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Last day on the contract from hell. I'd written a project with one other person in our spare time that performed a critical business function. The following conversation was had between myself, the job thief who was handed my job and their manager, with the 10 other IBM GS "dev domain experts" assigned to that team sitting silently on zoom:
Moi: hey all, what seems to be the problem?
JT: how to update the java for requirement?
Moi: I would assume a text editor, have you tried intellij
JTM: she's talking about ticket BS-101, the data is wrong
Moi: ah, well, you might want to fix that
JT: how to fix?
Moi: update the database and update the logic that depends on it
JTM: what changes are those?
Moi: the ones described in the ticket, I would assume, I'm no longer on that project
JTM: didn't you write this application?
Moi: yes.
JTM: ok, so do you know how to fix the issue?
Moi: definitely
JTM: ok... ... Can you tell us how to fix it?
Moi: yes.
*The sound of silence*
JTM: *will* you tell us?
Moi: I would, but I'm already off the clock, and as of an hour ago I no longer have a contract. And even if I did, I don't have a contract or authorization to work on that system. I'm not actually being paid for this call.
JTM: ... What are we going to do about this?
Moi: I have no idea
JTM: ok, so we can look at getting a 1 month contract to support this
Moi: I'm sure our firm has someone who can definitely help you out
JTM: *heavy raging* ... Can you do the work?
Moi: Unfortunatley, I'm already committed to a new contract at another customer. I also don't do one month contracts. I'm an engineer, not a car wash employee
JTM: well, I don't understand how you can just leave us in the lurch like this?!
Moi: well, respectfully, it was your decision to cut me from the budget because you thought you were close enough to end of the project to get it across the line with junior resources.
Interjecting-JT: I am senior!
Moi: Right. So, basically, you took ownership of the product before go live. We advised against it, in writing, numerous times. We also notified you that we would not carry a bench, so the project resources are now working on other things. We can provide you with new resources for a minimum 6 month duration who can help you out. Also, since we've cycled out, our rate has increased per the terms of our MSA.
JTM: we don't have budget for that! How are we supposed to do this?!
Moi: *zoom glare at JT* that question is more appropriate for your finance officer and the IT director. I can send a few emails and schedule a call with your account representative and the aforementioned individuals so you can hash this out.
-_---------------
I'm free! 🥳 That said, still plenty of residual fodder I need to get out of my system on these guys. Might need to start my own Dilbert.12 -
Hello everyone, this is my first time here so hi! I want to tell you all a story about my current situation.
At 18 while in the military I was able to get my first computer, it was a small hp pavilion laptop with windows 7. The system would crash constantly, even though I would only use it for googling stuff and using fb to talk to people. 5 months after I got it and continuously hated it decided to find out why and who could I blame (other than myself) for the system making me do the ctrl alt del dance all the time....
Found out that there are people called computer programmers that made software. Decided to give it a go since I had some free time most days. Started out with c++ because it was being recommended in some websites. Had many "oh deeeeer lord" moments. After not getting much traction I decided to move to Java which seemed like an easier step than C++. Had fun, but after some verbosity I decided to move into more dynamic lands. Tried JS and since at the time there was no Node and I was not very into the idea of building websites I decided to move into Python, Ruby, PHP and Perl and had a really great time using and learning all of them. I decided to get good in theoretical aspects of computer programming and since I had a knack for math I decided to get started with basic computer science concepts.
I absolutely frigging loved it. And not only that, but learning new things became an obsession, the kind that would make me go to bed at 02:40 am just to wake up at 04:00 or 06:00 because the military is like that. I really wanted to absorb as much as I could since I wanted to go to college for it and wanted to be prepared since I did not wanted to be a complete newb. Took Harvard CS50, Standford Programming 101 with Java, Rice's Python course and MIT's Python programming class. I had so much fun I don't regret it one bit.
By the time I got to college I had already made the jump to Linux and was an adept Arch user, Its not that it was superior or anything, but it really forced me to learn about Linux and working around a terminal and the internals of the system to get what I want. Now a days I settle for Fedora or Debian based systems since they are easier and time is money.
Uni was a breeze, math was fun and the programming classes seemed like glorified "Hello World" courses. I had fun, but not that much fun, most of my time was spent getting better at actual coding. I am no genius, nor my grades were super amazing(I did graduate with honors though) but I had fun, which never really happened in school before that.
While in school I took my first programming gig! It was in ASP.NET MVC, we were using C#, I got the job through a customer that I met at work, I was working in retail during the time and absolutely hated it. I remember being so excited with the gig, I got to meet other developers! Where I am from there aren't that many and most of them are very specialized, so they only get concerned with certain aspects of coding (e.g VBA developers.....) and that is until I met the lead dev. He was by far one of the biggest assholes I had ever met in my life. Absolutely nothing that I would do or say made hem not be a dick. My code was steady, but I would find bugs of incomplete stuff that he would do, whenever I would fix it he would belittle me and constantly remind me of my position as a "junior dev" in the company saying things as "if you have an issue with my code or standards tell me, but do not touch the code" which was funny considering that I would not be able to advance without those fixes. I quit not even 3 months latter because I could not stand the dick, neither 2 of the other developers since the immediately resigned after they got their own courage.
A year latter I was able to find myself another gig. I was hesitant for a moment since it was another remote position in which I had already had a crappy experience. Boy this one was bad. To be fair, this was on me since I had to get good with Lumen after only having some exposure to Laravel. Which I did mentioned repeatedly even though he did offer to train me in order to help him. Same thing, after a couple of weeks of being told how much I did not know I decided to get out.
That is 2 strikes.
So I waited a little while and took a position inside another company that was using vanilla PHP to build their services. Their system was solid though, the lead engineer remains a friend and I did learn a lot from him. I got contracted because they were looking for a Java developer. The salary was good. But when I got there they mentioned that they wanted a developer in Java...to build Android. At the time I was using Java with Spring so I though "well how hard can this be! I already use Android so the love for the system is there, lets do this!" And it was an intense, fun and really amazing experience.
-- To be continued.10 -
Day of the interview sr. Architect says: "We have near 100% unit test coverage in our code."
One month later when I tell him there are 0 unit tests written against 300 projects: "Yeah, I knew that was a problem."
What can you do when the people who want to hire you lie outright to your face?
Oh yeah, and not a god damned one was written using any sense of object oriented programming at all. Every single damned project is written like its on a motherfucking punchcard put together by a cs 101 student with a 2 hour fucking deadline.
I can understand if it needs some work, just tell me. Don't fucking lie to me just to get me in the door to fix a problem you know you have. JUST HAVE SOME FUCKING RESPECT FOR YOUR CANDIDATES AND DON'T FUCKING LIE TO THEM!
Off to drink some scotch and think about what it would be like to shove a finger deep enough into my nostril to hear a pop and smell popcorn before going off into that good night.
I said good day.3 -
dear api author at my company pt. 2:
If you're gonna create an api method that takes some arguments.
And one of those arguments is an array.
THEN MAKE THE FUCKING ARGUMENT'S NAME PLURAL YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT.
REPEAT WITH ME, MOTHERFUCKER.
ARRAY, PLURAL, NON-ARRAY, SINGULAR.
I need to pass a shitload of filters for the data for this table, and for every suckin fuckin filter I need to singularize this shit. Thank god for es6.
I know this sounds like nitpick, but I swear to fucking alpha omega this guy is inconsistent as fuck.
Every time it feels like he makes up a new rule.
Sometimes I need to send arrays of ids, other times arrays of objects with an id property on each.
He uses synonyms too, sometimes it's remove, other times erase.
PICK ONE MOTHERFUCKER.
If you can't do the basic things well, then what is to expect of more advanced stuff?
Naming conventions you fucking idiot, follow them. It's programming 101.
You're already sending them as plural in the fucking response. Why change them for the request?
And that's just style, conventions.
This idiot asshole also RARELY DOES ANY FUCKING CHECK ON THE ARGUMENTS.
"Oh, you sent a required argument as null? 500"
We get exceptions on sentry UP THE ASS thanks to this useless bone container.
YOU'RE SEEING THE EXCEPTIONS TOO!!!!! 500'S ARE BUGS YOU NEED TO FIX, YOU CUMCHUGGER
And sometimes he does send 400, you know what the messages usually are?
"Validation failed".
WHYYYYYY YOU GODDAMN APATHETIC TASTELESS FUCK???
WHAT EXACTLY CAUSED THE FUCKING VALIDATION TO FAIL????
EXCEPTIONS HAPPEN AND THANKS TO YOU I HAVE NO IDEA WHY.
The worst of all... the worst of fucking all is that everytime I make a suggestion to change shit, every time, you act like you care.
You act like the api is the way it is because you designed it in a calculated manner.
MOTHERFUCKER. IF A USER HAS ONLY PRODUCT A, THEN HE SHOULDN'T BE ABLE TO ACCESS DATA FOR PRODUCT B. IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO JUST RESTRICT SHIT WITH ADMIN ROLES. IDIOT!!!!!
This is the work of someone who has no passion for programming.10 -
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 :P10 -
Startup-ing 101, from Fitbit:
- spy on users
- sell data
- cut production costs
- mutilate people's bodies, leaving burn scars that will never heal
- announce the recall, get PR, and make the refund process impossibly convoluted
- never give actual refunds
- claim that yes, fitbit catches fire, but only the old discontinued device, just to mess with search results and make the actual info (that all devices catch fire) hard to find
- try hard to obtain the devices in question, so people who suffered have no evidence
- give bogus word salad replies to the press
This is what one of the people burned has to say:
"I do not have feeling in parts of my wrist due to nerve damage and I will have a large scar that will be with me the rest of my life. This was a traumatic experience and I hope no one else has to go through it. So, if you own a Fitbit, please reconsider using it."
Ladies and gentlemen, cringefest starts. One of fitbit replies:
"Fitbit products are designed and produced in accordance with strict standards and undergo extensive internal and external testing to ensure the safety of our users. Based on our internal and independent third party testing and analysis, we do not believe this type of injury could occur from normal use. We are committed to conducting a full investigation. With Google's resources and global platform, Fitbit will be able to accelerate innovation in the wearables category, scale faster, and make health even more accessible to everyone. I could not be more excited for what lies ahead".
In the future, corporate speech will be autogenerated.
(if you wear fitbit, just be aware of this.)
14 -
Business Continuity / DR 101...
How could GitLab go down? A deleted directory? What!
A tired sysadmin should not be able to cause this much damage.
Did they have a TESTED dr plan? An untested plan is no plan. An untested plan does not count. An untested plan is an invitation to what occurred.
That the backups did not work does not cut it - sorry GitLab. Thorough testing is required before a disruptive event.
Did they do a thorough risk assessment?
We call this a 'lesson learned' in my BC/DR profession. Everyone please learn by it.
I hope GitLab is ok.2 -
Oh where to start.
TLDR, *actually* prepare students for the *real world*.
- TEACH GIT.
- Stop with the useless projects with esoteric restrictions that absolutely do not exist in the software work field
- ENCOURAGE collaboration rather than make it academic dishonesty with high punishment consequences. Devs need to learn Teamwork!!
- Don't start 101 with Python then go straight to C++ in 102
....
good lord, the easier question is what DOESN'T need to change in CS undergrad programs. -
!dev
Sometimes life just cracks its knuckles and goes like, yeah let's just fuck this guy inside out.
Everyday is a battle. Cockroaches are my worst fear. Like Orwell's Room no. 101 level fear. My tiny student residence room has so many that I'm sick of killing them. And they just keep coming back.
My worst sorrow is lonliness. I'm the kind of person who's fairly independant and level headed but I just love the feeling of having close ones around. So much that it's a part of my existence and identity. And sadly, that's just not there right now.
My worst misery is unproductivity. Not working on something useful always makes me feel guilty. But all the stress and responsibilities and the above mentioned problems leave me with little mental room to do what I like unless I put in a lot of conscious effort into it which drains me.
Despite all this, I stay happy. I smile at the end of the day and I'm fucking proud of it.3 -
So I'm looking at getting a drone to do some videography for commercial purposes. I've been researching all the FAA regulations, dos and don'ts, tips for flying, videography, etc. My finger is hovering over the "buy now" button on BestBuy.com.
But, there's an exam you have to take to certify to fly for commercial purposes that, I thought, was supposed to test you on the Part 107 regulations. I pull up a list of sample test questions from the FAA's own website and it has questions on it that, for all intents and purposes, apply only to MANned aircraft, not UNmanned aircraft. Crap like "What airport is located approximately 47 (degrees) 40 (minutes) N latitude and 101 (degrees) 26 (minutes) W longitude?"
And I'm sitting here like, "WTF! I don't live anywhere near there! I just want to take pictures of some friggin trees and houses in my metro area!"
"Welcome to the FAA website, where we're not happy until you're not happy."3 -
For the last few years I've dealt with mostly PHP development however I now have some time to finally build something that I have been wanting to for a while. The trouble I'm having is what do I utilise for the build?! There are a 101 'perfect frameworks' out there and to be frank, totally lost on how to decide.
I'm using Strapi for the backend/API and i know I could build the application in PHP but that would require full rebuild to extend into a mobile app in the not so distant future. I originally opted for React as I'm familiar with that from a few project but honestly...god help anyone trying to navigate any article nowadays!
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