Data representation is one of the most important things in any kind of app you develop. The most common, classic way to do it is to create a class with all the fields you want to transport, for example User(name, lastName). It's simple and explicit, but hell no, in my current company we don't play that kindergarten bullshit, the only way we know how to do things here is full hardcore. Why would anyone write a class to represent a Song, a Playlist or an Album when you can just use a key-> value map for pretty much everything? Need a list of songs? No problem, use a List<Map<String, String>>, OBVIOUSLY each map is a song. Need a list of playlists? Use a List<List<Map<String, String>>>... Oh wait, need to treat a value as a number and all you have are strings? That's what casting is for, dumbass.

No, seriously, this company is great. I'm staying here forever!

One of the things I have no fucking patience for is bureaucracy. For the last year I've been working for a company I have no problem with, I like the place and I like the people here. Recently I was contacted by another company and offered a better salary to work for them. I was open about it with my boss and we both accorded that I will receive the same salary to stay (It was ok to me since I feel comfortable here), but in order to do that I'll have to sign a new contract. Ok, no big deal. Few days later a HR girl contacts me to send her all the documentation needed to elaborate a contract, and I was like 'You guys already have all my documents, been working here for a year'. But Ok, I tried not to be picky and just sent her everything again. Then she requests online psychometric tests, sends a shitload of formats to fill, like personal references, their company-custom resume format, privacy policies, and many more stupid and irrellevant paperwork nobody should need when a person has been working for you for a year and you want him to stay. I really tried to be patient and do everything the HR girl wanted me to do, but for one reason or other, she kept rejecting the formats I was sending (I had to download, print, sign, scan and resend many of them). We've been wrestling for an entire fucking week over this shit via email and she can't just write a new contract, make me sign it and leave me the fuck alone. The last thing she compained about was a stupid personal reference format I didnt scan with my signature on. This other company wants me to start next monday. I guess the next document I'll be sending her will be my resignation letter.

Gson is an excellent library every Java/Android developer should know. You can easily parse a Json or XML network response into a POJO class and get ready to go. But the guys who started the project I currently support found a better, smarter, slicker way to parse network responses into memory:

ArrayList<ArrayList<HashMap<String, String>>>

I would love to meet the genius who came up with this idea. I mean, you can parse absolutely any API response without even having to define stupid Java classes or importing libraries! And also you can reutilize the same scheme for literally all Java projects that handle API responses! Wonderful

"This guy already has a job and probably gets contacted 30 times a week by other recruiters. I'm gonna send him a message telling him that I need a developer, no job description and no salary specified, with a company he never heard of. Yeah, he will totally send me back his resume"

Our PM's reminder.

I developed a simple scholarship management system for my school using Laravel, MySQL, jQuery and Bootstrap, I did it for free since college students from my country have to pay social service to get their degrees. Everyone in the scholarships department seemed to be really happy with my work and they evaluated my social service with 10/10, but yesterday they asked for one last favor: to go talk to the new social service guy who'll be supposed to maintain my project, a mid 30's dude who was really pissed off from the beginning because he wasn't even able to deploy the project, he wasn't even able to clone the project from Github. Ok, so I tried to explain to him the tools I used and how the project was structured, but everything I said seemed to piss him even more, so I stopped and had a chat like:

Me: "Look man, do you know or at least have basic concepts of PHP and MVC frameworks?"

Guy: "Yes, but I'm a project manager, not just –despectively– any programmer, and you didn't write proper documentation, it's impossible to deploy your project with the manual you wrote, I cannot work like this".

*We go to their computer and I clone and setup the project in 3 minutes.

Guy: "Yes, but I still don't know how the project works, I need everything documented. If I have to change something, I don't know where to look.

Me: "Man, that's why asked you about knowing PHP MVC frameworks".

Guy: "I cannot work like this, nothing is documented, I don't even know what's that software you're using *points at Sublime Text*. Or tell me, can you arrive at a place where they expect you to work with something you don't know and they have no documentation?"

*At this point he was really pissed

Me: "Well... Dealing with non-documented software is what I do for a living"

Guy: "I don't know what companies you've worked for, probably not big ones..."

Me: "Well, I actually work for *I mention one of the biggest music apps in the country*"

*Guy ironically laughs

When I gave my feedback to the lady in charge of the department, I told her that this guy was really pissed off at how things were done and that I wasn't so sure of him being capable of maintaining the system. She told me not to worry, that the guy became a well known asshole in the office only after a few days, and that she'll probably have to find something else for him to do. It'd be hilarious if this guy ends up capturing scholarships in the system I made.

I don't know why my position has to be labeled "developer", when in reality I ain't develop shit, all I do day after day is fixing legacy code

I don't know why they made so many algorithms, data structures and big O questions during interview, when all they wanted me to do was to maintain some legacy, tight coupled, spaghetti code with no architecture, documentation, tests nor any kind of engineering behind :/

I started a new job a few days ago. I'm already adapting to the team's workflow and codebase. A new offer came up, same salary, but the company is near my place and have many green field projects. It wouldn't be any legal repercussions if I quit, but I would feel guilty for resigning just a few days after starting, the employer would have to start the hiring process all over again and some bridges will be burnt. Damn! I really don't know what to do: being unethical and take what is best for me, or being ethical and stay where I already am /:

What do you think about psychometric tests? I doubt a test can define the type of person you are nor your characteristics. I think it's ambigous, unprecise and extremely subjective. Today I was rejected from a job offer because "the psychometric department didn't give their vote of approval". This is the first time I get rejected for that reason, in the past nobody complained about the results of my tests. I don't know if psychometry is useful, but this company is looking for someone different, or maybe psychometry is, in fact, subjective and any fool can interpret your results however he feels like: "Oh, so he likes kittens over puppies, he's a potential serial killer, let's reject him"

Last tuesday I was scheduled for a technical interview with company's mobile team lead. First thing he does is noticing my The Legend of Zelda messenger bag. He starts asking questions about the games I've played, my favorite ones, the ones I disliked and keeps on going for about 10 minutes. Then he starts asking about my experience and some technical stuff for 2-3 minutes. Then he walks away saying "our HR lady will contact you to let you know what's next". Nobody contacted me the rest of the week. I guess someone who prefers "Ocarina of Time" over "A Link to the Past" is not a fit for that company.

I decided to quit my job. I was supposedly hired as an Android developer, but during the past few months I found myself doing everything except Android development: SQL scritps, frontend web development, backend web development, RESTful API's, DBA, release engineering... There's nothig wrong about being versatile, it's actually fun, but I wasn't doing what I really wanted to do and, most importantly, the manager didn't appreciate the fact that I was doing things that I'm not supposed to do, and not only that, I was doing it just as good as some full time web devs who do nothing but web development in the company. I'm pissed off. They probably believe the next Android dev they hire will do all the shit I was doing, accepting the same pay. Fuck them.

I was reading a discussion between recruiters in LinkedIn, they were talking about wether or not it was a good idea to contact a candidate on Facebook when he/she is not responding emails or LinkedIn messages. Most of them agreed it's OK to Facebook stalk a person if that's what it takes to reach the candidate. I don't know what to think: maybe they're really serious about their job and I should admire them, or perhaps being a passive-agressive stalker is part of the recruiter's psychological profile and I should be scared.

I developed an Android app that authenticates users via HTTP. Because it's an internal use app for employees only, we are in charge of unsubscribe the users that have access to the app in case they leave the company; all we have to do is update a bit column in one DB table and that's it, nothing complicated. My manager thought it was a good idea to develop an entire "front-end" website to make this task "easier", and yes, I am the one he put in charge of doing this, even though I work in the company as an Android dev, not a web dev. Making this site would be really simple and it'd only take a few hours of effort, but I find it really stupid and a waste of time coding a whole website to achieve a goal that only takes one freaking SQL sentence and no real clients using it. I don't know if, in fact, this is a stupid and useless idea, or I'm being a dick and have no reasons to blame my manager and bitch about it.

I hate UI design. When you code functionality, you either make a thing work or crash, efficient or unefficient, reliable or unreliable, maintainable or unmaintainable; but in UI design there's by no means an established way to make something look pretty and that pisses the crap out of me. You cand spend countless hours working in UI design, using the latest CSS libraries and frameworks, but at the end, any client can easily say it's crap no matter how cool anyone else think it looks. UI design sucks.