It’s one-on-one time yet again this week!

I have a 1:1 with my boss every Thursday from 11:30am to 12:00 noon. They often run 45 minutes instead of the planned 30.

Why do I have these? I complained that I have too many meetings, and that it’s hard to get my work done around them (especially while burned out). So as a remedy he scheduled a weekly meeting, every Thursday, so he can make sure I’m getting enough work done. Totally makes sense, right?

And every Thursday he’s 15-25 minutes late. And because they always run long, I lose a full hour or more of time I could have used to get my work done. See the problem?

Today he was 36 minutes late.
Seriously, how disrespectful can he be?

Police tech support, corruption, stilettos, fake agents, and all that. This is gonna be a long story.

Remember when I posted about wanting to become a digital nomad and how my annoying landlady has sped up the process for that? So I was looking for apartments to move into. Just a couple of months to get surgery, recover, and gear up for the new life. I met a real estate agent. He showed me his license, he's known by the guards and admins in the residence, and I met the unit owner together with him inside the unit itself. I did a background check and all looks good. A major property developer even posted several awards that he achieved. Sounds legit? Nope. This will soon become the highest level of real estate corruption I've ever seen in my entire life.

The property developer is well-established and has various luxury residences. After some further digging, I saw several posts about him in private owners' groups except they were screenshots of his name and face, not actual texts so it did not appear in the initial search. I see comments from several tenants and owners that he scammed. It turns out they even have a WhatsApp group dedicated into taking him down because he's done all kinds of trouble - bouncing checks, stealing items from the units, fucking up people's apartments, taking money from people and then ghosting them, etc.

Everyone seems angry but also hopeless because apparently, he's been doing this for years and the property hasn't banned him. There were discussions that the property itself takes bribe from him so he can freely go in and out of the residence. As far as I know, he's been doing this for almost a year, maybe longer but since he's a licensed agent with the management on his side, he's pretty much untouchable.

I mentioned his name to a previous agent I talked to, let's call her "Stiletto Girl" because she gave me a tour around the towers while wearing stilettos and dear god, I don't know how people manage to walk so long with those things on. Stiletto Girl was more furious than I am and sent me screenshots of their conversations. She obviously hates the guy and she confirmed that there is indeed corruption in the admin office.

I collected all these information and posted to an investors group to warn them about buying properties there. I received messages with terrible experiences and overall, people are convinced. This group has members that can buy properties in full with cash. I managed to get his account blocked in one of the payment options he provided and I was instructed to file a police report so they can permanently disable his account. I'm working on his other accounts.

After a trip to several police stations, I found myself talking to this asshole investigator in his camo. I fucking hated the guy and the tone of his voice. He gave me trouble for not knowing the suspect's full address. At some point, we were just yelling at each other. He made a phone call and went back agreeing to finally let me file a police report.

He asked for my ID. I gave him my company ID, I learned that doing this builds instant rapport to some because it's a well-known airline company and most of the people have taken a flight there so they're extra nice to me. Maybe they think I can give them a discount or something, whatever. Nope.

Him: "You're a software engineer? Are you good with computers?"

Me: *laughs knowing where this is going*

Him: "See, I have a problem with my computer. Can you fix it?"

Me: "Sure. Just give me the police report first."

He starts working on it. This time his tone is more friendly. Other police officers come in and he introduces me as his new "friend". As discussed, after the police report has been made, I sat on his computer and started fixing his shit. They went outside to respond to some emergency and asked me to guard the station for the meantime, lol. There's only me and another woman in a separate cubicle. When they came back, one of the police officers came up to my desk jokingly pretending to be a victim of some crime asking to file a police report.

I finished fixing his shit and now his asshole energy is diverted to the person I filed a police report against.

Him: "Do you think this guy is a one time criminal?"

Me: "Oh no, he's notorious and that property does nothing about it. I think he has a connection there."

Him: "WHAT?! I will pay them a visit tomorrow! Send me more pictures of him. If I see that fucking guy.."

I'm convinced that playing the piano has allowed me to type faster and commit keyboard shortcuts to muscle memory faster too. While coding isn't about typing quickly, there's a whole bunch of times when I've had an idea, and had to get that down into code as quickly as possible before I forget it - and that's when I really find fast keyboard work comes into its own.

For all my friends here who have known me for years can easily notice there has been a drastic change in me.

I used to be confident. That shit was hollow but I used to laugh in the face of fear. I was ignorant and that ignorance fueled a lot of the much needed confidence.

Over the years, I learned a lot. The more I know, the more I realised how much I don't know. And for all that I know, I have to use the brain power to retain and implement it, else it rusts.

This image is of my 2021 goals that I drafted last December. Wasn't able to achieve the first, the last and the art one. But surely got myself surrounded by some of the smartest people I have ever worked with.

Now they have rightly said, be careful with what you wish for.

MY CONFIDENCE IS SHATTERED.

I feel dumb. Constant imposter syndrome. While I am learning every moment and there is no measure to it, I feel incompetent to an extent that I have started questioning how did I even reach this far?!

While, yet again I am the youngest in my team, my manager is bit micromanaging and agressive with OKRs/KPIs and tech team isn't very supportive creating constant friction (something I never faced with developers in my life because devs are my best friends), I fear how much more time will I take to ramp up in this new job and feel confident enough to tackle things on my own without constant nudge from leadership or different teams?

Or is it just that I have burnt out firefighting and lost the motivation I had?

After all, what does this all even mean?

Positive story ahead.

Had to try and make a new system on my own in a company with no tech staff. I was scared shitless of the responsibility. About a year later we got 2 new devs and people are somehow paying for our very flawed and incomplete mvp.
It's fulfilling and fun. Taking something from zero and suddenly having an actual application with customers.

The other 2 engineers are fun and we talk shit while coding and teaching each other. We also study new tech every day to keep getting better.

I'm even getting some stocks soon.

Long road ahead but honestly, life's good.

Management: Our internal app must be 100% rigid so that we users follow predefined process flows exactly so no mistakes are made while also being 100% flexible so that users are free to go about their business in whatever way they feel is appropriate for their own unique needs. These are the requirements!

Dev: …

Got some detailed feedback from Booking.com, upon asking.

I answered all the questions right. But they said I am not ready for a Sr PM role (which might be true).

Here are three points that I captured from the feedback:

1. Focus on details
2. Clear and better reasoning for WHY
3. Realistic over idealistic scenarios

While it makes me feel low that I didn't make it but this feedback will surely help me overcome the challenges and clear interviews in future.

On to the next one now. Let's see what comes my way..

One thing for sure, there is lots and lots to learn for me yet.

One thing I surely lack is articulating my thoughts and keeping things crisp while conveying the information aptly.

Anyone has any tips/resources on how to improve in this area?

So they finally implemented vaccination certificates here that are apparently "WHO recognized" and you can generate it online. We used to only have vaccination cards. Guess what?

1. There's a data privacy section that's supposed to be step 1 but when you load the page, you're on step 2 where you have to enter your details. Step 1 is not clickable, you advanced child! You're skipping grades, congrats.

2. They have questions that can be answered with "yes" or "no", the question itself is a drop-down and wait, clicking it opens a dialog box that has two radio buttons for "yes" or "no". Amazin'.

3. Some words are capitalized for no fucking reason. It's so random, it makes you wonder if such entities exist and you just don't know about them.

4. There's minimal validation for the dates and even the bare minimum doesn't make sense.

5. You have to enter each detail in perfect order, otherwise it will assume you didn't enter anything.

6. Some of the fields are required but it allows you to proceed anyway. Well, it's your fault, get fucked.

7. Their version of CAPTCHA is literally a dialog box with random texts on it. TEXTS. If you enter it wrong, it doesn't generate a new one so take your time, dear. You'll get it right.

8. When it tells you that you did something wrong (rare), it flashes a black box at the top of the page that says "Oops, that's incorrect!" A literal fucking high school project.

9. When you finally reach the last page, it proudly informs you that they have successfully looked you up except your name is wrong. You know it's you from the first and last name, the date of birth, the vaccine brand, the vaccination site, time, and date. For some reason, the middle name is wrong and it's not a matter of "John" and "Jhon" or "Louise" and "Louis". They got the first two syllables right, removed one, and made up the few others. HOW?

I remember going to the vaccination site and seeing the brand new tablets they struggle to use. They even have keyboards and some slick leatherette casing for each. There's not a single scratch on those things. They have the best of the best tools while typing with one hand. Okay, maybe it's not the best tool but it's ages away from the typical pen and paper oops-i-lost-it system they had before. I chastised myself for being a cunt. "Come on, they're trying."

This is where our taxes go. High end tools for the damn fools. Even the website, just like every other government website, looks like a high school student's project. I thought the last bullshit I'll ever see was that stupid OTP crap that doesn't actually send you an OTP, it just writes the numbers on the textbox and all you have to do is press the OK button.

God have mercy.

One thing that @scout taught me is to wear the oxygen mask myself before helping others. Oh she is a sweetheart.

This advice has stuck with me since and slowly & steadily, I am regaining my lost confidence and self love.

Remember, how I was struggling for clarity a couple of months ago? But now, I feel more clear in head.

During the start of the pandemic, I joined a community of corporate normies. I used to live happier until that decision.

That place made me ultra competitive and I subconsciously became a rat trying to win the race. I damaged myself more than I benefited.

I joined at the time of inception. Every core member is a good friend.

Now the fun thing is, they moved to Slack. Many of the core members run the community as admins.

While I don't engage much, but talk to some of them occasionally.

One key area is, running a job board to help people get jobs. And another is mentorship to help the members overcome challenges and grow in their career.

In DMs, literally every core member who is doing this for others is struggling themselves for the same. How fucking ironic!

They seek help and advice from me and vent out their failure frustrations.

Imagine, someone who isn't able to solve their problem, let alone solving it first before helping others, is guiding the community of few thousands to excel in their careers.

Fucking brilliant.

One of the biggest life lessons @scout taught me, wear your oxygen mask first before helping others.

Question - is this meaningful or is this retarded?

if

2*3 = 6
2*2 = 4
2*1 = 2
2*0 = 0
2*-1 = -2

then why doesnt this work?

6/3 = 2
6/2 = 3
6/1 = 6
6/0 = 0
6/-1 = -6

if n/0 is forbidden and 1/n returns the inverse of n, why shouldn't zero be its own inverse?

If we're talking "0" as in an infinitely precise definition of zero, then 1/n (where n is arbitrarily close to 0), then the result is an arbitrarily large answer, close to infinite, because any floating point number beneath zero (like an infinitely precise approximation of zero) when inverted, produces a number equal to or greater than 1.

If the multiplicative identity, 1, covers the entire set of integers, then why shouldn't division by zero be the inverse of the multiplicative identity, excluding the entire set? It ONLY returns 0, while anything n*1 ONLY returns n.
This puts even the multiplicative identity in the set covered by its inverse.

Ergo, division by zero produces either 0 or infinity. When theres an infinity in an formula, it sometimes indicates theres been
some misunderstanding or the system isn't fully understood. The simpler approach here would be to say therefore the answer is
not infinity, but zero. Now 'simpler' doesn't always mean "correct", only more elegant.

But if we represent the result of a division as BOTH an integer and mantissa
component, e.x

1.234567 or 0.1234567,

i.e. a float, we can say the integer component is the quotient, and the mantissa
is the remainder.

Logically it makes sense then that division by zero is equivalent to taking the numerator, and leaving it "undistributed".
I.e. shunting it to the remainder, and leaving the quotient as zero.

If we treat this as equivalent of an inversion, we can effectively represent the quotient from denominators of n/0 as 1/n

Meaning even 1/0 has a representation, it just happens to be 0.000...

Therefore

(n * (n/0)) = 1

the multiplicative identity

because

(n* (n/0)) == (n * ( 1/n ))

People who math. Is this a yea or nay in your book?

I haven't been here for a long while but I wanted to peek in because of the dev ducks, cause I thought they would be a great gift for someone and now I found out they're sold out - my disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.

But now I decided I'm just gonna buy. a rubber duck and DIY it.

Hail Adventurer,

By Linus, do not fear what you see
and curse not I, but those before me

hold steady in the storms to come
brace for bugs, wherever from

I pass on to you, the light of PHP
Use it well, to fight against scrutiny

if it works, keep it so, ask not why
my time is over, while yours is nigh

You know what fuck github , anyone remember when git cli was easy and straight forward to use

Now i have conflicting master branches because the remote is main and git automatically defaults to master.

Git still asks for a password while github can't wait to inform me how I have to go through the very long process of setting up an auth_token.

Apparently https remote origins for some reason don't work anymore, why because apparently i need to change them into ssh, good luck with the public key errors

This sucks , fuck github and fuck politics

We have a tradition in our company to post in an anonymous forum about the things we're thankful for when it's thanksgiving.

I almost wanted to post that I'm super thankful to have this job, because I have the ability to stay at home, work "remotely", while the kids are in school/daycare, and just sleep all day because I can finish my task for the week in 2 hours.

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.

I just called somebody beside me an idiot while the call microphone was on. Quick question: how do I dig a hole and bury myself?

There’s immense power in being perceptive to what your business prioritizes for the rank and file versus what the business prioritizes for *itself*.

Like for example pushing to get individual performance reviews done with an exceeding pressure of a certain drop dead date while suddenly but simultaneously relaxing of any similar immediacy of completing management reviews.

🧐

Talk amongst yourselves.

Job post I saw today. They are either looking for:

- C/C# Dev to the company
- HAPPY Frontend dev
- Java Dev to the company

Well now.. only the front end gets to be happy but doesn't know where to work while the other two can be grumpy and know they'll work at the company? 🤔

[!dev]

Sometimes I feel an overwhelming lack of willpower that prevents me from moving except for my eyes. It passes within a minute and leaves a temporary tiredness. I didn't really think about it until now and I have no idea why, but yesterday it happened while a friend was talking about something they're passionate about and I realised that this is very far from normal. Have you experienced something like this?

I'd like to hear from developers which prefers Angular to React the reason of said preference.
I want to hear that becasue I like React way more than Angular since I find which is easier to learn (making a form with a React hook is easy while it takes days just to get a grip on Angular forms), it usually takes less code to do things, it doesn't force libraries which may not be necessary for your use case and just makes your bundle bigger (for example most things which are done in NgRx can be done just as easily with regular JS promises without the need of an external tool) and I generally prefer functional programming to OOP.
Said that I want to hear the other side, not to argue but because I want to know cases in which Angular may be a better choice than React to become a better rounded dev.

Every single morning I despair. I can’t stand this job.
Why pay very highly and get very skilled people to have them working 4 to a support ticket. Doing the most mundane support tickets you have ever seen in your life (mainly updating client contact details)?
And why have such a rigorous recruitment process to get people’s in in the first place?

The company is pissing money away by working like this and all the new starters like me think it’s complete shit.
But the bosses and anyone who’s been here a while think it’s great. Company still is making loads of money so they don’t even care about it.

I’ve never met senior developers who have never worked on a greenfield project in their entire careers until I came here.

I can’t believe how I got suckered into this (was head hunted).

Does anyone have a feel for the UK contracting market right now?

I’m considering the jump but I think I’d have to be looking for remote only contracts because where I live has few opportunities ‘on-site’. Preferably c# / angular.

Is there much competition for roles or is there a shortage of skills in the contractors?

The thought of going into another permanent role that could be as bad as this genuinely keeps me awake at night.
I’m not sure I can go somewhere and then have it in the hands of managers to decide what projects I’m going to do and what tech it will be on.

At any big company there’s going to be tech debt as well as new work. So becoming perm now feels like it’s 50-50 whether or not a new job will just mean being put into legacy stuff for a couple of years or doing something that is actually good.

I’ve been talking various people about roles in government departments (multiple different departments are hiring) and because priorities change none the gov recruiters can guarantee what the work is that they’re recruiting for actually is.
Just that the the big recruitment push is to bring work previously done by consultancies back in house. Presumably because consultancies have been fleecing them.

why is my charger so loose

my phone is dead because my charger is charging slow
its really loose in the port and it falls out sometimes
a lot of the time it doesnt even work when its laying flat
my phone died while it was charging, which is a first
help

My battery is dying while the charger is in. I start playing a game and it starts charging it properly. I stop playing the game and within a couple minutes I lose 2% battery life.

Howdy. Not making any new posts for a while. Mostly because of tinnitus and because I started to lose interest in programming.

wtf is JAMF? a quick look on internet and i can see that its a worst tracking software i guess. remote code execution, network tracking, app usage , system logging, keystroke tracking(maybe), this shit does everything you don't want. I guess this is the end of my devrant, pornhub, leetcode, freelancing, travel booking and everything that i would do on an office laptop while considering it as my own.

"Best remote work culture" my ass. if they can't trust their devs then why even bother letting them work from home? deport them to fucking Guantanamo bay, no?

This is a shitty situation . What do i do now? Install a vpn? will that work? please share names of some good and affordable vpns

i will have to check on this JAMF shit to see if i am able to keep my personal life away from its prying eyes. if not i guess i will have to buy a new device.

what do you people do? are you able to switch context b/w the 2 of your devices easily?I am shit at multi tasking

I'm novkinger able to post tweets about Windows 11 on Twitter. Everytime I try I get an error saying tweet failed. But other tweets have worked. I've been bashing on Windows 11 for a while now.

What a fucking shit OS it is. I'm sick of it already.

I'm going insane.

So let's say you have an object in database, with 20-30 related objects (Or lists of objects) (All related objects have a foregn key to the "main" object).

Now, as long as you just edit/create thinga everything is fine.

But the deletion... Oh MY GOD

"Just put on delete cascade", right ? RIGHT ?

WRONG ! presence of some objects should block delete, while others can be deleted and some are "situational" depending on the first object state.

So delete operation with all the checks takes .... 1 - 2 seconds.

Seems fine ? WRONG ! When you have 40 or more objects to delete, even 1 second is too long.

Should I say "fuck it" and just write a stored proc which will crash if object cannot be deleted for any reason ? because with Entity Framework, I don't see how I can do it effitenly.

But I HATE stored proc, after couple of month/years noone remembers how they work...

RHAAAAA.

Ok I feel better.

I've been feeling a lot of burnout these past few days/weeks... But like only in a specific programming language? Which is an issue cause I mainly work on python and I can't seem to bring myself to do that while learning and working with new languages/frameworks in classes are no problem.

Working as a Dev for a while now, I tell new people not to bother with it. There is never any job satisfaction as people in charge never understand the basics.

Instead of learning to write efficient code, figure out how to solve real business problems, work towards a maintainable flexible product to quickly deliver value on changing requirements, write automated tests to improve quality, maintainability and prevent live issues - basically do anything a good Dev strives for - you will just constantly end up working for people with no interest beyond the next couple days, on a shit code base that no one can understand, with people that don't want to learn anything about software design and just check boxes off.

Apart from pay this must be the worst career possible in a technical field.

Building gunpla.

Helped me postponing my burnout by doing 1 page a day everyday at lunch break (or 2 steps, depending on the model)

Also helped a lot with realising its fine to break and customise stuff, that most hardware is just marketing & that the right tool, while being cheap, can save you a huge headache and lead to a better result.

The only weird thing with ReactJS, it titles my cmd as "PowerShell" while starting the development server

In the Philippines, when you go out while you are coding then you get the traffic enforcers as your new friend.

Is there still a maintained/upToDate desktop client?

The Community Projects Page on devrant.com wasn't updated since a while, am i right?

Is there any terminal who informs when you write code while drunk.