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Search - "wk385"
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My CTO told the COO and CEO i'd be finished SOC2 compliance by the end of December... On December 14th.
It takes 3 months to do the audit, let alone all the actual work. I hadn't even started yet.
He was fired shortly after that.7 -
The most unrealistic deadline? Okay, here it goes. For context, this is one of my earliest jobs, and I’m actively using React.
— Kiki, I have a stunning idea! Let’s build a Figma clone!
— Okaaaay, 🧐
— You have two days.
— A what?
— I’ve just stumbled upon an amazing new technology. You maybe don’t know it yet. It’s called React.js, and you totally can build a full Figma clone in two days using it!
— …
— It’s a revolution, and you’re so ignorant for not following it. Are you even a real engineer?
— …
Two days later:
— Forget about Figma! Let’s build an online DAW for musicians!
That guy was nuts. I left when we had an executive meeting, I was explaining tech things, and he suddenly popped out a fucking tambourine and started striking it. One year later, he lost everything and went to get a junior C++ position at an outsourcing company.8 -
Once, I overheard a conversation between my former PM and a client during a phone call.
Client: I will send the final draft of the project by Thursday.
PM: That's great to hear!
Client: When can I expect the updates to review the changes after the draft is sent? I need to present it at a meeting this weekend.
PM: It should be ready by Friday without fail!
Client: Excellent! Thank you. I will be expecting it.
PM: Sure, goodbye.
(After the call, PM joined the team.)
PM: So, team, the client for Project-A will be sending us a new draft for review and updates. They are putting a lot of pressure on us and need it to be ready by Friday at the latest. We need to treat this with a sense of urgency.
(After hearing this, we felt compelled to respond.)
Me: There's no way they would expect us to deliver an unseen draft within a day. Both the backend and Figma team members were forced to work last weekend, on Saturday, because you mentioned that Project B was behind schedule and the client needed an update by Monday. We simply can't continue working like this.
Backend guy 2: I also worked last Sunday on Project B.
Me: We overheard you telling the client that they should expect an update by Friday. It seems like you're the one directly putting the team under pressure, even though we still have three ongoing projects with tight deadlines.
(The office fell into an uncomfortable silence.)
(PM left the office without saying a word.)
Later on, I heard that he contacted the client to reschedule the expected time of arrival (ETA) after receiving the draft.7 -
Not a deadline but I once worked for a company that regularly asked for “accurate estimates” which I found hilariously oxymoronic7
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Most unrealistic deadline I've had?
The client gives us a project with A 3-month deadline. All good, at first.
3 days later they told us that they're cutting out the funding and they gave us two options: Either stop the project right away and get paid for the work so far, or somehow finish the project in 7 days and get paid for the 10 days worth of work.
My idiot boss chose the second.
Saturdays and Sundays were declared working days, everyone screaming at each other, devs running around scrambling code to make the webpage render and keep it responsive.
Forget unit or automation testing, we only did not null and undefined testing and submitted the project.
Yeah, I hauled my ass out of the company just after that.4 -
Migrate and entire fucking ERP system in NINE DAYS.
"It's just copy and paste!"
Yeah, if both systems worked exactly the same. And if they do, why switch?5 -
Potential client once asked for a clone of Amazon, for $5000, in one month. I did not take the project.6
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We were once tasked to create a 3-part Flash game to advertise the upcoming release of an album by a very famous band. Every part used a different gaming engine which we had to build from scratch (one of which was like a simplified version of the OG GTA game - top down driving with zooming in etc). On top of this we had to deal with user registration and score submission.
We had 4 weeks to do it in. We were 3 people.
We did an illegal number of hours to get as much done as we could, and we still didn't manage it in time because, frankly it was impossible.
Pretty good game though.1 -
To get a PhD in three years. Half way in, absolutely unrealistic but that's a hill I'm willing to die on! ⚔️
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Got yelled at because super important feature for a client was two days overdue.
The kicker is that they never even talked to IT about the feature let alone give us a decent spec/assignment.
So I guess my most unrealistic deadline was the day before yesterday...2 -
"this office, that is located 2000 miles from here needs a network because of we decided to renovate the entire office starting today.
Can you fix no later than tomorrow?"
We were not notified about this before.
We did not have the equipment.
It is impossible to get an hotel room atleast two month in advance.
Yeah3 -
Our PM wanted us to do a massive refactor of our Codebase. He gave it 1 Story Point ( or in his words :"Small T-Shirt size") since it was just a refactor, what could Go wrong ?
Answer: Everything . WE needed 2 Months to get Everything up to standart (how he saw it) and 2 of the programmers just quit because they were getting yelled at for Not refactoring fast enough9 -
There was a project discussed and the agreed deadline was 4 months. And the next morning we got an email that we need to deliver that in a week with absolutely no change in requirements.5
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Someone wanted me to make a full system from zero with good UI/UX, for 2 different user types (think marketplace style), admin area, and cool features that could only be done through phones because the tech is not available in web. All of this with good security due to the delicate information it would handle. Also of course subscription support as well.
By myself, within a year.6 -
* Teams meeting, doing some early testing with the client *
Dev Team: This is an early build, so please be aware that bugs can occur at this stage. (That's why we didn't want to show it but you insisted)
Client: Sure, don't worry.
* 15 minutes later, first bug happens because some state management at the front end was not tunned yet *
Client: Can you solve this bug?
Dev Team: Sure, just let us replicate it and we come back to you as soon as...
Client: Can you solve it now?
Dev Team: ... Okay, let us ser whats happening and we will come ba...
Client: You don't need to hang up, just solve it.
*Dev Team internal chat*
Me: Fuck
Other dev: Fuck
My leader at the time: Fuuuuuck
PS: This happened in two separate occasions. I hated that project.6 -
In my case, the most unrealistic deadline was when I was put on a project for 30 person days in 2008. The project had been running for about 6 months at that point.
I spoke to the project manager about my tasks and she told me to finish the fat client. So I immersed myself in the sources. And I was horrified to realize that not only was it not even a POC, but the performance was lousy to say the least. It took about 70 (sic!) seconds to start the program, read in about 20 records from a database and display them as a hierarchical structure.
I asked the PM when I was supposed to have finished my work, and her response was, "Yesterday."
"Very funny," I replied.
"No, really," she said, "the deadline was yesterday."
It took me an afternoon to speed up the fat client startup to 6 seconds. And then it took us another two weeks or so to identify the processes in discussions with the technical project manager. Because that didn't exist yet either.
About 1.5 years after the deadline, the software system - consisting of the fat client, mainframe modules and purchased software - was stable enough to be rolled out. -
Our company decided to buy a new platform from a third party company..but they did not pay at all at once, it was like a loan, and every month we received a new feature to integrate in our code system, after a couple of months the company stopped paying, then they decided to cut the relation and suddenly I was working 18 hours per day to build the platform that they were supposed to buy.. we were told that we had one month to finish, of course we didn’t make it, I got fired the same year :D2
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Tuesday**
PM: can we have this site hosted by Friday..?
Me: I'll try but I need all the information about their organization
Wednesday**
PM: *sends half of the info I need
Thursday**
PM: how far have you gone..? I want us to host tomorrow
Me: I still don't have all the information I need3 -
so this client asked me to build a fully functional financial education app for kids that she needed to present as a project in the next two days...
I did attempt it and it felt good but failed to meet the deadline cos I almost died1 -
I joined 3 months into a project that was expected to be done in 6.
As the day passed I learned about the scope a little more, 30 days in I decided to step aside, I slowly learned that they wanted a whole bank built from scratch.
User support ticketing systems, the banking core and an app like "revolut", everything with a team of 4.
To this day I have not seen them launch, and it's been over 5 years. -
"Build an entire PoS system, from scratch, that will run in hundreds of airports around the world along with an accompanying back office. You have 6 weeks but 4 would be better"
Even for an agency this was an insane ask but they decided to only put myself, mid-level at the time, and a junior dev on the project.
Somehow we just about managed the deadline and the system has been up and running for almost 9 years now.5 -
Why do some devs who work for corpos have a superiority complex?
“Oh I cannot imagine working on a small team of 3 people (2 devs, 1 designer) on a website”, saying it like if he was disgusted. “The team I work in has 40 people”, with a hint of superiority in his voice.
Bro, chill for a moment, it ain’t a race to the top.10 -
>"We need this project finished for tomorrow"
<"But we don't even know what the client wants for parts X, Y and Z"
I'm currently in a sinking ship of a company that has no proper project management or documentation. Requirements mutate with the lead manager's biorhythms and all projects are delayed because he's incapable of scouting or retaining talent.
Unless I've misread their financial situation, I don't think they'll stay in business throughout the year without some major restructuring.2 -
Our new potential customer requires us to have <Feature>.
Can you implement <Feature> before your vacation? We'd like to roll it out while you're away.
<Feature> has been in discussion since 2018, our competitors developed it for years while we deemed it too much effort, my vacation starts next week and it is fucking Wednesday.1 -
Risk engine for payment processing, with support for custom rules and third party integrations like IDology. Deadline was one week.2
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There's one thing I have most frustrated with, it's when a project manager has no technical knowledge.
They are like those people who makes you angry every time they open their mouth.
Thay just never makes sense and never understand anything.
Always wasting everybody's time.8 -
This happened a few years ago. We started this new project that was estimated to take 3 devs around 5 months to complete. We had a meeting where the client, the project manager, me and two other devs were present. When the client asked if we were still on track to complete the project by the end of September, the PM just said “yeah we are totally on track, no worries”.
Me and the other devs looked us straight in the eyes and nonverbally agreed that this guy has to be sniffing glue or something. For context: it was August.
After the meeting we immediately raised our concerns with him and our boss. The deadline was shifted and a freelancer was hired to assist. The PM quit shortly after and a way more competent guy took over. But the damage was already done.
In the end we finished that project in February or March the following year. Client was still happy but this shit triggered a whole clusterfuck of a year. Other projects were lagging behind because of this and we had to push out project after project that had accumulated in our backlog. -
Using devrant on windows phone. Windows phones are so so so nice. Why microsoft did you stop windows phones. They are the best OS and greatest experience. Bring back windows phone please.11
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man, SCRUM is a FUCKING chord, sometimes. Isn’t it supposed to make us productive and not hog time and resources?4
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Ever since i learned terraform i cannot go back. I cant fucking use the ui anymore. This shit is too good. 1 command to create all bullshit and 1 command to destroy all bullshit. Fantastic. Misconfigured shit? Just fix it in a file and 1 command to update it. Perfect. Need to add more shit? Add more lines and 1 command to update. Shitastic. Instead of misconfiguring bullshit or forgetting to delete some shit manually i can simply just do it all 1 command no errors
HOWEVER i noticed sometimes even terraform gets fucked up with bullshit. When im destroying my infra it infinitely says destroying. As if its stuck in that loop. No idea why. So i have to manually destroy the bullshit and then run destroy a fww more times till it works5 -
Got one right now, no idea if it’s the “most” unrealistic, because I’ve been doing this for a while now.
Until recently, I was rewriting a very old, very brittle legacy codebase - we’re talking garbage code from two generations of complete dumbfucks, and hands down the most awful codebase I’ve ever seen. The code itself is quite difficult to describe without seeing it for yourself, but it was written over a period of about a decade by a certifiably insane person, and then maintained and arguably made much worse by a try-hard moron whose only success was making things exponentially harder for his successor to comprehend and maintain. No documentation whatsoever either. One small example of just how fucking stupid these guys were - every function is wrapped in a try catch with an empty catch, variables are declared and redeclared ten times, but never used. Hard coded credentials, hard coded widths and sizes, weird shit like the entire application 500ing if you move a button to another part of the page, or change its width by a pixel, unsanitized inputs, you name it, if it’s a textbook fuck up, it’s in there, and then some.
Because the code is so damn old as well (MySQL 8.0, C#4, and ASP.NET 3), and utterly eschews the vaguest tenets of structured, organized programming - I decided after a month of a disproportionate effort:success ratio, to just extract the SQL queries, sanitize them, and create a new back end and front end that would jointly get things where they need to be, and most importantly, make the application secure, stable, and maintainable. I’m the only developer, but one of the senior employees wrote most of the SQL queries, so I asked for his help in extracting them, to save time. He basically refused, and then told me to make my peace with God if I missed that deadline. Very helpful.
I was making really good time on it too, nearly complete after 60 days of working on it, along with supporting and maintaining the dumpster fire that is the legacy application. Suddenly my phone rings, and I’m told that management wants me to implement a payment processing feature on the site, and because I’ve been so effective at fixing problems thus far, they want to see it inside of a week. I am surprised, because I’ve been regularly communicating my progress and immediate focus to management, so I explain that I might be able to ship the feature by end of Q1, because rather than shoehorn the processor onto the decrepit piece of shit legacy app, it would be far better to just include it in the replacement. I add that PCI compliance is another matter that we must account for, and so there’s not a great chance of shipping this in a week. They tell me that I have a month to do it…and then the Marketing person asks to see my progress and ends up bitching about everything, despite the front end being a pixel perfect reproduction. Despite my making everything mobile responsive, iframe free, secure and encrypted, fast, and void of unpredictable behaviors. I tell her that this is what I was asked to do, and that there should have been no surprises at all, especially since I’ve been sending out weekly updates via email. I guess it needed more suck? But either way, fuck me and my two months of hard work. I mean really, no ego, I made a true enterprise grade app for them.
Short version, I stopped working on the rebuild, and I’m nearly done writing the payment processor as a microservice that I’ll just embed as an iframe, since the legacy build is full of those anyway, and I’m being asked to make bricks without straw. I’m probably glossing over a lot of finer points here too, just because it’s been such an epic of disappointment. The deadline is coming up, and I’m definitely going to make it, now that I have accordingly reduced the scope of work, but this whole thing has just totally pissed me off, and left a bad taste about the organization.9 -
There was once some webservice made by a junior over the course of a few months. He always said it's good to go and everything works fine - but nobody ever asked to see something of it.
Big mistake, the thing was a fucking mess. Major spaghetti, nothing _really_ worked. The whole application felt like walking on eggshells.
Fast forward: It's Wednesday at 3PM, and the product is to be presented and used on Thursday at 9AM by the customer. They brought me and another colleague into the project and we fixed it in time, but it was one hell of a night.1 -
I have to convert a very complex algorithm form matlab to C , and push to prod in next 7 days 😭
[FYI can’t use matlab to c coverter]5 -
its two years since ive told a story here but lets go.
we got a new client, who is revamping their infrastructure. i gave some tasks to 2 dev ops guys (i am not devops). they were primarily bash scripts that needed to be altered. (ofc i can write scripts it takes a moment, its their jd)
after a week of chasing them around, getting no result from them, i end up doing it myself because client needs it and the company needs this client. for one task, they told me it does not apply to the component we were working on. (it did, and i did it)
we have a meeting with higher management, they asked me how did i implement it, i show my entire working, my backtracing etc (everyone knows this is how you approach huge system, component focused strict deadline task). it was infuriating how they approached it by trying to understand complete system in one week. i asked them why they hadn't taken component specific approach. they said they tried but failed because..
[this because is the whole reason for the rant, because i believe this because should be a fire-able offense]
..because we were not using VS code to find things in files
HOW IS WHAT TEXT EDITOR YOU USE OR DON'T USE AN EXCUSE
ARE YOU GUYS GETTING THIS?5 -
Before I joined the project I was told I had to EOY to hit deadline. After I joined for 1 month was told I have to hit the deadline in a month and that I’m too slow.2
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This project is just a complete clusterfuck... But nvm. We had to integrate a third party service pushing data into our system. Btw the service wasnt even working correctly. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. Its friday around lunch time. Message appears "what is the status of the integration?" Yeah havent started working on it. Last info was service is not stable. I doubt that this will be done this week. Next message from PO: "We will all push hard to get this done today and deploy to prod." Why? Because this dumbasses said to the customer this will be deployed eod. And by we you mean the devs once again doing overtime. Has this shit stopped? No. Like for the last two weeks its like we promised the customer xyz to be deployed tomorrow. Not a single dev was asked how long it takes to add this3
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Rant.
Fucking frontenders…
CNN… scroll down…tap into article…swipe back… completely somewhere else…
It is soon 2024
You retards.
You imbecils
What-is-the-matter-with-you?
Why don’t you solve this? Why? Why do you persist (or not)?3 -
I have a ton.
This one is more about my own foolhardiness, but I also learned a ton and came out stronger & wiser.
when I started out as a dev (my very first job!) and had not learned to say no.
I was a novice way out of my playground.
Like lifting a full booking platform from legacy php to Laravel & launching it like yesterday because it’s high season.
Didn’t know the full domain, so I just built something quite different in a week and shafted the existing db into it.
Obviously wasn’t feature complete or anything, so it resulted in maintaining legacy while building the new one and because it was already live and on different domains, we didn’t fully know which ppl went to, I had to every day painstakingly back port data from both platforms.
What I initially thought would take a few weeks that was launched in 3 days, spanned across 2 years plus one year refining and cleaning up my mess.1 -
WK385, unrealistic deadline.
My bachelors thesis, ok the deadline was not set unrealistically by the school but it took ungodly amount of time for me to understand what I was supposed to do. By the time if actually got started I had four weeks left until deadline.
I still question myself how I pulled it off3 -
So we work in sprints of two weeks, we are two people in our team, in the beginning, we get assigned work and we continue to work on it the rest of the week, but sometimes my manager adds last minute tasks or makes it so whatever i was currently working on is not important anymore after i have already cut a long shot through it
But anyways i understand thats how work is, but what seems to happen now as well is that i finish all the work assigned to me early so i can work on any bug fixes that may arise from such features or old bugs, so then for example he gives task 1,2,3,4 to me and task 5,6,7,8 to my colleague which is ahead of me in rank but not my leader per se, she has more experience as she worked in another company for 7 months before and i never worked before , but then i finish my work by the middle of second week and he ends up adding some of her tasks to me and forces me to finish them fast as he thinks they are no big deal (hes also a non technical manager) so i am always racing to finish whatever he throws at me last minute and ending up getting the blame if i dont finish those last minute tasks, also if i take vacation and come back instead of giving me tasks to do he just gives me bugs of recent features that was done by my colleague while im on vacation
And when i confronted him about it that at any point in time whenever i check how much work is left for me and my colleague, she has less work than me, he said “i will skip all this because you got this wrong” and then continued to just ask me to do more things on the weekend day
Ofc so i tried to make sure i dont finish my work before time so he doesnt do that
But instead he ends up blaming me and saying i should have finished2 -
A web app (recruiting system) with two interfaces، in a holiday (2 days), without any other information.
No one wants to answer your question because of holiday.
Somehow it worked fine after the holidays, but I redeveloped the system in 3 weeks. -
Most deadlines we get are unrealistic... but not in the sense you think. I get to do a task and you can bet that the deadline they tell me at that point is not gonna be the real deadline because they will keep pushing it into the future. Happens in projects with many stakeholders...