Client project manager calls me up one day

PM: hey can you make some precise estimates on some items for a project you’re not working on? It should be easy. It’s very similar to the project you ARE working on and it’s only a handful of user stories, mostly front end stuff. We´ll need this to be done by tomorrow night.

Me: um, I guess if it’s just a few simple items. ok

PM: great! I’ll let you know when you get access to the backlog.

Me: sounds good

Link to project is sent to me. Backlog contains over 20 user stories, most of which are backend related. And it doesn’t have much to do with my current project.

I contact PM: this isn’t exactly what you announced when I had you on the phone. If you want precise estimates with a minimum of design, this could take up to a week. I could however proceed to some ballpark estimates (poker planning) for starters if you need this quickly for your roadmap.

PM: no I need PRECISE estimates down to the hour for each item.

Me: ok then, it’ll take up to a week.

PM: 🤬🤬🤬. You told me it could be done in a day. I’m coming to realize your word can’t really be trusted.

Me: 🤦🏻‍♂️

During job interview
Me : Am I going to maintain old solution?
Interviewer : Of course not.

2nd day
PM : Please fetch project X from SVN

me: *has insomnia*
me: ok I'll check ways to improve my sleep
me: *keeps drinking coffee after 6 pm and using my phone in bed* i wonder why I can't sleep

PM: To achieve this, do A
Me: That's unnecessarily complex, can't we do B
PM: Ooh, so it's too complicated for you?
Me: No, it's complex, it will bottleneck the system
PM: We've done A in 5 different websites, so you should do the same
Me: ......

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.

Got some detailed feedback from Booking.com, upon asking.

I answered all the questions right. But they said I am not ready for a Sr PM role (which might be true).

Here are three points that I captured from the feedback:

1. Focus on details
2. Clear and better reasoning for WHY
3. Realistic over idealistic scenarios

While it makes me feel low that I didn't make it but this feedback will surely help me overcome the challenges and clear interviews in future.

On to the next one now. Let's see what comes my way..

One thing for sure, there is lots and lots to learn for me yet.

One thing I surely lack is articulating my thoughts and keeping things crisp while conveying the information aptly.

Anyone has any tips/resources on how to improve in this area?

I deployed one of our staging websites to a free plan because the site is rarely used. Project Manager sends the stakeholders the new url. There will be a lot of 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♂️🤦 all around. Some of it’s my fault. A lot of it is just WTF.

Stakeholder: We still need the staging site because we don’t want to test in the live site…

PM: Okay. We didn’t say we were deleting the site. We are just moving it to a new and better hosting platform, so we’re letting you know the url has changed.

Stakeholder: This url is for the front facing page. How do I access the backend? [they mean the admin interface]

Me: The only thing that’s changed is the url for the staging website. So domain-A/account is now domain-B/account.

I thought that was a pretty straightforward way of explaining things, that even a non technical person would get it. They took the /account example as the literal login url.

Stakeholder: I forgot the password for our admin login and I submitted a password reset, but I realize I don’t know if I have access to the admin email. Or if it’s even a real email account.

WTF

I look back at the email chain and I realize that I gave the PM the wrong url.

Also, WTF x 2. How did this stakeholder not realize they were looking at the wrong website?? There are definitely noticeable style and content differences. And why would you have an admin login that uses a fake email??

Me: My apologies. I sent over the incorrect url. My instructions are mostly the same. All that’s changed is the domain.

Stakeholder’s assistant: [DMs me] How do we access the backend?

WTF…are they seriously playing this game and demanding I type out the url for them?! 🤬 I’m not playing this game and I just copy and paste the example that I already sent over.

They figure it out eventually. Apparently, they never used /account to login before They used /admin/index… but that would still bring them to /account, but with ?redirect=/admin/index appended to the url if they weren’t logged in. Again, WTF.

I know I made mistakes in this whole thing, but damn. I can’t even. I’m pretty sure this whole incident is fueling my boss’s push to stop supporting this particular website anymore so I can focus on sites that actually bring in revenue…and have stakeholders that aren’t looney and condescending like this.

Why the hell does that happen?

my boss some months ago: so there is this new project, and we're planning to slowly fade in and gradually increase the time you guys work on this project

new pm last week: welcome to the project, you're now 100% allocated to the new project, that's your highest prio now
me: ...what about the other projects? they might have questions xD
pm: don't worry about that, dealing with that is not your job

my boss this week: yeah no, the other releases are most important for our company. the new project needs to be subordinated and has lower prio, at least lower prio than critical and highly prioritized bugs.
me: so.... who decides which items from which projects i shall prioritize higher than the new project and how much time i shall spend on them?
my boss: it is your job to talk to people, give them estimates and tell them how many items you can work on, so they can decide which items they pick

so basically i'm having the feeling that i need to manage myself here. it will be fun to attend the new project daily standups and tell the new pm all the time that i couldn't do anything because i had no time. anyone else with this experience? is this normal? actually i liked our new pm's attitude "dealing with that is not your job". i should have known it was too good to be true ^^'

Yesterday, the Project Manager forwarded an email from a staff member who worked on a donations campaign. Staff member was confused about a Cloudflare challenge that appeared before the user was sent to the donation page. It’s a less than 5 second JavaScript check. He thought it looked fishy.

I had to explain that it’s a security measure that’s been up for almost a month. PM knows this but left it to me to explain because ownership of the site is on me. The donations page and api gets hit by a lot of bots because it’s a public api and there are no security measures like captchas to deter the bots. I’m inheriting this website and I didn’t build it.

Staff member says other staff want to know if the Cloudflare page can be customized so it looks more legit. Um, Cloudflare is a widely known legit service. Google it.

A few thoughts pop into my head:

1. Engineering communicated to stakeholders about the Cloudflare messaging a month ago.

2. Wow, stakeholders don’t share relevant info with their staff who aren’t on these emails.

3. Woooow, stakeholders and staff don’t look at the website that often.

every day my boss says he'll review the requirements for our product. every day he forgets to do so. every day he asks where the update for the next stage is. every day i remind him. every day he forg ---

Hot take:

Want to bloat the shit out of your product and want to lose the core USP?

Want to stop solving the problem you set out to address?

HIRE A PRODUCT MANAGER.

PMs are expert at shit show. We fuck up everything.

God I hate my profession.

When I start my company, the mandatory rule for every PM will be that if you want to add or enhance a feature, they will have to remove a feature. Whoever fails to do so will be punished by having to clean up the code base and work in sales for a quarter.

Since the 3rd day, I have been telling y'all but none of you listened to me.

I kept repeating that I am the dumbest person I know. Why didn't you believe me when I said it?

Remember, Booking feedback? They sent me another official rejection with additional feedback. Mind blown.

That feedback really helped me understand what was going wrong. And now today in an interview, I was asked a question and the interviewer said, "I am looking for a specific details like xyz for why you should be a Sr PM".

That's when it clicked me, that I have done stuff and I know things. It's just that I didn't understand the question and wasn't able to articulate and communicate well.

My dumbass just needs constant feedback to learn. How much I love feedback more than ever.

The feedback cycle is interesting too. When I was new, I hated it. Then started to realise the value of it.

Then it did felt bad in the very instance whenever I got one, but quickly I used to incorporate the changes.

And now, I am crave and desperately seek feedback. It only helps me improve.

Funnily, everyone gave inputs when I didn't want it. And now when I am hunting for it, no one is giving inputs. This is how life is.

Nonetheless, I am pretty impressed with Booking. Good people, nice vibes, and kickass culture for sure.

Clock: Friday, 15:45 PM - just go home now, idiot!
My stupid ass: Makes substantial changes to the code I have been working on and breaks it.

i swear to god, my year end journey is taking the best kick out of me.

its less than 48 hours left now and shits that have happened since now are :

1. my mom cancelled our home to destination tickets once out of fear of omicron and then i had to rebook. that's INR 15000 down the drain with 0 returns and additional INR 6000 of re booking ( the ticket had 5 of my relatives and my mom's ticket. they are now reaching the place by train only)

2. just yesterday i found out that the bag that we are supposed to take had its zips rusted and i got to get it replaced. i also bought an additional trolley bag and kinda showed mg miser mindset and bought a 2 wheel large trolley instead of 4 or 8 wheeler and now the second trolley is a bitch to be carried on.

3.on friday , i ran a little extra , got exhausted , didn't had much food since diet, then ran some more in evening , then umm.., <exercised> some more in night . guess what ? the night was the chilliest in india , and my body caught cold, my sinus kicked in and i was on the verge of catching a fever which any stupid airport staff would directly declare as "omicron-coivd positive" . i didn't though, but this all could still happen , since i have not fully recovered from a runny nose.

4. its 48 hours left and i have just now caught this worst hiccups because i had to eat rice while watching standup comedies on a bed in a shitty posture .

this period of shitty happenings is not coming to an end. i just want a break for damn's sake. just yesterday i was on the verge of a heart attack when our dear old santa claus pm came on the television and started announcing .that guy has been known to fuck the whole country in his sudden announcements but thankfully he or omicron hasn't affected my journey plans........ yet

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.
FML

what are personal projects if not the daughters of hackathon solutions that never saw the light of day

Stop using 'i' in loops

One of my friend offered me $500 for creating a virus in "assembly"
I lost $500

I am currently going to start data structures and algorithms in python...
suggest me a roadmap according to your experience

(No punchlines just a rant sorry, very angry at this person. Can't leave the club. Talked to seniors about it. Talked to coworkers for some voluntary help. No help here ;-;)

Yesterday: we need to have a meet to plan things out. 3 PM?

Rainbow eating monster: Yes

Yesterday 5 PM: Reminder

Rainbow shitting monster: I can't I have important things

Yesterday 5:01 PM: Children eating monster (in group): hey yall watching the event going on rn

Yesterday 5:02 PM: is this what you're busy with?

Rabbit pooping monster: this of course I can't miss. And anyways I have 5 more things to do: thing that I've already done, this club meet that you asked me to do yesterday and I said I'd have done, a meet with a friend, I'm having lunch now, and a meet with you. Hence I can't meet with you.

...

Today (in group): Kidney stealing monster: @me (irrelevant to discussion) can you meet for other thing that *I* was supposed to do a week ago?
Will you be available @me at 5 PM?
Okay everyone, assuming @me is available, tentatively we meet at 5 PM.

Today 12 PM: i wake up to this faeces

need more experience for good entry-level jobs, need a good entry-level job for more experience. yay

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.

I caught up a scammer last night he was doing some astrology and stuff.
He asked for money......
I gave him a grabify link.....
He gave me his location(accidentally)and told me to teach him the trick....
He wasn't even scared

Does anyone else also feels like "I knew it why I didn't try this way, this was easy" after using stackoverflow

can someone explain me what are ADT(abstract data types)

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.

which is the best cloud provider for a complete beginner (user/dev) in terms of community support, employer preference and user-friendliness?

i know that understanding the tech and concepts behind it matters more than getting familiarized with a specific platform, but i'm looking to build a more diverse profile and have noticed many positions asking for AWS/Azure experience.

since i'll be starting from scratch, any provider with easy-to-follow documentation, online help and certifications that don't leave you broke (would have to pay myself, earn very less as a student from a third-world country, parents/current employer can't support) would work.