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Rant
Why do shithead clients think they can walk away without paying us once we deliver the project !!!
So, here goes nothing..
Got an online gig to create a dashboard.
Since i had to deal with a lot of shitheads in the past, I told them my rules were simple, 20% advance, 40% on 50% completion and 40% after i complete and send them proof of completion. Once i receive the payment in full, only then i will hand over the code.
They said it was fine and paid 20%.
I got the next 40% also without any effort but they said they also needed me to deploy the code on their AWS account, and they were ready to pay extra for it, so i agreed.
I complete the whole project and sent them the screenshots, asking for the remaining 40% payment. They rejected the request saying my work was not complete as i had not deployed on AWS yet. After a couple of more such exchanges, i agreed to setup their account before the payment. But i could sense something fishy, so i did everything on their AWS account, except registered the domain from my account and set up everything. Once i inform them that its done and ask for the remaining payment.
The reply i got was LOL.
I tried to login to the AWS account, only to find password had been changed.
Database access revoked.
Even my admin account on the app had been removed. Thinking that they have been successful, they even published ads about thier NEW dashboard to their customers.
I sent them a final mail with warning ending with a middle finger emoji. 24 hours later,
I created a github page with the text " This website has been siezed by the government as the owner is found accused in fraud" and redirected the domain to it. Got an apology mail from them 2 hours later begging me to restore the website. i asked for an extra 10% penalty apart from the remaining payment. After i got paid, set an auto-reply of LOL to thier emails and chilled for a week before restoring the domain back to normal.
Dev : 1
Shithead Client: 025 -
Storytime!
Manager: Hey fullstackchris, the maps widget on our app stopped working recently...
Dev: (Skeptical, little did he know) Sigh... probably didn't raise quota or something stupid... Logs on to google cloud console to check it out...
Google Dashboard: Your bill.... $5,197 (!!!!!!) Payment method declined (you think?!)
Dev: 😱 WTF!?!?!! (Calls managers) Uh, we have HUGE problem, charges for $5000+ in our google account, did you guys remove the quota limits or not see any limit reached warnings!?
Managers: Uh, we didn't even know that an API could cost money, besides, we never check that email account!
Dev: 🤦♂️ yeah obviously you get charged, especially when there have literally been millions of requests. Anyway, the bigger question is where or how our key got leaked. Somewhat started hammering one of the google APIs with one of our keys (Proceeds to hunt for usages of said API key in the codebase)
Dev: (sweating 😰) did I expose an API key somewhere? Man, I hope it's not my fault...
Terminal: grep results in, CMS codebase!
Dev: ah, what do we have here, app.config, seems fine.... wait, why did they expose it to a PUBLIC endpoint?!
Long story short:
The previous consulting goons put our Angular CMS JSON config on a publicly accessible endpoint.
WITH A GOOGLE MAPS API KEY.
JUST CHILLING IN PLAINTEXT.
Though I'm relieved it wasn't my fault, my faith in humanity is still somewhat diminished. 🤷♂️
Oh, and it's only Monday. 😎
Cheers!9 -
And then one day you wake up and discover that your first boss,
the one who hired you when you had no experience
who believed in you when nobody else did
and also paid you a full decent payment when the rest of the world tried to pay you less than half the amount
who taught you a lot about the business and even when you disagreed, it was impossible to get angry because he was calm and gentle always
and treated you so many lunches and dinners
…was beaten and killed by a former colleague…
I have no words…
Sayonara 👋 boss
I will miss you so much on this Earth 😢4 -
Ahhhhh devrant... long time no see.
I just need to get something off my heart. The past two years, I worked for the same ISP in Germany, but now as a devops engineer. Well, popo hit the fan really quick lately..
First a good friend, team lead for one of five areas in Germany, quit his job. He was one of the nicest persons I knew, and he believed that all that five areas should work together and share dev resources. Thats why I work mostly in other areas as developer.
Shortly after, his deputy quit as well. I heard that this specific area, the management were a bunch of dicks, but wow!
A short while later, I learnd the hard truth, why those two good friends quit, and that brings me to this story. In a meeting I readied myself up to present my new plattform - a social room - to management. I got a lot of positive feedback from others and we thaught managment would approve of the project. But nope. "We can buy from external, we dont need to program ourselfs. In fact lets stop spending money on internal programming, we should outsource everything!"
I was baffeld... Wtf did i just witness? My team lead didn't say anything, and afterwards I didn't dare to question it, but I told most of my close dev friends and we all realizied, that the rumors were true... We will be shifting into project managment.
At this point, I realized that I wasnt having it, and made a linkedIn account, not because I wanted to switch jobs, but because, meh you never know.
One week ago, one of my bestest buddies said he will quit and join his team lead that left eariler this year, I was heartbroken. Me and our other buddy are devestated, because now we have to do everything he had done. Management didn't listen as we told them that nobody can maintain his code. I have so many projects, I can bearly keep up with them. Now I got a lead role for creating the server infrastucture for a huge project my buddy was working on. Only as specialist and not PM, but his Team Lead thinks I am replacing him!
Last week I got a message on LinkedIn, a consulting firm reached out to me to aquire me as a new consultant or devops engineer. They look great, only less vacation (26 instead of 30 days), 40h shifts instead of 38h and only slightly more base payment. I currently receive about 53.000€ a year, the new firm only grants up to 60.000€ a year for anyone. Otherwise, they look great.
With all my buddies quitting around me, work getting more while time developing decreasing, I don't know what the right thing to do is... There is no way I can get a payment increase in my current position. I always say "my workplace is save, but my work isnt". I don't want to do project managment.
Today I have a meeting with my team lead, she is really nice btw. This is an annual meeting where we discuss my future in the company etc. Shortly after, I have a meeting with the new firm to discuss a bunch of questions I have.
I dont know what to do...
Edit: I missed you, devrant7 -
Went in, done everything perfectly, they want me in… cool.
“We know you have a 2 months notice, but could you boil it down to 2 weeks?”
“I uh… no… not really, I have tasks to pass and I doubt the company would like me to just rush out like that…”
“Come on, just stop working and tell them to fire you”
“I… no? I told you I have an important role it would be irresponsible to just leave like that… assuming they want me out that bad…”
“Okay then give notice and we’ll send you the contract”
1 week later, fortunately I didn’t give the notice
“Aaaah regarding the contract… we are postponing it for 4 months cause we needed 2 roles and we decided to hire the other role as we wait”
2 months and a half later, still didn’t give notice cause the postponing was a red flag
“Aaah sorry buddy the budget is not enough but we have to wait 3 more months cause investors moved the payment to January”
Never heard from them again… fortunately I didn’t give the notice and I started to search another job after the 2 months and a half thing.
Remember: until the contract is signed, nothing is set in stone.11 -
I'm a tech lead for a digital agency.
Digital agencies are universally known for being shite. Why? Because they typically push through sub-optimal code with very little testing over tiny deadlines for maximum profit. Maybe I've just had bad experiences but this is the 5th digital agency that I've worked at that does this bollocks.
I am currently sitting on a Teams call at 8:39pm because the fuckwit project/account managers are unable to face up to the big scary client and ask them terrifying questions like "Is this bug a blocker for the deployment?" or "We don't have enough time to fix/change these things, can we delay another day?". They just assume that A - We will work into the evening, and B - that all the issues are P1 and that we should all 'pull together' as 'team players' to get this done in time.
No, Me and my team have to work into the evening for seemingly free because these pricks can't do their jobs properly.
The funniest thing of all? When I speak to the CTO about overtime payment he tries to make me feel bad about "we don't typically pay for overtime..."
Fuck Everyone.
Time to find a new contract.11 -
I built our slack bot messages so that they are prefixed in BIG LETTERS with whatever system they originate from, i.e.:
"DEVELOP: You are a useless product manager"
"STAGING: You are a useless product manager"
"PRODUCTION: You are a useless product manager"
One of these is when a payment is made on our platform. Our lovely product manager proceeds to message me, "did you just trigger a payment in the test system?".
YES, OBVIOUSLY I DID SEEING AS THE MESSAGE HAS THE GIANT WORD "STAGING" IN FRONT OF IT!!!
https://lmgtfy.app/?q=how+to+read1 -
So I've got my first sort of proper gig. I'm tasked with writing...
A goddamn minecraft plugin in java.
Well, it's actually rather fun strangely enough. My ideas of payment were not declined but rather accepted, the other devs are nice and everything is going well for now.
Also: Do expect a mental breakdown post next week or so8 -
I love getting a fucking email for every fucking change, instead of getting a list of desired changes.
You know what? Fuck this, I'm tired of being the nice guy, I'm not even getting paid for this, and you expect me to do it expediently on a Sunday. I'm done, you can find someone else to piss off for free.2 -
Follow up to: https://devrant.com/rants/5047721/....
1- The attacker just copy pasted its JWT session token and jammed requests on the buy gift cards route
2- The endpoint returns the gift card to continue the payment process, but the gift card is already valid
3- Clients wants only to force passwords to have strong combinations
4- Talk about a FIREWALL? Only next month
5- Reduce the token expiration from 3 HOURS to 10 minutes? Implement strong passwords first
6- And then start using refresh tokens
BONUS: Clearly someone from inside that worked for them, the API and database password are the same for years. And the route isn't used directly by the application, although it exists and has rules that the attacker kows. And multiple accounts from legit users are being used, so the person clearly has access to some internal shit7 -
Today another story in this stupid company:
A freelancer created a feature to pay orders online . It took him 3 months (!)
Problem: sometimes people pay, but orders are not stored. Every morning, it takes 1 hour to check in db if the orders are stored, and if not, create them manualy
Yes, orders are created after payment.
Manager wants to fix it by creating the order before the payment, in 3 days (!)
Turns out that the freelancer has written a lot of obsolete code, I now have to clean up. 3 fucking months vs 3 fucking days!
And on top, the shoppingcart was stored in localstorage! (Already fixed by now)
Fuck this, I'm getting another wodka4 -
so... not really a rant because i'm happy to be in the long-term zenlike state where i don't really give a fuck about anything anymore, but...
so today's my birthday (thanks in advance for all the semi-mandatory "cheers" reactions and such)
the agency i do temp jobs through sends money weekly (for the one week back) (which is the main and only reason i use them). they arrive at friday 12:25, so that's when i know to go "check" by withdrawing it, and it's also awesome because it's the best time to provide funds to reward myself (by booze/weed) at the end of the week.
last week, nothing came in. i called them and learned it was due to the contact person in the company i did job in being too late on sending the agency list of people who showed up at the work, i was told it's gonna arrive one week later together with the proper payment for the week-1,so effectively i was one week without any money (literally), but on the next week double was going to arrive, which is nice.
that next week of double was now. i found out that no double arrived, only single-value payment. i called them to ask why.
i was told that what arrived was the late payment, and the dude in company was again late with sending the presence list, so the other payment, for the proper week's work, will be a week late again.
so... that kinda ruined my financial planning tor tge week that's going to happen.
i guess my point (if i have any) is... funny how when someone fucks up, there's nobody for me to be angry at and hold responsible in any way, but when i have delays in my work due to delays upstream, nobody gives a shit about my excuses and it's my fault and i should have compensated, it was my responsibility and duty, and me not doing it (to my own detriment, for someone else) is me failing.
funny how the subjective dynamics of the world always somehow works out in a way where everyone else fucks up and i either have to suck it up and be okay with it otherwise i'm a selfish unreliable entitled asshole, or suck it up and extinguish their fire for them, otherwise i'm a selfish unreliable entitled asshole XD
anyone else noticed this in their life?
how does it work? what is the factor that decides whether you're in the "suck it up" class or the "fuck it, someone else will suck it up" class?
doesn't seem to (just) be the money(flow), i've seen this thing happen even in situations where the money/client dynamics were flowing the opposite way to what would be natural for the shit fall direction.4 -
Hey! This is a followup to my last story.
TL;DR: I thinking of quitting my old job, got an offer at a startup, about the same pay, but much better working conditions.
First of all, the meeting with my lead. It was a performance report on her side to me, and I got 100 to 110% in performance in all points. My lead said "this team without you wouldn't be this team anymore" - which makes me feel a little bit bad for her if I decide to quit. She is a great team lead, but I don't belive the old company is worth my time anymore.
Now to the new company. Shortly after that performance report meeting, I had a call with the ceo, and what do I have to say besides: What a cool dude. He listened to me, asked me questions about my previous jobs (not just as programmer) and so on. But because first looks are deceiving, I went to their office last thursday. And wow. Their are exactly what I imagined them to be. Cool, young folks, 100% tech enthusiasts, and open minded.
One of the new hires in the new company wanted a 6 months internship between his studies. Instead they offered him a full time job - for the 6 months. They even offered me to pay back my scholarship that I will own my old company for leaving early. This is awesome.
The only things that will be worse than my old job are, that I have to negotiate payment instead of yearly increases, 4 days less paid vacation, so only 26 days, and 40h weeks. And they have no workers council, which isn't good, but it's not the worst either.
I got them fixed on 57.000€, not including an up to 10.000€ annual bonus. The way you achieve your bonus seems good to. It's split in two parts, internal and external bonus. Internal bonus is when you engage with internal events like tech calls, sharing your knowledge on your main IT topics, etc. External Bonus is a bit more complicated, but also straight forward. You work on projects for customers, and if you have less than 3 weeks a year that you dont participate in an project, you get the full bonus.
Last friday, I filed a request for a certificate of employment from my current team lead, this is odd for her because I have never done it before, and she asked why I requested it. I said to her that we can talk about it, and she agreed but didn't call me, yet.
Lastly, another good friend of mine will be employed by my team soon, but for a fraction of the payment that I currently receive! He is doing the exact same work, and even worse, he is doing project managment for his main developer project too! And is getting less paid... I just cant...
Yesterday we needed to update a few cloud instances, the only other person who knows about setting up CICD and our OpenShift Containers than me is only in part time and works two days a week, his trainee didn't know anything, so it's up to me. This isn't hard or anything, but it shows that this system our mangement maintains will fail soon, maybe even with me going? I sure hope so tbh.
One of you guys said, I should go to my team lead and negotiate a higher pay, but the truth is, that because we are a big ISP we have an collective agreement for payment and are grouped by tasks (which is bull shit btw, because I'm doing tasks much higher paid than currently). This also means that I cannot simply jump in another group, and can only increase my current pay to about 115%, which is done automatically every year by 5% up to 115%. Anything above is considered extra, but I don't think they will go with it.
I will decide this week about my future at the old company, but I really don't know what to do...2 -
Well....this shit again
This morning or technical manager calls me in his office and says he needs to discus something
sits me down and started talking about a project he needs
A school management system says he presented some demos at the client yesterday but they didn't really like options at the table
Manager: So can you get us something really quick?
Me: Well... what's the time line?
Manager: They needed this like yesterday!
Me: Aaaah....well i think i can have something by 2moro morning
Manager: Aaah! No!.... 2moro it's too late need something like fast
Me: Ok so will look for some online solutions and open source projects
Me:.....
Opens browser, opens github, download project, runs project
project isnt looking good enough
starts designing UI
Manager:
downloads a system
installes
runs
closes
reopens
meet with a "Buy to continue using system" message
calls me
Manager: this was just a demo now it needs payment what should we do
Me: I'll come up with something by 2moro1 -
Just fucking hate how expensive and hard to find a cheap SMS gateway
And as in cheap, I mean cheap as send email
I found Cheap Global SMS and it doesn't have a professional website nor a good API but it is way more cheap
Downside? I must pay with a payment gateway made by the same company (coincidence?)
And NO WAY I'm sending my id to a payment gateway that no one uses
I'll try sending some random image to see if they accept it
But, still, no confidence to put my credit card in there3 -
Why when adding payment method (debit card) in Google Play it requires home address?
Why i need shipment address for a digital app?3 -
I have a task:
Make a feature to gather donates at web site through debit cards and e.t.c.
Additional conditions:
There is no company to register the payment gateway.
U need to find the one that would agree to work with physical person in Russia.
It needs to accept payments in USD and EURO worldwide.1 -
Hey guys I need an interview tip here.
I applied to this payment processing company as an android dev. I completed almost all of the stages, they gave very positive feedback and tomorrow is the last stage (30min talk with their CTO from USA, who's been in his company for 18 years).
They told me that he wont ask many questions and he will just try to scan me and figure out the vibe. Mind that the main company is in USA and company where I'm applying is in Europe. So I guess this is a final test to see how good I'm in english in terms of speaking? Jokes on them I worked in 3 startups in Europe and I can speak better than most of my peers who never left my country lol.
What kind of questions should I ask HIM? I am able to leave a good impression, but I would also appreciate any tips on how to deal with this better. Apparently I will need to communicate with this guy from time to time in the future, as he is the head of our project.9 -
FX [ Tries to pay online bill using PayPal.. ]
"Payment failed" said their website. ( When I say, said, I mean, flashed on the screen for 1/50th of a second.. )
Only "PayPal" had other ideas and gave them money anyhow..
No problem, I'll just message the customer service folk and get it sorted in a jiffy..
4 weeks later..
First they said Payments take up to 7 working days to action..
Yet previously when I've paid not via Paypal, it took half an hour to show up in my account, not 7 days..
Anyhow, we wait 7 days..
Still nothing, so another message ( They don't appear to have an email address, so you have to use an online form, which limits how much you can type into its little box.. )
During these exchanges I include all the data on my PayPal payment, and each time they seem to ignore that..
First they say they can't find such a payment.
Then they say they are looking more closely and their "PayPal" department will be looking into it.
They still can't find it..
Could I provide a screenshoot of my PayPal payment, sure, but since its hard to send them attachments, I had to stick it on a website and give them a URL instead. ( Hopefully that is not too technical for them.. )
Now waiting to see if they can find it..
If not, I guess one can ask PayPal to get the money back, right ?
I've not had to do that before..
How difficult is that going to be ! ?1 -
One of our previous clients is not paying the rest of the payments after receiving the codes. What are the things we can/should do digitally to make them pay the payment?
btw, it was a web app. we worked on the front end and the backend of the app. So, naturally we know all the API endpoints, we have the database access, and so on. So yeah, we can do so many things.
But still I wanna ask you guys, what would you do to make someone pay?3
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