Storytime!

Manager: Hey fullstackchris, the maps widget on our app stopped working recently...

Dev: (Skeptical, little did he know) Sigh... probably didn't raise quota or something stupid... Logs on to google cloud console to check it out...

Google Dashboard: Your bill.... $5,197 (!!!!!!) Payment method declined (you think?!)

Dev: 😱 WTF!?!?!! (Calls managers) Uh, we have HUGE problem, charges for $5000+ in our google account, did you guys remove the quota limits or not see any limit reached warnings!?

Managers: Uh, we didn't even know that an API could cost money, besides, we never check that email account!

Dev: 🤦‍♂️ yeah obviously you get charged, especially when there have literally been millions of requests. Anyway, the bigger question is where or how our key got leaked. Somewhat started hammering one of the google APIs with one of our keys (Proceeds to hunt for usages of said API key in the codebase)

Dev: (sweating 😰) did I expose an API key somewhere? Man, I hope it's not my fault...

Terminal: grep results in, CMS codebase!

Dev: ah, what do we have here, app.config, seems fine.... wait, why did they expose it to a PUBLIC endpoint?!

Long story short:

The previous consulting goons put our Angular CMS JSON config on a publicly accessible endpoint.

WITH A GOOGLE MAPS API KEY.

JUST CHILLING IN PLAINTEXT.

Though I'm relieved it wasn't my fault, my faith in humanity is still somewhat diminished. 🤷‍♂️

Oh, and it's only Monday. 😎

Cheers!

Manager: What’s taking so long on that PR?? It’s just some small styling adjustments

Dev: No it’s not you added an entire new calendar module that doesn’t work

Manager: Ok but besides that it’s just a small couple of css edits

Dev: You made styling changes in 50 files, half of which break our mobile responsiveness

Manager: Well then STOP talking to me and FIX IT if you’re so smart.

Dev: You also added a series of filters on a table in this same PR that cause th—

Manager: OK SO I GOT A BIT DISTRACTED THE FACT IS IT ALL NEEDS TO GET DONE SO IT DOESN’T MATTER IF IT’S ALL ON ONE PR SPLITTING THINGS UP INTO SMALL UPDATES IS JUST UNNECESSARY BUREAUCRACY AND IF YOU LIKE THAT THEN GO. WORK. FOR. THE GOVERNMENT!!!

Dev: …

How can I feel so smart and so dumb at the same time?

A brief, and biased opinion of what love is in the dev world:

Love is my employees bringing me something to eat when they know I stay back so that they can all go out do whatever they can do.

Love is my CMS admin getting his ass up and walking all the way to my office when the director walks in to say some STUPID FUCKING SHIT to me that he(CMS Admin) knows would have me 2 fucking seconds away from getting out of my chair and drop kicking the fuck out of him.

Love is the rest of my employees getting up to follow along in case(certainly) one dude is not able to hold me down.

Love is them knowing that I know that their mere presence there will make me chill the fuck out and not choke the fucking director

Love is the CMS Admin proof reading every email I send to a bitch that was trying to get smart, to make sure that I was not being agressive.

Love is said CMS Admin bringing me coffee or a coke congratulating me on listening to him about X email not being aggressive (there is no passive in my vocabulary, just balls out "isn't this your fucking job" aggressive)

Love is my lead developer showing to work after medical treatment fucked up as all hell because he knows that if he is not there I will do a billion things myself in order to give him some rest.

Love is taking my CMS admin and lead dev out to eat when a major stakeholder shits on something I damn well know it took them a while to finish. Love is also letting me open up to said stakeholder to tell them how much of a fucktard they are, sometimes they let me loose, and I appreciate that.

Love is every small person in the company approaching you to tell you of their issues, becuase they care more about the productivity they give to their users, rather than the bullshit numbers their managers care about.

Love is the staff of other places taking care of you because you are not a VP dickhead that treats them like shit.

Love is the HR reps sending you personal e-mails asking you for help because their shitbag of a boss does not count for help and leaves them in the blank with shit software, for which said HR go above and beyond for you later on even though said shitbag manager said no.

Love is your team getting angry and responding respectfully at people when they talk shit about their manager on their emails (manager being me)

Love is your employees closing your door for you when they know you are overwhelmed and you need a quick second to pull yourself up.

Love is not wanting to leave this miserable place because you know some dickweed will be left in charge of the people that care for you, trust you, work for you regardless of the date, and confide in you.

They got me locked in, this shitty institution, for now. Until I find a way to bring my entire team with me.

I find smart watches so rude.

You are talking to someone and the bloody watch goes dinggg..

So the person you are talking to, stops listening, checks their smart watch, and performs whatever action they want before getting back to the conversation.

I fucking hate it. Not only you are rude to me, but also broke the chain of thought and rhythm of the conversation.

Fuck you and fuck your smart watch.

The other day I saw the office boy and the janitor wearing a smart watch. Mind you, the salaries of these folks is not more than $250 a month. Yet they have a top quality smart phone and a smart watch, where the combo usually costs more than their monthly salary.

It's important to consume and show off, than to make the bloody ends meet.

A monkey world.

Story time on my job hunt: Currently interviewing with Google during my notice period.

I always had a love hate relationship with Google. Unlike my hate towards Meta or Amazon, where I had a reason to hate them for how ill intended they are, I never had a valid reason to dislike or hate Google apart from the fact that they steal my data.

That's it. That's my only reason why I hate Google. But I fell in love with their products during my trip to Istanbul and how throughout my journey, Google products were there for me to solve all my needs.

As y'all know, I was treated badly during my Meta interview, last October. With Google, the experience is on another level.

People are fucking smart and ingenious, but at the same time very polite, humble, and respectful.

During my 3 interviews so far (2 more remaining), each one of them made me so comfortable that I was more anxious before the interview than during or after.

They supported me during each question they asked. They made me felt heard and focused on my strength, instead of the weaknesses (or trying to break me down unnecessarily).

The interview syllabus is so fucking vast, and recruiters know so much that they helped me not only with preparation material, but also guided me personally. Haven't seen such knowledgeable recruiters.

The questions were dynamic in nature and thankfully because of my preparation, I was able to answer them most.

Overall, the culture at Google seems brilliant and an environment where one can flourish. No wonder companies are trying to copy every aspect of how Google operates and no surprise that Google is doing well at scale.

I feel so high on emotions (positively), after these interviews that I wonder how would it be to work at Google with such phenomenal people and exceptional environment.

!rant
... so... maybe not that much of a thing, but i think it is:

a gal (27 years old) i started teaching programming two weeks ago, who had literally no previous experience with programming, algoritmization nor c#...
... just now, after 3 lessons of 6 hours altogether, and after yesterday when i explained to her what arrays are and reminded her what loops do...

... invented bubble sort. on her own. no googling. on paper. no "trial and error code typing and running".

i'm actually pretty proud of her :)

... putting the algo concept into actual code will still be a bit of a struggle, but yeah, hell, can't help thinking that she's actually pretty smart :)

(p. s. fist lesson was i drew uml of a fibonacci algo and forced her to understand what it does, second lesson was i explained the minimum required c# syntax for her to be able to implement it and forced her to write it (with as little help as i could), third lesson was the concept of array and "okay, now here's array of numbers, make a function that will sort them")

looking forward to what will happen when i explain recursion and nudge her towards quicksort O:-)

Microsoft Teams can burn.

Their latest feature ? Well, turns out that when I get notifications on mobile that I do not get on desktop BECAUSE I AM FUCKING INTERACTING WITH THE CHAT OR CHANNEL THAT SENDS ME MOBILE NOTIFICATION, the notifications do not clear themselves. Oh, no, that would be too smart.

So EACH FUCKING EVENING I sit and browse all the fucking notifications to see if there is anything noteworthy I need to act on, or if it is a dead notification from earlier today.

Dear Lord, Microsoft are fucking experts at TAKE A WORKING FEATURE AND BRAKE IT.

I swear the amount of self proclaimed "i am the top 1%, i figured out the system" bullshit social medias has enabled, makes me sick down to my core.

STFU you fucking retard, how the fuck do you manage to be this stupid and retarded you waste of space trash, when you have access to the internet with a lot unlimited information, how the fuck do you manage to come out with such idioicy bullshit:

"moon landing was fake, the moon is made out of cheese, vaccines injects pest, you are being controlled and brainwashed by tv waves"

Of cause you without any education and being jobless are smarter than scientists, astronauts, rocket scientists, doctors, military personnel and experts etc.

I swear comment sections where every idiot can say anything they want (specially on news related things like videos and articles) are unbearable and i simply ending up being dumber by reading them. And yes i useually read comments, in the hope of finding decent comments, so i hear other opinions etc about something.

This is in no way a rant about i find myself smart or shit like that, since i am useually wrong about a lot of things.

I just lost it and got tired of all that retarded bullshit idiocy mixed with fake news and conspiracy thories bullshit. People who are spreading that garabage trash, are completely worthless toxic waste.

I was working as a software dev contractor at this company providing specific e-learning services for a specific industry X.

One day the CEO posts on Linkedin about an interview discussing the potential of gaining $100k per year working in industry X after getting specialized training for 6 months (using our e-learning platform of course) .

My gross income at the time was $65k. My experience was about 7-8 years. Now the thing is you might say "gee that's pretty low for a dev, especially a contractor", and yes I agree, but you have to understand a few facts:

1. I am from eastern Europe (cheapish labor - which btw for all of you out there from the West, including Germany and whatnot, it is xenophobic to consider easterners cheap and it personally insults me and my ability - but that's another story)

2. I was happy to accept the offer since it was the best I had up to that point :))

Now, by the time the LinkedIn post I was heavily invested in the product development. I personally had written 30% of the code (frontend and backend) compared to the whole development team (about 15 devs)... and yes you might argue that performance is not measured by number of lines of code... but trust me when I am saying I did the most on that product, and I am not saying this to brag, I actually care about the stuff that I work on.

When I saw that post on Linkedin I thought to myself "what kind of BS is this? I am a dev and devs are supposedly the best paid workers out there, and a guy from industry X that just got trained for 6 months would get more than me?! WTF?!"

So I messaged the CEO ...

Me: I noticed the post from linkedin about $100k by working in industry X, I am curious how does one get to that revenue per year? What is your advice?

CEO: The best way to obtain value is by creating value which you maximize continuously.

Me: and how does one maximize value?

CEO: it does not matter how hard your work but how large of an impact you make!

Me: ... and how do you measure impact? (me thinking about performance reviews for contract negotiations - and because performance reviews should be SMART -> meaning it should be measurable somehow)

CEO: Simon Sinek says ... << insert motivational quote here because I don't remember and don't care >>

I just lost if after reading the name "Simon Sinek" ...

So you see my dear friends ? It is all fairy dust, smoke and mirrors, in the end it is about maximizing profits, lowering costs and maintaining the illusion of opportunity... when there is none.

Lord is my witness... I hate hypocrisy and quackery ...

You can imagine that my contribution on that product immediately lowered, doing the bare minimum to meet the contract demands AND I FEEL NO REGRET.

%&#$ YOU SIMON SINEK.

Chrome dark mode in a nutshell. After a certain update a couple of months ago, it apprently turns some pictures with darker colors in them, white. And other darker colors like dark red to a very light red.

Exapmle of chrome dark mode ruining the profile pictures of devRant.

In theory i could see its smart to also have dark mode and reverse on images, so images isnt getting fucked up.

But in practices it just seems dumb, mostly so many images like logos etc are ending up looking so weird / ugly and it only seems to do it on smaller images anyway.

Not really a rant, just something i found stupid.

Im thinking about leaving my employer because I keep getting way too much work on my plate, people get annoyed that its not done in time and tell me that i should tell them if im getting too much work.
So i tell them its to much and our deadlines are to tight, then i just get told "this is how we always work, we just gotta finish things faster and better"...

Another one is that our HR/office manager keeps bugging me about setting up SMART goals so i can prove my value to the company and that its my responsibility to do so if i want a pay raise (even if im already underpaid)...
Im sorry but if you wanna keep me, you gotta give me some damn incentive to stay...

Ive been putting up with it sofar because i like the office and the people and the majority of the work itself and i really dont wanna go looking for another job because im really bad at it... but wtf... im so done with all the "how does this work" questions too...

tl;dr: getting negative reviews because im bad at my own evaluation is gonna make me quit probably, while im being praised for all other work i do

Did a presentation to the brass with data so summarized that no informed decision could conceivably come out of it.
They want it even more summarized.
Here is your messy-suit-that-cost-50-grand, version, your overpaid tool:
1) Client be dumb
2) Supplier be slow
3) Money be good
4) We be smart
5) We make money (if you stop meddling and eating my whole morning with a PowerPoint to a meeting you got an hour late to, your fiduciary sack of douchness)

When you realize devRant's SEO is pretty decent and you were getting doxxed from your old account so you change your name to fullstackclown 🤡

(tried to include the emoji in it but once again devRant is too smart for me)

So this might be a very long post , but i am sure most of you can relate to it .

So , the year end . Time of joy and appraisals right?You have slogged your ass off the entire year and are expecting amazing ratings.Then boom , your piece of shit sadist manager starts of his review by saying 'there are worrysome things to discuss' after not saying shit for the entire year . I am pretty new to corporate , in fact 1 year old , still managed to handle devops for a team of 130+ , majority of whom have no work apart from playing a blame game and indulging in cheap politics. I mean , bro , I am literally your son's age , i dont see the point in playing this cheap shit with me.On top of that this sadist and borderline piece of shit manager has the audacity to say that I did not raise any blockers , while I have CCed him in every fucking mail possible.How big of an a****** can you be bro?
I counter his points for 40 45 mins straight ,leaving him stuck without words for solid 10 to 15 seconds many times during the 'review meet'. This guy is in the same place working on the same shit code , which 90% of this community can't even think of. Every thing is bloody manual and apparently ' I should have tried to streamline the entire f**** process' . Cool bro , why not open a startup while I am at it ?

Then this piece of poop gives me a rating which is just above the inconsistent performer bracket :) .

I just dont get the points what do these people get by giving shit ratings and not even having valid points to back up their fuck all arguments.This guy , throughout the duration of the call did not say 1 (bloody 1 ) good thing about my efforts. Past context is majority of the smart people who were literally running their pods single handedly , were under him and were fed up with not getting hikes and appraisals.Apart from me ,everyone resigned and left with hikes as high as 50% (LOL right).

But I have a year of experience and its really difficult to perform well in 4 rounds of bs compititive coding rounds, after which I get the generic ' oh you did well bro but we are moving on with other candidates' (FFS) .

I pray that even my worst enemies don't get such managers and I hope he rots in hell.

Amen and sorry for the cussing :)

One of our team mates is based out of the US office. We are physically distant, but after our manager's departure, we lost touch because our scope of work was different.

Me and two other team members work closely with each other from India and dude is alone, working out of the US.

Super smart, very polite, and a fun person to work and be with. Even when our interaction was less, I learnt so much from him.

Since, I am facing some challenges, I decide to use it as an excuse to connect with him for a coffee and also seek his guidance because he is senior to me.

Some things he mentioned,

1. Our new line manager asks him to do things on spot with no heads up. He has to drop everything and complete the ask.

2. Often times, poor guy, is asked to join meetings on immediate basis. Even while he is having his lunch.

3. He never got support from our new manager. Infact, based on the conversation, I realised that the manager supports me more.

4. He is facing same, if not more, issues with tech. And he didn't have any guidance on how to handle the issue.

5. A lot of times he is facing process and system problems which he isn't able to solve because the org culture is that of working in Silos. And he doesn't get any support from manager.

6. Tech has clearly pushed him back when he asked for help and other teams never respond to him.

My man was still smiling bright and was looking things from a positive lens that all of this is interesting and adds to the learning experience which will be valued when we decide to move on from this job.

These are the people who inspire me. Smiling in the time of adversity.

Even when he had his own challenges, he was ready to guide me and hear my frustrations. I offered him help and will make sure to stay connected so he doesn't feel left out and alone in the team only because we don't work together in physical space.

One thing I have learned over time is, while I am facing problems, someone out there is facing more and difficult problems then me. I always tend to blow up my problems out of proportion then what they actually are.

I am the dumbest person that I know and mark my words, I'll die because of my empathy. I wish I could help my team mate in any possible way.

So, just to recap if you missed the last few episodes. I've been a web developer for years. But I decided to get a degree and go to uni.

Also I am firmly on the fewer comments side of the debate about self-documenting code. Even though I usually rephrase it and say method and variable names are comments. Basic idea: something is unclear, you should leave a comment. But, before you leave a comment, take a good look at your method. Can you rename a variable? Maybe the method name? Maybe extract a method into smaller methods so it doesn't need a comment? And only if you fail to do so, leave a comment.

Alright, now that we rehashed that, uni coding makes no bloody sense.

There is code that is abbreviated to the max (or min).

And then, they need everything commented. I mean, why do that? Why call the parameters a and b instead of base and exponent. And then say:
"But write a whole article about it above the method". Like:

a is the base for a power operation.
b is the exponent for a power operation.
return int representing a to the power of b

How about just do this:

public static int power(int base, int exponent).

How is this not the same documentation?

Is it because we're at a uni, a place for smart people and smart people shouldn't have an issue keeping a mental map between the variables and their meaning?

Or is it because they are all mathematicians. All respect to applied mathematics. I mean, the function about exponent calculation, I was not aware that it could be that effective. But on the other hand, keep mathematicians away from programming. I get it, writing maths per hand doesn't have intellisense and therefore you don't want to write long variable names. It's and old tradition. Yada yada, yah.

But programming is not maths. And maths shouldn't be maths like that. Right naming makes it simpler. It might still be a while until we all LaTeX rather than handwrite and be able to give maths right naming schemes, but programming is beyond the point. Calling the array you handing in a function A and the one that you're returning D makes no fucking sense.