Definitely gonna try this on a co-worker one day.

My vague naive extreme understanding of interview questions are on a spectrum from situation a to situation b.

But what should the industry be doing? Is the industry just going wrong blindly copying big N companies hiring process without the same rationale? (e.g. they need computer scientists able to deal with problems specific to them at their size and that often means creating new tech, unreal problem solving abilities and cuh-rayzee knowledge)

a) stupid fucking theoretical shit that some people argue you won't ever need to be doing in practice for most companies, while giving you no ability to google, leetcode hard problems kind of stuff

b) practical work similar to what you'd be doing on the job, small bugs, tasks, pair programming on site with your potential future coworkers

Lots of people hate option a because it's puzzle/problem solving that isn't always closely related to what's on the job. Whiteboarding is arguably very much a separate skill. (Arguably unless it's like a big N company where you want computer scientists to deal with specific problems that aren't seen elsewhere, and you're making new tech to deal with your specific problems.)

We could go to the extreme of Option b, but it tends to trigger people into shitfits of "NO, HOW DARE YOU MAKE ME DO REAL WORK, BUT NOT PAY ME FOR IT AT THE INTERVIEW STAGE"

That's before we get into how to execute option b whether or not it's being given as a take home assignment (which is a huge pain in the ass and time sink, among other issues) vs a few hours at the potential workplace working with some of the future potential coworkers and soaking in the work environment (you have to figure out how to take the time off then)

Is it really just poor execution overall for the wrong use cases for the majority of the industry? What should the industry be doing in which cases.

Then this is all before HR screening with shit like where they might ask for more years of swift experience than its existed.

Note: I had AI rephrase this because apparently it was too full of swearing or smth to be accepted and I was getting a "there was an error posting this rant". Nice that people at devrant's can't even show a clear error of WTF is going on, not even in chrome dev tool console/network requests, so maybe you're able to figure out WTF is going on and fix your post. They must be the same kind of people I'm ranting about.

-----------End of the note.----------------
TL;DR;: My coworkers are smart idiots that learn fast but can't control themselves into turning any project into a trashcan of spaghetti code and I'm burning out and want to switch for couple years to a simpler job.

I'm considering leaving my career in programming, consulting, and project management in favor of a more straightforward, manual labor job—perhaps something like baking or another role that relies on physical effort rather than constant problem solving.

I’ve reached a point where I can no longer tolerate the challenges of my current position, especially due to the dynamics with my coworkers. I long for a day where I can work for eight hours, exhaust myself physically, and then go home without any lingering mental responsibilities or ties to complex problem solving.

Over the past decade, I’ve collaborated with many people, yet I've only had the opportunity to manage an entire project from scratch on my own twice. In those rare instances, everything ran smoothly, issues were quickly resolved, and the code remained stable for years without constant complaints from clients.

Unfortunately, my coworkers, despite their intelligence, tend to overcomplicate even simple tasks. They often fall into the trap of overengineering, chasing the latest technologies and implementing unnecessarily complex paradigms, design patterns, frameworks, and techniques—even when I’ve offered simpler, proven solutions.

For example, I’ve built robust portals that handle everything from national highway finances and warehousing to HR and inventory management for major companies. In contrast, when others attempt similar projects, the resulting code becomes overwhelmingly complex and difficult to manage.

To give a few specific examples:

Example 1: The .NET Portal
We began developing a .NET portal about two months ago, which is now nearing version 1.0. Before we even started, the team had created multiple flowcharts to split the project into components like SaaS deployment, Docker integration, obfuscation, and separate portals for user administration and backend processes. Within a few weeks, they scrutinized and debated numerous authentication technologies—even though we had successfully implemented JWT token solutions in the past. The team continually shifts focus, leaving me uncertain about the final direction.

Example 2: Over-Engineering with Patterns
In another project, the team overused inversion of control (IoC) and mediation patterns, even going so far as to have an AI generate a custom message bus. Navigating this overly decoupled code is challenging; even Visual Studio’s IntelliSense struggles to provide guidance, and the code often feels like a puzzle that changes whenever I return from a break.

Example 3: Complicated Logging Implementation
We needed to add logging functionality, and I proposed a simple solution using custom exceptions that would bubble up to a central logging mechanism. Despite its past success in saving time and reducing frustration, the team decided to implement three different logging methods—one using .NET’s ILogger, another with Serilog, and a third hybrid approach. They even suggested using a rarely seen technique involving stack traces to determine which function threw an error. This approach added unnecessary complexity and only increased my frustration.

Now, even though the project is too far along for me to withdraw, I find myself feeling burned out just a few days back at work. The code has become a tangled mess, and even routine tasks like adding logging are turning into sources of intense frustration due to constantly shifting ideas and overly complicated designs.

On top of all this, I’m also disappointed with the performance of AI tools, which seem to be producing unreliable code that requires further fixes, compounding my frustration.

I’m now seriously contemplating a complete career change—perhaps even moving to a country with a better work environment, such as Denmark or Switzerland—in the hope of finding a job where the work is more straightforward and less mentally taxing and better paying

#Suphle Rant 6: Deptrac, phparkitect

This entry isn't necessarily a rant but a tale of victory. I'm no more as sad as I used to be. I don't work as hard as I used to, so lesser challenges to frustrate my life. On top of that, I'm not bitter about the pace of progress. I'm at a state of contentment regarding Suphle's release

An opportunity to gain publicity presented itself last month when cfp for a php event was announced last month. I submitted and reviewed a post introducing suphle to the community. In the post, I assured readers that I won't be changing anything soon ie the apis are cast in stone. Then php 7.4 officially "went out of circulation". It hit me that even though the code supports php 8 on paper, it's kind of a red herring that decorators don't use php 8 attributes. So I doubled down, suspending documentation.

The container won't support union and intersection types cuz I dislike the ambiguity. Enums can't be hydrated. So I refactored implementation and usages of decorators from interfaces to native attributes. Tried automating typing for all class properties but psalm is using docblocks instead of native typing. So I disabled it and am doing it by hand whenever something takes me to an unfixed class (difficulty: 1). But the good news is, we are php 8 compliant as anybody can ask for!

I decided to ride that wave and implement other things that have been bothering me:
1) 2 commands for automating project setup for collaborators and user facing developers (CHECK)
2) transferring some operations from runtime to compile/build TIME (CHECK)
3) re-attempt implementing container scopes

I tried automating Deptrac usage ie adding the newly created module to the list of regulated architectural layers but their config is in yaml, so I moved to phparkitect which uses php to set the rules. I still can't find a library for programmatically updating php filed/classes but this is more dynamic for me than yaml. I set out to implement their library, turns out the entire logic is dumped into the command class, so I can neither control it without the cli or automate tests to it. I take the command apart, connect it to suphle and run. Guess what, it detects class parents as violations to the rule. Wtflyingfuck?!

As if that's not bad enough, roadrunner (that old biatch!) server setup doesn't fail if an initialization script fails. If initialization script is moved to the application code itself, server setup crumbles and takes the your initialization stuff down with it. I ping the maintainer, rustacian (god bless his soul), who informs me point blank that what I'm trying to do is not possible. Fuck it. I have to write a wrapper command for sequentially starting the server (or not starting if initialization operations don't all succeed).

Legitimate case to reinvent the wheel. I restored my deleted decorators that did dependency sanitation for me at runtime. The remaining piece of the puzzle was a recursive film iterator to feed the decorators. I checked my file system reader for clues on how to implement one and boom! The one I'd written for two other features was compatible. All I had to do was refactor decorators into dependency rules, give them fancy interfaces for customising and filtering what classes each rule should actually evaluate. In a night's work (if you're discrediting how long writing the original sanitization decorators and directory iterator), I coupled the Deptrac/phparkitect library of my dreams. This is one of the those few times I feel like a supreme deity

Hope I can eat better and get some sleep. This meme is me after getting bounced by those three library rejections