Building computers, video games, Bitcoin mining, cisco networking classes

Many years ago I had a job as web developer at a small promotions company. The owners loved micromanaging their 7 employees, down to the minute. Work started at 9am, if you were even 1 minute late, you were deducted 1 point. (Even if the weather was bad) Once you were at 10 points, you were disciplined by being given an unpaid vacation day. (Thanks for the day off!). At 12 points, you were fired.

It only took me about 8 months before getting my day off. Somehow I was able to time it perfectly to a job interview at a large company.

Luckily I got the job, and purposely was late the next two days so when they told me I was fired I could tell them I already got a new job (thanks to their 10 pt rule) and I'm out anyway.

At the new job, I'd often drive home and nap on my lunch hour. No one would notice if I came back an hour and a half later.

The owners of the 1st company divorced a few years ago. The husband and I have actually kept in contact over the years. He's a cool guy when you don't work for him. He invited me to a Green Day concert over the summer. Probably makes the above story a little less cool, but at the moment, I was burning bridges!

My prederred method of communication is over email.

A guy I've built an ecommerce platform and affiliate tracking for was sending me a lot of IMs. So I disabled Google chat. Then he started sending me texts to let me know he sent WhatsApp messages.

Last week he sent me a text to let me know to check WhatsApp. The message there was extremely vague and a minute later an actual email came in explaining the actual issue.

He's fucking with me right?

Then yesterday he messaged me a random series of questions, some that could have easily been googled, that on a holiday while I'm out with my family, should have definitely been over email, because they weren't immediate issues. I actually pictured him drinking at a bbq when he was writing them.

I was about to quit this dude but I get some nice monthly bonuses.

Our company doesn't have much structure. One of 4 people can have me working on a project, or all 4 at the same time. And every few hours 1 of them asks how their project is going and get huffy if I'm working on one of the other guys, claiming top priority. After 3 years, I've been able to just go with it. Half the projects have never actually made it to production. Sometimes, they'll even forget about their projects.

Got paid Friday. I have just enough to pay rent, car payment and health insurance.

Bosses : check out my new car.

You're welcome.

Called in for an interview for graphic design, didn't get it. Same company contacts me a few months later for a web design opening. I get the job. They were behind on graphic design work, so my first few months were helping them to catch up. One day they asked how the web site was going. I was like, uh, you've been scheduling me graphic design since I started. It took a few more months to get my plate cleared completely but I was able to finally build out their site and a photo appointment scheduler that we could all love.

If you're a developer and you enjoy/love doing it... Don't get married. Don't have kids.

EVER

When the boss needs you to clarify a peice of info he received from a vendor/client because there's one techie word in it or the conversion involved you at one time.

I just got an email and it says we can't do 'thing a'. Does that really mean we can't do 'thing a'?

Yes. I'm gonna get back to work now.

When the logical way doesn't work, I have to get creative.

Everyone I start feeling like a badass programmer and I can take over the world, there's another programmer that comes out of the woodwork and make me feel like a noob. Why do I even try. Fuck your way of doing things.

When someone posts memes or images from other sites on devRant...

I've seen it before. Give me something original, something creative, something from your own skullhead...

Anytime I've needed to show my bosses and coworkers something more than once, and they still ask... Those are the dumbest tech questions.

Today was nice. All the owners were out on vacation except for one. He took me out to lunch and went home after. Even though the office was silent and free of distraction, I did not work... I watched a webinar and played Hearthstone and ingress. Nationallazyday enjoyed.

I worked at a company that had timers on the lights. If you were in a stall for 10 minutes it would go pitch black. You either had to hope someone was coming in to pee soon or open the stall and wave your hand hoping the motion detector would see it, and hope no one was about to walk in. Keep your Kingdom Rush games short.

Too much deving, not enough ranting....

I can't believe I agreed to do a party bus to Cleveland at 7:30 am to watch a parade. I don't like sports, and I hate crowds. I don't feel like drinking yet, I have a 10 minute phone meeting at 10am. At some point I'm gonna wish I just went to work.

The Online Marketers I work with sometimes ask how I know so much about certain things.

Well, while you guys were partying in your late teens/early 20s and playing sports with your friends, I was sitting home on nights and weekends learning about computers, networks and code.

It only sucks they make a shit ton more money than me and work about 4 hours a day.

At least I'm making more than most of my peers and probably 90% more than people I went to high school with.

We haven't been able to come up with a solution for a simple problem while emailing and texting over the last 30 minutes, after hours, but let me waste more of your time talking to you on the phone about what we've been emailing and texting.

Sat next to a guy, like close enough to smack, but he would have hour long chat sessions with me on gchat going over work and projects. Kept his headphones on.

Another kid, one time I was helping him on HIS project he was given to finish before next day. I was helping so he didn't get stuck working TOO long over. The shit head still left at his normal quiting time and said he was gonna finish it at home. Still wasn't done the next morning when management needed it.

Friday Night!

Get Drunk and Code!

[off topic] (good thing this isn't stack overflow)
2.5 years ago I moved 35 minutes north of all my friends for a job and only see them about once a year now. I have a wife, kid and a few clients so spending time meeting new people has become a disability.

I have a bar near me that does board games and DnD n shit. I thought I would be able to pop in, make a few friends and play a few games of cards against humanity or something.

Nope. Even though I knew I was the coolest guy in the place (I'm a musician and up til a year ago played bass in rock/metal/90s bands ) , couldn't bring myself to talk to anyone or try to play any of the games. I sat at the bar on my phone, like a nerd.

Talk with boss on phone about new billing page for split test.

Create new billing page.

Create split test

Launch.

Checking everything after a few hours. Notice the boss turned off the control on the split test so everything runs to new page. Noticed two other tests that he had turned off variations on also, so no tests are actually splitting, but they're all still eating up our paid clicks.

I'm glad I wasted time setting up the test and goals only for it to not be used.

Not sure why I still call my smartphone a phone at all. I rarely talk on it. It's a microcomputer with a phone app. I'm really surprised my toddler even knows to put it up to his head and pretend talk.

If( $time > 7:00) work_from_home();
If( $time > 10:00) work_at_office();

function work_at_office() {
$people_in_office = rand(1,5);
$total_hours = rand(4,8);
$quick_easy_tally = 0;
...
}

That time you think you found your dream dev job...

But they really just needed a content entry person so the other dev could add 'senior' to his title and work on all the new fun projects, while you're stuck fixing IE7 bugs in his code from 3 years ago.

He used prototype instead of jQuery.

You try to tell them about responsive design, but they think everything needs a separate mobile version.

You spend half the day learning his custom functions to a cms he built 2 years ago, and he's in the process of rebuilding a new cms from the ground up, so you have to learn the new version too.

Was fired 3 days before my birthday, and didn't get my company gift, even though I contributed to every one else's gifts.

Fired 2 months before birth of my child so lost my insurance.

After my time there... They now build responsive, they now use jQuery for everything. I also showed them how to do IE testing with virtual box, instead of them using the secretary's computer.

Sometimes you just have to kick your wife and kids out on a beautiful day so you can get some work done.

I sit in a cubicle and I update bank software for the 2000 switch. You see, they wrote all this bank software and to save space, they put 98 instead of 1998. So I go through these thousands of lines of code and uh, it doesn't really matter. I, uh, I don't like my job. I don't think I'm gonna go anymore.

When you want to ++ someone's rant because you feel their pain, but have no idea what the fuck they're talking about....

Use your words.

Just bought a new monitor.... Look at those blacks!

When you rant too hard...