One week, and it turned out to be worse than that.

I was put on a project for a COVID-19 program in America (The CARES Act). The financial team came to us on Monday morning and said they need to give away a couple thousand dollars.

No big deal. All they wanted was a single form that people could submit with some critical info. Didn't need a login/ registration flow or anything. You could have basically used Google Forms for this project.

The project landed in my lap just before lunch on Monday morning. I was a junior in a team with a senior and another junior on standby. It was going to go live the next Monday.

The scope of the project made it seem like the one week deadline wasn't too awful. We just had to send some high priority emails to get some prod servers and app keys and we were fine.

Now is the time where I pause the rant to express to you just how fine we were decidedly **not**: we were not fine.

Tuesday rolls around and what a bad Tuesday it was. It was the first of many requirement changes. There was going to need to be a review process. Instead of the team just reading submissions from the site, they needed accept and reject buttons. They needed a way to deny people for specific reasons. Meaning the employee dashboard just got a little more complicated.

Wednesday came around and yeah, we need a registration and login flow. Yikes.

Thursday came and the couple-thousand dollars turned into a tens of millions. The amount of users we expected just blew up.

Friday, and they needed a way for users to edit their submissions and re-submit if they were rejected. And we needed to send out emails for the status of their applications.

Every day, a new meeting. Every meeting, new requirements that were devastating given our timeframe.

We put in overtime. Came in on the weekend. And by Monday, we had a form that users could submit and a registration/ login flow. No reviewer dashboard. We figured we could take in user input on time and then finish the dashboard later.

Well, financial team has some qualms. They wanted a more complicated review process. They wanted roles; managers assign to assistants. Assistants review assigned items.

The deadline that we worked so hard on whizzed by without so much as a thought, much less the funeral it deserved.

Then, they wanted multiple people to review an application before it was final. Then, they needed different landing pages for a few more departments to be able to review different steps of the applications.

Ended up going live on Friday, close to a month after that faithful Monday which disrupted everything else I was working on, effective immediately.

I don't know why, but we always go live on a Friday for some reason. It must be some sort of conspiracy to force overtime out of our managers. I'm baffled.

But I worked support after the launch.

And there's a funny story about support too: we were asked to create a "submit an issue" form. Me and the other junior worked on it on a wednesday three weeks into the project. Finished it. And the next day it was scrapped and moved to another service we already had running. Poor management like that plagued the project and worked in tandem with the dynamic and ridiculous requirements to make this project hell.

Back to support.

Phone calls give me bad anxiety. But Friday, just before lunch, I was put on the support team. Sure, we have a department that makes calls and deal with users. But they can't be trained on this program: it didn't exist just a month ago, and three days ago it worked differently (the slippery requirements never stopped).

So all of Friday and then all of Saturday and all of Monday (...) I had extended panic attacks calling hundreds of people. And the team that was calling people was only two people. We had over 400 tickets in the first two days.

And fuck me, stupid me, for doing a good job. Because I was put on the call team for **another** COVID project afterwards. I knew nothing about this project. I have hated my job recently. But I'm a junior. What am I gonna say, no?

This rant is a confession I had to make, for all of you out there having a bad time (or year), this story is for you.

Last year, I joined devRant and after a month, I was hired at a local company as an IT god (just joking but not far from what they expected from me), developer, web admin, printer configurator (of course) and all that in my country it's just called "the tech guy", as some of you may know.

I wasn't in immediate need for a full-time job, I had already started to work as a freelancer then and I was doing pretty good. But, you know how it goes, you can always aim for more and that's what I did.

The workspace was the usual, two rooms, one for us employees and one for the bosses (there were two bosses).

Let me tell you right now. I don't hate people, even if I get mad or irritated, I never feel hatred inside me or the need to think bad of someone. But, one of the two bosses made me discover that feeling of hate.

He had a snake-shaped face (I don't think that was random), and he always laughed at his jokes. He was always shouting at me because he was a nervous person, more than normal. He had a tone in his voice like he knew everything. Early on, after being yelled for no reason a dozen of times, I decided that this was not a place for me.

After just two months of doing everything, from tech support to Photoshop and to building websites with WordPress, I gave my one month's notice, or so I thought. I was confronted by the bosses, one of which was a cousin of mine and he was really ok with me leaving and said that I just had to find a person to replace me which was an easy task. Now, the other boss, the evil one, looked me on the eye and said "you're not going anywhere".

I was frozen like, "I can't stay here". He smiled like a snake he was and said "come on, you got this we are counting on you and we are really satisfied with how you are performing till now". I couldn't shake him, I was already sweating. He was rolling his eyes constantly like saying "ok, you are wasting my time now" and left to go to some basketball practice or something.

So, I was stuck there, I could have caused a scene but as I told you, one of the bosses was a cousin of mine, I couldn't do anything crazy. So, I went along with it. Until the next downfall.

I decided to focus on the job and not mind for the bad boss situation but things went really wrong. After a month, I realised that the previous "tech guy" had left me with around 20 ancient Joomla - version 1.0 websites, bursting with security holes and infested with malware like a swamp. I had never seen anything like it. Everyday the websites would become defaced or the server (VPN) would start sending tons of spam cause of the malware, and going offline at the end. I was feeling hopeless.

And then the personal destruction began. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat. I was having panick attacks at the office's bathroom. My girlfriend almost broke up with me because I was acting like an asshole due to my anxiety issues (but in the end she was the one to "bring me back"(man, she is a keeper)) and I hadn't put a smile on my face for months. I was on the brink of depression, if not already there. Everyday I would anxiously check if the server is running because I would be the one to blame, even though I was trying to talk to the boss (the bad one was in charge of the IT department) and tell him about the problem.

And then I snapped. I finally realised that I had hit rock bottom. I said "I can't let this happen to me" and I took a deep breath. I still remember that morning, it was a life-changing moment for me. I decided to bite the bullet and stay for one more month, dealing with the stupid old server and the low intelligence business environment. So, I woke up, kissed my girlfriend (now wife), took the bus and went straight to work, and I went into the boss's office. I lied that I had found another job on another city and I had one month in order to be there on time. He was like, "so you are leaving? Is it that good a job the one you found? And when are you going? And are you sure?", and with no hesitation I just said "yup". He didn't expect it and just said "ok then", just find your replacement and you're good to go. I found the guy that would replace me, informing him of every little detail of what's going on (and I recently found out, that he is currently working for some big company nowadays, I'm really glad for him!).

I was surprised that it went so smoothly, one month later I felt the taste of freedom again, away from all the bullshit. Totally one of the best feelings out there.

I don't want to be cliche, but do believe in yourself people! Things are not what the seem.

With all that said, I want to give my special thanks to devRant for making this platform. I was inactive for some time but I was reading rants and jokes. It helped me to get through all that. I'm back now! Bless you devRant!

I'm glad that I shared this story with all of you, have an awesome day!

Rant && story time

When I was in first grade of high school (age of 15) we had a class of informatics. Nothing unusuall, you say, but this teacher was ummm ... Let's just say special. Most of his classes looked like this:

TEACHER: Ok, class, today we are going to learn/work with <insert a name of a software here>. # And then he sat behind his desk, falling silent for the rest of the lesson. We had to look up the software ourselves, and learn to use it. Or not.

Next lesson, he just said:

TEACHER: Continue your work from the last time.

And on the third lesson of each cycle, there was grading in place. He walked through the class and if he saw you working with the software, you got a 5 (that is A for our western friends), but if you were doing something completely different, you got a 1 (that is F). That just ment that you had to open the program and wave the mouse around while he was looking at your screen, and you got a guaranteed 5.

And then the cycle repeated.

However, this is not the story about the teacher in general, it's a story about one specific event involving him.

Around the beginning of the year (calendar one, not school one; that is middle of the school year) a programming competition took place.

The first stage (school competition), was easy; I got 45 points out of 50 (I was second-best on the whole school, of all years (students from 15 to 20 years of age).

A few weeks later, second stage (national competition) took place. However, when I got to the registration dosk, things got weird.

I patiently waited in line, but when I got to the front, the assistant asked me for year and school.

ME: I come from SCHOOL_NAME and go to first year.
ASSISTANT1: All students who go to SCHOOL_NAME need to go to that separate line.

It seemed strange, but I walked over anyhow. Maybe there was enough students from our school so that new line opened for us.

ME: I go to first year. # I assumed I don't have to tell the name as the line was only for our school.
ASSISTANT2: Ok, but you need to go to that row. *points to the row wherexI just came from* # WTF is going on now?
ME: Ummm, I just came from there, and they told me to come here.
ASSISTANH2: Oh, you go to SCHOOL_NAME?
ME: Yeah
ASSISTANT2: Ok then. What is your name? # Thank Knuth, one mistery less
ME: My name is SELF.NAME
After a short search through the envelopes:
ASSISTANT2: Here you go # Both the fact that my name was completely misspeled and the procedure it took us to finally get to the correct envelope are a story for a different time.

Skip forward some 10 minutes, to the lecture hall where they just told us all the instructions and started to divide us into classrooms

ASSISTANT3:
for CLASSROOM, STUDENT_LIST in STUDENT_DIVISION:
for STUDENT in STUDENT_LIST:
STUDENT.invite(CLASSROOM)

At the end, only a few people, including me, remained.

ASSISTANT3: Is there anyone not from SCHOOL_NAME? # Umm, yeah, WTF is going on now?
Noone replied.
ASSISTANT3: OK, you all, come with me now, we will find you a classroom.

From there on, competition went fine, I came in second, got a new phone as a prize, no complaints.

However, later on, I realized what was the reason for all that weird behaviour.

Signup date for the second part was on LAST_SIGNUP_DATE, which was at least two weeks before the competition, and signups had to be done untill 1600 that day.

Our teacher signed us up at 2200. ON THE FUCKING DAY BEFORE THE COMPETITION. OF COURSE THEY HAD NOTHING PLANNED FOR US, NO ENVELOPES, NO COMPUTERS, NOTHING, IF WE WERE SIGNED UP LESS THAN FUCKING 12 HOURS BEFORE THE COMPETITION INSTEAD OF 2 WEEKS EARLIER. THE ONLY REASON WE GOT TO COMPETE WAS BECAUSE SOME PEOPLE DIDN'T SHOW UP AND WE USED THE PC'S MENT FOR THEM. IF EVERYONE SHOWED UP WE FUCKING COULDN'T COMPETE.

And from that moment on, I always signed myself up for all of the competitions; better safe than sorry.

So, Today was the last day of my internship.
and it was a great last day but everything was fine until.

I started my computer and for some reason it got caught up in boot. It didnt start Nautilus.

So i asked a Senior Dev for help. Nice as these Devs are, he helped me look for reasons. And we found them. My ubuntu hadnt had enough disk space to start. (On a side note there is nothing but Atom Firefox and a few files on there.) So we looked for the biggest files in the system and found them. Syslog was 40 Gb big. And if you think that is shocking behold. Because Syslog.1 was 290Gb big.

Not really a rant but a Story.

Long rant ahead.. so feel free to refill your cup of coffee and have a seat 🙂

It's completely useless. At least in the school I went to, the teachers were worse than useless. It's a bit of an old story that I've told quite a few times already, but I had a dispute with said teachers at some point after which I wasn't able nor willing to fully do the classes anymore.

So, just to set the stage.. le me, die-hard Linux user, and reasonably initiated in networking and security already, to the point that I really only needed half an ear to follow along with the classes, while most of the time I was just working on my own servers to pass the time instead. I noticed that the Moodle website that the school was using to do a big chunk of the course material with, wasn't TLS-secured. So whenever the class begins and everyone logs in to the Moodle website..? Yeah.. it wouldn't be hard for anyone in that class to steal everyone else's credentials, including the teacher's (as they were using the same network).

So I brought it up a few times in the first year, teacher was like "yeah yeah we'll do it at some point". Shortly before summer break I took the security teacher aside after class and mentioned it another time - please please take the opportunity to do it during summer break.

Coming back in September.. nothing happened. Maybe I needed to bring in more evidence that this is a serious issue, so I asked the security teacher: can I make a proper PoC using my machines in my home network to steal the credentials of my own Moodle account and mail a screencast to you as a private disclosure? She said "yeah sure, that's fine".
Pro tip: make the people involved sign a written contract for this!!! It'll cover your ass when they decide to be dicks.. which spoiler alert, these teachers decided they wanted to be.

So I made the PoC, mailed it to them, yada yada yada... Soon after, next class, and I noticed that my VPN server was blocked. Now I used my personal VPN server at the time mostly to access a file server at home to securely fetch documents I needed in class, without having to carry an external hard drive with me all the time. However it was also used for gateway redirection (i.e. the main purpose of commercial VPN's, le new IP for "le onenumity"). I mean for example, if some douche in that class would've decided to ARP poison the network and steal credentials, my VPN connection would've prevented that.. it was a decent workaround. But now it's for some reason causing Moodle to throw some type of 403.

Asked the teacher for routers and switches I had a class from at the time.. why is my VPN server blocked? He replied with the statement that "yeah we blocked it because you can bypass the firewall with that and watch porn in class".
Alright, fair enough. I can indeed bypass the firewall with that. But watch porn.. in class? I mean I'm a bit of an exhibitionist too, but in a fucking class!? And why right after that PoC, while I've been using that VPN connection for over a year?

Not too long after that, I prematurely left that class out of sheer frustration (I remember browsing devRant with the intent to write about it while the teacher was watching 😂), and left while looking that teacher dead in the eyes.. and never have I been that cold to someone while calling them a fucking idiot.

Shortly after I've also received an email from them in which they stated that they wanted compensation for "the disruption of good service". They actually thought that I had hacked into their servers. Security teachers, ostensibly technical people, if I may add. Never seen anyone more incompetent than those 3 motherfuckers that plotted against me to save their own asses for making such a shitty infrastructure. Regarding that mail, I not so friendly replied to them that they could settle it in court if they wanted to.. but that I already knew who would win that case. Haven't heard of them since.

So yeah. That's why I regard those expensive shitty pieces of paper as such. The only thing they prove is that someone somewhere with some unknown degree of competence confirms that you know something. I think there's far too many unknowns in there.

Nowadays I'm putting my bets on a certification from the Linux Professional Institute - a renowned and well-regarded certification body in sysadmin. Last February at FOSDEM I did half of the LPIC-1 certification exam, next year I'll do the other half. With the amount of reputation the LPI has behind it, I believe that's a far better route to go with than some random school somewhere.

//begin midnight rant

THATS IT, I AM PISSED OFF NOW ABOUT THIS SNAPCHAT SHIT!!!

I DON'T GIVE A FUCK !!!

I DIDN'T GIVE A FUCK WHEN SNAP CHAT WAS INVENTED

I DIDN'T GIVE A FUCK WHEN WATSAPP COPIED ITS FEATURE(yeah I haven't seen your pathetic story)

AND I ALSO DONT GIVE A FLYING FUCK ABOUT THE SHIT ITS GOTTEN INTO NOW.

as a guy who is allergic to people I stay the fuck away from such apps.

but for God's sake get real u shit heads... Uninstalling an app is not an achievement worth bragging about( there is a drag and drop interface for it in ur Android phone)

Here is a guy who started his own company when he graduated from college and is providing employment to 100s of ppl and ur going to put that at risk just because your fragile ego was hurt because of "poor country " comment fuck u do your research that comment was made in 2015 when a monthly 1gb 3g internet would burn a hole in your pocket

Go screw yourselves u brain dead pieces of shit if u r so worked up about being called a poor country then start a company and provide jobs for the people who are struggling(why would you when uninstalling an app is so much easier).

Any one with 300 mg of common sense would have realize that the video would have difficulty in buffering in your slow ass 2g internet pack in your phone in 2015 when Jio sim was not yet introduced.

People like you are the reason I wish the super villains would win at the end of sifi movies.

I hope God(if there is one and if ever he decides to give a fuck) would give the guys who built this app the strength to get through this shit storm

PEACE OUT

//End of mid night rant

You know. I have mixed feelings on the way people have been reacting to senzory's rant regarding the way he deals with clients. Some people believe that he is unethical, some people see it as just business(me included) but to see what the community says is somewhat interesting.

First, let me be clear on something: i have been fucked over by clients many times for being a nice guy and trying to play it nicely.

Because of this I am selective of who deserves good treatment and who gets to fuck off. But regardless of the client I do the same thing: regardless of who it is, nice or otherwise. If a project will take 1 week to complete then I tell them that it will take 3 to 4 weeks. Why? Well because I have many things on my plate, I am married and have two children, one lives with me and I try to spend as much time with them as I can. I work from 8 to 6, sometimes later and when I get home I sometimes don't do shit since at work I maintain the web services of 2 fucking college campuses.
I don't look for my clients. Through word of mouth they come to me. And being in a privileged position(there are about 5 devs here and they all suck) they can either do with my times and fees or can fuck off over the border where Pedro will do their shit on vbscript and classic ASP(which I like, but you know why this is not an option in 2018)

Apps can be sold for large quantities of money, regardless of what their use case is, if a company wants to outsource their apps to an external developer(such as yours truly) that means that they are willing to play the game. And that is what business is: a game, a survival game.

Where I live, a company will not think twice of firing a single mother for whatever reason. In the U.S of A, and specially in Texas, you can be fired for whatever reason. I have automated people's jobs without knowing it, I have made people lose their jobs and saved companies thousands with my apps. Things like that were not know to me, had I known that someone would have lost their jobs I would have tried differently.

If a company is willing to tell employees(loyal employees) to fuck off, then i do not regret charging what I do and hustling the way I do with rat faced dickheads that care not for people. If I could I would destroy entire companies here. But that is for another story.

I have been used, insulted, gambled with and have been lied to, to my face by these companies. Which has left me jaded.

Oh now, trust me. I am still highly optimistic and nice. And if someone has a small business and I can help them out, then I will lower my rate and give positive vibes in the hopes of making things better through karma. I want to see the best in people. But this does not stop me from being a shark and giving quotes the way I do.

Because companies, as an overall entity are not people with the best intentions(sometimes) and they will not take your kindness, they will take advantage if possible in an effort to save money. Its just dickhead business.

So why, as a professional and privileged developer that obtained his skills through intense study and practice, a wizard by all means, should lower to these nameless, Faceless entities?
Why should i give them the fairness they do not give others? Why should I play the high morale game and come out as a loser?

At the end of the day, I get to swim in my own pool of success, knowing that they did not get the chance to fuck me over

So if you tell me that you took advantage of your hard earned skillset, and built a cross platform app(which compiles to native binaries) and sold 2 products for one, I will tell you that you are an excellent player at their game. If you tell me that you finished before and got to charge for 2 weeks of work doing just 2 days I will say that you are an excellent time manager. And if you tell me that at the end of the day you managed to keep said customer I will tell you that you are a true professional.

There is a difference lads, in selling a product to big momma jamma's cajun restaurant, to the largest logistics company around.

Be nice to those that desserve it.

You know what really grinds my gears? As a junior webdeveloper (mostly backend) I try my hardest to deliver quality content and other people's ignorance is killing me in my current job.

Let's rant about a recent project I had under my hood, for this project (a webshop) I had to restructure the database and had to include validation on basicly every field (what the heck, no validation I hear you say??), apperently they let an incompetent INTERN make this f***king webshop. The list of mistakes in this project can bring you close to the moon I'd say, seriously.

Database design 101 is basicly auto incremented ID's, and using IDs in general instead of using name (among a list of other stuff obv.). Well, this intern decided it was a good idea to filter a custom address-book module based on a NAME, so it wasn't setup as: /addressbook/{id} (unique ID, never a problem) but as /addressbook/{name}, which results in only showing one address if the first names on the addresses are the same. Lots of bugs that go by this type of incompetence and ignorance. Want to hear another joke? Look no further, this guy also decided it was a great idea to generate the next ID of an order. So the ordernumber wasn't made up by the auto incremented id on the order model, but by a count of all the orders and that was the next order number. This broke so many times, unbelievable.

To close the list of mistakes off, the intern decided it was a great idea to couple the address of a user directly to an order. Because the user is able to ship stuff to addresses within his addressbook, this bug could delete whole orders out of the system by simply deleting the address in your addressbook.

Enough about my intern rant, after working my ass of and going above and beyond the expectations of the customer, the guy from sales who was responsible for it showed what an a**hole he was. Lets call this guy Tom.

Little backstory: our department is a very small part of the company but we are responsible for so much if you think about it. The company thinks we've transitioned to company wide SCRUM, but in reality we are so far from it. I think the story below is a great example of what causes this.

Anyway, we as the web department work within Gitlab. All of our issues and sprints are organized and updated within this place. The rest of the company works with FileMaker, such a pile of shit software but I've managed to work around its buggyness. Anyway, When I was done with the project described above I notified all the stakeholders, this includes Tom. I made a write-up of all the changes I had made to the project, including screenshots and examples, within Gitlab. I asked for feedback and made sure to tag Tom so he was notified of my changes to the project.

After hearing nothing for 2 weeks, guess who came to my desk yesterday? F**king tom asking what had changed during my time on the project. I told him politely to check Gitlab and said on a friendly tone that I had notified him over 2 weeks ago. He, I shit you not, blantly told me that he never looks on there "because of all the notifications" and that I should 'tell him what to do' within FileMaker (which I already had updated referencing Gitlab with the write-up of my changes). That dick move of him made me lose all respect for this guy, what an ignorant piece of shit he is afterall.

The thing that triggers me the most in the last story is that I spent so much free time to perfect the project I was working on (the webshop). I even completed some features which weren't scheduled during the sprint I was working on, and all I was asking for was a little appreciation and feedback. Instead, he showed me how ignorant and what a dick he was.

I absolutely have no reason to keep on working for this company if co-workers keep treating me like this. The code base of the webshop is now in a way better condition, but there are a dozen other projects like this one. And guess what? All writen by the same intern.

/rant :P

!Rant

Story, only read this if you feel like wasting your time

Ok so I live in a small village and it takes around 15 minutes to get to the next city by car. I can't drive yet because I am 15 and so I would need my parents to drive me there. There are also no buses anymore which drive to the city after 2pm.

Most of my friends live in that city, none of them code. We always meet on a discord server and then play games or do some other shit. Today I got online at around 3pm and when I joined the discord server they asked me if I wanted to go see the movie 'IT' with them tonight, I said yeah of course (I am a huge fan of horror movies), but only if my parents come home early enough to drive me there.
Time passed and then my last friend left the discord server because he had to walk to the cinema.
I was the last one still on the server and also the one with the farest way to the cinema. I already knew that my parents wouldn't come home in time anymore and so I decided to just start coding something. I usually code while listening to some music and so I switched over to spotify to choose a playlist. I just randomly clicked on the first playlist spotify recommended me and the song started playing: 'Sound of silence'.

Fuck you spotify algorithm.

I know that not being able to go to the cinema with your friends is a fucking stupid reason to be sad but I just feel very sad right now. Sitting alone in my dark room staring at my computer screen.

Sorry for wasting your time

== Internship Interview Rant ==

This is the weirdest interview I've been to to be honest because it wasn't really ABOUT ME. It's like the boss is not really interesting in knowing what I can do, what I am capable of doing. He asked me about my educational background for 5 minutes and started explaining about the startup for 45 minutes. He explained how he came up with the idea like it was a children's bedtime story. He explain what the job is, BUT he didn't mention what programming languages they use. All he said was it required knowledge about different programming languages. I tried asking but he seemed to dodge the question for some reason by saying everyone needs to know a little bit of everything. (Srsly i don't even know what to start learning for this) After listening to him talk and talk and talk and talk, he finally said "hey, think about it and send me an email if you are willing to take it up!"

He works with STUDENTS. The team is composed of him and 5 students. o.O They all seem so..... quiet in the office. Is that normal ???? Or like shouldn't everyone be kinda "interactive" sometimes?

So there is a girl working there too for 3 weeks now but SHE IS IN ROMANIA like wtf, gr8 then i guess ill be the only girl there but hey perks of being a girl, u get to be spoiled sometimes XD it happens a lot !

Internship ad ----> Main language: English
Me: *rages internally during the interview and thinks: BRUHH WHY ARENT U SPEAKING IN ENGLISH i prepared what I was gonna say in english for an hour*
I wonder if the code is in english or maybe its not :(( But I wish it were because it would be soooo much easier in english.

And there you go, I guess I have one week to find a better internship or decide to deal with this talkative boss. This isn't exactly a story of my last job cause my last job is totally non-dev related. This is a story of (maybe) my future job unless I actually find a better internship.

#!/usr/bin/rant
So, we are a web development and marketing agency. That's fine... except now it seems that we are a marketing and web development agency. Where the head marketing guy feels it's his job to head up web development.

This is NOT what I signed up for.

When you offer web services to a client, the one meeting with the client should understand at least basic stuff, and know when to pull in a heavyweight for more questions. Instead, our web team is summarized by a guy who listens to 80's rock music in a shared office (used to be just me in there) and spends his days trying to get 30-year-olds on Facebook to click an ad.

He was on the phone yesterday with some ecommerce / CRM support, trying to tell them that they have an API, that "it's a simple thing, I'm sure you have it", and that's all we need to do business with them. Which is not his call, it's my call, but for some reason he's the one on the phone asking for API info. The last time I took someone else's word on an API, I underquoted the work and eventually found out that their "API" was nothing more than a cron job which places a CSV file on your server via FTP.

Anyway, we now have a full-time marketer and two part-time interns, with another ad out for an AdWords specialist. Meanwhile, I'm senior dev with a server admin / retired senior dev, and if we don't focus on hiring a front-end guy soon we're going to lose business.

Long story short, I'm getting sick of having a guy who does not understand basic web concepts run the show because he's the one who talks to the client.

(Part 2/2?)

THE RAT-RACE ARC:

I get a mail 2 months into this fiasco telling me to register on their website and take up another test. I was already over with my emergency and was working my full-time default. (Fortunately I found another internship during this time which was one of the best initiatives I've worked with).

It asks me to register as a new user, take up the test and "share" my results. Not pushing it on insta/fb but legitimately share my test results link to my friends manually like a referral code. The more shares the more marks I'll get in the test. Why the test you ask. Of course to sign you up for the same Whatsapp trickery bullshit.

Luckily these nutcases didn't know they could be bypassed. I simply opened the link in incognito and logged in with my own account and that counted as a point. So I automated that shit.

Surprise surprise. The same fucking "Hello everyone" message into my mail. To my surprise I was relatively lucky to get ghosted after my attempt. This story is quite depressing in general cases. You're supposed to do this assignment shit for 2 months and then they ask for 2000 INR for a training period, past which you are paid between 1000/- and 7000/-. Though I didn't get the chance but I'm willing to bet you get 1000/- per month in a 2-MONTH INTERNSHIP. WTF.

You also have the other option of ranking first in their 3 consecutive competition that they hold. The theme is again to create chunks of their actual outsourced work.

WHY NOW:

The reason why this rant sparked is because I recently received an email with my results of the aptitude exam that I first took before the Whatsapp fiasco. I imagine they just pushed out a new update to their test thingy and forgot to set it's limit.

THE CORRECTION ARC:

I pushed this message to Internshala. They were kind enough to remove them from their website. I also shot down their Angel and Indeed listings. I sent a strongly worded email counting their con-artist operations and how I've alerted authorities (obviously a bluff but I was enjoying it). They most probably are not affected by this though. They might still be continuing their operations on their website.

I'm sharing the story here with the moral of:

Don't do jackshit if they're not compensating you for it

Always check for reviews before you start working at a place.

Be cautious of bulk messages (and the infamous HEY GUYS!! opening)

Don't do anything outside your work specification at least while doing an assignment.

You're free to question and inquire respectfully about the proceedings.

If you're good at your job you'll get good working place. No need to crush yourself with an oppressive job due to external restrictions.

And if you manage a company, please don't take advantage of helplessness.

There's no good ending to this tale as I have not received a follow-up. Though I want to see scumbags of their calibre shot down without remorse.

Good bye and thank you for listening.

So in my current workplace we have an IT department of... 7-8 people, with 3 developers (or 2.5, but that's debatable)

The oldest dev is old school, over 65 now came from Visual Basic, of course, and is a father of department's director - this is a story in of itself, but besides the point of this rant

Anywho, this dev is of course in this workplace way longer than me, and historically is in charge of finance and Microsoft CRM systems.

Guess the reason why Microsoft CRM was chosen at all in the company?

Because dev said he is not good with creating web forms from scratch, and apparently with MSCRM you can craft them without much trouble.

Yes, that's it, our MSCRM is used as a web application with custom forms that store data into custom DB tables that dev creates... nothing to do with actual CRM use cases.

Coworker pushed some changes and gave me good reason to rant.
Here's my story:
I start implementing a new feature, senior reviews it and suggest some changes, which are actually good ideas. I continue developing and implement the suggested changes.
The next day, senior keeps working on outdated source and makes similar changes like i did on the day before. Just pushes it anyway and breaks fucking everything.
The api now contains redundant information.
My classes still exist, but aren't used anymore. Let's keep some redundant code in the project, because deleting it is so much work.
All the unit tests broke, but he just commented them out, so everything is green again. We have now 0 tests which actually do something in the project, but at least the build is green...

I have a rant. A genuine rant, not a funny story, etc.

I want a keyboard. I need one. It can cost €500, as long as it won't break in a year and fulfils all my needs. Make it a €1000, I don't care. What are my needs then? Well...

It has to be a split keyboard - two halves. But wireless in every aspect, ergonomic, with multimedia keys on its outer edges (preferably pointing outwards, not up) and a heavy metal trackball on the right outer edge (preferably upper right corner). That's a bare minimum.

On top of that it probably some magnetic scrolls for things like navigating pages, changing volume and fidgeting in general wouldn't hurt. Also I'd prefer it to snap back into a one-piece whenever I need it to lie on my knees, e.g. when I type while sitting on a coach (I have a coach PC setup, no desk, and there's a reason). Why do I need it to split then...?

I had an accident. Kind of broke my back when I was 11. It's mostly okay now after couple years of rehabilitation and many more years of careful living. Luckily the only two wheels I ride on are powered by a 105.97 hp @ 9,970 rpm engine. Still, I try to be careful so I tried tons of work hygiene techniques over the years and I found out anything over 2 hours is best done while lying flat.

Coding while lying flat has its challenges, mostly focused around screen and input. Ever since I got a VR headset half of them got solved but the other half - acquiring a suitable keyboard - it's very hard to satisfy. I tried that with a one-piece keyboard lying on my stomach. Turns out actively bending elbows quickly wears them out (hello tennis players). So a split keyboard it has to be. So far I tried 4 different ones and I had to modify the cable connecting both halves in each and every one of them so that it'd be long enough to go behind my back. The main cable itself I only had to modify once because usually there're extensions available.

Apart from cables, all of those keyboards had issues. Starting from some kind of de-syncing when keys from both halves would randomly register in a wrong order - I didn't know it's possible with a cable connected halves... I did try two generic WiFi keyboards (using one for each hand) and they unfortunately suffered from that very same issue but I was sure it wouldn't happen if the device was designed to be a one unit from the very beginning, right? And yet it in 2 of the tested devices.

Other than that, plugs disconnecting on their own forcing me to take off the headset and fiddle around, too high key travel that'd strain the wrists after a few hours, even the noise that would wake up my girlfriend sleeping in a separate room were all a common issue (I briefly had an almost completely silent WiFi mechanical keyboard from Logitech we both really liked, but it was a one-piece). Once I got a split keyboard that was "natively" WiFi but not only the two halves were still connected with a cable that turned out to be way too short for my needs, it also had a very noticeable lag despite the high price - a lag way higher than any of the cheap WiFi keyboards I owned in the past. So I sent it back. Now IDK what to do because AFAICT there are no more models available, at least where I live.

So yeah, I need a keyboard and I'll probably have to make one myself. Sorry, just had to vent.

!rant. Story:

There are a lot of things I would like to do, but the lack of enough money makes it hard.

My goals are to become more active on YouTube, find clients and hold them, try to learn how to sell products convincingly, become better at web design, understand university-level mathematics, leave Germany (one particular reason for this is the need of the redundant imprint), help people around the world, become more fit bodywise (by doing e.g. swimming, jogging and going to the gym), eat healthy and drink a lot of water, work on my emotional intelligence, learn peoples' behaviours and why they do what they do, write my own book, finally start practicing yoga and muay thai, live on my own, make a world tour for a year, learn the skill of powered paragliding, getting the license for powered paragliding, glide with a powered paraglider the whole day, build a house in the woods, create my own satellite and launch it, develop new things (like building some sort of vehicle that can fly in a special way), learn about biology, chemistry, physics (I hate it, but I believe in the power of what is going to happen once you learn it), become more aware of what is happening, live on the streets with no money to learn the ability to survive in more extreme situations, learn how to use guns, bombs, snipers and knifes properly (don't assume that I am a terrorist now haha, I am just interested in that type of stuff. That's all to it) ...

But all of that, obviously, not in 2020. More like within 10 years.

!Dev rant

So tired of meeting people in my generation who literally live to just freeload. Like some of us are actually trying to get shit done in life and yet here you are, just being a lazy fuck who for some reason thinks they're still in highschool and need to not give a god damn shit about anything else.

I've basically got to a point in my life where I have no idea why am I friends with someone thinks it's okay to punch another grown man in the balls after they changed a song, get to a yelling match with another person over a boardgame, sit in the one way that will definitely break the fucking couch.

But then!!!

When I'm at your house, and I change the music on the Spotify, you kick me out because I'm crossing the line? Also, they almost kicked my friend for wearing the wrong shirt (it had minions on it, they hated that movie)... The fuck.

Like you want respect, buddy you gotta earn it. You literally live off welfare and your parents and your girlfriend parents money. You are a fully capable non disabled straight white male, who hasn't aimed higher in their professional life whatsoever. I know people who had every sad story in the book thrown at them, and yet they have achieved twice what you did.

And after all of that, you feel like it's your right to be a shithead, and tell others how to act.

Go fuck yourself.

This is the story of me discovering devRant by accident.
---
I have never meddled with php before and I never intended to do so. For some reason, I accepted this consulting and chose Ci4 as the framework. All hell broke lose on my life. I could be a fucking idiot or the framework is a real ass wipe.

The setup took me hours and when I tried adding myth/auth, the real shit hit the giant fucking fan. WHAT THE FUCK PHP AND CI4? I tried all the weird fucking suggestions from the internet and you still fucked me in the ass with a bigger stick EVERY FUCKING TIME. I spent an whole night figuring you out and now I have my real job to login to with NO FUCKING SLEEP. You royally fucked my night and also my day without an ounce of A FUCKING CLOSURE.

Once I figure this out, Imma fuck the fucking project dealer and throw the weird ass shit on his ugly ass face and yell "FUCK YOU".

I am so depressed that this made me find an app to rant about it like a maniac.

-BrainlessIdiot

So in my last rant I mentioned an ERP. This is its story:
When I started, all paperwork (including invoices, delivery slips, orders to suppliers etc.) was done on Word and some Excel, no specialised software whatsoever.
At some point (I already worked there for 2 years then), it became too much even for our boss, so he decided to spend some cash on the real deal.
After some looking around, he found software that seemed right (same vendor as our external bookkeeper used, so it would work with him too, nice). In order to save some money, he purchased it in Germany, as they offered a smaller product costing way less (we were based in Switzerland).
Once installed, we realised that this product was only meant to be used within the EU, as it only supported € as a currency and German VAT rates. We needed Swiss Francs and local VAT to work as well.
His solution looked as follows: I had the task to edit all forms via built-in MS Report Builder (god does it suck) to display the string CHF instead of €, and alter the on-sheet excel-like functions to use our VAT rates. Internally, the application of course still thought it was using € etc. For that reason, all output was unusable for bookkeeping, so we (as before) would just hand it in on paper.
If he had purchased the version sold here, all of the above would not have been the case, meaning support for multiple currencies and VATs, as well as direct transfer to the bookkeeper. He hardly saved 15k, in exchange for a non-working solution.

Most of these windows lovers here exist just because windows haters don't have a solid reason and follow up on those who actually do have good reasons to hate windows.

Moral of the story: Don't hate windows just because you think all the devs hate it. Come up with some decent reasons to avoid gamers and microsoft warriors from crushing your rant.