I was asked to present a code I wrote previously. This was not planned. I shared my screen and presented. Things went well.

One employee asked me to search a particular term which was possibly related to an advance topic in the domain we were working on.

I opened Chrome and the first page had a Quora post: "Why my dull co-workers try to act smart and are not yet fired?".

[silence]

We were once in an all hands (200+ people) and our over-seas folks had to call in. It was like 10pm there. One guy (who was on our team) was in bed with minimal clothing on, laying sideways in the come hither position on his bed. I think you see where this was going.

He accidentally had the camera on and briefly was on the projector in front of the entire meeting room, mostly naked. He saw what was going on, a look of terror came over his face and I never saw someone move so fast as he jumped off the screen and turned the camera off. There was a lot of shushed giggling.

Washboard abs though so it wasn’t like it was a total embarrassment. I was impressed frankly. Probably one of the best days in my professional career. We still love him very much of course, awesome team member!

The lesson here should be obvious. Even when you’re working from home, put your damn pants on for your meetings. You know just as well as the person standing next to you that every single GUI made in the last 15 years was designed to be as hard to use as humanly possible and as long as there is a chance that it’s going to show your bare ass to your company it will happen unless you got them pants on.

I've been working exclusively from home for over 2 years now. I've been seeing several posts from people talking about adjusting to working from home, so I figured I would compile a list of tips I've learned over the years to help make the adjustment easier for some people.

1) Limit as many distractions as possible. WFH makes it much easier to get distracted. If you have roommates/family members at home, ask them politely to leave you alone while you're working. Make sure the TV is turned off, put your phone on silent, etc.

2) Take regular breaks. I find it easier to accidentally go hours without taking a real break from work. Try working in half hour intervals, and then taking 5-10 minute breaks. Read an article, watch a youtube video, grab some coffee/tea, etc.

3) When you eat lunch, eat it away from your computer. I often find myself eating lunch trying to wrap up fixing a bug, which makes it feel like I never really "took a lunch." Lately I've been trying to step away and do something else completely unrelated to work.

4) Get ready for work like you normally would. It's very easy to wake up, throw on your favorite pair of sweats and sit at the computer with messy hair half awake "ready" to start the day. Instead try doing your normal morning routine before sitting at your computer. It will help your mind and body go into "it's time to work" mode.

5) Keep your work area clean. I find it very difficult to work when my workspace is cluttered. Studies have shown working in a messy place tend to make us less efficient.

6) Keep your work area work related. Try to only have the things you need for work in your workspace. If you're working from your personal computer this can be difficult. I always end up with camera/music equipment left over from the previous night's photo editing/jam sessions. So try to clean off your desk when you're done for the night so it's ready for work in the morning.

7) Prepare for meetings. I have alarms set 10 minutes in advance so I can go from programming mode to meeting mode. During this time I'll go to the bathroom, grab a snack, water, mute all my email notifications, close any non essential programs, get my code ready if I need to present it.

Stuff is hard & stressful right now, but hopefully these tips will make it a bit easier. If anyone else has any good tips please share them.

Got woken up by a phone call from a recruiter today.

"Do have a minute to answer a few brief questions?".

"Sure thing," as i sleepily start fumbling for my cigarettes and stumble my way out onto the front porch.

I get out there and immediately this weird noise coming from the backyard. It's a 5ft geyser shooting up over the water well.

"So can you tell me the 4 pillars of oop?"

"Ummmm.... water, fire, wind and earth?!?"🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️

A couple more similar questions answered sorta correctly and I think it became obvious I was a little distracted. The guy decides he's going to forego the rest and just send an assessment by email.

I hang up the phone and run back in the house to find the breaker for the well. Of course the box isn't labeled correctly so after flipping 2 or 3 of the wrong ones I finally just kill the master. Pump shuts off, along with everything else in the house. Oh well at least I can go back to sleep now...

How's everyone else's morning going?

I'm the only developer in my company. I am a "junior dev" who started working like 6 months ago. Safe to say I am not well experienced and have a lot to learn in this journey. Due to this pandemic, my bosses who have been flaunting their wealth have started making losses and now needs to find another way to get money. Mind you, the company I work with is a marketing firm.
So what the bosses thought of doing was creating a delivery service due to the current situation. It is not their field but since they still need to show people they are the rich people, they need money either way. Since I'm the only developer in the company I've to make this application. I've to make an Android and iOS app with a back-end and an admin portal all in 1 month. My pay is shit and by shit I mean less than even 700 USD. I've not done a project like this before so there would be a learning curve as well. And there is no one to guide me either.
They think just because they have hired one developer anything development related is settled and I will do everything no matter how big or complicated or how shitty my salary is.
The feature list is a whole system, like it is so complicated that someone could really make their own company just to work on that application. It's HUGE.

I'm thinking of saying no I can't do this shit. But just wanted to see what some more experienced devs say about this. I've attached the features list in the rant.

Just left a senior position in a YC startup for a middle position in my local company.

I believe that this downgrade will relieve some of my stress and give me more free time to heal my depression.

After fixing my uncontrollable consumption issues I can finally stop being a wagecuck. I don’t care much about my salary anymore while focusing on health and happiness. I saved up a lot of money so I finally can afford not to live paycheck to paycheck.

I’m slowly shifting towards living off my side projects only.

Tragedies of Non-Technical Boss:

Boss: What happened yesterday, tried reaching you several times, you were just unavailable!

Me: My wifi stopped working as there was some issue at the ISP's end.

Boss: You could've atleast dropped a skype message that your internet is not working!

Me: Yes sir but the internet was not working, so I couldn't drop that message too!!

Boss: But you should have, I was in panic what happened to you...You were alright or not?...

Me: Yup I know, I didn't see the wifi tragedy coming.

Boss: If ever the internet goes down or anything sort of that happens just drop me a text on skype, that your internet is not working. Okay!

Me: *Confused* as to if he is high or just not listening to what I am saying...

Java script is like an angry girlfriend who won't tell you what is wrong.
This shit happened today.

Me: somearray.includes[stuff];
JS: I'm alright everything is fine.
Me: no it's not, Clearly the feature is not working.
JS:* silence*
Me: Fine be that way.. * spends lot of time debugging finally finds the issue*...oh shit.
Me: somearray.includes(stuff);
JS: I SAID NO TRAILING SPACE IN END OF THE LINE YOU STUPID PIECE OF SHIT NO TRAILING FUCKING SPACES AAAAHHHH!!!

That time when this other manager used a "city buildings" background while his hair was swaying around as if he's actually on a rooftop. People started teasing him about his "nice background" while me and my colleagues joked in our group chat about seeing Godzilla in one of the buildings.

Halfway through the call, a woman appeared in the background and he signalled her to go away while they're both laughing then his webcam turned off.

Maybe he unleashed his Godzilla.

Finished my project early today. I assumed it would take another day or two since it's primarily research and I had no idea how to progress, but I caught a break and finished it early. I also finished another surprise ticket! yay! I had the rest of the day to myself!

... had!

But then I noticed I had been working on the wrong branch. Fuck. Moving my work over was tedious, as was the cleanup. I kicked myself for good measure. Also, every time I switch branches, I need to run a bloody slow script that runs all the migrations, data tasks, backfills, etc. for the branch. It takes 12-18 minutes. There's a faster version, but it usually breaks things.

Turns out the branch I was supposed to be working on wasn't up to date with master. So I merged that in, leading to....

merge conflicts. Because of course there are conflicts. To make matters worse, I had (and have) no idea which changes were correct because idfk what those 248 new commits are doing. So I guessed at them, ran the script, and (after more waiting) ran a few related specs. Yet more waiting. Sense a pattern here? Eventually they finished, and all the specs passed. H'ray. So I committed the changes, and told Jenkins to kick off a full spec suite, which takes 45+ minutes.

La de da, I go back to cleaning up the previous ticket, pushing reversion commits, etc. Later, I notice the ticket number, look at the branch number I've been working on.... and. Fuuuck. I realize I had put everything on the wrong freaking branch AGAIN. I'm such an idiot. Cue more cleanup, more reversions, running the bloody script again and again. More wasted time, more kicking. ugh.

All of this took well over three hours. So instead of finishing at a leisurely 5:00 like a normal person, I finally stopped around 9pm. and I won't know the Jenkins spec results until morning.

A nice early day?
I should know better.

Why focus is important.

Mr Miyagi:
"wax on"
"wax off"

Enterprise IT manager:
"wax on"
"have a meeting"
"wax dried during meeting"
"wash off"
"wax on"
"have another meeting"
"have a meeting bookending that meeting"
"wax baked on by sun"
"get out sander to remove dried wax"
"ruin paint"
"try to spot fix"
"have another meeting"
"paint is the wrong color, won't come off"
"throw it wax, start a new project"
"pay vendor to repaint car"

I’m on video calls very often, but never really bothered if I’m wearing a shirt or tee. Even when the call is with people like CEOs or bosses.

This time though, the friend specifically asked to be in a good shirt, be professional and shit. Till this point all I knew was the friend started a very amazing business of sort and would like me to join too. And the person I’ll be meeting is very busy and impossible to get an appointment.

The buildup is so much for this call that I’m wondering it’s either going to be CIA or scam. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t CIA.

A few minutes into the call, I get a feeling it’s a scam. A few more minutes and I was sure it’s a pyramid scheme.

Now, I can’t call it out because the friend is really into it, almost blindly believes this scheme, and isn’t ready to hear any counter-arguments. So I thought, let’s just get over with this call.

The call went on for 3 hours. 3 WHOLE HOURS. I had to be attentive, professional, and not laugh on their face for 3 hours. On top of that, I was feeling hungry AF.

Mr. impossible-to-get-appointment was explaining Robert Kiyosaki’s financial theories - in a completely incorrect manner and interpretation. I tried correcting a couple of times, because I’ve read his books and theories in detail - but this person just went on and on and on for 3 fucking hours.

My first of "Stop doing" series of rants:

STOP WRITING WRAPPER FUNCTIONS AROUND NATIVE FUNCTIONS THAT DO NOTHING OTHER THEN PASS PARAMETERS THROUGH.

If its not significantly configuring values prior to using in the native function or combining several results, leave it be so NEW DEVS SUCH AS MYSELF aren't having to learn your shitty naming conventions wrapped around every native function to the language. Im a JS dev, not a Dave's witty web stack dev.

In my uni course "Algorithms and Data structures" we use Java. Fine. Definitely not my preferred language but it's not like I have a choice.

Anyway, our teacher uploads code files for us to use as reference/examples. The problem is, they look like this. Not only does she not indent the code, she also uses a charset that is not utf-8.

In the rare cases where she does indent the code, she uses THREE, yes THREE spaces...

I really dread working tomorrow. That manager and his team really have a way of demotivating me. My entire being is refusing to do even a tiny amount of work for them. I would rather work on a shitload of tasks if it's for some other team. You are the worst manager I've ever worked with so far and that's in comparison with the psycho I had in the hellhole that first introduced me to devRant back in 2018.

That one made employees cry but at least, that manager cared about her job, maybe even too much. You don't and you have your impoverished flying monkeys with slave mentality supporting you all the way. Third world mentality, am I right? You're constantly looking for developers to drag into your web of incompetence. You don't know what needs to be done and you rush and pressure someone else as soon as you're reminded of it. Dude, stop using developers as scapegoats. If I was a manager and other managers are telling me, "Please cascade this information sooner. We don't want to put unnecessary pressure on anyone." I'll take the hint that I suck, apologize, and stop dropping the names of developers as if I've given them the information a long time ago.

You fucking didn't.

I fucking hate working with you so much that even on a Sunday, I daydream of shoving your face down a deep fryer and giving you a full body massage with mercury. I've been doing all I can to improve my life and be less angry in the past few months but damn, surprise fuck-ups are the worst. I can't help but stress over the fact that this could be my life on the next months to come. I would be focusing on working for my original team and improving their process and then you'll pop out of nowhere and drag me to hell.

It's just not worth it. I'm responding to recruiters now. When I get an offer and someone tries to keep me, I'll tell them I'd stay under the condition that no one borrows me from my original team anymore. This "you have to be flexible" bullshit is just another excuse for "we have terrible managers". I really like my original team and I get excited working with them, talking to them, and discussing improvements but this manager is just too fucking much.

I read a thousand times that employees leave managers but I've never been put into a position where it's so accurate until now.

Needed to convert a collection of .avi videos to .mp4. Online converters only allow 1-2 videos at a time, with slow uploads, so no option.
Can't find a program that quickly fulfills my needs. Interesting ... 🤔
Look for python and a quick and dirty solution, ffmpeg and subprocess it shall be then.
Install ffmpeg, run subprocess with ffmpeg, put it inside a for loop, iterate over all videos with their respective number. Done.
3 lines of code, saved some time.
It's great to be a developer (sometimes).😏

I work in a consulting firm.

I started right after graduation. I entered with candy glasses. Thinking is all well and ready to climb the ladder.

I entered as a junior developer.

On my first project, i am constantly belittled by my team lead. To the extent i suffer from ptsd.

On my second project, i am the only dev. I am amaze i manage to handle all the development job by myself for a year. Still i get nasty comments from my boss. Despite i am able to deliver on time.

On my third project. i left due to office politics.

Currently i am in my fourth project. The code is complete mess. The development environment is crappy. It doesn't reflect change right away.

My passion has dried up.

I'm seriously giving thoughts, should i switch career path.

Sorry, long since my last post...

I have quit my job recently at DERP & CO.. The level of anxiety was already somewhat of medical severity.

For months I had been in a project that not only did not progress, but that it was getting worst day by day.

A bit of Context

November: "Dev, junior anon needs you to help him on the SHIT project because they are running out of time, it is mainly doing unit tests."
Well, the code was a mess, there was a LOT of copy paste and it was all bad quality (we talk about methods with complexities between 80 and 120 according to SONAR QUBE).
Dev: "Anon, you know this is wrong, right?"
Anon: "Why? it works"
Dev: after long explanation.
Anon: "Oh well, yes, from now on I will take it into account." And he did it / try his best.

Dev does the unit tests and do extra work outside of the reach of the sprint (y than i mean work after hours, classic) and alerts the boss of the mess.

December: After a project of approximately 6 or 8 months of development, the boss discovers that the junior anon have been doing everything wrong and/or with poor quality (indicating that throughout the whole development the quality of the code was NEVER checked nor the functionality).

Boss: "This is a shit. Dev, you have to correct all the errors and warnings marked on sonar", which are around 1200 between smelling code, high risk errors, etc.

Dev fixes something like 900 bugs... lots of hours...
Boss: "This still is all wrong, we have to redo it. We will correct the errors leaving something stable and we will make a new repository with everything programmed as it should be, with quality and all"
- 900 corrections later, now are irrelevant -
Boss: "Dev, you will start to redo it, anon is out on other project. First you must leave the existing one working properly"
Dev: "ok ..."

January: How can I correct the mess if the client asks for more things. I am just fixing the mess, doing new functionalities, and when I have free time (outside the work) I try to advance the new repository, poorly I must say because burntout.

Boss: "Everything should be arranged at the end of January, so that you can redo everything well in February."
I can't handle everything, it starts to fall further behind. Junior Anon quits the job.

February: Big Bad Bugs in the code appear and practically monopolize the month (the code is very coupled with itself and touching in one place sometimes meant breaking other stuff).

Boss: "It can't be, you've been with this since January and you haven't even started correcting this mess in the new repo"

Dev: "It is that between the new things that are requested and the bugs I cannot put myself with that"
Boss: "Do not worry, you will be helped by random dev if you needed. SPOILER ALERT: random dev is allways bussy. Not made up bussy, He had a lot of work by itself, but it can't help me the way I need it.

High anxiety levels, using free time to try to reduce the work left and gradually losing the taste for develop.

March: So far, not only do they add new things day and day, but now they want to modify things that were already "ok", add new ones and refactor everything in a new repo. I just did not see an end of this nonsense.
Dev breaks, the doctor says it's anxiety, so I just know what I have to do.
Dev: "I quit my job"
Cool Manager: "Damn, why?"
Explain everithig
Cool Manager: "Do you want to try if I can change you to other project or anotjer scope on the same project?"
Dev: "Thanks, but no Thanks. I need to stop for a while".

End. sry for long sad post and maybe poor use of English (?) Not my native language.

So this happened. Small surprise at the end.

Today after inspecting the stock, my spouse and I suspected that my MIL's partner has been helping himself to our gin. Since starting isolation at our Summer home almost 3 weeks ago, we've had 2 glasses each but almost 2/3rds of our 1L bottle is gone. Neither of us noticed because the bottle has been at the back of the fridge but today I spotted how empty it was. We're supposed to be the only 2 people (out of 4) who drink spirits and my MIL doesn't drink at all.

My MIL's partner on the other hand is a 77 year old alcoholic curmudgeon bastard. I honestly haven't met a more detestable man his age and if it wasn't for the fact that he spends 90% of the day in the garage with the lathe, we'd probably have had a row or two. This guy is capable of everything from undressing in the fucking kitchen in the company of others to putting his socks on the dinner table. God knows what the actual fuck my MIL is thinking but seeing as she's 69 this year it's a bit late to cut and run.

Anyway so this fucker has been stealing my gin and this ain't any old gin but a premium, imported brand that takes 4 weeks to get delivered. I got a bottle in preparation for this whole isolation fiasco and this cunt has made away with about half of it all on his own.

So I poured the remainder into another bottle and I replaced the missing amount of gin with E10 Unleaded petrol. Yeah that's right petrol, the kind that goes in cars.

I actually forgot about it because nothing happened for about 2 days. But this morning we woke up to him choking in the kitchen with the bottle on the table. Had to hide the grin on my face at a seconds notice. Didn't even exchange a single word, he just went into the shower to rinse his mouth out and brush his teeth hahahahahaha. Want to know the best part? I bought the cunt A FIFTY PACK of double strength beers before we arrived for quarantine, as a surprise present. A fucking 50 pack! Obviously to sweeten the fact that while we'd rather be elsewhere, at least we've manners and plan to get along. He drank em all in under 2 weeks. The spirits were mine. He knew this and he's agreed with my MIL to only drink beer anyway. He didn't touch any of the wine that's been had and none of the champagne in storage. Nope, just helped himself to my imported spirits. Would have been happy to give him a glass or two if he'd asked me in confidence, but stealing? Fuck right off.

Anyway fucker woke us all up with his choking and no less starting off the day with a swig of pythoninrelay's precious hooch huh? Certainly not the breakfast of champions. Was prepared for a shitstorm but he didn't have the balls to say anything, least of all even dob me in to his MIL.

Asshole. We're leaving on Friday and you couldn't be a decent human being for 2 whole fucking weeks. You're lucky it wasn't ricin. Prick.

Edit: Really I'm so fucking done with this virus. At this point I'd rather get it, get sick, get over it and get on with my life but coming this far and still being 100% healthy. I'm trying not to spit in the face of those who've got ill or worse. In any case we're off to our own place again and I can't wait to have my space back. Another bottle coming in the mail but who knows when I'll get it...

Instead of a rant I have a story for you.

I was browsing my emails and eminently pissed off, as I usually am. Came across an email from
michael@michaelnthiessen.com

and thought "fuck this guy and his adverspam!"

Because whats more rational than hating someone you don't know, over something they didn't do, because of something completely unrelated to them of which they have no control?

Totally human.

The email looked like this

"I have some fantastic news for you:
Clean Components will be released again on April 21!
"

With a "🎉" emoji. I'm in a more vile mood than usual today.

It goes on.

"Even better, I'm significantly dropping the price, so you'll definitely want to pick it up!"

How presumptuous.

I fire off a quick reply.

"What a bunch of bullshit.
I decide to change careers and a month later, just like in 2008, this fucking pandemic happens and the economy and hiring
Starts collapsing.

And here I am getting sent this bullshit.
"

I had to rewrite and shitcan the response a few times for civility. I guess this is me being polite, but I was suddenly compelled to vent to this total stranger over what in all likelihood was an *automated* email.

Six and a half hours later I got a reply.

"Hey James, I'm sorry this pandemic has been rough on you.

I hope things turn around for you soon.

If it would help, I'd give you the course for free, but if you've switched careers I'm not sure it's relevant any more?

Michael
"

My god. A lone voice of calm in a wasteland of 24/7 bad and worsening news. Sometimes simplicity is the soul of class.

Hes got it in spades.

And here I was thinking "today might be the day. Thank god for giant bottles of hydrocodone."

It's not true that all gingers are soulless demons.
Some of them are angels in problem glasses.

No but seriously, hes a cool guy in my book.

Check out his site if you're interested in Vue at

michaelnthiessen.com