Me: Optimize a sort & match method in backend because users complain it's a bit slow.

Coworker: These algorithms are both O(n), so they're identical *closes PR*

Me: *start zoom call* "Heeeeeeeeeey Iiiiiiiiiii wouuuuuuuld liiiiiiiiike toooooo diiiiiisscuuuuus thaaaaaaaat puuuuuuulllll reeeeeequuuueeest yooooouuuuu cloooooossseeeed"

Coworker: "wtf are you doing, why are you talking so slow"

Me: "No matter whether I talk fast or slow, the information still reaches you in O(n) time, so why are you complaining"

I fucking hate it when people misunderstand the purpose of (or abuse) big O notation. It's an estimate of how an algorithm SCALES once the set increases in size, in which case you leave out both less significant terms and constant factors.

But those terms and factors are important when you're talking about the DIRECT PERFORMANCE of the algorithm on fixed-size sets, instead of SCALING to larger sets.

1n and 10n are both O(n), but 10x performance on a job that used to take 10 minutes is still significant.

Last day on the contract from hell. I'd written a project with one other person in our spare time that performed a critical business function. The following conversation was had between myself, the job thief who was handed my job and their manager, with the 10 other IBM GS "dev domain experts" assigned to that team sitting silently on zoom:

Moi: hey all, what seems to be the problem?
JT: how to update the java for requirement?
Moi: I would assume a text editor, have you tried intellij
JTM: she's talking about ticket BS-101, the data is wrong
Moi: ah, well, you might want to fix that
JT: how to fix?
Moi: update the database and update the logic that depends on it
JTM: what changes are those?
Moi: the ones described in the ticket, I would assume, I'm no longer on that project
JTM: didn't you write this application?
Moi: yes.
JTM: ok, so do you know how to fix the issue?
Moi: definitely
JTM: ok... ... Can you tell us how to fix it?
Moi: yes.
*The sound of silence*
JTM: *will* you tell us?
Moi: I would, but I'm already off the clock, and as of an hour ago I no longer have a contract. And even if I did, I don't have a contract or authorization to work on that system. I'm not actually being paid for this call.
JTM: ... What are we going to do about this?
Moi: I have no idea
JTM: ok, so we can look at getting a 1 month contract to support this
Moi: I'm sure our firm has someone who can definitely help you out
JTM: *heavy raging* ... Can you do the work?
Moi: Unfortunatley, I'm already committed to a new contract at another customer. I also don't do one month contracts. I'm an engineer, not a car wash employee
JTM: well, I don't understand how you can just leave us in the lurch like this?!
Moi: well, respectfully, it was your decision to cut me from the budget because you thought you were close enough to end of the project to get it across the line with junior resources.
Interjecting-JT: I am senior!
Moi: Right. So, basically, you took ownership of the product before go live. We advised against it, in writing, numerous times. We also notified you that we would not carry a bench, so the project resources are now working on other things. We can provide you with new resources for a minimum 6 month duration who can help you out. Also, since we've cycled out, our rate has increased per the terms of our MSA.
JTM: we don't have budget for that! How are we supposed to do this?!
Moi: *zoom glare at JT* that question is more appropriate for your finance officer and the IT director. I can send a few emails and schedule a call with your account representative and the aforementioned individuals so you can hash this out.

-_---------------
I'm free! 🥳 That said, still plenty of residual fodder I need to get out of my system on these guys. Might need to start my own Dilbert.

Example #1 of ??? Explaining why I dislike my coworkers.

[Legend]
VP: VP of Engineering; my boss’s boss. Founded the company, picked the CEO, etc.
LD: Lead dev; literally wrote the first line of code at the company, and has been here ever since.
CISO: Chief Information Security Officer — my boss when I’m doing security work.

Three weeks ago (private zoom call):
> VP to me: I want you to know that anything you say, while wearing your security hat, goes. You can even override me. If you need to hold a release for whatever reason, you have that power. If I happen to disagree with a security issue you bring up, that’s okay. You are in charge of release security. I won’t be mad or hold it against you. I just want you to do your job well.

Last week (engineering-wide meeting):
> CISO: From now on we should only use external IDs in urls to prevent a malicious actor from scraping data or automating attacks.
> LD: That’s great, and we should only use normal IDs in logging so they differ. Sounds more secure, right?
> CISO: Absolutely. That way they’re orthogonal.
> VP: Good idea, I think we should do this going forward.

Last weekend (in the security channel):
> LD: We should ONLY use external IDs in urls, and ONLY normal IDs in logging — in other words, orthogonal.
> VP: I agree. It’s better in every way.

Today (in the same security channel):
> Me: I found an instance of using a plain ID in a url that cancels a payment. A malicious user with or who gained access to <user_role> could very easily abuse this to cause substantial damage. Please change this instance and others to using external IDs.
> LD: Whoa, that goes way beyond <user_role>
> VP: You can’t make that decision, that’s engineering-wide!

Not only is this sane security practice, you literally. just. agreed. with this on three separate occasions in the past week, and your own head of security also posed this before I brought it up! And need I remind you that it is still standard security practice!?

But nooo, I’m overstepping my boundaries by doing my job.

Fucking hell I hate dealing with these people.

Buy it, use it, break it, fix it
Trash it, change it, mail - upgrade it
Charge it, point it, zoom it, press it
Snap it, work it, quick - erase it
Write it, cut it, paste it, save it
Load it, check it, quick - rewrite it
Plug it, play it, burn it, rip it
Drag and drop it, zip - unzip it
Lock it, fill it, call it, find it
View it, code it, jam - unlock it
Surf it, scroll it, pause it, click it
Cross it, crack it, switch - update it
Name it, rate it, tune it, print it
Scan it, send it, fax - rename it
Touch it, bring it, pay it, watch it
Turn it, leave it, start - format it

The recruiter in call today is a spoilt brat .

I answer him wether am I know PHP. So I show him my code in PHP (oop) I show should him how I build a restful API and connect to MySql etc.

He told me that's not PHP , PHP don't use define and class , and that's not how you connect to MySql (I'm using PDO) he confused that pdo is something from Java. He told my code is not working because it is java syntax (actually not even closed)

Then I asked him then show me the proper way , he showed me his code in PHP which is started by <PHP instead of <?php (this is fucked up)

And I told him that (after looking at his code), he yelled at me that "there's no mistake, do you really understand PHP? " And he ended the meeting

All this happen in a zoom meeting.

So this chick has been super nice to me for the past few months, and has been trying to push me towards a role in security. She said nothing but wonderful things about it. It’s easy, it’s not much work, it’s relaxing, etc.

I eventually decided I’m burned out enough that something, anything different would be good, and went for it. I’m now officially doing both dev and security. The day I started, she announced that she was leaving the security team and wouldn’t join any other calls. Just flat-out left.

She trained me on doing a security review of this release, which basically amounted to a zoom call where I did all of the work and she directed me on what to do next, ignored everything I said, and treated me like an idiot. It’s apparently an easy release. The work itself? Not difficult, but it’s very involved, very time consuming, and requires a lot of paper trail — copying the same crap to three different places, tagging lots of people, copying their responses and pasting them elsewhere, filing tickets, linking tickets, copying info back and forth to slack, signing off on things, tagging tickets in a specific way, writing up security notes in a very specific format etc. etc. etc. It’s apparently usually very hectic with lots of last-minute changes, devs who simply ignore security requests, etc.

I asked her at the end for a quick writeup because I’m not going to remember everything and we didn’t cover everything that might happen.

Her response: Just remember what you did here, and do it again!

I asked again for her to write up some notes. She said “I would recommend.. you watch the new release’s channel starting Thursday, and then review what we did here, and just do all that again. Oh, and if you have any questions, talk to <security boss> so you get in the habit of asking him instead of me. Okay, bye!”

Fucking what.
No handoff doc?
Not willing to answer questions after a day and a half of training?

A recap
• She was friendly.
• She pushed me towards security.
• She said the security role was easy and laid-back.
• I eventually accepted.
• She quit the same day.
• The “easy release” took a day and a half of work with her watching, and it has a two-day deadline.
• She treated (and still treats) me like a burden and ignores everything I said or asked.
• The work is anything but laid-back.
• She refuses to spend any extra time on this or write up any notes.
• She refuses to answer any further questions because (quote) “I should get in the habit of asking <security boss> instead of her”

So she smiled, lied, and stabbed me in the back. Now she’s treating me like an annoyance she just wants to go away.

I get that she’s burned out from this, but still, what a fucking bitch. I almost can’t believe she’s acting this way, but I’ve grown to expect it from everyone.

But hey, at least I’m doing something different now, which is what I wanted. The speed at which she showed her true colors, though, holy shit.

“I’m more of a personal motivator than anything,” she says, “and I’m first and foremost a supporter of women developers!” Exactly wrong, every single word of it.

God I hate people like this.

Yay, another item to tick off the bucket list.

- fall asleep during a zoom call ☑️

I think I've hit the point of being so burnt out, even self consciousness is hard to maintain.

I've been wondering for a while, how the backend my team has to use could have so many issues. I was convinced they had no alerting system in place and have been commenting on it for a while now, and complaining about it.

Was on a Zoom call with one of the backend devs today, he shared his screen and had his email open. I saw a folder he had setup called alerts, and sub folders under that. One of them was named the name of the service/app we are using ... it had over 360,000 un-reads ... and emails are automatically deleted after 4 months in my company.

So they have alerts setup, they just don't care ... problem solved. Enjoy your weekend folks!

Dear Managers,
This is not efficient:

Boss: * calls *
Me: * answers *
B: there's a bug in feature ABC! The form doesn't work!
M: ABC uses a lot of forms. Is it Form A, B, or C?
B: Umm... let's just go on a Zoom call!
* 5 minutes trying to set up a Zoom call *
* 3 more minutes trying to find the form *
B: This form in here.
M: It works fine for me. What data are you inputting?
B: * takes 5 minutes trying to reproduce the bug * (in the meantime, the call is basically an awkward silence)

You spent 5 minutes wasting both of our times trying to set up a Zoom meeting, and another 8 wasting MY tine trying to find the bug.

This is efficient:
B: There is a bug in form C. If I try to upload this data, it malfunctions.
M: Thank you. I'll look into it.

You saved me 8 minutes of staring at a screen and saved us both another 5 minutes of setting up a meeting.

Best work prank?

Get a random friend to burst into my home office during a zoom call, wearing a ski mask, gun in hand, speak foreign language, and drag me out of the room. Have another masked friend go up the camera and threaten to kill me if my coworkers go to the police. Disappear for a week, then email my boss saying I need 100k or they’ll start killing my family members one by one, take the money, then go on vacation while I fill out job applications. Get a new job and repeat the prank every few months until I retire.

I had a zoom meeting with a new company who came looking for ME. I did NOT look for them. I already have a job (but they pay 3-4x more than my current job).

It went well. How the fuck was this a technical interview. Guy only asked me what ive worked on so far by now. Nothing technical n shit

At the end

Hr asked me how much bands i want 💰💰💰(here we fucking go again)

I had to stall it and avoid question. The guy started rolling his eyes and turned off his webcam. The fuck is your fucking problem Bitch?

Then she said we cant move to the next 76th interview unless i say range or minimum. I don't give a fuck anymore. I said my minimum

She started writing it down and, i have never in my life seen someone disconnect a zoom call after that.

Literally hr was saying Thank u for taking the time to join the interview, the guy also said thanks, i started saying thank you for your time an- they fucking disconnected the fucking call. In the middle of my fucking sentence. I did not manage to finish my fucking sentence from how fast they disconnected.

NOW I'LL ASK FOR DOUBLE OR NOTHING AT THE END INTERVIEW DUE TO THIS BEHAVIOR. GET FUCKED

It happened.
It finally fucking happend, I wish it didn't, but it happened.

I was in my very first call through zoom were I didn't even speak and didn't even really need to listen.

About 1h.

Everything could have been an e-mail, of course

Slack.

A product which I hated in the beginning, is something that I have started admiring now.

Like Telegram, things just kept improving without bloating the shit out of the product.

What's interesting is that they came up with Huddle, an instant call and connect feature where they support Audio and Screen sharing.

Totally a game changer and a Zoom killer because Zoom could be even better in terms of UX.

Functionally, hands down, Zoom is flawless but slowly it's becoming an overkill.

I am excitedly waiting to see how both of these compete because Slack surely has an upper hand in this game.

This was interview in so called startup.

BTW I don't get point in company calling themselves as startup when they are 5-6 years old, just call your self small sized company.

1 - online interview with HR, Normal.

2 - online technical interview - 1 hour of discussion with Lead.

3. On-fucking-site technical interview - ~1 hour of detailed technical discussions.

4. Coding task- submitted successfully

5. Zoom meeting to discuss on coding task - just told it was good and started discussion on their dead project which was unrelated to job position but I've worked with that kind of thing so it was fine.

6. Trial Day Onsite - Gave me to draw a fucking BPMN chart - fuck you motherfuckers - I knew it was waste of time.

Fuck this kind of Hiring process which takes >1.5 month.

Rant

So a couple months ago, my dad called me to try and solve a problem he was having in his work.
You see, my dad owns a driving school and he was teaching 14 and 15yo kids how to ride mopeds and their theory exams are made in the school's facility, by going to this website of the entity that rules the moped teaching thing. When the time to have the exams came, they couldn't even see the exams and one of the kids had one of his attempts wasted (they had 3 attempts). We mailed and called the entity multiple times, to no avail, as they told us to "check the website, the instructions are all there". They were also trying to get it together but they couldn't. Here's the "funny" part: the software in which the exams were done ran on XP and there was no way in hell we could make it work on our W10 PCs. Not to mention this is a natiowide problem.
We reinstalled Java to v.7.9 (I think...?) as the "instructions" told us, with no results whatsoever.
So my dad decided to call me and asked me to bring a PC that didn't run W10. The closest thing to XP I could think of was my uncle's Toshiba, that had Vista, so I went to his house and grabbed it and drove to my dad's school. Even in compatibility mode, it didn't work. Everyone was in despair LoL. I was even put on the phone with the entity's technician, who didn't know how to solve it either but was trying, as well with our tech guy.
After a bit of running around and crying inside, our secretary remembered we still had a tower on site that ran XP. We went for the thing and connected it and booted it up. After reinstalling Java and setting security to "medium" (required), and meddling with zoom (the window was too small to show the whole exam and if the window showed up before we set the zoom to 75% or so we couldn't choose the answers) it was finally set to do the exams.
I've never felt so relieved for solving tech stuff LoL. It took me 3h to get it done and I feel it would have been easier if we had remembered about the tower earlier but oh well what can one do.

Thoughts prior to feedback meeting, about how it's gonna go.

---------------------------------------------------------
Scenario one:
Supervisor: The shit is this? You call this a research work? Get the fuck out of here! You're fired and even your unborn kids are banned from coming into this institute ever again!

Me: *walks out sobbing* (dunno how one can walk out of a zoom meeting, but this is imaginary so who's counting?)

Scenario two:
S: Umm, good work. I just don't think it's presentable. Maybe come back in like a few weeks when you actually polish this into a "real scientific work".

Me: *sobs after meeting. Starts preping for seppuku cuz no idea where I'm headed with this work any further*

Scenario three:
S: nah man. This is no good. Let's start from the bottom. Like, start data collection from the beginning or something.

Me: *sobs and commits seppuku on the meeting.* (I just have a pen tho. Hope it has the same effect as a sword)

---------------------------------------------------------

There are other scenarios, but they all end up in me sobbing and/or committing seppuku in/after the meeting so yeah the drama is running high right now.

What is the thought process which goes behind wearing a mask on a video call meeting?
[a] virtue signalling
[b] Idiocy
[c] <insert your answer>

Using Zoom to share my screen so my colleague can use his Skype Business to record the Zoom window so that the other people can see my screen and I can call in using my phone

All because Linux does not have skype business :p

Started new job at startup and finished all the development environment setup started development it was going smooth for one week.all the created API were working fine on the next day morning without any changes API's were giving cors error.asked my senior what must be the problem he said bypass cors and figure out the problem after trying for 1hrs i couldn't figure out what was the problem but API's were back to normal without any changes. then after sometime same day in zoom call i asked what was the problem he said show me the error but I couldn't reproduced the same cors error he then lectured me for 1 hrs and after that he said that learn to solve by your own dont come with silly mistake like this to me.
I don't know what was the problem he even refused me show to what the problem was.

> 5 times zoom meeting in a single day.

What a time to be alive

Literally slept off during this zoom call. I just woke up I don't wth everyone is talking about. Turns out my PR was up for discussion. Now I have to review a bunch of shit I thought I was done with. OS maintainers can be a pain sometimes 😭

I want to work with managers with introverted personality who wouldn't call you or setup zoom meetings for stuff that can simply be texted.

I work for an investment wank. Worked for a few. The classic setup - it's like something out of a museum, and they HATE engineers. You are only of value if work on the trade floor close to the money.

They treat software engineering like it's data entry. For the local roles they demand x number of years experience, but almost all roles are outsourced, and they take literally ANYONE the agency offers. Most of them can't even write a for loop. They don't know what recursion is.

If you put in a tech test, the agency cries to a PMO, who calls you a bully, and hires the clueless intern. An intern or two is great, if they have passion, but you don't want a whole department staffed by interns, especially ones who make clear they only took this job for the money. Literally takes 100 people to change a lightbulb. More meetings and bullshit than development.

The Head of Engineering worked with Cobol, can't write code, has no idea what anyone does, hates Agile, hates JIRA. Clueless, bitter, insecure dinosaur. In no position to know who to hire or what developers should be doing. Randomly deletes tickets and epics from JIRA in spite, then screams about deadlines.

Testing is the same in all 3 environments - Dev, SIT, and UAT. They have literally deployment instructions they run in all 3 - that is their "testing". The Head of Engineering doesn't believe test automation is possible.

They literally don't have architects. Literally no form of technical leadership whatsoever. Just screaming PMOs and lots of intern devs.

PMO full of lots of BAs refuses to use JIRA. Doesn't think it is its job to talk to the clients. Does nothing really except demands 2 hour phone calls every day which ALL developers and testers must attend to get shouted at. No screenshare. Just pure chaos. No system. Not Agile. Not Waterfall. Just spam the shit out of you, literally 2,000 emails a day, then scream if one task was missed.

Developers, PMO, everyone spends ALL day in Zoom. Zoom call after call. Almost no code is ever written. Whatever code is written is so bad. No design patterns. Hardcoded to death. Then when a new feature comes in that should take the day, it takes these unskilled devs 6 months, with PMO screaming like a banshee, demanding literally 12 hours days and weekends.

Everything on spreadsheets. Every JIRA ticket is copy pasted to Excel and emailed around, though Excel can do this.

The DevOps team doesn't know how to use Jenkins or GitHub.

You are not allowed to use NoSQL database because it is high risk.

everytime i buy a new phone ,i feel this sense of extreme regret :(

i bought a moto g 5g phone last year in feb, it was so good . it didn't had any out of the world cameras or some funky stuff, but it gave a decent performance and i couldn't want any other phone.

In October my mom's phone started giving issues so i bought a realme phone for her that was half my phone's price. i couldn't spent any mor e because otherwise she wouldn't take it. she accepted the cheaper phone and within 4 days sue was cursing it. the phone had decent specs but would lag in certain apps like zoom, and won't run some call recorder apps. at the end i swapped my phone with mom's since i didn't cared about zoom or the recorder.

now this shit realme phone's memory has gone around 60% full of my stuff, and its showing its limitations. this shit auto relaunches insta after a few minutes of usage, probably because its runtime memory gets short( 4gb 128gb device gets memory shortages. nice). its video quality is shit and camera also takes rarely good pics.

the worst thing i like about smartphones today is how they over optimise the ui. this insta issue and auto call recorders not working is simply because of the realme skin running over the stock android. i had similar issues with a xiaomi device i bought for my dad sometime ago. (fortunately my dad is more medieval so that crap has not came back to me :'/ )

so overall i am buying a 3rd phone in 17 months.
This time it's Samsung f23 and am worried that it's also going to suck. i was this 🤏close to buying a pixel 6 or even an iphone coz i can afford them.

but the regret of buying such an expensive phone that will need replacement in 2 years made me rethink.

the only android os that have suited me the best is stock and as of now only 2 companies are making it : google and moto(* it's 100% aosp with 3 extra apps but they can't say that, so they also state that they are not stock os) . one plus is also a brand that i have heard makes a good os . but recently i also heard that they have completely scrapped their os and using oppo's softwares . plus the amount of tickets we get for notifications not working in oneplus, am sure their optimization is extremely aggressive.

so everything between a moderate price phone ( that will need a replacement in 2 years ) to a flagship felt unnecessary to me, so i went ahead with a Samsung's shit phone. f23 has almost same specs as moto but it's again a heavily customised os. i wanna waste my money on trying a custom os and declare it shitty.

most of my friends that use Samsung are fan of it but they are also not very techy so i guess it suits them well. i am the guy who first installs nova launcher in his device, so let's see what it brings on the table. from the 3rd person p.o.v, i felt its screen and camera images to he nice whenever i used their mobiles, so let's see what this brings to the table :(

Microsoft Teams 👎

Luckily most of our company uses Zoom, which is great UX-wise. But MS Teams... What a joke!

I've even been on a call with MS engineers for some Office integration support. Of course, they scheduled a Teams meeting. It was embarrassing how bad the quality and connections were. But likely they simply don't know any better...

Engineering manager and I have a chat last Friday about some working performant code that needs to be refactored for future reusability. Not my favorite stuff but ok, let’s do it. We talk about things VERBALLY, one way of doing it, then another way. She’s in a rush to her next meeting and has to go. I feel very clear on what she wants and how it needs to happen.

After the call I do some thinking and I give her the estimate and brief her my plan. I tell her exactly the way it’s going to be done. She says do it and gives me her sign off.

I submit my MR today. And then she says why I didn’t do it another way. A more generalized way. And “the way we talked about.”

And I ask her if she can explain her way bc there is obviously some misunderstanding. And she proceeds to zero in on some functions I wrote and say how they are not generalized enough and how it’s basically the same as what we had before (but it’s actually a much different design). I patiently listen and at some point she abruptly says she’s out of time and needs to go to a meeting. I say I still don’t understand what she wants. Then she says that she will implement it bc I still don’t understand and she has no more time to explain. I feel pretty bad.

I suggest next time she can show me on zoom whiteboard, just anything visual and not auditory to make sure things are clear and we are on the same page.

She concludes that management has directed us to come to the office more so I need to come in so we can do in person white-boarding.

This whole thing feels unnecessary. We’ve never had this issue before. It seems like either some intentional plot to get me to come into the office more often or terrible communication skills and a lack of priority on my managers part. Like can you just white board your ideas for 5 minutes?!?! There are many tools to do this digitally!

The thing is I still don’t know where the communication gap is bc I still don’t know what she wants. Keep in mind all this fuss is over three cards of text on a webpage.

This is my first job in industry. How do managers normally communicate engineering ideas? And what are the best ways over zoom? And in person?

I noticed here there is not a culture of whiteboarding or pair programming.

It’s on the days like these I question what I’m doing here…

i am seeing this weird pattern of people getting too much close to their work colleagues and i am unable to understand the why behind it .

so one of my homies is a kind of introvert but a smart genius IT guy who ended up with a rich paying job.

now, his job is mostly wfh and 1 day wfo, but he has engrossed himself in his company so much that i fail to understand why. like,
- he would go to his office for 3-5 days instead of 1
- he would plan trips/vacations with his colleagues and bosses
- he would go to different cities/countries to attend the meetings that are happening virtually too( basically a zoom call where some people are joining from office and some from home)
and so on. basically instead of spending time with his homies/family, he prefer spending time with work people.

another guy is doing somewhat similar . basically he runs a legal firm, and instead of having a strict boss employee relation with his interns, he would bring them to his home, celebrate birthdays/parties with them in clubs, and even bring them to our homie gang trips.
as of late ,those trips now don't even include us :'(

-----

i fail to understand why. my work culture is so shit, i just wanna complete a fucking year here and grab my bonus and leave. most of the team that i work with is in a different city, we are asked to work from office that is 40 km away from my home, other colleagues are practical snakes and i am not even interested to see their double-faced faces even during work hours, leave alone after-hours.

another guy among us is a tution teacher and this fella is taking coaching classes even on weekends. i don't know whats wtong with people of my age. we haven't crossed even 26 and we are all running some rat races.

i need some people in my life with whom i can spend some hours relaxing without worrying about my job or backstabbing

Coworker admits to jerking off once behind a zoom call. He is a rookie.

I swear the most annoying thing about zoom is the fact it keeps requesting the focus while connecting to a call…

“Git a”
*alt-tab*
“dd [a letter][tab]”
*alt-tab*
“[a letter][tab][enter, missed cause it tries to focus itself again]”
*alt-tab*
“[Enter]”

The introverted and silent people can be heard in chats in video calls (zoom), can be heard in slack chats. But from my experience, it looks like the majority is yet to consider that as important. Text communication may not be perfect because it's hard to capture a lot in text, like emotions, tone, maybe some might be able to capture them if not all. But text is still something, rather than nothing, but I usually see people listen more to spoken words than care about texts. Not to mention the craziness of parallel conversations in text chat during video calls where video call has one conversation going on while text chat has a totally unrelated conversation going at some point. One could say - maybe parallel conversations in text chats are a hindrance to people trying to communicate over text rather than speak up through voice / audio

Stand-ups where I find myself waiting for my colleagues to go on the Zoom call.

Dude ist sysadmin at server Pool hosting our app for the client.

Client: something minor is not working.

Dude: Let me just restart app, works at my windows laptop everytime or whatever.
*restarts app, hangs on entrypoint*

Dude: Dear client it's brocken.

Clients: *calls us in panic.*

Horus: Dear dude, when it hangs on startup consider to download an update because we fixed some issues with in theis area recently. Also maybe enlarge the docker compose timeout.

Dude: Still does not start up.

Horus: ok just call me on this Zoom link, then we can debug together.

Dude:...

Dude:...

Dude:...

Dude: oh i just saw it did startup mean while, it just took some time.

Fuck you dude, and your impatience!

So I have this new role at work, still app development with some added responsibilities. Nothing major. But already I'm noticing what could be a pattern.

Zoom meetings that could have been phone calls or emails. Meeting was setup a week and a half or so in advance. Had real a meaning last week where a team member mentioned it and reminded the other team members of the upcoming meeting. We all confirmed that we'd be there.

I get a notification that the meeting is in 15 minutes. Meeting time!!! So I log on, only to see one person from the other company, two more people from said company log on then my team member. But to my surprise him and I are the only people from my team on zoom.

My team member then goes on to waste this poor man's time asking him questions that he doesn't really have the answers to and I'm here just wondering why.

Why isn't this meeting a 2 minute phone call?
Why am I in this meet?
Is my team member bored?
How does this make my company look in the eyes of these people?

Now I know why my other team member didn't log on. They smelled the rat and knew this would be a wast of time. And me being new to the team walked right into it 😐