 mins, i was like yeah i want to do that too. So in next turn when he asked for a show of hands, i raised mine and fucking went to stage!
I forgot that if you go on stage you should have something to talk to . But the moment i was on stage, i was like... "Nope, we will do this differently".
I had been working on a video ads module from the last week which could be easily explained in 2 mins. But i felt like giving a non techy talk instead.
It went something like this: i introduced myself with my experience details ( who gives experience details on stage !?!) Then host said to speak loudly and i went like "Bharat mata ki jai!"( Victory to mother india (wtf!?😆) .
Then started talking about how the developers feel disheartened when searching on internet where the resources are scattered . And the solution i told them was :"don't be disheartened. You will eventually find it (like wow dude wtf, as if they didn't knew that) . Look on the youtube and other resources " and then went full on explaining/marketing about some online tutor who gives advice/consultancy via a subscription based payment ( tbf that guy really helped solve a lot of my doubts, he has written books on Android dev and is the top so answerer for Android).
Then i went on sharing my thoughts live on that fuckin stage ! ( Live because i usually post my thoughts here on devrant before discussing them out with real people, you guys are my safe space) but there i discussed my thoughts on libraries!
I have this believe that Android devs these days are having lesser knowledge of the system because we have all the libraries and templates available to us. But when we have to customize stuff, we need to go deep into docs and source classes and find ourselves in trouble there. So i kind of said this out loud and that we should try to read more the code and implement stuff ourselves instead of using the library 😅🙈)
I was feeling so fucking embarrassing after that all stuff! It was so full of stammering , broken English and worst attempt at motivation. At that time i was regretting this and about to burst cry and run away, but somehow i gathered my self, got my mood back to the event games and talks, later went to the organizers and apologized(and they were very nice and didn't cared about it), and overall enjoyed my weirdest day!
When i came home, my mom gave me a little more confidence about it. Now i think i shouldn't be that much instinctive. Next day i went hack to work and everything got normal.
But Yesterday i found a link to the public repository of the photos. Ohh fuck, someone had took my image! and that was too in full hd!!! 🙈🙈🙈😅😆😆 Oh mann I can't stop looking at that cool stage speaker image, i love it ! I, the shy-est and the most uncool awkward person , present on the stage with a mike, oof , i think i lived my dream !
I hope i could get enough confidence and speaking skills to take a real stage talk next time ( and maybe enough interesting talks and confidence to talk with girls of our office, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )5 -
!rant && anxiousness
So, I applied for several jobs because I started hating my current job and the boss.
On my CV and motivation letter I really only wrote stuff I am confident enough with to show if someone would ask me.
I only have 2.5 years of work experience and a B.Sc.
In 3 days I already got 2 answers out of 3 companys, I applied at, who would like to meet me.
Tomorrow is the first meeting.
Now I am anxious that I might still not live up to my CV or motivation letter although I know that I use the techniques mentioned there daily.
I fear that I might be not as good as they might think now, even feel like I know nothing at all.
I never really believed I would fall in the imposter syndrome trap, but here it is.
Any advice? I really want to find another job and I don't want to screw up the interview because I am too nervous.4 -
G'day lads and lass',
Just jumping in as I seem to have been inactive for a few weeks and thought I'd update those who care, things have sort of taken a steep fall down when it comes to programming, seem to have fallen into a bit of a depression with it as every time I get the urge to do anything, by the time I actually start; I've already just lost interest and have no motivation anymore, so in light I'm taking another break from most things dev related (Might start some super minor and bullshit projects that'll probably be abandoned on github after like 5 commits)
But on the other side things have never been better, just about to finalise purchasing a block of land start building my first house with my fiance and my job has been secured after 6 months of probation, starting to gain traction with starting up my food business and seem to have a lot less 'real life' stress on my shoulders.
That being said I probably will still browse dev rant on the occasion but don't expect anymore half assed rants from me for a fair while..
Plan on throwing some of my already abandoned projects on github for anyone who might want to start picking up the pieces and finish what I never could.
(Don't worry Jilano, I'll never stop wearing the flanny and will still always have a beer in one hand, I'm not going anywhere mate)2 -
First Year in College.
I have been into computers since 9th Standard. What I meant was I could make music, edit images, play and install games after downloading, hack them(change values) using Cheat Engine, make trainers for myself because why type when you can freeze, format computers using a pendrive (trust me, I saved a lot of money) and then finally, make some presentations and send emails.
Now, College begins. Programming in C language. I don't know what the fuck that means. But they say, it's 'essential'.
Enter Professor. "Okay students, we begin with the course on C Language. how many of you know pointers?".
Me: Wow. Sounds cool. But, I don't know anything.
I couldn't love coding. I think I love to code but at the end of the day, I'm a sick Undergraduate who fell in love with a Bass Guitar and Vocals and wants to code for a living. Heavily interested in changing the world and all that stuff but have no motivation and even if I have, I can't give a fuck about it.
Peers are getting medals everywhere. I'm sitting alone in a room learning C. They said, It was 'essential', but they never told me, 'why'.
Not a rant. IDGAF what you think but I'm a failure looking for ways to make a living.6 -
One of the best ways to deal with low motivation is to teach or help others. Being that cool senior who teaches awesome stuff is a huge confidence boost.
-
When the monthly scrum retrospective reaches the 90 minute mark...
You know when people are being stress tested and they break by getting up, run around screaming and ultimately knock themselves unconscious by running into a wall?
That. I felt like doing that.
I swear someone activates some sort of gravity well when these meetings begin because time beings to stretch on and o........n....... while they meetings happen.
I began to list things I think I'd rather be doing than be in that meeting.
1) Tax returns.
2) Prostate exam (not old enough to need one yet but at least I'd be out the meeting).
3) Visiting the dentist.
4) Assembling IKEA furniture.
5) Watching soccer at least they have the decency to give you a break in the middle and I find sports as engaging as a dog turd on the sidewalk.
So bored was I that I began to notice notches and holes in the ceiling tiles and when I remarked upon them others became engrossed in them and began to speculate upon their origins.
I don't know who a speaker is, what department they are from, what product they're working on or what's so important about the algorithm they're working on. There is no context, no explanation and half way through a show and tell I had to check we were still in a show and tell.
I was bored shitless. I actually felt physical pain from boredom, I've not felt that way since I was a child.
I really, really hate that scrum is implemented in this way.
It left me with only half an hour of coding time left and really it sapped my energy and motivation to the point where I just went home early.
Excuse my language, but:
Fucking bloody cunting waste of time, I've had more productive moments in the restroom. They need to piss off or committed seppuku, ideally both. Dante got it wrong the seventh level of hell is this. I'm usually a very calm and balanced individual but yesterday, yesterday I just... Fuck! Argh! Fuck you meeting, fuck you.
If you are the type that schedules meetings like this:
May a thousand Jabberwockies plague your nightmares and be it that the next seventy seven times you lay with a human shall ye experience bitter failure! I hope Cthulhu himself visits his "enlightenment" upon you and you fear sleep henceforth.
I'm bringing a rubix cube or juggling balls into the next meeting so that I can say at least I learned something and it wasn't time wasted.3 -
Ok a quick, short story time.
Might write longer one later.
Few months ago i asked my professor if i could do something to skip all those labs and lectures from "introduction to programming". He agreed, but i have to take tests as well and make a program showing that i can use all of C/C++ functions, syntax required by the subject. After few months I didnt managed to do ANY significant progress. That happens when i dont have any directions, i just get 10 000 000 ideas and 0 motivation to implement them (with that many ideas my mind becomes tangled as well). I can bet that im not the only guy who has a similar issue, but keep in mind my mental situation isnt that great; more about that in the next rant.3 -
My love for you I can't describe it,
so I dont't even try and hide it.
Dev. you are my one true passion
you are always there to teach me a new lesson.
Some missing semicolon;
I have searched for you soo long.
Or was it a wrong indent,
ah f**k it was the missing increment.
Thinking through endless loops
in while, for and even do form,
just that my programs do a little better perform.
You give me the possibility to express myself as who I am and who I want to be,
in so many languages, from java, JS, GO, python and even C.
You give me bugs and issues that I track,
from motivation for you I never lack.
There are projects out there, where I contribute to
oh what a beauty are you.
And now you even bring fun into my life
with devrant, I now know how to survive.
How to survive client meetings and non devs around me,
oh how much stupidity I there see.
Let's exit this small programm of mine, this so called rime,
where I an immutable statement define:
I think about you even when we are not together,
My dearest DEV I will love you forever. -
I need help.
I love software and hardware development but over a period of 4 years now i have lost motivation. I hardly finish anything i have started and if i finish, it's never rewarding.
I also feel like i live a very boring life. Staring at the screen all day and doing very little.
What do you guys do for fun? What activities or books do you read to keep yourselves busy or entertained?
I have been having this desire for someone to love but something makes me think that it's just a reaction to a soul that has lost purpose and only feels like loving someone will be a source of happiness. Luckily, nobody has been available for the mess i have been.
I really admire busy people. People who are passionately working on something they have chosen to do and still have fun.
I think talking to someone about how bad i feel about myself will help a little but what i really need is help on how to restore the motivation i had 4 years ago.
Can someone give me a fun project i can work on? Not for making money but something i will do, learn and feel happy about it.
I will also appreciate if someone can recommend a good book that will help me learn. Get me motivated and also hide me from this reality.
Thank you.1 -
With a nice cup of coffee, you start earlier than your colleagues, you do the hard part that everyone is afraid to touch.
But there is always someone who starts late his day and leave usually the first with a stupid smile.
I'm not the manager, so it's not my responsibility to control this person, I admit seeing this affects my motivation but I don't need to have his load on my plate.
I know that this case is quite common but I needed to rant about it.
#do_your_work_bob5 -
#need_help
Dear all,
I'm trying to make a choice, a choice that won't make me regret it for the few years advanced, I'm in a dilemma, I don't know which MacBook should I get for my everyday life, I currently work as an iOS developer (Learned iOS using all kinds hackintoshes, yeah I never bought a single apple computer, yet), and always have motivation to learn new stuff (from machine learning, to web development, to making games with unity (or whatever engine), hell I even like to design stuff from time to time using Photoshop, sketch, I sometimes do video editing using premiere and after effects), and I yet have to choose which laptop to get, I got only one week to make the choice so...
Here are the options:
The new MacBook Pro 2016 (Touch Bar edition):
Pros: 'Latest' and 'greatest', have thunderbolt ports which makes it (sort of) future proof, TouchId for unlocking the laptop using a fingerprint.
Cons: You need a damn dongle everywhere, no escape key (Which I use for the autocomplete feature in Xcode), and this touch bar (Which I really have no idea if i will ever use it other than the nyan cat app for 5 minutes), plus I heard about battery issues with it (don't know if they resolved it or not), fucking huge trackpad, and no fucking MagSafe!
The previous model MacBook Pro 2015:
Pros: Ports, lots of them, small trackpad (Which you don't have to worry about your palm screwing up your work), and MagSafe! (Which I honestly don't know if it'll make any difference for my usage)
Cons: has old CPU from Haswell generation (I know that it won't feel different, it's just that I like to have parts that are the 'latest')
Now some questions, for people who have the old MacBooks and new MacBooks:
For the ones with old MacBook:
If you were given the choice to replace the old MacBook for the new one for free, would you go for it?
After all this time, how's the battery performance? is it still great from the time you bought it?
Foe the ones with new MacBook:
Does the huge-ass trackpad interfere your work day?
Do you miss magsafe to a point where you really want to throw out the new laptop and go back to previous model?
Did you get used to carry out dongles everywhere?
Did you like the TouchBar? Does it help you in your everyday work? from designing to coding to whatever, do you think that now you can't live without it?
How's the battery performance?
Is programming on it joyable? or the new keyboard and touchpad are just a meh?
Strawpoll to make it easier to vote:
http://www.strawpoll.me/12856510
In addition to that I would love that you guys detail me your experience and answer some questions that I posted above, I would be very, very grateful.2 -
Who are these people?
Who have side projects?
Where do they find the time?
Where do they get the motivation from?
Where do they get ideas from?
My manager recently created an android game as a side project... He also suggested me to have side projects if I wanna grow fast :/
I, wake up, pick up some motivation to finish office work (which I actually like) and it's already evening!
Is something wrong with me?10 -
Lately I take work literally seriously, not due to motivation but due to fear, more on that later, but this is what I think about lately while I'm working
> that line of code should fix it
> oh shit I should've checked logs
> let me check logs
> let me put 10 breakpoints in code and javascript in chrome
> why is this bug not reproducing?
> why I have to work on someone else's spaghetti code?
> this loop iterates over all customers' data I'll just step over it, Oh fuck I resumed
etc etc
I'm feared because where I live, isn't a good place for software developers as there aren't companies which hire, those who hire need ninja developers who complete 1 JIRA Sprint/Phase in 1 day, Here I feel safe as there are people to correct me plus coffee machine -
Me: *tinkering on a webpage that spits out random characters, motivations, themes, and genres for the purpose of short story creation*
Me: Okay, so we have a young girl, with the motivation of The Power of Friendship, the theme of Crime, with the story structure of Dan Harmon, and set in a Fantasy genre.
Coworker: Dan Harmon? Improvise. Wait... A young girl, on a Purge planet who befriends Morty... I mean a young boy from a different universe.
Me: *a minute later* Wait a second, that was an episode of Rick and Morty!!
Coworker: I did that on purpose because you said Dan Harmon.1 -
How do I deal with low motivation ?
I look at other human beings who are doing great in their life, that motivates me enough to beat them in this game of greatness. -
Serverless and death of Programming?!
_TL;DR_
I hate serverless at work, love it at home, what's your advice?
- Is this the way things be from now on, suck it up.
- This will mature soon and Code will be king again.
- Look for legacy code work on big Java monolith or something.
- Do front-end which is not yet ruined.
- Start my own stuff.
_Long Rant_
Once one mechanic told me "I become mechanic to escape electrical engineering, but with modern cars...". I'm having similar feelings about programming now.
_Serverless Won_
All of the sudden everyone is doing Serverless, so I looked into it too, accidentally joined the company that does enterprise scale Serverless mostly.
First of all, I like serverless (AWS Lambda in specific) and what it enables - it makes 100% sense and 100% business sense for 80% of time.
So all is great? Not so much... I love it as independent developer, as it enables me to quickly launch products I would have been hesitant due to effort required before. However I hate it in my work - to be continued bellow...
_I'm fake engineer_
I love programming! I love writing code. I'm not really an engineer in the sense that I don't like hustle with tools and spending days fixing obscure environment issues, I rather strive for clean environment where there's nothing between me and code. Of course world is not perfect and I had to tolerate some amounts of hustle like Java and it's application servers, JVM issues, tools, environments... JS tools (although pain is not even close to Java), then it was Docker-ization abuse everywhere, but along the way it was more or less programming at the center. Code was the king, devOps and business skills become very important to developers but still second to code. Distinction here is not that I can't or don't do engineering, its that it requires effort, while coding is just natural thing that I can do with zero motivation.
_Programming is Dead?!_
Why I hate Serverless at work? Because it's a mess - I had a glimpse of this mess with microservices, but this is way worse...
On business/social level:
- First of all developers will be operations now and it's uphill battle to push for separation on business level and also infrastructure specifics are harder to isolate. I liked previous dev-devops collaboration before - everyone doing the thing that are better at.
- Devs now have to be good at code, devOps and business in many organisations.
- Shift of power balance - Code is no longer the king among developers and I'm seeing it now. Code quality drops, junior devs have too hard of the time to learn proper coding practices while AWS/Terraform/... is the main productivity factors. E.g. same code guru on code reviews in old days - respectable performer and source of Truth, now - rambling looser who couldn't get his lambda configured properly.
On not enjoying work:
- Lets start with fact - Code, Terraform, AWS, Business mess - you have to deal with all of it and with close to equal % amount of time now, I want to code mostly, at least 50% of time.
- Everything is in the air ("cloud computing" after all) - gone are the days of starting application and seeing results. Everything holds on assumptions that will only be tested in actual environment. Zero feedback loop - I assume I get this request/SQS message/..., I assume I have configured all the things correctly in sea of Terraform configs and modules from other repos - SQS queues, environment variables... I assume I taken in consideration tens of different terraform configurations of other lambdas/things that might be affected...
It's a such a pleasure now, after the work to open my code editor and work on my personal React.js app...2 -
!rant
I've got a question for everyone as we are all in the same realm. How do you handle working for a company who provides no motivation, very little challenges, horrible pay, incompetent developers, and completely useless management?
Also, no other opportunities in the area. Literally. So, "change companies" wouldn't really be a viable option.12 -
My university had a Programming Fundamentals course in the first semester and we got assigned this grumpy lady who demanded respect and would always claim she was the best at programming among her colleagues, had an obnoxiously snobbish tone and had a habit of forcing unneeded nonsensical sarcasm everytime one of us stepped up to ask her a question.
She taught C++ and I'm not saying she didn't know her stuff or anything; I respected her regardless (because she was my teacher), but she would mix up C classes in and insist that that was the right way to do it and had no consistent programming style.
Once she got so fed up with our class that just to prove her point that we're all dumb and worthless (she hated us a lot, yeah) that she started explaining binary trees and recursion out of the blue and gave us assignments for them... even though they weren't going to be covered that week. It soon became a shitfest, to be honest.
But on the plus side, because I didn't wanna listen to her lectures I pulled two all-nighters and covered the semester's worth of C++ and started napping in a corner in her class. She never had personal beef with me so I was thankful for that but her being the way she was helped me learn C++ with more motivation and vigor than I normally would have and also let me earn some change because my classmates couldn't understand her classes and wanted me to explain whatever she covered. -
My master thesis is in ramble.
What I thought to be an achievable task in the beginning turns out to be very challenging.
My skill is not up to it.
The assistant prof I worked with is also not very helpful. I thought he's already familiar with the lib I will work with, turns out he's not so I have to study it by myself.
Me : **Asking question A**
Him : **Explaining B, C, D that's not really related to A. My question went unanswered.
Him giving me explanation on things that I already knew**
Me : "How about this code? Can we please focus on the code?!"
Him : **Finally explains the code so I can move forward a little**
Apparently I have to grow fangs and horns to scare people to give me what I want. :/
He and my prof are not in sync about how to solve the task.
They told me that even though I was behind my deadline (30% progress at 50% time), I still have some time before the deadline of the thesis.
The truth is, if I no longer believe that I can solve it, even if they gave me a time extension, it's going to be useless.
My motivation of finishing it is fading away. It's not a subject that I enjoy, the people I work with are not helpful.
I have been in depression for 2 months, and it's taking a toll on my health.
I am seriously considering dropping it and just let go of my master degree. There are many people who can work in IT even though they don't have proper formal education eh?5 -
Note: In this rant I will ask for advices, and confess some sins. I will tell my personal story- it will be long.
So basically it has been almost 2 years since I first entered the world of software development. It has been the biggest and most important quest of my life so far, but yet I feel like I missed a lot of my objectives, and lots of stuff did not go the way I wanted them to be, and it makes feel frustrated and it lowered my self esteem greatly. I feel confused and a bit depressed, and don't know what to do.
I'll start: I'm 23 years old. 2 years ago I was still a soldier(where I live there is a forced conscription law) in a sysadmin/security role. I grew tired of the ops world and got drawn more and more into programming. A tremendous passion became to burn in me, as I began to write small programs in Python and shell scripts. I wanted to level up more seriously so I started reading programming books and got myself into a 10 month Java course.
In the meanwhile I got released from army duty and got a job as a security sysadmin at a large local telco company. Job was boring and unchallenging but it payed well. I had worked there for 1 year and at the same time learned more and more stuff from 2 best friends who have been freelance developers for years. I have learned how to build full-stack mobile apps and some webdev, mainly Android and Node.js. However because I was very inexperienced and lacked discipline, all of my side projects failed horribly, and all attempts to work with my experienced friends have failed too- I feel they lost a lot of trust for me(they don't say it, but I feel it, maybe I'm wrong).
I began to realise I had to leave this job and seek a developer job in order to get better, and my wish came true 6 months ago when I finally got accepted into a startup as a fullstack webdev, for a bit lower wage but I felt it was worth it. I was overjoyed.
But now my old problems did not end, they just changed. My new job is a thousand times harder and more intensive than the old one. I feel like it sucks all the energy and motivation that was still left in me, and I have learned almost nothing in my free time, returning home exhausted. My bosses are not impressed from my work despite me being pretty junior level, and I feel like I'm in a vicious cycle that keeps me from advancing my abilities. My developer friends I mentioned earlier have jobs like I do and still manage to develop very impressive side projects and even make a nice sum of money from them, while I can't even concetrate on stupid toy projects and learning.
I don't know why It is like this. I feel pathetic and ashamed of my developer sins and lack of discipline. During that time I also gained some weight that I'm trying t lose now... I know not all of it is my fault but it makes me feel like crap.
Sorry for the long story. I just feel I need to spill it out and hope to get some advices from you guys who may or may not have similar experiences. Thanks in advance for reading this.2 -
I'm so down that i didn't see the red circle with the cross to add a rant...
Why is that? Because several month ago i began a job with all my motivation & optimistic mood.
I was so glad that a compagny payed attention to my profil that it was the best day of my life. I wanted to improve myself and learn!
At this point i did'nt know yet that i will began to work with assholes.
In this fantastic world, designers are kings and you have to do magic to adapt one of their stupid static design on web.
Because the suprem king is the client and designs are validated.
And don't even ask for an fonctionel analysis they will laught at you!
I did everything that i could do to make things work, fast and good. One time i managed the end of a project all by my self (like said once Celine Dion). I maked the work of my colegue who was on holiday because she left with unfinished work. She said to me "it's easy". She liked to say that i maked lost her time because of my questions and that i need to search the answer by myself & work more and more and more. So i worked, day & night because i didn't have enough time. And other thing is that some persons loved to say "if you don't do that someone will need to do that for you"!
I'm a junior developer and i had acces to staging and prod environements and crashed it both several time... I needed to develope in one year the experience of a senior developer.
Every thing is my fault because i need to pay attention to things that i ignore.
Today i'm not glad, i learned a few things but can't remembered it because things went o fast for me and i can't memorized everithing. All i know is that i'm just happy to still be able to get out from bed.3 -
I honestly think the hardest thing as a developer is to find people who will contribute to a proj nothing against people preoccupied just saying if anyone wants to help they can but back to the main point I also think that motivation is hard thats why I am so grateful for the devrant community
-
Who else is frustrated/burnout at building products that never gets into production?
When I work for a company I always tend to do everything with good practices, spend a lot of time thinking on the best ways to build x feature, and then the company falls into the infinite loop of adding stupid features, and then I've been working for 2 years and 0 paid customers. Funny that we've Sentry, GA, Hotjar sitting there doing nothing.
I'm honestly hating the startup environment rn. Good thing is that I've learnt a lot and salary is good. But also I lost all motivation.
Any recommendations for a tired dev?7 -
A web dev newsletter that's targeted at "advanced beginners" (people who are done with FCC/Codeacademy etc courses and have nowhere else to go). It's ready and stuff but there's just not enough motivation to keep at it consistently 😂
-
I'm a beginner web developer - and I've run out of motivation / inspiration.
I'm a lazy teen who wants to be a web developer. Everyone and then I will start some project - and probably never finish it 100%. These last weeks I am really out of motivation or inspiration to do anything. I've learned a lot of things and I want to make something, I wanna test my skills. So - is there any place I can seek for inspiration on Front end web development? Or just if you need some help with any front end project - contact me.10 -
Dear fellow ranters, what do you guys do to stay motivated while developing projects?
I've recently figured out that whenever I'm developing on a large project I get side tracked a lot and eventually lose motivation to continue on it. A couple of possible reasons are:
- a jerk faced incompetent client who makes unreasonable requests
- redundancy in features that will hardly ever be used but are a must according to the bullwhack of a boss
- front-end dev on some design which looks like a shit pit of vomit and puss due to having no designer or someone more competent in it
There are plenty of reasons left to be named but those are my biggest.1 -
Right guys and gals, I need your opinions.
Recently was approached by a recruiter who thought I’d be a good fit for a role, a role that is a step up from senior dev but without moving into people / project management.
More like a bridge between architects and senior devs.
I thought what the hell, why not. So I agreed to go for it.
It could be quite a decent payrise (though that wasn’t my motivation for going for it) and I like the idea of doing more mentoring, design and research than I do now. It would involve stuff like learning new tech, coming up with examples and implementations of how the dev team need to use it to churn out user stories.
For the last few years I’ve been mainly a back end developer, which didn’t start by choice and I always liked to be full stack.
But the recruitment process for this role has been quite slow (number of reasons) and since then I’ve been given a new piece of work at my current employer doing some greenfield angular work, plus the c# back end.
I’m really, really enjoying this angular work. Haven’t done it for a while and it feels great to get back into it. Seem to be picking it back up with no problems, like the old magic is still there.
Also the money at my current place is good enough.
So now I’m wondering if I should bail on this other role in favour of seeing this out and maybe going back to being full stack (tho for reasons I’ll outline below in the long term that might have to be elsewhere)
But I’m also trying to remind myself that up until enjoying this work there’s a reason I decided to go for this other role.
Current place is a small company that has no project management process. It’s chaos, and everything’s an emergency. There are no requirements for anything, not enough people etc. No one has a clue how to run an IT project.
The one thing we do have is good development practices in our team and we have been greenfield for the last 12 months working on a new product. But we do tend to be pigeon holed into looking after a specific service/area.
But this new place if I got the role, is a bigger company (I’ve worked in small, medium and massive companies so I know what the difference is like), they’re a household name, they have resources for learning, putting people through aws certs, etc. They give people time each week to invest in themselves. Much more agile.
And thinking about it now you don’t often see a role that allows you to ‘move up’ without having to take on people/project management and still having time to be hands on.
(Just maybe more hands on with strategic work than delivering user stories for business as usual)
So just in general, what do you think? -
Hi guys,
I got myself stuck in a studentjob, where I have to do whatever I am told 😥.
We have a 10-minute survey for (former) Ingress players about the Motivation to play the game.
bitly.com/Ingress2017
I would appreciate everyone who takes part and gets me closer to the end of my work time (18h remaining 😕).
If you know people who played Ingress for some time, I would appreciate it if you could share the survey with them.2 -
Blessed with a best boss and the worst client! Literally got a fucking rude and stupid client, who often tries to mock developers in the team, but got a great boss who saves your ass like a pro and doesn't let your self confidence and motivation crash at any point of time!
-
So I’ve been recording the same project into dr who bullshit meets the invasion of the body snatchers
If I were sleeping and motivated to finish something some bastardized people would steal it would be so simple to keep progressing through it and it would be contributed allowing people to write their implementations to parse and index Gis formats and integrate a lot of valuable data regarding travel and survivable conditions
Except for all the above mentioned bs which cuts my goddamn motivation down to next to nothing
And no one else seems to see a problem with this across the goddamn board because the pods already sucker their innards out13 -
I have a stable day job of IT administration.
But since college years have been enthusuastic about open source. Lately learnd Python and did well with job profile related simple tweaks and hacks. Mostly self taught lone wolf, dont have corporate development experience.
I keep reading and Courses cant see bigger picture, where I am heading? How far i can go with this?
Any suggestion, motivation, criticism, someone who have been in similiar situation. Most welcome3