Boss: make this thing
Me: yeah no worries. Where is the spec?
Boss: We don't have enough one but we outsourced the design so call him

Designer: haven't started yet
Me: excellent

Boss: I'm going on holiday. I'll leave this to you.
Me: erm ok. I'm having a few problems getting stuff out of the designer though.

*2 weeks later and still no designs*

Boss: I'm back. Where is the progress?!
Me: indeed.

*1 week later i get half designs that sort of make sense*

Boss: hurry up!

*1 week later*

Me: designer you're busting my balls here
Designer: yeah lol

Me to boss: still having problems. No idea what I'm doing.
Boss: deal with it

*2 days later*
PM: we are demoing it to clients tomorrow
Me: brilliant. I'll become a magician then.

* Meeting goes well and no one notices the thing is a bit buggy*

*2 days later*
Me to boss and pm: you already know whats going on but I'll keep trying.
Boss: ok it's just a proof of concept anyway.
Designer: yeah here's the rest of the designs lol

*1 week later, the designs made no sense, no idea what they wanted but hey it's a proof of concept so I'll just do my best...*

*suddenly again, hey you have 1 week before we sell it. Lol. smashes a product together as fast as humanly possible, due to half designs and no time to do it right even html classes and CSS aren't right - didn't know things would be repeated at the time. No time to fix entire thing. Luckily just a proof of concept*

New senior developer: hey boss just said this is being sold tomorrow.
Me: wtf..It's a proof of concept and i was given longer...
New senior developer: no
Me: :(

Senior developer and all colleagues: it's full of bugs and doesn't work
Me: yes that will happen without specs, random tight deadlines, no designs that made sense and a total of about a week and a half to make an entire system for multiple user types to make applications, send messages, post jobs, handle all paperwork and move paperwork among different user types as they go through applications. I told everyone what was going on but i get no support...

*Silence*

Boss: wtf i gave you so long! All i know is my entire staff is working on a product that should be done ages ago
Me: ok, however i have said almost every day i need-
Boss: I'm not interested

*I finish my placement year and never get any promised work or the job offer*

Seems legit?

After months and months of unrealistic deadlines, pulling late night shifts coupled with an insane commute and two very small children at home I had a total burnout. Turned up to work one morning, and stared at the Java code I had been writing for the past couple of days and it might as well have been written in Martian. The more I stared, and the more I tried to keep things together internally the less I was able to make sense of anything - just a random jumble of characters on screen that were as intelligible as the green scrolling lines from The Matrix.

My office manager saw that I was obviously in some distress and took me into a meeting room to have a quick chat - and there I was, a grown man of 35 bawling my eyes out like a two year old. Not the most edifying moment of my life.

However, the company couldn't have been more supportive afterwards; one of my colleagues drove the 100 miles to get me home in my car and took a train back up to the office; my GP signed me off work for six months and treated me for severe depression; the office instituted stricter working policies - not on the developers, but the sales/PM teams that were handing down ridiculous timescales simply so they could get a sale.

For my part, I've learnt to push back and say "NO!" - work is not your life, it's an important part of your life, but my no means everything. Don't feel beholden to a company to meet unrealistic targets that you haven't agreed to. Talk.

My whole team was a circus:
- Dev 1, the senior: he will be spent his days coding his personal projects and will convince management that everyone else needed to prove themselves so he will have nothing to do and we will do all the work.
- Dev 2, the junior: he was convinced that his mission in life was to be friends with his team. He's desk was far from the rest of the team so he will show just right after lunch EVERY FREAKING DAY with a list on his phone of random things he wanted to talk about like music, artists, art, news, etc., he really thought I didn't notice the list.
- Dev 3: the vegan: you will hear on every chance how she was so awesome for being vegan.
- Dev 4, the expert: if you ask him anything he will stare at you in silence to make you feel like you are a stupid for not knowing the answer and then turn around like nothing.
- Dev 5, the ghost: he will show early every day, code without mouthing a word and leave at 5pm, I think I heard him saying "hmmm" once but I might be wrong.
- Dev 6, the coder by accident: he was a graphic designer and ended up doing front end so he hated his job.
- Dev 7, me: the one who didn't care about anything but doing his job and leave.
- The project manager: she didn't knew anything about technology but will attend meetings with clients on her own, commit to deadlines and then inform us that the project that we estimated for 8 weeks will have to be done in 2 with new additions to the features.

You know the drill, here's your potato :/

Just finished my internship.

I entered knowing nothing and spent the entire year on solo projects.

My company does not use any frameworks because "they don't want to run code on a server that they didn't write", they use waterfall, only use version control on half the projects, use notepad++, never once even glanced at my code to check I know what I'm doing - even when i asked.

Also have never heard of a code review, have absolutely no QA in place other than the devs making it and quickly testing it visually, no requirements gathering - just pictures and have never heard of tdd.

Recently was given a project with no designs, no specs other than a verbal half thought out explanation and was dumped with random deadlines like "this needs to be demoed tomorrow night" with no idea about the project progression or what it looks like. Apparently it's all my fault that it failed.

I am very grateful to them for teaching me so much and giving me opportunities to teach myself on nice projects but come on.

What boggles my mind is that the company is 6 years old and has big, big clients. I don't understand how. I once tested a project about to go out the next day that had been "tested" and found pages of bugs. They would have lost the contract for sure...

Worst things about being a dev? Boy, this will be a long one!
- Whatever I do, be it hard work or smart work, I feel I am always underpaid.

- Most people who don't know tech feel my job shouldn't take that long. "Oh, a website that should be easy." "Oh, REST services, that's cute!"

- Most people who know a little tech will be like, "Here is the code for this on Google, then why are you charging this much"

- Companies like Microsoft and Apple who are too cool to follow standards.

- Always underpaid!

- The friggin compilers and random environment vars. Sometimes you make no change and the code works on a restart. I mean wtf!

- Having to give/meet deadlines, when we know most of the times things get out of control.

- Having to work for jerks mostly who don't know squat, and can't tell the difference between a CPU and a Wooden box.

- Sometimes I wanna take a break from my laptop(traveling and stuff) , those are the times I get the maximum work load!

- Did I mention we are always underpaid?

- Because of the kind of work I do, finding a girl has been challenging. Where the heck are they!

- We have to stay always updated. Often we deploy something using a framework and the next day we see an update.

- Speaking of updates, I hate having to support for OSes like Microsoft.

- Speaking of OSes, I hate Apple!

- Speaking of Apple, I feel we are underpaid, de javu?
...
How much would you hate me if I wrote "just kidding" ?

Is it normal for your boss to sell a product when it is only half completed and pick arbitrary deadlines to demo it to potential clients?

"Don't waste your time reinventing the wheel, just use *random CMS or framework*"
I understand that I will never have all the time to do every projets from scratch, because of deadlines, clients, employers... But I was still a student when I've been told that.
And I never felt that I was wasting my time because I wanted to better understand what I was doing.

And I hate CMS. All of them.

For fucks sake
Will I really have to become the fucking PM around here so shit start being done properly?

We look like bunch of scared cockroaches doing random shit everyday and lying to our selves that we are gonna meet deadlines and produce quality software but the only shit we can produce is quality bug.

I really think there should be a subject in every CS course to teach us how to handle/work-under Grade-A assholes and dumbfucks. Not that it would help, but atleast warn us on what we are getting into.

In my opinion, development is not *that* hard or frustrating but is made so by these shitty people. But again, what do I know.

I was scolded by my boss for using for-loop to iterate through an array recently. Apparently for-loop is not used in real world projects and this iteration should be done "in-memory". My colleagues and I are still trying to understand and process that.

I was asked to add fitbit integration to a project within 2 hours just because I had "already done it a week ago" in *another* project. Luckily, it was then given to a "senior" developer who took 4 days for it and essentially copy-pasted my work without much changes, ofcourse it stopped working every now and then.

I am given unreal deadlines on my tasks, on technologies I haven't worked on before, and then expected to churn out production ready code with no bugs in them.

My boss literally just sends me the links of 1st three google results on the problems I encounter and report, after humiliating me ofcourse. Yes, I did google it and yes I went through all I could find from Google forums to GitHub issues. When the library/plugin author himself says that this feature is not yet available, don't expect me to develop it in 2 hours you dumbfuck.

And for the love of God, please stop changing the data model every single day and justify it with agile development. Think before making any changes to it. Ever heard of Join queries? Foreign keys? Or any other basic database concepts.
We reached a point where each branch in the repo had different data model. Not kidding. And we were a team of just 4 developers. Atleast inform us when you change models after discussing it with your shit for knowledge "senior" developer, so we don't have to redo it all over again. The channels on slack are not for sharing random articles only.

I am just waiting to complete my year here.

I should have known what I got myself into the day he asked me to remove the comments I had added to explain what my code does. Why you ask? Because "we don't write comments".

How to waste money as a dev company, 101:

Give people ton of budget for their education to do whatever they want with it with no oversight at all:
1) Devs go to some shitty confs in places across the world that teaches them nothing (new) so they can visit interesting places on company's money
2) Go to a conf where you learn ton of stuff that can be implemented right away

...Then you come back, no time to do stuff properly, just "make it work" (or make it seem like it works), because of deadlines, poor prioritization, new features, bad planning, vague roadmap and poor client management. And the worst of them all, LGTM code reviews.

Few months later, who the fuck wrote this shit? Oh, dude that left? What about this mess? Oh, he's a goner too. What the fuck should this random undocumented chunk of code do?!

Do that a few times and you've got bunch of pissed off clients with a ton of bug reports nobody can solve without wasting 20x the amount of time it would originally take.. LGTM

RIP project.

After reaching the pinnacle of my latent burnout and mental overload lately I quit and managed to get paid leave for the rest of the notice period through hr as I told them I'm not able to work for them anymore and else had to go on sick leave. My brain just had to have a clean cut and blocked me from
getting into their overcomplex and shitty, unplanned projects as I see no value in doing anything for them anymore. I gave them all my access keys and a small handover, but it was clear that they would run into problems without me, cause I've been doing like 5 jobs there due to developer shortage. Now I still get requests from my manager even though I had an operation and spent last week in the hospital and am still recovering for the next two weeks. He's still trying to build pressure as if it was my fault that we never got time to document stuff properly and automate things that have to be automated. He ignored every recommendation I made in past to ensure that things keep running when I leave, as I always knew that I wouldn't do this shit for long. It was always more important to please bosses ever-changing requests and stupid whims as fast as possible at the cost of quality, pressuring us into putting projects live at 80% to meet random deadlines we had no say on. What a fucking asshole trying to put the responsibility on me now. Not my problem anymore. Have fun finding someone else taking over that shithole of an underengineered software-architecture. I'm out!

I really really hope that no one post this,a friend texted it to me and I wanted to share it because made my day.

Idk where it comes, so feel free if know where this came from to post it:

//FUN PART HERE
# Do not refactor, it is a bad practice. YOLO

# Not understanding why or how something works is always good. YOLO

# Do not ever test your code yourself, just ask. YOLO

# No one is going to read your code, at any point don’t comment. YOLO

# Why do it the easy way when you can reinvent the wheel? Future-proofing is for pussies. YOLO

# Do not read the documentation. YOLO

# Do not waste time with gists. YOLO

# Do not write specs. YOLO also matches to YDD (YOLO DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT)

# Do not use naming conventions. YOLO

# Paying for online tutorials is always better than just searching and reading. YOLO

# You always use production as an environment. YOLO

# Don’t describe what you’re trying to do, just ask random questions on how to do it. YOLO

# Don’t indent. YOLO

# Version control systems are for wussies. YOLO

# Developing on a system similar to the deployment system is for wussies! YOLO

# I don’t always test my code, but when I do, I do it in production. YOLO

# Real men deploy with ftp. YOLO

So YOLO Driven Development isn’t your style? Okay, here are a few more hilarious IT methodologies to get on board with.

*The Pigeon Methodology*
Boss flies in, shits all over everything, then flies away.

*ADD (Asshole Driven Development)*
An old favourite, which outlines any team where the biggest jerk makes all the big decisions. Wisdom, process and logic are not the factory default.

*NDAD (No Developers Allowed in Decisions)*
Methodology Developers of all kinds are strictly forbidden when it comes to decisions regarding entire projects, from back end design to deadlines, because middle and top management know exactly what they want, how it should be done, and how long it will take.

*FDD (Fear Driven Development)*
The analysis paralysis that can slow an entire project down, with developments afraid to make mistakes, break the build, or cause bugs. The source of a developer’s anxiety could be attributed to a failure in sharing information, or by implicating that team members are replaceable.

*CYAE (Cover Your Ass Engineering)*
As Scott Berkun so eloquently put it, the driving force behind most individual efforts is making sure that when the shit hits the fan, you are not to blame.

Deadline approaching. Gotta stop reading in office and slog my ass off for next 6 days. Damn life's a bitch. I made that bitch, a bitch.

My old boss who somehow has gotten his small team of 4 PHP development contracts with Vodafone and Tesco etc. No QA, no tests, no frameworks allowed.

Sets random deadlines and used to suddenly drop demos on me for projects I'd just started and he had no idea of the state of them. Needless to say one project I was so rushed with no idea what I was actually making (for real) that I got sacked.

Everyone around me is running like crazy to deliver a project on time (the day after tomorrow) and I am sitting quietly trying to reply an e-mail of my project manager in french...

12 Stages of Software Development:

1. Analysis.
2. Development
3. Realization the whole analysis is complete bullshit and has nothing to with reality.
4. Denial about failing deadlines.
6. "Acceleration": adding more people to the project, bringing out big corner cutting machine.
7. Learning that massive amount of new features needs to be added, while the deadline is two weeks away.
8. Putting some random crap in production, riddled with horrid bugs and security flaws, to technically not miss the deadline.
9. Get the mess almost working long after the deadline has passed.
10. Maintain this steaming pile of crap for a year.
11. Start planning for full system rewrite that "Makes Everything Better".
12. Goto 1

Recently attended an interview. The guy was some random company consultant. Job description was for spring-boot (also required templating engine experience). He was asking me whether I know angular and JEE (completely different and kinda opposite of the job desc). That's a bummer but good thing I've messed around with these once or twice so I know whatsup.

Also, who the fuck has already got 7 programmers and wants to double up to 14 by only adding university students to the team (after teaching them angular and jee for a month, but whatever, its only a fucking month), in order to complete a new project with tight deadlines?

I don't think I'm sticking with this one...

gulp.pipe(notify("SASS compiled, motherfucker!"));

I hate working on tight deadlines when I have plans the entire week, so I add some random shit to my gulpfile once in a while to cheer myself up.. Did not work, but I'm not gonna remove it.