God saved my soul...

I try as hard as possible not to be judgemental towards incompetent colleagues, motivating myself with the knowledge that we were all incompetent at some point, and that people need a chance to learn, and that sometimes too much pressure will lead you to believe that they're bad. Or sometimes, people just aren't good at the stuff you want them to be good, and you just need to discover that niche where they will be very useful.

Mostly that goes well.
I've had the incompetent late bloomer who was a family man who started too late to dev, and wasn't really serious. A bit of harsh talk, some soul searching over a few beers, made him into a really valuable asset. Not the brightest rock, but reliable, steady-paced developer who earned his stay.
Then there was the girl who wasn't really good at coding, but saved our team from disaster many times by keeping things into account, and realizing what must be developed or tested at every step.

However, there are exceptions. I've worked with people who have been nothing but a menace, through their incompetence AND attitudes.

The most noteworthy example was an intern that we sought out, by talking to professors to point us to their best students. So we got that intern on board. He seemed strange at first. Kind of perfectionist. Talked serious, with an air of royalty, and always dressed sharply. He really gave the impression that one must be worthy to receive his blessing. The weirdest part was his handshake. It was as if he was touching an iron hand heated to 3000 degrees. It was over before you even knew it. Leaves you kinda offended. Especially when he always took a wet wipe after that and wiped his hands. Am I really that gross?
But that's fiiiine. I mean we're all different and weird in our own ways, right? So he's a germophobe, so fucking what? We just gotta find a way to work together, right?
WRONG.
As soon as he started (and remember, he's a paid intern, who barely knows how to code, and has zero industrial experience), he started questioning my architecture solutions, code implementations, etc. I don't mind discussion and criticism, which is why I welcomed his input. But it seemed like he wasn't willing to accept any arguments, so I started looking for excuses not to talk to him.
Meanwhile, the most productive team member we had, to whom you could just give and describe an idea, with architecture and stuff, well, and you'd see it implemented the next week, with only the most well placed questions asked, started going into fights with this intern for the same reasons I was avoiding him.
.....
And here's the kicker.
Get this:
This intern comes to me (I was the team lead), while that guy is not in the office, and with a straight face, dead serious, starts telling me that that guy was making stupid decisions and being a bad team member because he doesn't ... I quote him almost verbatim... "follow my indications". He said that I had to do something because he refused to work with him together.
I was stunned.
This good for nothing imagined superhuman, who was completely useless and an amazing annoyance to pretty much everyone in the team, came to me, telling me that the most capable and productive developer in the team is bad, because he doesn't follow his orders, and that I had to pick between the 2.

I couldn't believe what I had heard.
I had so much emotion in me right then. I was angry, but at the same time I could barely abstain from laughing.
I just told him calmly that he was wrong, and that I wouldn't mind if he never came back. I didn't see him for 5 years after that.

Anyway, later that week our team went for a dinner + beer, and the stories from all the team members started pouring in. They didn't want to talk him down either, but now that he was gone, it was a weight off, and everybody could tell their story.

What a fucking asshole.

So 5 years after I stumbled on him as he was entering a church. Still an arrogant bitch. Barely exchanged 10 polite words and I continued on my way as he was disinfecting his hands from my filthy handshake.

Best:

Leaving my work in the soul crushing dog eat dog world of transportation and logistics for higher education software for colleges and universities .
I work at a college and I fucking love it and love my team.

Worst:

The soulc crushing dog eat dog world of transportation and logistics where I worked as a backend developer and lead mobile developer. Not only did it made me hate and despise native android development, but it also made me despise the human race as a whole. Watching a motherfucker letting go of employees that he knew personally (as in bbq with their families and shit) because my software automated a large portion of their work(it was meant to make it easier for them for that i was originally told) was absolute and total bullshit and i still carry that fucking remorse with me. After that I vowed never to do that sort of bullshit work again....sort off. No one gets fired at this institition for it. Logistics sucks big monkey dick and the people there are the absolute fucking worst. Every single motherfucker i met was a fucking shark, all of them and they would not think about fucking people over if it saved them some money.

Yeah, that even tops the military and that was fuuuull of fuck fuck games and other similar fuckery.

So ok, today was a crazy day.
New sprint, new ticket.
Work on the bug tickets first he said ….

Sure can. Oh had I just known that this very first innocent looking ticket is the way to coder‘s hell ….

‚Access of undefined‘ it said. Easy to fix, I thought.
Until I found the very same code twenty-fucking-two times over about 50 files!

Who would guess that exportSingleOperatorBooking, exportSeveralOperatorBookings, exportAllOperatorBookings (… and more) could in practically be the same? Nah, they all use different interfaces.
Oh wait, the alias type of the extended sub-interface of file misc.ts is the same logical content as a differently named interface below another different interface with the same content as in another ts file?
Wait that can‘t be. Riiiiight?? 😳

8h later I have barely scratched the surface of refactoring this shitshow of a project.
But no, I refuse to put the same error handling multiple times in different places.
I could have been done already. I could have saved my soul, my sanity. But I will be brave and strong to save the innocent developer that will cometh after me. For I shall be rewardeth for my sacrifice.
Amen.

Can I just say, I owe my soul, nerves and eternal gratitude to the folk over at Percona? They publish articles that have, on more than one occasion, saved my hide when a DB node wasn't working as it should, and I had to find out how to fix that.

Seriously, amazing, love those guys!