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Ask questions during interview.
Ask about trainings - it's usually a good sign when company offers training budget. Ask about specifics - sometimes it's a shared pluralsight account, and nothing else, which means that that had an idea and half assed it into existence.
Ask tech recruiter about overtime, a good sign is when they have no idea or say that it must be budgeted and scheduled - it means that it does not happen often.
Ask if it is possible to select and change projects, and how often it happens - if often, it may be bad low level management, or people learning new things and jumping between projects.
Also make sure to ask about rules for promotions and pay rises. Good company wił have a clear set of rules in place.
All of the above apply to mid to large companies.
For small company, i'm sure it will be different.3 -
After a long time just reading your posts, here's my first post:
Just for clarification: I'm studying electrical engineering in Germany. During your time at university, you have to work half a year as a intern to get some practical experience. So I'm in a position where I mainly have to say "yes" to work that is given to me. Also I'm working with a lot of PLC programmers, so I'm nearly the only one who programs non-PLC stuff at the department.
But now it's time for my rant (and also my most satisfying optimization ever). In the job interview for the internship, my task at the company was described as C# programmer. I only programmed C and Python before, but C# looked interesting and so I learned C# from ground up in the summer before the internship. I quite liked it and I was really happy on my first day of work. Then I was greeted with this message: "I know you are hired as C# programmer, but could you please look into this VBA program, it takes 55 seconds until it finishes its task and that's to slow". So I (midly angry because I had to do VBA and not C#) started the program and it was really horribly slow (it just created a table with certain contents from a very big imported symbol file). I then opened up the source code and immideately saw bad code. The guy who wrote it basically just clicked on the macro recording button and used the recorded mouse clicks in the source code. The code was like: Click on cell A1 -> copy cell A1 -> move to sheet XY -> click on cell A2 -> paste copied stuff and so on... I never 'programmed' in VBA before, so I used my knowledge of 'real' programming languages to do this task. After using some arrays and for-loops, which did not iterate over all the 1.000.000 unused cells after the last used one, the program took only 3 seconds after it finished the new table! Everybody was quite impressed, which led to much more VBA optimization... That was clearly not my goal haha :)9 -
Look i have new space for new sticker
Hmmp
Im thinking devRant sticker would be there.
Help me to reach this post 20 +++
1 like = 1 prayer
Haha
😂😂😂
10 -
Before new years eve I prepared a sheet on google sheets that allowed people to add drink recipes and order drinks (specify how many of each drink they want), calculated part of budget each person had to cover and generated shopping list of drink components with exact amounts needed.
It was more fun to make that thing than to attend the party.2 -
Welcome to PLC development! Your first thing to do is find out whta these dozen global variables do that are used by several tasks in odd places.11
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(I'll give some context before the rant: I'm part if the IT department of a manufacturing company (actually I'm 1/2 of the department), and all the applications (old an new - except the ones used on production line) used in the company are my responsibility, that including most of databases too... Also, English isn't my native language so there will be some words or phrases that I'll probably write wrong... Sorry for that, if there are any corrections, I'll be glad to hear them)
So...
There will be an implementation of new "control point" on the "shipping department" which consists on a electromechanical equipment controlled by a PLC. And despite the original concept was a collaboration between 2 departments (we, IT, and Production Control), I was never taken in consideration about anything of the project... To be fair, I forget about its existence until two weeks ago.
So, a few days I learned that there are a huge delay regarding the original deadline (mainly because the supplier was delayed with the delivery of their system), and since two weeks (less, actually, because some holydays in between) I'm learning how to integrate that "P.o.S" into an existing application on a PC using a serial communication (not the main problem, as I've done that before... With another brand of PLC's) while avoiding buying any additional software (to get the communication done and in a easy way) and that sort of things... But discovering in the process that it will be necessary to acquire such additional SW in order to finish the job ASAP.
When suddenly I get the "news" that it's almost all my duty (and responsibility) to meet the original deadline, because it doesn't matter how the other departments screw all the schedule, it's the job of IT to get the shit done in time... And what is worst: they didn't said that in such straight manner, no, the implied it while making a quick test with the general manager.
I mean, WTF? Besides doing a "respectable" number of "user support" activities in a dialy basis, I also need to manage the activities of other departments? And also fix their screw ups on a schedule that I just learned days before?
And also there is a coworker (one of whom screwed up) that, almost every time she see me, is asking "how much until you'll finish?"
As I read on a meme years ago: "please, give patience, because if you give strength, I'll need bail money too..."
Damn... I don't know of the benefits of this work are worth all this nonsense -
This is how i setup my laptop after my long journey of paying.
I used it for gaming, rendering designs and development. 😍😍😍
7 -
Started a new job last week. Pays a tad below average for position, but i get training time and budget for anything i want.
So far i have had few days of company introduction, and now a week for training courses related to position.
I have not seen any code yet, brought no value in, just joined.
Massive green flag to me. -
Company i work for just posted updated pay rates.
It's good. They went from lower end of spectrum to a little above the average in terms of pay, and benefits stay the same - solid. -
I want to make an AI bot from scratch. Where do I start? Which languages should I know? What IDE should I use?10
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Not leaning on unit tests. I usually write them after testing my code manually, and lose time for testing feature by hand.1
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I graduated with a CS degree which focused 99% on software only. In my current job, I get to write software to control hardware (pumps, valve’s, etc). I think this is awesome and I really enjoy interacting with the hardware. It makes the software seem more tangible.
I’d like to stay in positions that allow me to write software and interact with hardware but I’m having a hard time finding jobs that aren’t just a PLC programmer.
Do any of you guys have a job like this?4 -
I stumbled upon series of stories about serial killer/system administrator addicted to lager and onion bahjits who hates users, managers, beancounters and sales people.
I'm just gonna leave it here https://theregister.com/data_centre...1 -
Me: IDK how this works. Lets ask support.
PLC Support: Use these ID's to locate what you need in our documentation.
Me: Why the fuck are all of them invald and I cant find shit?!
PLC Support: 🙃🤷 -
!rant
Today I got an interview for a cool job: Comissioning engineer with focus on PLC-programming.
So nervous, but so happy at the same time.3 -
Recently had to start developing on a PLC for a new project and didn’t realize how much these companies fuck their developers.
For example, I’m using CODESYS to write structured text to run on the PLC. CODESYS is free to download. However, in the free tier, they take all your .st files and ur config files and combine them into a SINGLE FUCKING BINARY which completely defeats the purpose of version control.
However, if you BUY their pro license, you can install a git module.
There’s other things that make developing in them suck. For example, the only IDE you can use is the one built into CODESYS and it fucking sucks. Another one is that their builtin IDE has a “dark mode” that only works on certain files. If you open a function file, it uses dark mode. But if you open a struct file, it uses light mode.
Also, having no other runtime than the one built into CODESYS fucking sucks.
Maybe I’ve been spoiled with VSCode and python 🤷♂️5 -
After a long development and you do a live testing you but you forget to update the prod repo. AFkdkskdkdkskf errors is coming. My boss try to kick me 😂😂
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Love going to out-of-state programming courses on the company dollar!! Went to Germany, Denver, and Rochester, NY for Codesys training. Hate PLC programming but it's fun traveling and learning new things.
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FUCKING VAGRANT!
IT always remove elastic search package and i can't migrate my database because of this package required to be run. I always reinstall this to make it run.
Sometimes vagrant itself don't run perfectly in windows.
I think i will move to UBUNTU to make it run smooth.
TODAY you made my task stuck.2 -
okay. Just had an interview for a web application engineer role. It was a catastrophe. Basically, they are taking care only of things I was never worked with, like certification management, ansible deployments, bash scripting. ?? What? Like, what the hell? Guys, I can make you a nice javascript game, or laravel website, eventually mount the routers and switches, configure and automate the networks, but certs... for me ssl is just an extra checkbox when I'm buying a new domain. I asked the recruiter like 5 times, please tell me what the hell is the role about, he doesn't knew... I think, I'll just give up this applying for a jobs stuff, and stay maintenance engineer, dig into plc-s and etherCat even more and forget the IT career completely...7
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Today, I want to send a POST request from Siemens PLC as a UDP datagram to an apache webserver running PHP and Laravel. It's definitely something wrong with me. It's like 98% failure. :D3
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Here go on a course to learn the basics of this Plc (Siemens) right now this mega project that is the most complex thing our company has ever done now it's yours. WTF
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I spent ~12h working on a simple issue/bug.
7h was spent on rebuilding local dev environment which is a clusterfuck of maven profiles, tomcat, some autogenerated degeneracy, and 2 different build systems for JS.
5h spent on actual bug fixing, code reviews and so on.
FML2 -
Send an email.
Or, more seriously: invite only people who must be there, and can add something to the discussion, have an agenda, stick to it, and plan the meeting so that it ends at the start of lunch break. That way everybody will be interested in finishing on time or earlier. -
When you are terminated in your work because of fuck*** slow internet.
But they installed slightly competitive speed of internet. And you are already out of company.3 -
When you take the 5hrs task and they forgot to add subtask and more subtask will come and it took weeks until now
MORE WILL hahahaha -
Programming Siemens PLCs is the same like using windows. Pretty comfortable - if you are fine with using it like 85% of the users.
Spent 10h today finding a way to realise an interrupt everytime a specific variable is set.. Every damned microcontroller can be used to! - _-
And therefore this typcial windows user question:
Is it not intended by Siemens or am I blind?
I mean i know you can use some prefabricated interrupts.. Like the cyclic interrupt OB.. I can't believe that it's not provided to freely create interrupts?!
Someone with an idea? -
As a machine (plc) programmer I regularly have to get my 17mm laptop out to fix mechanical problems.
It really winds me up when mechanical or electrical bods can't find the faults so they blame software, I prove to them that it's not software by using hand tools and doing their job for them.
Bone idle people! -
for christ sake.. I ended up receiving all problems at a startup, I am alone every lvl of support from software exceptions to plc. Even for machines I have never received any training or explanation. How can a company afford mass holydays and rely for all level support on a single person who is still under training? I cant dug deeper in any issue because then I got overfilled with questions. I really want this week to end...1
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Yo fellow devrant devs!
Are here any PLC devs present?
After 4 years of internal struggle, short side leaps and a big amount of feeling restricted and beeing tired of it, I decided to totally switch from windows to linux. No dual boot (which ended about 20times in "oh, i didnt start linux for 2 weeks.."), no "i can have Linux on VM". Just linux and me, hopefully a neverending love story.
Thats the theory.
Problem 1: is it somehow possible to use Siemens TIA portal with Linux in a proper way?
Problem 2: is there any IDE which is at least nearly as comfortable for c# coding as visual studio?2 -
Got pissed that my story delayed the whole project by 3 weeks (major story, lots of changes, and management decided to put me in a few extra activities outside of the project).
Stayed up until like 23:00 to deliver PR.1 -
When you had some cloud service testing and google cloud got an error while not so popular cloud service got working. 😅
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Which Java GUI shall I learn in 2021? I see people are demonizing swing and telling its obsolete, so it would be really helpfull if someone gives an nice Java stack example for developing windows application focused on PLC and other external controller like arduino, raspberry etc, control and visualisation., in general, automation and industrial monitoring and controls.3
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Work with PLCs and similar controllers. If there is an issue that cannot be found in a relative amount of time, just turn it off and back on. "Power cycle" is oh to common with my coworkers and actually works too often for my liking.
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Get to know the new company better (Changed job shortly before Christmas).
Learn some DPs, DDD, k8s, finish introduction to hacking course, start doing htb and thm machines, finish and defend my thesis, finish books clean code, thinking in java (reading it to fill in gaps on knowledge), a few books about pentesting.
Among non tech goals: pass drivers license exam for cars, another one for motorcycles, go back to learning russian. -
Time to unwind after more than a week of building the structure of a micro service. I feel exhausted right now 😫😫1
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Alias git commit to git stash.
Write a script that opens this page in fullscreen mode after a few minutes of inactivity https://fakeupdate.net/win10ue/ -
Update of previous post
I just got assigned to a project.
Project-specific training is designed to take up to 20 days.
I got materials, videos, and a person who is in this project for a long time to supervise training and introduce me to the project.
Only problem is that the project apparently uses 5 years old version of base framework.
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