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 - "pricey"
-
A room full of mostly old male stressed out engineers sat in chairs, and the presenter said:
"So who watched Judging Amy last night?"
The presenter went on to express her surprise that nobody in the room had seen last night's episode of Judging Amy.... and wasn't going to drop the topic.
The meeting, if it ever had any, now had no chance of going anywhere good.
By the end of the meeting someone would walk out and "retire" shortly there after, and it certainly wasn't going to be the presenter....
Backstory:
The company built on the IBM model of sell pricey custom hardware (granted it worked really well) and sell expensive support contracts wasn't doing as well as it had hoped. Granted it was still doing better than most of its neighboring companies, but it was clear that with the .com bust the days of catered lunches every day were over.
The company had grown fat and everyone knew that while the company had a good enough product(s) to survive, there weren't enough lifeboats for everyone to survive.
In the midst of this an HR department that took up nearly 20% of the office space at HQ felt it needed to justify its existence / expenses.
They decided to do this in the same way they always had, by taking funding from other departments, this time not by simply demanding more direct budgets for themselves.... they decided to impose mandatory 'training' on other departments ... that they would then bill for this training.
When HR got wind that there were some stressed out engineers the solution was, as it always is for HR.... to do more HR stuff:
They decided to take these time starved engineers away from their jobs, and put them in a room with HR for 4 days. Meanwhile the engineer's tasks, deadlines and etc remained the same.
Support got roped into it too, and that's how I ended up there.
It would be difficult to describe the chasm between HR and everyone else at that company. This was an HR department that when they didn't have enough cubes (because of constant remodeling in the HR area under the guise of privacy) sat their extra HR employees next to engineering and were 'upset' that the engineers 'weren't very friendly and all they did was work'.
At one point a meeting to discuss this point of contention was called off for some made up reason or another by someone with a clue.
So there we all sat, our deadlines kept ticking away and this HR team (3 people) stood at the front of the room and were perplexed that none of these mostly older males in this room had seen last night's episode of Judging Amy.
From there the presentation was chaos, because almost the entire thing was based on your knowledge of what happened to poor stressed out Amy ... or something like that.
We were peppered with HR tales of being stressed out and taking a long lunch and feeling better, and this magical thing where the poor HR person went and had a good cry with her boss and her boss magically took more off her plate (a brutal story where the poor HR person was almost moved to tears again).
The lack of apparent sympathy (really nobody said much at all) and lack of seeming understanding from the crowd of engineers that all they should do is take a long lunch, or tell their boss to solve their problems ... seemed to bother the HR folks. They were on edge.
So then they finally asked "What are your stressers?" And they picked the worst possible person they could to ask, Ted.
Ted was old, he prickly, he was the only one who understood the worst ass hell of assembly that had been left behind.
Ted made a mistake, he was honest with folks who couldn't possibly understand what he was saying. "This mandatory class is stressing me out. I have work to do and less time because of this class."
The exchange that followed was kinda horrible and I recall sitting behind Ted trying to be as small as possible as to not be called on. Exactly what everyone said almost doesn't matter.
A pedantic debate between Ted and the HR staff about "mandatory" and "required" followed. I will just sum it up that they were both in the wrong for how they behaved for a good 20 minutes...
Ted walked out, and would later 'retire' that week.
Ted had a history and was no saint. I suspect an email campaign by various folks who recounted the events that day spared ted the 'fired' status and he walked with what eventually would become the severance package status quo.
HR never again held another 'training', most of them would all finally face the axe a few months later after the CEO finally decided that 'customer facing, and product producing' headcount had been reduced enough ... and it was other internal staff's time for that.
The result of the meeting was one less engineer, and everyone else had 4 days less of work done...4 -
This has been said countless times before me, and way better than me that’s supper tired, but I need to rant out
And what I’m ranting out today, is Apple. Its essence, its core, the reason it still exists: the ECOSYSTEM!
The problem with Apple ecosystem is that it’s the ecosystem of a fucking PRISON!
People like it because it works well together , but it’s sure that in a prison, the path from your cell to the cantine is pretty optimized; you get forced there! And you might try to get your food elsewhere, but the walls of the prison are made to be difficult to cross. Especially on mobile, where they’re making it harder and harder to escape, to make a jailbreak (pun-intended). Keeping you the loyal little sheep, or the forcing you to it.
That prison is also made private, a little club, to attract people to it. They even got their own little system to talk to each other, but oh god protect them from their little messages to pass the walls of the prison.
And all that prison is guarded by the warden, watching from high in the cloud. Forcing you to report yourself to him to be part of that prison.
That prison, also, can only be entered with specific vehicles, provided by the prison, to ensure maximum compatibility and efficiency. Good luck entering with a disguised vehicle if you find the official ones too pricey for their parts.
They also provided pressure tubes to send things from one cell to another. While being only simple pressure tubes like any other, they’re acclaimed because they’re apparently easier to use than the other 3rd party pressure tubes that can send things to the outside. Why? Because, oh yes it’s already in everybody’s cells (of that prison, outside is dangerous) and the other tubes have been conveniently being placed somewhere harder to reach.
Another thing they have are those windows that can view the outside. While being maybe less clear than some other windows, they are ok. But if you ever consider going mobile to enjoy that safari with lions, then man do they love bringing you back to that window.
Ok so I’m done with the prison metaphor, or I won’t sleep.
The ecosystem is probably the major reason Apple is still there. You buy from there because you’re a prisoner (I guess I’m not finished with the metaphor after all).
This is a prime example of RMS’s quote “If the user doesn’t control the software, the software controls the user”
AirDrop isn’t some sort of revolutionary tech, it uses a well established protocol that other implementations use to do the same thing. They could really easily open source the protocol and allow everyone to profit, but they won’t, because that would mean you don’t have to buy Apple.
That’s why I militate for open source, decentralized and standardized protocols. Because that way, we control the software, and it doesn’t control us.
All the things I said aren’t so bad because when you buy Apple, you make a choice. But I don’t have a choice, I am typing this on an Apple device, because I need to (I won’t elaborate on that) because of that fucking *ecosystem*
I am really tired, so half the sentences probably don’t make sense, but thanks for coming to my stupid TED talk.12 -
[Dark Rant]
I'm sick of this stupid tech world.
Don't get me wrong, I love tech. I just can't stand anymore the global brainwashing that we're part of.
Think about all the huge companies making profit on our data. For a better service, yeah sure, but do we really understand what the cost is?
Ok sure, you don't care about your data because you trust these companies and the advantages are all worth it. What about the fact that we are all forced to buy the next new smartphone after 2 years?
Like if removable batteries were a problem for us, users. Or like the audio jack. Because now someone decided that the pricey wireless headphones are Just What You Need™.
Do you think you own your smartphone?
No, you don't. You are paying a bunch of money for something that soon will be just a useless brick of glass and metal which you can't repair. But you'll be happy anyway.
Someone is so happy to the point that they will defend their favorite company, doesn't matter how they decided to stick it into their ass.
Open your eyes, you've been brainwashed.25 -
Tooday
Movie sucks
Games sucks
Most programmers sucks
Buying a house sucks
Try to get a grocery under 200$ for nothing sucks
Have child with no future other then capitalisme sucks
Friends that don't take any news in 8 years sucks
Have a girlfriend that don't sucks sucks
Buying pricey shit and thinking i will survive at least 10 years and broke after 3 years with warranty sucks
All social platforms sucks ( other then devrant)
Working for a shit salairy and doing everyone jobs sucks
Lossing mind about idiots in our world sucks
My english sucks
You sucks
My water heater sucks
My landlord sucks
My budget sucks
My old 16 years old bike i use to go work sucks
Government sucks
House builder sucks at 80%
Bank fuck you everytime sucks
Taxes for any service sucks
Medical system in canada sucks
Educational system in canada sucks
Goes on each day i realize something sucks...12 -
I just spent almost a semester's worth of money on a certification course. I know it'll help me make more in the long-run and get me out of the job that has started to cause me to become actually depressed, but this price-tag is depressing me. Why are certs so damn pricey???2
-
Why the fuck people advertise themselves as 24h service if they work 9..17?! I need a fucking plumber to change leaky toilet seat. Called over ten different guys, and, guess what? They don't give a shit!
Meanwhile I used to have clients calling in the middle of the night or early in the morning. And I DON'T work 24/7.
What's fucking wrong with this world where you have to study long years and buy pricey tools and be available to the client all the time, and on the other hand you don't have to even start a college, just have right tools and materials, and you have better job? I could become a plumber. At least my work wouldn't be outsourced to India...
Sorry you Indian guys ;-)9 -
I made this bad decision to buy pretty pricey laptop with nVidia card. Lenovo Legion Y520.
So yeah, have you heard about optimus technology and how much one can hate nvidia?
> Debian is working, nice.
> Let's try nvidia-driver.
> 48hours later: WOoooooah glxgears at 120 fps!
> Installed some fonts. "Could not load gpu driver". HDMI port stops working. Unable to repair. Entering despair.
> Surviving on dual-booted windows.
halp3 -
Just earlier today I was looking at the hosting packages for a local hosting provider in my country (who shall remain unnamed as I want to work there and criticizing them might not be a very good idea right now) and they start at €250/month apparently. I thought - that's fucking ridiculous!
Like for real, I could literally buy a server for.. I dunno, €600 from the likes of bargainhardware.co.uk with some pretty darn good specs, put it in my home, get a business contract with my ISP for say around €100/month (and use it for my own purposes as well instead of my consumer contract, win-win!), and the server would pay for itself in no more than half a year, probably even less! And you're even getting the actual hardware with it!! And that is for the price of that hosting provider's starting option!!!
Now I know what you're thinking, sure there's more to servers than just the server itself, like redundant power, generators, SLA, multiple routers and switches, and all sorts of failover measures. And you are absolutely right. But does that really justify a rental cost of a server of €250/month?
Not only that, even their shared hosting.. shared hosting, the dreaded, shitty shared hosting! solution is starting at around €10/month. I'm paying about €5/month for 3 light-duty servers and a domain for Christ's sake!
So.. is this hosting provider just expensive as fuck or is this really the industry standard, particularly for the dedicated hosting part? And maybe that's why some services like.. say devRant which apparently gets around €600/month from 299 supporters at the time of writing, yet still has @dfox and @trogus pay from their own wallets for it (if at all possible, please let me know if that's still the case).. I wonder if those costs are all really justifiable?
It just strikes me as odd.. you can get *a lot* of server for a couple hundred bucks if you do it well.. no?16 -
Dev bootcamps? I went to one! Probably the best decision I ever made.
They aren't perfect, they're pricey, and they won't make you an expert, but it's a good way to expedite a new career, gives a good base knowledge to start out. -
Fuck off slickplan. Your subscription model is not for the little guy. i love your site map builder, but I cant justify $118 a year for my 6-8 annual site maps. i’ll use keynote. if you price stuff properly then you’d have more subscribers. greedy cunts. it tends to be the way with a lot of online services. people will gladly pay, but it’s gotta be of value. you think twice when you start getting pricey.
-
So, I'm starting cross platform mobile app development with NativeScript. Just side projects at the moment, nothing "business-related".
Well, as for the Android part, I'm free to choose whether I'd like to develop on Windows 10- or on my Linux machine. I can compile the project on either system. As for publishing it to Google Play, I might do it, I might not do it, since it is possible to install an app by providing the apk file.
As for the Apple part: I'd either have to buy an completely overpriced Apple computer (iMac, MacBook, etc.) or subscribe to a pricey online CI/CD service... just to be able to compile the fucking project. And if that wouldn't be enough, Apple wants to charge me 99 $ a year so I may have a chance to publish the app to their App Store... of course without any guarantees that my app will be published, because it might be revoked by them. WHAT THE FUCK?5 -
Cross-platform open-source & free password manager.
Description:
Cross-platform mobile/desktop password manager application. No backend needed, private data will be encrypted and stored in Google Drive/One Drive/Dropbox etc...
I've used multiple applications over the years but they pricey (especially if you switch platforms) and most of them don't have full cross-platform support.
Also, I've made a POC app with Ionic a while ago, but I didn't like the hybrid app feel.
Tech stack:
Js/React Native10 -
Heroku.
I don't like setting up servers and things. I know how to (I spent 1.5 years using archlinux and I know a lot on what's going under the hood). I like the functional paradigm where the same input yields the same result. I don't like having side effects although I know they can be necessary.
I would have to create a script to handle the configuration process instead of spending hours redoing it.
That's what I love about Heroku even if it's pricey. Almost no configuration at all. Attach some addons, configure a few env variables and everything else is in the code. -
I haven't even turned on my old laptop for a year. It's about six years old and becoming sluggish with modern software. Now I want to participate in a workshop for Raspberry Pi that requires you to bring a computer.
I feel like I should get me a new laptop, and knowing myself I'd get something in the upper mid range that gives a good bang for the buck and is slightly more pricey than I originally intended.
But I think it would be a very ridiculous thing to do, because afterwards it would just stand there while I do everything on my stationary computer, tablet and phone.
Maybe I'll throw in some lightweight Linux distro and see how far it takes me.
And feel like I should get me a new laptop.4 -
I have a Macbook with 128GB PCIe SSD that's very pricey to upgrade. Considering switching to another UNIX distro but will that solve my storage problem or should I bite the bullet and just upgrade it? Or both?5
-
Hey guys, I want to do a cyber security career. For me it's the most interesting field in CS. How can I get started? Is it worth to do some online courses where you get certifications (asking this because they are kind of pricey). I'm a QA Tester with 1 year of work experience, don't know if I should just apply to jobs or acquire skills/certificates first. Thanks for all the incoming answers. :D5
-
Every 3 years or so I invest in a new iMac. I was holding on for the new M1 IMacs, which are ready to order. So I am trading in my 2017 Imac and guess what I get £420 🍾 trade in value. What I am saying is, they may seem pricey to most people but when you can get a 1/3rd back when you trade in for a machine that has run constantly for 3 years without any issues or downtime that’s a pretty good investment. 👌🏼PS the MacBook pros are shite, only a fool would by one of those😀38
-
I like egghead.io cause they're quick and straight to the point compared to frontendmasters.
Are there other online courses you can recommend to learn the JS ecosystem?
These two are a little pricey for me (outside US).2 -
!comforting
TL;DR - I’ve done some thinking about operating systems and sticking to one
Mk
so I, like many of you, have seen far more than my fair share of “X operating system is perfect for it all, so don’t use Y operating system because it’s just awful” posts.
Over this week i’ve really done some thinking and experimenting with multiple devices and OSes and programs for various tasks. People coming from windows over to linux (like myself) tend to diss windows (rightfully so for the most part, but still). I’ve also noticed that the android vs. apple debate can get heated among users.
Listen guys,
iOS has its shortcomings obviously, UI being kinda a big one; but no one can deny that apple shoves some of the nicest hardware into their devices. Yes, this stuff is pricey as hell obviously, but the new macs come with an i9 and quite a bit of memory as well. Apple devices tend to have longer lasting batteries too - i cant count the times where i’ve just turned on my mobile hotspot, and stuck my android in my pocket to use my iphone (its a wifi-only 5s). the applications run nicely on apple hardware.
i couldnt learn even half as much programming as i do on my android though; Termux is a godsend, and im able to run and test scripts right there in the palm of my hand. can’t get that on an iphone.
Some of my favorite game developers only develop for windows; I’m dual booting for that sole reason (warframe and the epic games launcher don’t properly run through wine).
Just boil it down inside for a second; You might have come from a more “user friendly” operating system, to learn on one that is less so - wether you wanted the freedom and wiggle room for customization, or just a more developer friendly working environment (God bless conky and its devs) - so you didn’t have to be locked down into one way of seeing things. Putting a previously used OS down directly violates that thougjt process, and at that point you’re just another windows hater, or arch junkie, or whatever. I think we need to be open to appreciating the pros of every system, even if we almost never use some of them, and we should try not to put down other devs-to-be or csci/sec enthusiasts down because of that either.2 -
Dokku, Flynn, Deis Workflow, Datacol, nanobox.
Does anyone have experience with one of these? Do you recommend any?
I have been amazed by Heroku concept, however, Heroku prices seem to be a bit pricey. I have a production app to be produced in the following weeks, and I was thinking about getting a Public Cloud machine from OVH with one of the tools above.
Any suggestions?