Week 278: Most rage-inducing work experience — I’ve got a list saved! At least from the current circle of hell. I might post a few more under this tag later…

TicketA: Do this in locations a-e.
TicketB: Do this in locations e-h.
TicketC: Do this in locations i-k.
Root: There’s actually a-x, but okay. They’re all done.
Product: You didn’t address location e in ticket B! We can’t trust you to do your tickets right. Did you even test this?
Root: Did you check TicketA? It’s in TicketA.
Product guy: It was called out in TicketB! How did you miss it?!
Product guy: (Refuses to respond or speak to me, quite literally ever again.)
Product guy to everyone in private: Don’t trust Root. Don’t give her any tickets.
Product manager to boss: Root doesn’t complete her tickets! We can’t trust her. Don’t give her our tickets.
Product manager to TC: We can’t trust Root. Don’t give her our tickets.
TC: Nobody can trust you! Not even the execs! You need to rebuild your reputation.

Root: Asks coworker a simple question.
Root: Asks again.
Root: nudges them.
Root: Asks again.
Coworker: I’ll respond before tomorrow. (And doesn’t.)
Root: Asks again.
Root: Fine. I’ll figure it out in my own.
TC: Stop making it sound like you don’t have any support from the team!

Root: Asks four people about <feature> they all built.
Everyone: idk
Root: Okay, I’ll figure it out on my own.
TC: Stop making it sound like you don’t have any support from the team!

Root: Mentions multiple meetings to discuss ticket with <Person>.
TC: You called <Person> stupid and useless in front of the whole team! Go apologize!

Root: Tells TC something. Asks a simple question.
Root: Tells TC the same thing. Asks again.
TC: (No response for days.)
TC: Tells me the exact same thing publicly like it’s a revelation and I’m stupid for not knowing.
TC: You don’t communicate well!

Root: Asks who the end user of my ticket is.
Root: Asks Boss.
Root: Asks TC.
Root: Fine, I’ll build it for both.
Root: Asks again in PR.
TC: Derides; doesn’t answer.
Root: Asks again, clearly, with explanation.
TC: Copypastes the derision, still doesn’t answer.
Root: Asks boss.
Boss: Doesn’t answer.
Boss: You need to work on your communication skills.

Root: Mentions asking question about blocker to <Person> and not hearing back. Mentions following up later.
<Person>: Gets offended. Refuses to respond for weeks thereafter.

Root: Hey boss, there’s a ticket for a minor prod issue. Is that higher priority than my current ticket?
Root: Hey, should I switch tickets?
Root: Hey?
Root: … Okay, I’ll just keep on my current one.
Boss: You need to work on your priorities.

Everyone: (Endless circlejerking and drama and tattling)

Once upon a time, there were a restaurant called "iEat.tech.com".
It was a small single-location place, where the sufficient number of patrons could be served by the cozy number of employees.
In fact, headcount was so lean that the cook was also the one who washed all the dishes.

But then came the suits and their "VC"(daddy) money and scaled shit up.
Soon, there were so many patrons that the dishes started to pile up the sink, never washed.
"We need someone to wash the dishes!" said the cook
"Fuck you, you wash the dishes!" said the s*its
Naturally, the cook left soon after.

The s*its had a problem now. They could not replace the cook fast enough - all other cooks were either young, inexperienced and mediocre (but did clean the dishes), or refused to waste their time on the sink.
So the suits did what $*its always do - they got a fucking consultant. Who told them to get a fucking dishwashing machine and billed them the GDP of Ireland.

The s*is, of course, did not want to buy a dishwashing machine. "Our fucking process is too fucking disruptive for us to use a fucking store-bought mass-produced metal servant!" (s*its don't know what "machines" are. For them, it's all in terms of "servants", employees and machines alike).

So the s*its hired an engineer to "solve the fucking dish problem, once and for all".
The engineer quickly started measuring and drawing and calculating. The engineer was about to prepare a budget when the s*its came screaming "What the fuck are you doing? There is a fucking pile of dishes in the sink!"
The engineer replied that "I'm designing the machine!", to what the s*its responded "don't bring me fucking problems, bring me solutions!" (or some other s*it blabber)

So the engineer quickly designed an efficient dishwashing assembly line to be done in half the time most people would. And then went back to designing the machine.
But the s*its were having none of it. They kept expanding and expanding and doing what they could so that the engineer never had a moment to work on the machine. They dit it so surreptitiously that no one barely even noticed, but one day they were paying a team of engineers to be fucking human dishwashers.

Now replace "dishes" with "Jira tickets" or "quick fixes" or "tiny changes" and fix other terms accordingly.
Fucking s*its.

Client: can you filter boats by location?
Me: Let me see... As you know, there are three remote systems that feed data into your database. I'd have to make a connection between the location records. But I can't rely on coordinates, name, ID or anything else. You'd have to manually create those links for me by remote systems records IDs. Telling me that record XY from system A is identical to record YX from system B, etc...
Client: How many records are we talking about?
Me: 504.

Three days later...

Client: Got it, is that enough for you in excel?
Me: Let me see... Very nice work, I can work with that.
Client: I almost died on it!

An hour later...

Me: Got it, test it and let's run it on the production version.
Client: It works beautifully.

A minute later...

Can we filter the ships by ports?
Me: Let me see... Yes, it's theoretically possible, but it's the same situation as with places...
Client: How many records are we talking about?
Me: 12,647.

Skype relayed to me the sound of something heavy falling, something grunting. Something dying.

I was asked to look into a site I haven't actively developed since about 3-4 years. It should be a simple side-gig.
I was told this site has been actively developed by the person who came after me, and this person had a few other people help out as well.
The most daunting task in my head was to go through their changes and see why stuff is broken (I was told functionality had been removed, things were changed for the worse, etc etc).
I ssh into the machine and it works. For SOME reason I still have access, which is a good thing since there's literally nobody to ask for access at the moment.
I cd into the project, do a git remote get-url origin to see if they've changed the repo location. Doesn't work. There is no origin. It's "upstream" now. Ok, no biggie. git remote get-url upstream. Repo is still there. Good.
Just to check, see if there's anything untracked with git status. Nothing. Good.
What was the last thing that was worked on? git log --all --decorate --oneline --graph. Wait... Something about the commit message seems familiar. git log. .... This is *my* last commit message. The hell?
I open the repo in the browser, login with some credentials my browser had saved (again, good because I have no clue about the password). Repo hasn't gotten a commit since mine. That can't be right.
Check branches. Oh....Like a dozen new branches. Lots of commits with text that is really not helpful at all. Looks like they were trying to set up a pipeline and testing it out over and over again.
A lot of other changes including the deletion of a database config and schema changes. 0 tests. Doesn't seem like these changes were ever in production.
...
At least I don't have to rack my head trying to understand someone else's code but.... I might just have to throw everything that was done into the garbage. I'm not gonna be the one to push all these changes I don't know about to prod and see what breaks and what doesn't break
.
I feel bad for whoever worked on the codebase after me, because all their changes are now just a waste of time and space that will never be used.

I really invested into this work from home lifestyle, moving in an appartment where i could have my own office, upgrading my personal workstation, leaving overpriced locations close to subways behind.. so i do hope it will remain like this for at least a few more years (or why not, even forever for dev roles)

It's way better than a shitty office placed in location equally incomfortable for everyone

Otherwise.. well, there is always the option to go freelancing from home

Do you prefer working remote or in the office?

I like to view these as equal choices. I don't think offices are as bad as some people make them up to be (of course heavily depends on the environment and company!). In opposed to working remote, offices can help you focus more on work and leave work problems "at work".

While, if you're working remote, it's not unlikely for work and personal life to become so intertwined that it's hard to tell them apart anymore. It's hard to not think about work at home if home is where you work.

I believe an ideal is somewhere inbetween - not entirely remote, but not entirely office focused either. Mixing and matching seems like the one approach where you get to have most of the benefits, but with the least negatives. It doesn't seem necessary to always be at the office but it also doesn't seem good for you to always be cooped up at home.

Hey everyone, need some advice here. To give some background, I am 17 years old, and currently residing in New Zealand. I love software and have my career path set on being a developer, most likely full-stack web. (Windows/native development & Game development I wouldn't mind either). I would say I am confident in JavaScript (incl. TS), web-dev languages (HTML & CSS) and Python. And with less experience, but a strong interest in Rust, C# and C++. I plan to go to my local university to study Computer Science. Because of factors like my age, location, lack of previous job experience and degree(/s) make it hard to meet any requirements for the few jobs available locally, or even remotely. Anyways, what have you done to get where you are today or what would you recommend based on my current background? My main goal is to get my foot in the door than to "have money" or "be occupied", so if other paths like certifications or more temporary contract-like work (similar to Fiverr) is a better idea then let me know.

i am so fucking conflicted right now. seeing my fiture getting ruined in front of my present eyes. Life always gives me a chance to jump out of a ship that's about to fucking blow , i took it the first time, but this time i missed it for bravery ( and stupidity), and now am sinking alongside this fucking ship

my first job was amazing. decent work, sometimes a lot and sometimes too less. i would learn new things ,interact with people, handle a lot of fuckups . at one point i felt like looking for another opportunity , got one giving 50% hike , so i jumped the ship and sent a resignation letter. the noitice peripd was less, so i enjoyed my days applying to other ships. got even a better offer with 100% hike, so from one boat to another to now a literal cruise.

later i got to know that my original company got bankrupt and fired 85% staff. the next month the company that gave me the first offer layed off 30% staff.

now the waters are tough and my cruise is also getting impacted. but instead of firing, they are asking us to come to the office permanently. their office is in a fucked up place: you need 8$ just to breath the fucking air there. its the city of blood and money. and you will be giving away both things there.

my brain got split into 2 parts after this announcement: my stupid self was still considering this while my sensible self started applying for jobs. my stupid self was thinking that this is a great opportunity to leave my fucking nest of a home , where i am liv8ng woth my parents for last 25 years, and learn to live alone. clean utensils, cook food , wash clothes... i wanted to live the life the harsh way.

but life still took a pity on the fool that j am and gave me an opportunity. an opportunity to work with a big brand who hasn't done any layoffs in their 40+ yrs of existence (but also known for giving shit increments)
the offer was just a 40% hike but it was near my home. i could be in office in 1 hr in less than a dollar a day and still earn more than what am earning now.

plus my notice period is now 60 days , so who knows what other offer i could have got in those 60 days ( when i would keep my profile with a big green "immediately available to hire" circle on me.

however this time i didn't jump the boat. i asked them for a bigger raisez they declined and my stupid self was more than happy.
now the company has started to send mails regarding relocation and yepp the cruise is sinking , atleast for me. if i was savingsx in this company, my savings would become x/8 if i go to that city. in the new offer it would have at worst remained x.

and that's not even half of what's bothering me. i had accepted the money loss in exchange of what that city and my company had to offer : a chance to experience WFO, a chance to live life like a mature man and not a kid in his mom's house ,and a life full of hurdles and strangers.

however i always like to keep an emergency fallback mechanism on me , for if things don't work out. I don't wanna go depressed and cut my wrists there, I don't want people to hurt me so much that I can't recover. i want to run away from that wreched city the moment i start to loose the battles there and the city starts taking over me.

but what the holy fuck? my company's notice period is 60 days, and my rented room's security deposit is 6 fucking months? i will be giving 6 months of deposit + 1 month of brokerage + 1month of rent on the first day i put my steps on that wretched land after travelling in a 100 dollar flight! where am i supposed to get this much money?!
and okay, somehow i manage this. say i did an 11 months agreement, paid the fucking 8 months of rent at one go and simply started living a shitty life there. in month 2 i break down and wanted to implement my escape mechanism. it would go like this : i will suck up and try to live for rent free for next 6 months. but wait, THAT'S NOT FUCKING ALLOWED!! iam supposed to get my security AFTER 11+1 MONTHS!! why not freaking adjust it in my rent?

I can't think straight . 6 months of security deposit has blown my brain. i am regretting anything and everything. I can't think of my roommates situation, home safety, room location, whatever the fucks we think while looking for a room . all i can think is ...WHY SO MUCH MONEY NEEDS TO GO AT ONCE!?

FUCK