Yesterday, in a meeting with project stakeholders and a dev was demoing his software when an un-handled exception occurred, causing the app to crash.

Dev: “Oh..that’s weird. Doesn’t do that on my machine. Better look at the log”
- Dev looks at the log and sees the exception was a divide by zero error.
Dev: “Ohhh…yea…the average price calculation, it’s a bug in the database.”
<I burst out laughing>
Me: “That’s funny.”
<Dev manager was not laughing>
DevMgr: “What’s funny about bugs in the database?”
Me: “Divide by zero exceptions are not an indication of a data error, it’s a bug in the code.”
Dev: “Uhh…how so? The price factor is zero, which comes from a table, so that’s a bug in the database”
Me: “Jim, will you have sales with a price factor of zero?”
StakeholderJim: “Yea, for add-on items that we’re not putting on sale. Hats, gloves, things like that.”
Dev: “Steve, did anyone tell you the factor could be zero?”
DBA-Steve: “Uh...no…just that the value couldn’t be null. You guys can put whatever you want.”
DevMgr: “So, how will you fix this bug?”
DBA-Steve: “Bug? …oh…um…I guess I could default the value to 1.”
Dev: “What if the user types in a zero? Can you switch it to a 1?”
Me: “Or you check the factor value before you try to divide. That will fix the exception and Steve won’t have to do anything.”
<awkward couple of seconds of silence>
DevMgr: “Lets wrap this up. Steve, go ahead and make the necessary database changes to make sure the factor is never zero.”
StakeholderJim: “That doesn’t sound right. Add-on items should never have a factor. A value of 1 could screw up the average.”
Dev: “Don’t worry, we’ll know the difference.”
<everyone seems happy and leaves the meeting>

I completely lost any sort of brain power to say anything after Dev said that. All the little voices kept saying were ‘WTF? WTF just happened? No really…W T F just happened!?’ over and over. I still have no idea on how to articulate to anyone with any sort of sense about what happened. Thanks DevRant for letting me rant.

Sales guys

There is this salesman right across from me that always brags about how rich his parents are and how lucky us tech guys are for having such an easy job. He told me one day that he was going to quit and make his own software company currently having no developing experience at all because "I've seen some of these developers. If those guys can do it, it'll be a breeze." I convinced him that the best language to learn in order to make your own websites/apps is Linux command line. Hilariously enough, the other 2 devs heard me say that and when Glenn the sales douche followed up with them one of them told him "Yeah, If you think you're really going to be quick with it then Linux will be your best bet, but if you have trouble just learn C++ instead and you'll still be able to make websites." Best of luck on your new Venture, you spoiled jizz stain.

Sister was getting a new phone (she likes iphones but the jackplug removal made her go towards android as well as the prices) and there was this Deezer family deal. So she Signal'd me asking if I'd like to join the deezer family and I was like 'yeah sure but just remember that there's a big chance of me moving to another country after my study, is that okay with this subscription?'
Sales guy: It's limited to the country the official subscriber is in.
Sister: 'Oh but my brother is a smart IT guy, he can probably setup a VPN server here so that he can still use the app.'

She told that the face of the sales guys was like 'what the actual fuck just happened'.

She called me afterwards telling the story and also 'even though I thought I'd never learn about this stuff (I always told stuff at the dinner table), appearantly you taught me more than I realized!;.

Yeah, that was a very proud brother moment =).

Summary of the summary: Boss is an asshole. Root gets angry; boss leaves instead of picking a fight for once. This makes Root sad (and really angry).

Summary: Root has another interaction with her boss. The boss is an asshole. Root is a bitch. Root would have been so so so much more of a bitch if the boss actually fucking responded. Root is sad this didn't happen. Root might have gotten fired. That would have made Root happy. :<

-------------

Le wild blackout appears!

-- Conference call (the short-short version) --
Boss: *freaks out* Fix it! Why aren't you fixing it? You have to fix it.
Me: I'm already fixing it. 😕
Boss: You have to fix it! This is important!
Me: Then let's get off this call so I can focus on fixing it!
Boss: Okay but fix it! *begrudgingly hangs up*

-- Slack --
Me: (posting a running log of what I'm doing) This is what i discovered. this is the cause. these are the possible fixes. I picked this one because it's quick and has few consequences, though it may break ____ so it'll need followup fixes. I'll do those tomorrow. Blackout resolved!

Boss: (apparently doesn't even noticed I fixed his shitty service)

-- Next day --
Boss: I want you to work on [stupid shit] instead.
Me: But what about the followup fixes?
Boss: Top priority! because customer service!
Me: ... fine.

-- Next week (verbatim because wtf) --
Boss: Did we test that [resolution] on ______? No one thought to test this. It didnt cross anyones mind at all? Either you guys can make good decisions and document concerns or I have to be part of every decision [...]. But this is basic. SHould have been a team heads up and said if we are switching this what can it break and can we test it. [sic]

Me: Did you want me to resolve the blackout quickly and allow people to actually use our service, or spend two days checking everything that might possibly have gone wrong? I weighed the possibilities and picked the solution with the quickest implementation with the fewest consequences. You're welcome.

Me: (Quotes boss's "SHould have been a team heads up" and links my "this is what could go wrong" heads-up in Slack)
Boss: (pretends not to even notice)
Boss: (talks about customer service related crap)

What a fucking loser.
I'm so angry he didn't respond and start in on me over it. I wanted to tear him to shreds in front of everyone.

Related:
He tried adding another huge project to my plate earlier today, and I started flipping out on him for all these shitty sales features he keeps dumping on me in place of real work that i still get blamed for not finishing. The contractor stepped in before it got too heated, though, which is probably best because my reaction was pretty unprovoked. The above rant, though? Asshole doesn't read, just blames and yells when he's angry.

I really hate him.

One of the linux engineers gets up with: 'I'm sorry, I just pushed a windows server sale to the sales guy :/'

Linux engineer 1: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE D:
Linux engineer 2: WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT @_@
Linux engineer 3: Why the FUCK would we want to manage yet another piece of problems?!

Engineer who said it: 'But it's still a sale guys....'

All engineers: THAT'S NOT A VALID EXCUSE O_o

😆

I work in a company where I'm the only developer, with everyone being designers or marketing or sales. Typically like the scene from Silicon Valley.

Moto was to create a ticket selling website for their products, and make sure they worked as well. It was all fine, until deadlines were discussed. They wanted it done within 2 weeks, the entire backend dashboard, API and front end.

I told them it's almost impossible to do it, but they insisted on it. So, I made a minimal dashboard and told them, I haven't completed a few things, such as if you edit data in one place, it won't reflect in other tables. So, be careful while editing the data.

They nodded their head for everything, yesterday was site launch and 2 hours before that one bastard decided to changed the product names to something "catchy" but failed to change the same in other places.

I had used the name as foreign key, so querying other DBs became a fuck all issue, and eventually API stopped giving any response to front end calls.

I got extremely pissed, and shouted at that dude, for fucking everything up. He said, you're the tech guy and you should've taken all this into account.

I sat and hardcoded all the data into database again, made sure site is live. Once it was live, these guys call a company meeting and fire me saying I was incompetent in handling the stressful situation.

At that moment, I lost my shit and blasted each of those people. The designer started crying since her absurd designs(though great) couldn't be realised in CSS that too within 2 weeks time.

One of the worst experience for working for a company. I could've taken the website down, and told them to buzz off if they'd called, I couldn't get myself to do it, hence ranting here.

I seriously feel, all these tech noob HRs need to get a primer course on how to deal with problems of a programmer before they get to hire one, most of these guys don't know what we're trying to tell in itself.

I find devRant to be the only place where I can get someone to understand the issues that I face, hence ranted.

TL;DR: Coded ticket selling site in 2 weeks. 3 hours to launch, data entry dude fucks up. I clean all the mess, get the site online. Get fired as soon as that happens.

Live long and prosper. Peace.

Fuck the memes.

Fuck the framework battles.

Fuck the language battles.

Fuck the titles.

Anybody who has been in this field long enough knows that it doesn't matter if your linus fucking torvalds, there is no human who has lived or ever will live that simultaneously understands, knows, and remembers how to implement, in multiple languages, the following:

- jest mocks for complex React components (partial mocks, full mocks, no mocks at all!)
- token cancellation for asynchronous Tasks in C#
- fullstack CRUD, REST, and websocket communication (throw in gRPC for bonus points)
- database query optimization, seeding, and design
- nginx routing, https redirection
- build automation with full test coverage and environment consideration
- docker container versioning, restoration, and cleanup
- internationalization on both the front AND backends
- secret storage, security audits
- package management, maintenence, and deprecation reviews
- integrating with dozens of APIs
- fucking how to center a div

and that's a _comically_ incomplete list; barely scratches the surface of the full range of what a dev can encounter in a given day of writing software

have many of us probably done one or even all of these at different times? surely.

but does that mean we are supposed to draw that up at a moment's notice some cookie-cutter solution like a fucking robot and spit out an answer on a fax sheet?

recruiters, if you read this site (perhaps only the good ones do anyway so its wasted oxygen), just know that whoever you hire its literally the luck of the draw of how well they perform during the interview. sure, perhaps some perform better, but you can never know how good someone is until they literally start working at your org, so... have fun with that.

Oh and I almost forgot, again for you recruiters, on top of that list which you probably won't ever understand for the entirety of your lives, you can also add writing documentation, backup scripts, and orchestrating / administrating fucking JIRA or actually any somewhat technical dashboard like a CMS or website, because once again, the devs are the only truly competent ones - and i don't even mean in a technical sense, i mean in a HUMAN sense of GETTING SHIT DONE IN GENERAL.

There's literally 2 types of people in the world: those who sit around drawing flow charts and talking on the phone all day, and those WHO LITERALLY FUCKING BUILD THE WORLD

why don't i just run the whole fucking company at this point? you guys are "celebrating" that you made literally $5 dollars from a single customer and i'm just sitting here coding 12 hours a day like all is fine and well

i'm so ANGRY its always the same no matter where i go, non-technical people have just no clue, even when you implore them how long things take, they just nod and smile and say "we'll do it the MVP way". sure, fine, you can do that like 2 or 3 times, but not for 6 fucking months until you have a stack of "MVPs" that come toppling down like the garbage they are.

How do expect to keep the "momentum" of your customers and sales (I hope you can hear the hatred of each of these market words as I type them) if the entire system is glued together with ducktape because YOU wanted to expedite the feature by doing it the EASY way instead of the RIGHT way. god, just forget it, nobody is going to listen anyway, its like the 5th time a row in my life

we NEED tests!
we NEED to know our code coverage!
we NEED to design our system to handle large amounts of traffic!
we NEED detailed logging!
we NEED to start building an exception database!

BILBO BAGGINS! I'm not trying to hurt you! I'm trying to help you!

Don't really know what this rant was, I'm just raging and all over the place at the universe. I'm going to bed.

You know side projects? Well I took on one. An old customer asked to come and take over his latest startups companys tech. Why not, I tought. Idea is sound. Customer base is ripe and ready to pay.

I start digging and the Hardware part is awesome. The guys doing the soldering and imbedded are geniuses. I was impressed AF.

I commit and meet up with CEO. A guy with a vision and sales orientation/contacts. Nice! This shit is gonna sell. Production lines are also set.

Website? WTF is this shit. Owner made it. Gotta give him the credit. Dude doesn't do computers and still managed to online something. He is still better at sales so we agree that he's gonna stick with those and I'll handle the tech.

I bootstrap a new one in my own simplistic style and online it. I like it. The owner likes it. He made me to stick to a tacky logo. I love CSS and bootstrap. You can make shit look good quick.

But I still don't have access to the soul of the product. DBs millions rows of data and source for the app I still behind the guy that has been doing this for over a year.

He has been working on a new version for quite some time. He granted access to the new versions source, but back end and DB is still out of reach. Now for over month has passed and it's still no new version or access to data.

Source has no documentation and made in a flavor of JS frame I'm not familiar with. Weekend later of crazy cramming I get up to speed and it's clear I can't get further without the friggin data.

The V2 is a scramble of bleeding edge of Alpha tech that isn't ready for production and is clearly just a paid training period for the dev. And clearly it isn't going so well because release is a month late. I try to contact, but no reaction. The owner is clueless.

Disheartening. A good idea is going to waste because of some "dev" dropping a ball and stonewalling the backup.

I fucking give him till the end of the next week until I make the hardware team a new api to push the data and refactor the whole thing in proper technologies and cut him off.

Please. If you are a dev and don't have the time to concentrate on the solution don't take it on and kill off the idea. You guys are the key to making things happening and working. Demand your cut but also deserve it by delivering or at least have the balls to tell you are not up for it.

When the Sales team fucks up something, they point finger at each other for the blame.

When the Dev Team fucks up something, as a Senior Developer I say to my Boss that we fucked it up no matter whose fault it is and we will fix it up by x time.

When the SysAdmin team fucks. The Dev Team is to blame.

Sorry guys, I got a bit frustrated. All our servers wasn't backed up from last week and the SysAdmin guys are saying it's our fault.

What the fuck is going on? fuck you fuck fuck fuck fuck...

Was asked to check the sales team server as it was running slow.
Apart from redundant processes and users with too much permissions I found a "Cobol" folder under one of the sales team member's home folder.

If it weren't the sales people I would immediately disregard this as trolling but with them it's quite possible that this is a real attempt to learn programming...
...most likely from the facebook ads with the hooded guys that offer to teach you to code in 10 days for $800.

When I quit my previous job, they hired 3 guys to replace me. One of them was a swedish guy that was completely useless. He lived in another part of the country, and our manager and a senior dev flew him in and interviewed him at the airport. That was obviously not sufficient.

I got tasked with helping him get started. The code base seen in retrospect sucked really hard, but he got the simplest tasks at first. One time he needed to add a checkbox to a form, and do something different in the BL when that box was checked. I showed him where in the code he needed to do the change, and let him on his own. 1 hour later he asked again. He hadn't even been able to place the if-statement. Omg.

I told our manager that they really should get rid of this guy, since he isn't qualified to be a developer. They didn't listen.

In Norway we have a 6 month test period where it's easier to let someone go. After that, it's quite hard to fire someone.

After a while I talked to a old colleague of mine, and they had finally been able to get rid of him. That had taken months. When he was told that he had to improve, he went to the doctor and got a sick leave. You can't fire someone on sick leave.. Finally he got the option of resigning himself, or being fired. He chose the first option..

He should have been transferred to sales. If he could sell himself as a developer, he could sell anything to anyone... :D

That feeling when the company looses a 120k account and it is blamed on your expert opinion and poor handling off the situation when It's really the fuckwits in sales who in their greed for provisions make shitty pitches.

I got a call to attend a meeting with a customer. Present was also the "developer" from the customers side who was to oversee the projects. The pitch was made earlier, but no information was provided beforehand so I was going in blind, covering for a suddenly absent lead. The point was to roughly present how the project was to be executed and I was told to voice my opinion on development time estimate that the clients expert had given. They were outsourcing and had already fired their whole team.

I gave a number based on the provided information and all hell breaks loose. Suddenly it's a total circle jerk. Shit goes down. The "dev" tells that he can do it himself in half the time and starts showing some shitExcelsOfTotalAbsurdness that prove it. I calculate his claim and end up with a result that he has 60+ hours in his day, so I ask why doesn't he do it then? Why the outsourcing if they could just give him a raise and save a ton of cash.. sudden silence and you just can hear the rusty gears turn while they try to make a new excuse.

Well it went south. Today I found out that the client was our sales guys buddy. so TL;DR of it was that our sales guy was trying to make a quick buck and give a break to his buddy and hang the shitbucket on our team. I pointed out that this was a shitty business deal that would go into the red, but the sales guy turned it around and now "I cost company 120k/month account on a long project" and because I acted unprofessionally customer is unhappy.

I FUCKING HATE THIS SHIT

secretly hoping to get fired over this

Our web department was deploying a fairly large sales campaign (equivalent to a ‘Black Friday’ for us), and the day before, at 4:00PM, one of the devs emails us and asks “Hey, just a heads up, the main sales page takes almost 30 seconds to load. Any chance you could find out why? Thanks!”
We click the URL they sent, and sure enough, 30 seconds on the dot.
Our department manager almost fell out of his chair (a few ‘F’ bombs were thrown).
DBAs sit next door, so he shouts…
Mgr: ”Hey, did you know the new sales page is taking 30 seconds to open!?”
DBA: “Yea, but it’s not the database. Are you just now hearing about this? They have had performance problems for over week now. Our traces show it’s something on their end.”
Mgr: “-bleep- no!”
Mgr tries to get a hold of anyone …no one is answering the phone..so he leaves to find someone…anyone with authority.
4:15 he comes back..
Mgr: “-beep- All the web managers were in a meeting. I had to interrupt and ask if they knew about the performance problem.”
Me: “Oh crap. I assume they didn’t know or they wouldn’t be in a meeting.”
Mgr: “-bleep- no! No one knew. Apparently the only ones who knew were the 3 developers and the DBA!”
Me: “Uh…what exactly do they want us to do?”
Mgr: “The –bleep- if I know!”
Me: “Are there any load tests we could use for the staging servers? Maybe it’s only the developer servers.”
DBA: “No, just those 3 developers testing. They could reproduce the slowness on staging, so no need for the load tests.”
Mgr: “Oh my –bleep-ing God!”
4:30 ..one of the vice presidents comes into our area…
VP: “So, do we know what the problem is? John tells me you guys are fixing the problem.”
Mgr: “No, we just heard about the problem half hour ago. DBAs said the database side is fine and the traces look like the bottleneck is on web side of things.”
VP: “Hmm, no, John said the problem is the caching. Aren’t you responsible for that?”
Mgr: “Uh…um…yea, but I don’t think anyone knows what the problem is yet.”
VP: “Well, get the caching problem fixed as soon as possible. Our sales numbers this year hinge on the deployment tomorrow.”
- VP leaves -
Me: “I looked at the cache, it’s fine. Their traffic is barely a blip. How much do you want to bet they have a bug or a mistyped url in their javascript? A consistent 30 second load time is suspiciously indicative of a timeout somewhere.”
Mgr: “I was thinking the same thing. I’ll have networking run a trace.”

4:45 Networking run their trace, and sure enough, there was some relative path of ‘something’ pointing to a local resource not on development, it was waiting/timing out after 30 seconds. Fixed the path and page loaded instantaneously. Network admin walks over..
NetworkAdmin: “We had no idea they were having problems. If they told us last week, we could have identified the issue. Did anyone else think 30 second load time was a bit suspicious?”
4:50 VP walks in (“John” is the web team manager)..
VP: “John said the caching issue is fixed. Great job everyone.”
Mgr: “It wasn’t the caching, it was a mistyped resource or something in a javascript file.”
VP: “But the caching is fixed? Right? John said it was caching. Anyway, great job everyone. We’re going to have a great day tomorrow!”
VP leaves
NetworkAdmin: “Ouch…you feel that?”
Me: “Feel what?”
NetworkAdmin: “That bus John just threw us under.”
Mgr: “Yea, but I think John just saved 3 jobs. Remember that.”

Manager: we have reached record sales this month, thank you for your hard work guys.

Employee: can I get a raise?

Manager: your greed is hurting the company.

Employee: but I worked here for 3 years

Welp. The startup I'm working for is going under. Ceo gave us zero hints.

I'm the lead dev and been working here for 6 months. Always built features before deadline, zero bugs, and going an extra mile. Can't say the same about the sales and marketing guys.

Kinda scared its gonna look bad. Oh you led a failed startup? Must be your fault.

Guess my side business is becoming full time now. Until new job.

#startup #9/10 #icebergahead

Project Manager: "Let's put this temporary site up that the sales guys can use until the app is released in a few months"

A year later it's still used more than the app.

// bandaids are forever

Well, the impossible needs to become possible again.

"you will shit out a full website for this customer in two days! Fully responsive, 16 pages, and it better be good!"

Yeah. Ok. Fuck you. My attitude stinks, but your expectations and temperament kind of forge my attitude. Now tell me how in fucks name i am supposed to just stop administering over 3000 users and god only knows the ever growing amount of servers, stop all my server side development, so that I can make a site for a customer paying the company the equivalent of $100 for it (because sales people here are retarded) and get zero fucking commission or even a thank you for it.

Nah. Fuck this.

Tired of complaining, and I'm sure you guys are just as tired of it.

Sales guy: Hey, you're technical. Can you tell me how I'd go about doing (foobar) in this webapp I have here?
Almond: Err... I've never dealt with that webapp in my life. I wouldn't have a clue.
Sales guy: ...but you're a dev right? Oh well, never mind. Anyone more experienced around here that may know?
Almond: No idea, but I seriously doubt any of the devs will have used it. Maybe one of the other sales guys will?
Sales guy: So you're telling me *none* of the devs around here will know how to do this?!
Almond: Very unlikely (thinking why the hell would any devs be using a sales app, but whatever)

...15 minutes later...

Sales guy: Ahah, I figured it out! (Explains what buttons he had to click in crappy app to do foobar)
Almond: Glad you got it sorted!
Sales guy: I'm really surprised none of you devs could figure this out, but I could. Perhaps I should change careers and be a dev.

...what?!

Been on a conference call with some coworkers and a huge company which is trying to sell us a new tool for our CI environment. Sales guys ask us sensible questions about our requirements and try to find out our needs. No one of my coworkers says a word. Sales guys rephrase their questions but STILL: Crickets on the line from our side and this call gets embarrassing. So I try to explain our SW dev process and explain what we need for our CI and suddenly Mr. Manager sends me a text msg telling me to to "STFU!"....Oh well THANK YOU, I just tried to be polite to these sales guys who were invited by US and took their time to present us their really good tool. I mean cmon...what is F*CKING WRONG with you?

I was in second year of University when I joined the internship, I knew the business idea sucks and he wouldn't be able to carry out the operations either. Little did I know that I will work with the dumbest team ever, literally, the dumbest.

So, the major chunk of the software was outsourced to a consultancy. I was a tech intern, and we were developing an Android App that will save your parking location, let you reserve locations and all etc.

I knew I have stepped on a wrong turf, but again, I had nothing better to do that summer. So, for a very meager stipend, I said yes to a very stupid project. Let the stupidity flow...

~ The boss, had quit his job for this dumb idea with no funding, no team, nothing.

~ He was pursuing a certification course in Android Development from somewhere, where their final project will be a calculator!

~ He had little to no tech skills, hardly knew Java but was leading an Android App Dev project in Java. He had little to no managerial, marketing or sales skills either.

~ For a brief period, I had to work along with the consultancy guys to ramp up their work. They would take backups in a USB drive every evening, and share each others code using the same. VCS died a painful death that day.

~ They hardly wrote functions, rather, wrote very long code in the main (onCreate) function. Code style died of cancer.

~ They couldn't compress an image before sending it to a server. I had to do it for them.

~ Had no concept of creating utility classes.

And best of all,
~ Wrote 20 cases (switch case) with the same code! Instead of using a loop...

The sales guys ate all our pizzas. Utter waste of meeting time.

It's not that my work is hard. Basically, all the work I do these days is something I've done before with a slight twist on it.

I just feel underappreciated.

"bUt u mAkE sO mUcH mOnEy dO uR jObBbb!!"

How much money I make should not suppress how I feel at a company. Two years without a raise, every company meeting is a circle jerk for the sales team, and whenever our work is mentioned it's "Great job to the PMs for getting this to our clients."

Fuck you guys. Lol. This is a team effort from all sides, but to put engineers last on the "kudos" ladder is just so shitty.

That moment the sales guys ask if a humongous new feature is doable. And doesn't wait for your answer before adding: "Well so you know, I'll already promised it to the client for last week"

Silicon Valley - sales guys a riot - and accurate. Meeting scenes were great. Very funny.

Stuck at some dumb company event where attendance is mandatory. I'm supposed to answer technical questions if needed, but I suck at socializing with customers, and the sales guys are already chatting people up about the products I've developed so I don't have anything left to talk about. Not that anyone asks much about the tech behind the shiny GUI anyway...

Should i just leave? I doubt anyone would notice...

It's a Friday morning I'm tired as hell after a hard week. trying to plough through all my work earphones in, music really loud. Sales guy in the office tries to talk to me i didn't hear him as my earphones were in he then says "you need to turn your music down or turn it off if you can't hear us" he said this in this serious tone. *music gets louder* to drown his noise out.

First proper day of work today.

Started at 11. Listened to multiple guys shout about how much everyone made in this crap-infested cesspit of a sales job.

Got to a city I'd never been in at 2.

Walked around in the fucking rain knocking on doors till 9.

Got on the bus at 11.

I earned £20 the whole fucking day, which I'm not even going to get for a fucking month.

I'm would firebomb the office tomorrow, but I need this job. Badly :/.

sales-managers: How long do you need to implement feature X ?
software-dev: Hmmm, that's nothing we have in our default-packages ... could be nasty, because it won't work without feature Y, which also does not exist in the current version 3 of our system.
I need to investigate this issue.
... 2 days later:
software-dev: This is really a nasty problem - to make X work, we've to reimplement Y for our system version 3, but this won't work with feature Z.
If we do this, it may take several weeks.
sales-manager: we need to go live in 2 months.
software-dev: might work.
------
1 week before go-live:
sales-manager: The customer saw us testing feature X. He does not like it. Could we just do it in ... blabla ... this way?
software-dev: This would work out of the box with feature Z, yes - we've to remove feature Y and X for that. But be warned - this might work next week without testing only.
sales-mamanger: do it now!
day of go live:
The customer tried the new feature X - it won't work.
software-dev: But it's not there, was removed, instead he has to use feature Z.
...
sales-guy comes back: He does not like it.
software-dev: why not? its working!
sales-guy: Yes, but he still wants it to work like feature X as he ordered.
software-dev: according to the specs, its exactly what he ordered. look at that: (showing the general specifications of project, showing feature Z).
...
sales-guy: The customer did not review this new document since last week.... Its still feature X
...
dev: really? why? I sent that version to you the day, he said, he doesn't like feature X, and you said I've to change that just urgently.
sales-guy: Please switch back to the version with X of last week. - could you. please ?
me: This won't work, because the other colleagues already finished their stuff on that currently running system - we'll lose all the optimations we've done to make this and other stuff work.
----- FAIL ------- NEVER DO ANYTHING WITHOUT SIGNATURE OF THE CUSTOMER !!!
One week onsite and rescheduled go-live is just so-what expensive.
Today (some weeks later) ... I saw someone else sitting in sales-guys office.

Many years ago, when I moved from a semi-experienced developer to an absolute beginner project manager at another company, my very first project was an absolute clusterfuck.

The customer basically wanted to scrape signups to their EventBrite events into their CRM system. The fuckery began before the project even started, when I was told my management that we HAD to use BizTalk. It didn't matter that we had zero experience with BizTalk, or that using BizTalk for this particular project was like using a stealth bomber to go down to the shops for a bottle of tequila (that's one for fans of Last Man on Earth). It's designed to be used by an experienced team of developers, not a small inexperienced 1-person dev team I had. The reason was for bullshit political reasons which I wasn't really made clear on (I suspect that our sales team sold it to them for a bazillion pounds, and they weren't using it for anything, so we had to justify us selling it to them by doing SOMETHING with it). And because this was literally my first project, I was young and not confident at all, and I wanted to be the guy who just got shit done, I didn't argue.

Inevitably, the project was a turd. It went waaay over budget and time, and didn't work very well. I remember one morning on my way to work seriously considering ploughing my car into a ditch, so that I had a good excuse not to go into work and face that bullshit project.

The good thing is that I learned a lot from that. I decided that kind of fuckery was never going to happen again.

A few months later I had an initial meeting with a potential customer (who I was told would be a great customer to have for bullshit political reasons) - I forget the details but they essentially wanted to build a platform for academic researchers to store data, process it using data processing plugins which they could buy, and commersialise it somehow. There were so many reasons why this was a terrible idea, but when they said that they were dead set on using SharePoint (SharePoint!!!) as the base of the platform, I remembered my first project and what happened.

I politely explained my technical and business concerns over the idea, and reasons why SharePoint was not a good fit (with diagrams and everything), suggested a completely different technology stack, and scheduled another meeting so they could absorb what I had said and revisit. I went to my sales and head of development and basically told them to run. Run fast, and run far, because it won't work, these guys are having some kind of fever dream, it's a clusterfuck in the making, and for some reason they won't consider not using SP.

I never heard from them again, so I assume we dropped them as a potential client. It felt amazing. I think that was the single best thing I did for that company.

Moral of the story: when technology decisions are made which you know are wrong, don't be afraid to stand up and explain why.

I wish more workplaces realised how stupid it is to quibble, argue, debate etc. about stupid things like buying Devs intellij licenses. I mean sure, we'll throw a meeting to discuss it, argue back and forth, ignore questions about why the sales guys always get any new tools they want, and then waste more on meeting time than the damn license would have cost... Great idea...

This Christmas I transitioned into a new job. At the old job I was the only kubernetes-guy, so since they no longer have any developers who are confident working with that, they decided to go with LAMP-stack.

The data from dev-kubernetes-server was backed up by some guy and moved to an offsite-server, or so they told me. Turns out, he had backed up the kubectl-config-file, and not the databases. Now everything is wiped. Sure glad we still have that config-file!

Of course, since that was only our dev-server, there was nothing too important there, except for all the documentation. The only other backup? On my laptop, which I turned in to them, and is now wiped and used by one of the sales-guys.

Now I’m being called in at least twice a day, since I was their goto-guy for almost anything backend-related. Feels great, after they spent a couple of months attempting to rewrite everything in pure PHP (with a strict no-dependency policy for some reason). Fml.

What is it with non-technical managers, especially those in sales, thinking that the solution to all problems is to "just pick up the phone and ring them?" This was *always* his opinion, whether the web service we were using wasn't accepting a valid request (apparently this was best "explained over the phone", I kid you not - have you ever tried speaking JSON?!) or whether we just needed a simple request going in to increase the API limit. I mean I could send an email or log a ticket in a few minutes tops, but you want me to spend 2 hours on hold to a support department only to be told "ah we don't take those requests over the phone, here's the URL, log a ticket."

Then it's always a case of "I don't understand why they're like that, all the guys I speak to are happy to help on the phone". Yeah, beacuse you're in sales & marketing you muppet. Blathering on to each other so you can stroke the egos of yourselves and your companies is kinda in the job description.

Grr. This was all a while ago, but I thought of it just now and the pure concept just annoyed me, so here it is. I really hope he's not doing the same thing to guys under him now (but let's be honest, he probably is.)

Why some (ok, a lot of) sales and buying guys are there just to transform any service experience in something bad?

In my experience, most sales guys promises anything, with absurd deadlines and it's up to you to make it work. Things never get good enough and, after all, the client doesn't like the work, you don't like and the sales guy doesn't like you could not make a perfectly task.

Buying guys are even worse when buying services. Email 30 developers in BCC: "Hi, I need this done by tomorrow morning and I would like to know how much you charge for it. I need your proposals in the next 30 minutes". He closes the deal with the fastest and cheapest proposal.

These things make absolutely no sense to me.

(On conference call with potential client)
Me: ...yes, you can interface with our system via our documented interfaces, using either JSON or XML...
Client: That's too hard. Can I just email you guys a Word doc or something?
Sales Rep: Yep, we can totally handle that, no problem.

rant(){
So, yesterday I was explaining one of our sales guys why I wouldn't be able to finish a task for his client, since I had passed the last days recovering from a major db breakdown, and had plenty of work on wait before I could get to what he asked.
The prick goes and tells my PM he's about to loose the business because of me, and screws all my timetable for the week...
What should I do to make sure he never messes with devs anymore?
}

For credential errors on login forms..

Do you guys follow the “OWASP standard” and won’t let the user know which field (email or password) was incorrect, just a general message or the more UX-way and let them know that it is for example the password that doesn’t match with given email (if it exists)? 🤔

Had a minor “discussion” about this with our sales-guy this afternoon why that I’m (as the full-stack, and only, developer there) not that of a fan about the UX-way.. (even thou ‘security’ is a “myth”). 😁

New bossman is looking for KPIs.

We're an agile team who build a back end system for a large corporation. Specifically the system we build is used by the sales guys when they are putting through a sale. I have no idea where to start with KPIs.

Can't measure number of sales as that's down to the salesmen. Can't measure speed of sale as again that's down to the salesman and how much they chat.

Any ideas?

is being a tech/dev person, a dead end job?

i have been thinking about this for sometime. as a dev, we can progress into senior dev, then tech lead, then staff engineer probably. but that is that. for a tech person :

1. their salary levels are defined. for eg, a junior may earn $10k pm , and the highest tech guy (say staff engineer) will earn $100k pm, but everyone's salary will be spread over this range only, in different slots.

2. some companies give stocks and bonuses , but most of the time that too is fixed to say 30% of the annual salary at max.

3. its a low risk job as a min of x number of tech folks are always required for their tech product to work properly. plus these folks are majorly with similar skills, so 2 react guys can be reduced to 1 but not because of incompetency .

4. even if people are incompetent, our domain is friendly and more like a community learning stuff. we share our knowledge in public domain and try to make things easy to learn for other folks inside and outside the office. this is probably a bad thing too

compare this to businesses , management and sales they have different:
1. thier career progression : saleman > sales team manager> branch manager > multiple branch manager(director) > multiple zones/state manager (president) > multiple countries/ company manager (cxo)

2. their salaries are comission based. they get a commission in the number of sales they get, later theybget comission in the sales of their team> their branch > their zone and finally in company's total revenue. this leads to very meagre number in salaries, but a very major and mostly consistent and handsome number in commission. that is why their salaries ranges from $2k pm to $2-$3millions per month.

3. in sales/management , their is a always a room for optimisation . if a guy is selling less products, than another guy, he could be fired and leads could be given to other/new person. managers can optimise the cost/expenses chain and help company generate wider profits. overall everyone is running for (a) to get an incentive and (b) to dodge their boss's axe.

4. this makes it a cut-throat and a network-first domain. people are arrogant and selfish, and have their own special tricks and tactics to ensure their value.

as a manager , you don't go around sharing the stories on how you got apple to partner with foxconn for every iphone manufacturing, you just enjoy the big fat bonus check and awe of inspiration that your junior interns make.

this sound a little bad , but on the contrary , this involves being a people person and a social animal. i remember one example from the office web series, where different sales people would have different strategies for getting a business: Michael would go wild, Stanley would connect with people of his race, and Phyllis would dress up like a client's wife.
in real life too, i have seen people using various social cues to get business. the guy from whom we bought our car, he was so friendly with my dad, i once thought that they are some long lost brothers.

this makes me wonder : are sales/mgmt people being better at being entrepreneur and human beings than we devs?

in terms of ethics, i don't think that people who are defining their life around comissions and cut throat races to be friendly or supportive beings. but at the same time, they would be connecting with people and their real problems, so they might become more helpful than their friends/relatives and other "good people" ?

Additionally, the skills of sales/mgmt translate directly to entrepreneurship, so every good salesman/manager is a billionaire in making. whereas we devs are just being peas in a pod , debating on next big npm package and trying to manage taxes on our already meagre , "consistent" income :/

mann i want some people skills like these guys

I somehow like it when some of our sales or project guys have to ask the customer what we sold 'em.
I will never understand why they humiliate themselves that much instead of getting their shit straight at least for the next proposal.

Sales guys in my company are unbelievable. They told client that my analysis algorithm runs for about one hour, so that is the time they have to wait for results. I asked if he actually asked what hardware do they have, and if they want all analysis done (its a complex algo) paralell, or just one by one.
Ofcoursenot.
Then I suggested to better ask these things, otherwise we end up reckt. Annnnd he said they will question our professionalism if we ask too much questions.
Ok so let me summarize. My algo needs to run maximum 1 hour long, regardless the actual functionality and input data, on any fcking hw you can imagine, or else i am not a pro. Mmmkay.

Responding to a numb sales guys joke with "do you know the best about UDP jokes? - I don't care if you don't get it! " ...turnin around left the hallway... Unbeatable

Hey guys how do you feel if someone interviews you for a developer job and then offers you a sales/marketing job based on your past work experience? I was very disappointed when he told me that btw, i told him i dont like that field, i love to code.

A friend outsourced a project to us with partial requirements. We developed it as per the requirements and submitted the app and admin portal to his client. I was aware of certain critical features missing in the requirement. Generally we provide an admin portal to manage the backend of the app, but in this project a backend was to be made but the adding or modifying users section was not mentioned in the requirement. My team presented the project and convinced them to create or modify users writing SQL queries on the production DB (they are sales guys with no technical knowledge)

P.S - we won't be responsible for any DB errors :P

Wait till you hear sales guys arguing about tech with a tech and developer (me/you)

Hey peeps just asking for some suggestions. We are currently having difficult times financially. My dad used to have food business but its now completely shut down and he is doing some sales job. My mom is somewhat educated (she completed till class 12th i guess) and knows very little abouts computers and stuff but she is interested in getting some job that's remote and computer based.

What things should i give her to learn that she could land a job in computer field?
Like am not talking about programming or development but other non tech fields people get paid for... Like data entry , emails writings etc. Currently i have given her courses to learn ms excel, ms word and basic English.
(Personally am also looking for a job but i know how you guys hate job postings . Checkout my website if you have something for me)

So udemy are currently doing sales

Can you guys recommend me some courses to buy? Of whatever subject you like (development, business, etc...)