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LocationNorth Carolina
Joined devRant on 6/3/2016
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An entirely typical exchange at work:
PM: How long would it take to build an application that collates Gubblefluffs and exports them as a PDF?
ME: Hard to say. What’s a Gubblefluff?
PM: Nothing complex. Its basically an object with some stuff in.
ME: Erm, okay. So I’ll define a Gubblefluff object plus methods to add edit and delete, then for each Gubblefluff have it write a line to a PDF.
PM: It will need to email that PDF to somebody.
ME: Okay, cool. “Gubblefluffs-by-email” should take about a day.
6 hours later…
ME: I’ve done Gubblefluffs-to-pdf, I’m not clear on what’s in a Gubblefluff but I’ve made it flexible so it can take almost anything.
PM: No, a Gubblefluff can ONLY be one of 4 Snigglefingers plus a timestamp and some JSON.
ME: What? Right. Okay. What’s a Snigglefinger?
PM: (sighs) A Snigglefinger is the collection of relevant Babelsets.
ME: Babelsets?
PM: Yeah, a user can have any number of Babelsets but they must correspond to one of the four types of Snigglefingers.
ME: There are users!?
PM: Of course!
ME: But I’ve not coded anything for users.
PM: Shit. I’ve told the client they can have it today. How long to add in users?
ME: And Babelsets, and Snigglefingers and the new Gubblefluff rules?
PM: Yeah.
6 days later…
ME: This is done now. It’s a beast but it works. Who should it email the PDFs to?
PM: Client X, plus cc to Y and bcc to Z.
ME: What? It doesn't support CC and BCC!
1 hour later…
ME: This is done. I’ve tested it and sent you a copy of the PDF it generates.
PM: Okay thanks. Is the cron running daily?
ME: What cron?
…
ME: Okay, so the cron’s running once a day at 8pm.
PM: Oh, it’ll need to be at 3:15pm. That’s when we’ve told the client they’ll get it.
ME: Right. I’ll change it...
PM: Also, the PDF you sent me looks nothing like the visual.
ME: What visual?
...53 -
It saved me from suicide.
You have to understand first that things in India work differently. Academics are not personal, but a social business. Academic competition in India is very high and not in a good way, or for the good reasons.
As a teenager was sent off from my home to the other side of the country. I didn't like it. My studies suffered, and I failed my exams. Came back home and faced months of emotional abuse (guilt trips, scornful comments, plain insults) from my parents, neighbours and relatives. Indian society is just built that way. They didn't know they were damaging my psyche, or they were too angry to care. Lots of other shit (lost friends, lost love) happened at roughly the same time period and everything started to fall like dominos.
I fell into severe depression. Lost appetite, lost sleep. Nothing mattered anymore. There were mornings when I would wake up and not get up from my bed for hours, and not even move a finger. Self-hate became the motto of the day. I became violent and anti-social. I would either be angry or trying not to break down and give up all the time. Many a night, I considered suicide. I would end up googling for easy ways out to take.
But what gave me a way out of the pains of my reality was programming. It helped my keep my head, figuratively and literally. It kept my mind distracted and gave me a sense of purpose. I would shut myself in, plug in my headphones, shut the world out and just experiment.
I am not saying that I am the best at what I do, but those sleepless and troubled nights, and many other similar nights over the years have given me a definite edge over my colleagues.
Even today, when everything is falling to pieces, I know I have something to fall back on. I still get episodes of depression every now and then, but I know I can always pick up a new project and distract myself. It probably isn't healthy, but eh...
I am alive. I code. I kick ass. My colleagues respect and value my opinion. I love my job.
Computer does what I tell it to do (mostly :p) and I feel good. Because for that small moment, I am in control of everything. For that infinitesimally small moment of my average, boring, and somewhat painful life, I am God.51 -
UPDATE: I have my dream job.
About a year ago I commented on Devrant that I was having some hard luck interviewing for development jobs.
Shortly after my post I decided to lower my expectations and took a job at a tech support call center.(3 month contract)
After getting a little experience(Not just a degree) I was able to land a hardware support job at a fortune 500 company.(Not what a programmer really wants 😂)
I worked hard and started writing tools at home to help with the job. I started giving them out to the other techs and put them on a little internal website for easy access.
About 3 months ago I just became a software engineer within the company.(after 6 months of hardware repair.) The main reason I got the job was because I showed them how much overtime and extra work I had done and that the techs relied on my software to do there jobs and that I was dependable.
It was hard work but it was worth it. And I built software that I never would have done if I hadn't taken this "lower job"
So keep your chin up and your fingers on the keys, I was in your shoes a year ago. 😉12 -
!rant
Boss: Something urgent has come up, can you take care of this.
Me: Okay.... But I am already working on X and it's a critical thing.
Boss: No, X is no longer of priority. You need to now pick up Y.
Me: But I was already........ Never mind. Yeah sure I will start working on Y.
Next day
Boss : What is the update on X?
Me: I was working on Y, also wasn't it de prioritized.
Boss : I think I was very clear when I communicated to you that X is very critical. Also you need to learn to manage your time.
Me: FUCK MY LIFE19 -
User:"It's not working"
Me:"Have you turned it off and on again?"
User:"Yes"
Me: goes down there, system uptime is 360days...
"How do you turn it off?"
User:"by pressing the button on the monitor16 -
I wrote a complex method for about 6 hours. Then I decided to test it via a console application...
It didnt print any output. After 2 hours of searching for errors I found the mistake: I never called the method. Guys... that's how you waste 2 hours of your life.10 -
Once I forgot to break a loop that was supposed to send 100 email to a colleague in the middle of the night.
She did not get 100 emails, she got alot more11 -
Best office prank: I was pretty young and naaive. Senior dev comes to me and says that it would be hilarious to slide a note under the women's bathroom door saying, "I know what you're doing in there". He says that the woman in there will think it's hilarious too. We work with her, she's very funny and laid back, so I go along with it, expecting to get a laugh. A few minutes go by and a different older women enters my cube. She's got the note! She works on the other side of the building so I don't know her too well but I can tell from the look on her face that she's pissed. I'm frozen with fear as my career flashes before my eyes.
I apologise perfusely and try to explain but she's not having it. After a while she goes back to her office not having accepted that it wasn't meant for her and that it was just a joke gone wrong. I spend the next two days apologizing every chance I get, hoping she won't go to HR. She remains stone cold until late on the second day. She couldn't take it anymore as her mouth reluctantly begins to crack a smile. At that point she drops the serious expression on her face and busts out laughing.
It turns out that the three of them planned the whole thing and executed flawlessly. I've never felt so relieved to be the butt of a joke.7 -
I just had a client complaining on the phone that she read my database design documents and that they are all wrong and need to be done again. Because things like varchar and int are confusing. And nobody understands what they mean. She asked around and nobody understood it.
Ooh, and I should place the customer name in more then one table because it would be handy to have in several places.
Spend a hour on the phone trying to explain that these documents are not intended for her. They are not for her to understand.
I make these documents to build a stable product and in case something bad happens to me its easier to pick up for another developer.
Long story short.. I'm currently making a document that explains the database design... Getting paid for it..... But fucking hell. Somebody save me.10 -
Anyone seen this? https://www.foaas.com/ FOAAS (Fuck Off As A Service) provides a modern, RESTful, scalable solution to the common problem of telling people to fuck off. An API for telling people to fuck off.3
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FUCK MY BOSS WHEN HE SAYS HE DIDNT SEE ANY UI CHANGES AFTER NOT SLEEPING FOR 24HRS TO GET THE ENTIRE BACKEND REWRITE DONE. I WENT OVER THE ACTUAL CHANGES WITH HIM 100 FUCKING TIMES! I GET THIS MESSAGE AFTER FINALLY GRABBING SOME FOOD "What did you do, you said you were going to work on the site??" FUCKFUCKITYFUCKFUCK!!! FUCK YOUR MONEY AND YOUR JOB!!!! AND WHILE IM AT IT FUCK WEBDEV!!! 🖕FUCK YOU GUYS🖕 IM GOING HOME
/rant Thank God for devRant32 -
Have you ever had a recursive meeting? A meeting about a meeting, about a meeting, about a meeting...9