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Boss: “Our YouTube channel doesn’t look at all like our website.”
Me: “I’ve made it look as close to our branding as YouTube allows for with its limited editing controls.”
Boss: “This is unacceptable. I expected more from you.”
Me: “I cannot accept the blame for this. YouTube is setting the design parameters for all channels and I can only do so much.”
Boss: “You can call the YouTube, can’t you? Why didn’t you call them?”
Me: “.......and ask them....what?”
Boss: “You don’t ask! You tell! Our company has been around for 140 years. Our brand name carries that weight. They’ll change their design to what we need if you’re assertive enough.”
Me: “Ma’am, that’s just not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.”50 -
X: Can you link my Facebook account with the website?
Me: Yes. Can.
X: Good. I want to update website using Facebook since I know how to use Facebook well.
Me: 💀16 -
This happened at my previous job where I worked for a dating app. It was at a time where the CEO was trying to turn the dating app into “more than a dating app” by adding tons of social features. We always had “interests” which allowed users to see what interests they had in common with another person, but he wanted to take the social component even further.
So with that, he decided we needed an “activity feed.” The activity feed would show what various Facebook connected users were liking on Facebook, posting on Facebook, etc. On a dating app. Where the majority of the audience was > 50 years old. The idea was absolutely ridiculous and everyone but the CEO knew it was destined for failure before we started building it.
But that’s not the best part. The best part was when we launched the activity feed component. We launched it late on day and went home shortly after. The next morning, we came in, and checked on the activity feed to see what was doing. It was literally all spammers liking porn/sex related stuff on Facebook. It was a complete disaster. All garbage but not just boring garbage - completely obscene garbage.
And just like that, the activity feature came and went in the course of a few days.18 -
In a meeting after I explained that the user passwords will be encrypted before we save them in the database
Them: "Please don't do that, we don't want to change our clients data"
Me: " so we should save the clear text?"
Them: "Yes"
😒9 -
"Can you make the UI look uglier and more ... Traditional?"
Removed CSS completely and gave them an HTML only page. They loved it.16 -
"Can you put my site as the first result on google?"
I can add SEO to your site, just give me your preferred keywords, a description, and let's make sure we follow white hat best practices etc.
"No call someone at google and ask how much to go to the top of the list"
So you want to pay for ads or..?
"No get a figure I can pay to get to first page"
"Or can you just edit the google"
... And so I never renewed that contract ever again, the end.12 -
A client requested that right-clicks be blocked on a website so that users couldn't copy (it on their words, "steal") content...35
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Client: We want a mobile shooting game with multiplayer, In-app purchases, leaderboard and stuff and you should also help us in publishing it.
Me: Cool what’s you budget?
Client: max $100.
I never replied again.16 -
Sure I've said this before, but I was once asked to embed a video in a pdf so people could print it...9
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PM: You know that screen that pops up at the start of the app asking for permission to access health data?
Me: Yeah the iOS HealthKit permission screen. What about it?
PM: Can you take that out. I don't think people are going to agree to it. I want people to use the app.
Me: Well we can't do that, apple says if we want to use HealthKit we have to ask for permission. We shouldn't be touching that data without permission anyway.
PM: Oh no permission is fine I get that, but is it not implied by downloading the app, its clearly a health app. I really don't want people to download it and then uninstall it because they don't like this.
Me: Not really, not everyone will know what data is needed, some of it might be sensitive to them.
PM: Nah I don't buy into that. I asked 5 of my friends on the golf course at the weekend and 3 of them said they wouldn't agree to it, thats 60% of our user base, we can't have that.
Me: ... ok, well I don't agree that your 5 friends is a fair sample to judge the whole world by, either way we have no choice.
Pm: No this isn't going to fly, can we not build our own HealthKit that doesn't have this kind of permission screen? Maybe we could start our own, and invite our partners to use it?
Me: ... no
Pm: why not? We'll have legal draw up something we put in the terms and conditions.
Me: ... it will take months to build for all the different types of devices we have, if they even let us get access to them, and then we will have a different standard to everyone else.
Pm: ... no your not seeing the big picture, i'll run the idea up the ladder.
**It was approved up the ladder, and subsequently cancelled when they realised the scale of the work involved which is both a "thank god" and a "wtf" moment**7 -
Client: We want it to run on both, windows and Linux servers.
Me: Why would you want such a thing?
Client: The user should be able to connect to the server, independently from what system he or she is using.
Me: So... should we setup a Mac OS X server too?10 -
Client : Now mail me the project "directly". Don't send it in files. I donno how to open files!!
Me : Directly? o-O43 -
More like the most obvious thing I accidentally left OUT of an application without thinking about it.
"application seems advanced/cool/working! Oh by the way how do I log out?"
😐😮😧😅😰😭16 -
A customer once wanted a button to sort a table column by name (alphabetically).
We told him, he just needed to click the column once.
The response:
C:"I still want that button!"
Just why...?7 -
"It must work in IE6, we still use it in our offices."
While developing a JavaScript web app for a bank with 10 000+ employees. In 2014.8 -
Me: "We are gonna move away from Google services."
Him: "Ok. Just make it EXACTLY like Googles services. I won't use anything with less features."
Me: "Look, I can offer you something with more privacy and security under european law. It may not be EXACTLY like Google. If I could do that I wouldn't be here obviously."
Him: "As long as I'll work here I'll not work with something less than Google."
Inner me: AAAARGHHH FOR FUCKS SAKE!! I'LL STICK THOSE GOOGLE SERVICES UP YOUR ARSE SO THEY CAN SPY ON YOUR FUCKING GUTS!"
Me: "Well, in this case I'm glad that you are not alone to decide that."21 -
"Oh you make games!
Can you make something like Pokemon Go? We you need to make it quick cause we only have 10 days till the event."
😓10 -
Boss : "just" hack the google AdWords and show our company ad everywhere on google search"
"Don't you know that everything can be hacked?"
Me : "Ok, first let me ***k you."
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I mean "let me hack you"8 -
( rant || !rant ) && idiots
console.info( this.isLongRant );
console.warn( "contains strong language and wordpress" );
A friend of mine sent two of his "friends" to me because they wanted me to build a website for their new business (~idea).
So I had a meeting with them.
First of all they wanted me to have a look on the current (work in progress) site.
First impression of the frontend:
OH BOY!?
Well, imagine this:
- a 90s/2k background (dotted/pixelated cloud in baby-blueish as backgroud with repeat)
- the logo was made by the sister of one of the guys, it wasn't too bad, but badly aligned, asymmetrical
- some obvious $offTheShelfShopPlugin with $randomStockContent
- the fucking slider had a small loading bar to indicate changes, it appears like an hyperanxious child on ADHS
- below the logo TWO FUCKING GIF SPINNERS to indicate nothing else but how fucking brain amputated these two dudes are, including the dev who is responsible for adding this. (to this point, they only told me, that a webagency did the setup and some basic work on the site, more on that later)
- no styling concept at all, random fonts and stuff everywhere including default styles of the shop plugin.
- FUUUUUCK WTF wil come furtherin this meeting?
After seeing a pile of binary puke fisted out of a 60yo nonstop-intern who changed his jobtitle from dildo-traveling-salesman to fullstack-frontend-dev by wrinting it on a post-it-note, I imagined, there has to be something wrong with the backend as well.
Boy was I right!
Yes, you guessed it! A random Wordpress adminpanel login appeared! OH NO....
I really wanted to levae this meeting immediately.
I was not able to hold my disgust back and I told them right in their face, what a shit pile of nutty squirrel turds this current page is. And that Wordpress is not the right choice at all for a shop.
Then came the best part: They basically told me, that they terminated the previous contract with the webagency because they were too expensive (they are cheap, compared to others, I know people who know their prices) and that they wanted to create A BIG MARKETPKACE with multiple ressellers who can have their shop in their website. Something similar to FUCKING AMAZON. ON FUCKING WORDPRESS!?!?!?
They even asked me if I wanted to be their partner & developer and that they can't pay much at the moment until the marketplace starts to grow.
I more or less told them to go fuck themselves with a rusty pitchfork.2 -
Fuck my life...
Okay, so I’m working on a web app with a small group... the app is basically a lead generator for new business in another country. We just need contact details cause they’re a fucker to buy.
Step 1: prototype to the investors, working with the ceo to make this thing look shiny AF.
Goes well as fuck.
CEO: “when can we get this out?”
Me: “it’s basically done mate, get your guys to look at it and we can talk about marketing”
Que a shower of 10 or so bellends with senior in their title going into a room and coming out with:
Bellends: “so on this page we want the user to confirm and accept the contract”
Me: “cool, makes some sense, that’s what it’s already doing.”
Bellends: “afterwards we want to show them the price and have them put in their banking details.”
Me: “Wait, you what when?”
Bellends: “Yeah, well Jenny says we should have as few clicks as possible to get to the final stage and have the customer accept.”
Me: “Jenny’s on fucking crack, moving the contract formation phase to after the contract acceptance stage is not an option”
Bellends: “Oh it’s okay, Andy in legal said that would be okay”
Me: “Andy’s a fucking moron, tell him that online contract formation laws were updated 2014/2015 and you can’t do that anymore”
Bellends: “No, andy’s legal, surely he knows”
Bellends: “We want all of this above the fold”
Me: “OH FUCKING SUCK A DICK YOU ABSOLUTE BAND OF FUCKWADS... which one of you, which one hasn’t looked at a website this millennia!?”
Needless to say I ignored all their shit, got the lead generator out and told the CEO those ten people are certifiably fucking useless.
Bonus round; recent, but “it has to be on internal infrastructure”
“Why? It’s a mobile app sending rest calls to a third party saas.”
“It just has to, we have this thing called the private cloud and w”
“Wait... you what son, priv 🤦🏼♂️ private what mate?”
“Private cloud”
“You... you mean a server rack?”
“Nah we spent £2mn on it, it’s brilliant”
“Hahahaha you fucking dick, you blew £2mn on server infra with fuckall to put on it!?”
“No, no it’s the private cloud”
“Fucking idiot, aye son, where’s the fucking bean stalk you prick!?”
“It has to go on internal infr”
“Shut up, that won’t work”9 -
"I want my API to return insults as error messages if they forget shit"
Uh no, I prefer helping them out by writing proper documentation than sending a giftbox with me flipping them off like Linus Fucking Torvalds for their spaghetti usage of your API5 -
Placed a hidden flying unicorn as easteregg in our last business app. My boss stumbled across it and told me: "make it that all users can see it more easily without using the secret gesture."
...but ..it's an easteregg! .. :facepalm:2 -
- We need a „Save Session“ - Button in the Navbar.
- No problem
- ... and the icon should be a thumbs up!
Yeah... uuuh... Makes perfect sense... 🙃3 -
can you put this on the right side when someone scrolls?
*sends a gif of a caterpillar running at 3 fps with sparkles everywhere*5 -
CPI, coffee programming interface. Pretty much my boss wired a Pi0 to his coffee pot somehow and uses the GPIO pins to detect when the pot is done brewing and stops heating the top, then it sends a message to him on Slack.8
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Made a website for a local choir when i was younger - for FREE (my Mum’s been a member for >30 years).
They INSISTED on playing music on start that can’t be stopped.
Told them that wouldn’t be very wise, people would just immediately leave. They didn’t believe me. Removed it shortly after...1 -
My high school teacher once asked me to make a digital clock that ticked slower the further away you were from the computer. That without any sensors or webcam or anything...
He had this notion computer's are magical machines that can do anything. And all that in VB out of all languages.7 -
"We want a fully responsive web application.
Also, it must look identical to the old one written in VB6"3 -
Simplicity is a prerequisite for reliability.
I put those words on the wall in giant vinyl letters, and I point to them every time someone asks me "can you add a frontend button which checks this external API and stores the correlation between the amount of rain and the sales numbers of purple buttplugs inside the user profiles?"
People always ask for one more column in a table, one more paragraph under an image — they never ask for replacement or removal of items.
So I force them. Want a feature? Fine, if you point at something of equal or greater complexity to delete.2 -
"The customers of our webshop are able to change their billing address... We don't want our customers to be able to do that."
(in a few months with the new general European data protection regulation I need to code it in again, so I just removed the html...)5 -
Was asked to make an e-sign system that manipulates PDFs to insert an image and the date at different coordinates on x number of different pages.
200 hours later, it was done. Now I'm the PDF guy2 -
Client request hover function on hyperlink to display tooltips...the problem is they request it to be implement on mobile/android apps...3
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I had once had person who wanted me to make a program and wanted the backend to be in google spread sheets2
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Dumbest request?
Email piping chat system.
The chat system had to take replies from web and send them to an email, which the admin user can reply back via email and it publishes straight into the chat.
It was all fun and games until they wanted HTML based emails and content going back and forth, and attachments going both ways.4 -
Spinner (combobox) must not change it's content when user selects an option. 🙄
For example if by default it says: Select an option
If user selects an option from it's drop-down, text must not change and must always display: select an option.7 -
Please add option to share results on Facebook. I worked on a grading software for teachers. Do they want to share "I just failed a student. Come and join me on (link)!"??1
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I was once requested to update a website and the requirements were that it "must be flash based...and use our company's color scheme."
I saw the current site and critiqued the color before knowing that the color was the company's signature and had to be there. The colors were a pukish yellow like someone pissed all over the site and that color was everywhere. I said that site looked like something from 1998 and flash was not the way to go.
They wouldn't hear any of that. No need to mention I didn't take that job. -
Client : Use google map because it has more data but make sure the location and navigation in the app as to look like Apple Map.
Me : 😧😧1 -
Client: I want a new feature for my chat bot. It should be able to rap.
Me: ... k
*monologue: wait u w0t m8*
Also me: Can you please go more into the details? It should be able to rap. Ok. But how do you want it to look like? How "strong" should be the discrimination level, for instance?
Client: It should beat ass, yo.
Inner me -> core me: Let us just ignore him. We won't be able to do it, since he isn't really explaining his needs. "It should be able to rap". We are not wizards.
Core me -> inner me: Chill. We will just use some insult apis, combine it with cleverb0t api et voila.
Me: Alright. I got an idea for it. I can do it within this week. And if you don't like it, I will ofc do some changes to it.
Client: Hmmm... that's nice and good. But within 1 week?
Inner me: I can't do magic and pull that feature out of my fucking ass!
Clients... clients... clients...
0. Don't expect us to be done in a few days. We are also humans. And not fucking machines.
1. Do us (all devs on planet earth. -Microaggression in 3, 2, 1..) a favor and (kill yourself) learn how to request a feature.2 -
Got so many. (remember where I am from? 😁) Gonna share my favorite first.
X : I want a web app that my staffs can use and update data from different branches.
Me : Ok I can development such project.
X : But I want them it offline so they can use the app even with slow internet or no internet.
Me : 💀
// The data are shared across the branches BTW.5 -
Long but hilarious:
I was deeply concerned about how we have a single, non-paginated call to a backend service, returning hundreds of entries, which has to be enriched with constant data fetched from our db for each entry. FOR EACH ENTRY. AND FOR EACH REQUEST.
I voiced my concerns to my PM, who called me a "rage prophet" for it.
As expected, the call took 20-something seconds to complete.
Ten minutes before the CEO comes over to have a look, another dev changes his loosely-related service, and the entire super-heavy, sprawling abyss of enrichment pipeline returns in sub-second timing!!!
CEO: guys, this is too fast. You have to slow it down a bit. It doesn't seem reliable that we're able to get all this data immediately.
PM: you see, rage prophet, it all worked out in the end
Me: #$@%$&!!!!!2 -
Not sure if this counts as a dumb request but:
Customer- There are too many tasks, we need a 'SELECT ALL' button to complete everything easily
Me- sure that's easy to add
(After addition)
Customer- people are completing the tasks too fast! We need to get rid of the select all !
Ugh5 -
We want an App!
Our logo big and centre screen!
It's the emergency button to call for help in dire and potentially dangerous situations.
What? Our logo doesn't look like a button? Just do what we say.1 -
We need you to support IE7, IE8, IE9, IE10, Firefox, Chrome, and Opera. Also since the customer may one day want to use tablets start thinking about that. And if possible don't break IE6 compatibility.3
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We are required to use corporate SSO for any authenticated internal websites, and one of the features they require you to implement is a "logout" button.
They provide a whole slew of specifications, including size and placement/visibility, etc. They provide an SSO logout URL you must redirect to after you take care of your own application logout tasks.
Makes sense... except the logout URL they provide to serve the actual SSO logout function broke over 3 months ago, and remains non-functional to this day.
Apparently I'm the first person (and perhaps one of the only people) who reported it, and was told "just not to worry about it".
So, we have a standing feature request to provide a button... that doesn't actually work.
Corporate Security - Making your corporation _appear_ more secure every day...2 -
Manager : I wish to upload an excel sheet from my browser, and based on *some conditions*, could you please highlight the cells with incorrect values.
Me: And then download the new edited sheet with highlighted cells, right?
Manager: No just change the file that I have on my desktop. So I can repeat whenever I need, with the same file.
Me: :/1 -
UX: we need to add a close button to the filter menu.
Dev: wtf, why?
UX: the users cannot figure out how to close it. -
Web form request.
Client: Can we have an Excel workbook with a form? Download it. Fill it out? Then upload the workbook.
This was his suggestion. The workbook would be potentially updated by over 5000 users.
WTH!!!!!!2 -
Client: There is currently no way for us to save forms to “the cloud” (yes they actually put the cloud in quotes)
Me: That would be because this software is installed on your onsite server infrastructure and is not cloud hosted in any way. -
UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity.1
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We had this customer that wanted a app called "Bottle message" to use it for basically everything like ordering shoes or sending money. He thought it would be practicable to just write in the "message" what you want to do and when you want to make it happen.
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On our Android tablet app, we had to have the hamburger menu on the bottom right corner (normal top left). It sorta became the floating action button...3
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I have a bug that shows null but i got an "null" string which is nasty. To someone who did this, i'll find you and i'll kill you
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I was asked to add full page takeover announcements to a website, even though there's a perfectly reasonable announcement system already in place.
I objected on religious grounds - doing that would undoubtedly get me sent to developer hell (also knows as COBOL).
But the client wasn't convinced so I made them a demo. I immediately got a message back saying "wow, that's a lot more annoying than I thought, please remove it".
Of course all of this was done in a separate branch, so this blasphemous code would never be in my master commit history.1 -
"Could you implement a network connection into the project so that people can use it even when they don't have a Internet connection?"1
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I'm building a cross platform mobile app for this sales company to manage sales of each Van Sales Representatives. The app displays details of the customers; name, address, etc...
After demo, they requested for a map inside the app, specifically on the screen that displays the customer details for easy navigation by their VSR.
All attempts to convince them to use Google maps failed :(3 -
Built website with Skype video call functionality, install Skype in server and do call. Don't ask user to install Skype. 😠
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We had a meeting with our customer and showed them our prototype. The prototype had a fancy GUI.
The customer looked at the prototype and said: well, it looks nice but I don't know. In some kind the Gui don't flashes me. Make it so that it flashes me.4 -
Asked to implement a feature in a mobile app that wasn't actually supported by the backend. Feature had 3 possible values in the backend, only 1 and 2 were properly implemented. Below was the backend teams solution to support the third option.
- If the key is missing in API response A, means the user is not allowed access this feature.
- If the key is present in API response A, and missing from API response B, that means it hasn't been set.
- If both are the same value, user has that value.
- It will never be the case that both return option 3.
- If both are different values, one of them being option 3, display option 3.
this ... monstrosity, is in production to this very day. -
An analog clock widget. For something only used in office computers via a browser. Ffs whatever your os is there is a clock already at some corner why do you need a clock widget for the homepage which you will see only for 5 seconds per day
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I was developing a project for the software engineering course. We we're building a sort of mips instructions simulator that would show you the path the signal takes while it's traveling in the CPU.
So after almost finishing everything, the professor asks us to add a voice over feature that would tell you what is happening while you go through the animation.
You can only understand this if you see it. It's very funny and stupid.
The website is http://mipssimulator.com
Make sure sound is on.
Edit: the site is kinda glitchy on mobile so try loading it on a computer for better results.5 -
System architect make feature to print password, when you create new client. It was architecture for backend server. Just why and how?!5
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"Copy the file sent to our warehouse management system to another folder so we can keep track of the deliveries we sent data for."
Why these geniuses think that having a folder with file names containing timestamps (and not delivery numbers) would make their job easier is beyond me... -
Not learning web quicker, it's now the most growing thing and there are so many technologies and frameworks and I haven't had enough time to go over them. However, the only problem is some of these frameworks last a little while and die out so it's not all that bad.1
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