This is now on our office door.

Microsoft has the audacity to put "Get the new Outlook (It's free for Windows Users!)" on my lock screen. Extraordinarily annoying because:

- It's just the web app packaged in the SHITTIEST electron wrapper you ever did see.
- IT FUCKING HAS ADS

In a slack call just realised I've zoned out for the last half hour and it's now lunch time and I'm hungry...

So apparently I'd been hired 2 emails ago, only because the email said "I've been told that you're starting with us in April" and not "you're hired" I didn't realize it. Extremely neurotypical behaviour.

so I'm the new guy now, my new team write complicated, deep-for-no-reason IFs instead of a switch, gave me a shitload of resources to get up to date with their standards, insisted to every time make sure my code has been tested, then the first deployment I see THEM do breaks production, because a major fucking app had no tests whatsoever, also half of the team has 30+ years of experience in backend, laughs about TS on the server (which is actually fair) and I'm the frontend guy

challenge accepted

Wake up, it's 1983...
Node? React? Copilot? Programming Socks? Furries?
Man, I told you to not drink so much the last night, now wash your face and grab a coffee, you have a program for the VAX-11 to finish.

Red flags in your first week of your software engineering job 🚩

You do the first few days not speaking to anyone.
You can't get into the building and no one turns up until mid day.
The receptionist thinks you're too well dressed to work in this building, thinks you're a spy and calls security on you.
You are eating alone during lunch time in the cafeteria
You have bring your own material for making coffee for yourself

When you try to read the onboarding docs and there aren't any.
You have to write the onboarding docs.

You don't have team mates.
When you ask another team how things are going and they just laugh and cry.😂😭

There's no computer for you, and not even an "it's delayed" excuse. They weren't expecting you.
Your are given a TI PC, because "that's all we have", even though there's no software for it, and it's not quite IBM compatible.
You don't have local admin rights on your computer.💀
You have to buy a laptop yourself to be able to do your job.

It's the end of the week and you still don't have your environment set up and running.
You look at the codebase and there are no automated tests.
You have to request access every time you need to install something through a company tool that looks like it was made in 2001.

Various tasks can only be performed by one single person and they are either out sick or on vacation.
You have to keep track of your time in 6 minute increments, assigned to projects you don't know, by project numbers everyone has memorised (and therefore aren't written down).
You have to fill in timesheets and it takes you 30 minutes each day to fill them in because the system is so clunky.🤮

Your first email is a phishing test from the IT department in another country and timezone, but it has useful information in it, like how to login to the VPN.
Your second email is not a phishing test, but has similar information as the first one. (You ignore it.)
Your name is spelled wrong in every system, in a different way. 2 departments decide that it's too much trouble, and they never fix the spelling as long as you work there. One of them fixes it after you leave, and annoys you for a month because you haven't filled out the customer survey.

Why is it so hard to make friends with other developers?
Nobody understands how hard it is to sit on my ass all day while my wife complains about the lack of attention I give her. Anyone else relate?

Story time...of how HR actually did its job of taking care of employees.

So, I started at this new gig on December, the boss was all sunshine and promise (big red flag now to think back). Then as time passed, he started seeming...off. To a point I considered quitting my boss just after 2 months of working for him.

Then one morning we had a project meeting. He started verbally abusing me, calling me incompetent, bashing my work (of which he knew ~nothing, his experience 30 years back). Earlier in the week he demanded me to make a presentation which he in this meeting told is complete bullshit without actually reading any of it. He told me 'I am your boss, you do exactly as I say' when I told him something is technologically impossible in the situation we're in. He *actually* told me to break the law with data protection...

This was like wtf dude. That's not how you manage people. So, I made an HR ticket about his behaviour. They were *shocked* and escalated the matter.

Long story short: he was a bully, he's getting fired, my team has a new manager. My workplace actually appreciates my expertise.

Bad thing in this is, now I actually need to continue doing my job. ;_;

User: - The application throws an errror message.

Me: - The error message is caused by a minor bug that doesn't affect functionality, though. This is an old solution that is in the pipe to be redesigned from scratch. As this function is rarely used, perhaps you can live with this cosmetic bug for a couple more months?

User (one week later): - I haven't got any answer from you. How is this issue proceeding?

Hello World!!

Any app is a dating app if you're Indian enough

Developer superstition, never say something is easy, fast or straightfoward.

It will take weeks to develop, months to test and debug and you will consider change jobs just to stay away of that code

nice, 10k reached before sidtheitclown! (that’s all that actually matters, heh)

so, yes, as promised it’s me… chris from chris’ full stack blog.

I think kiki knew this, as I used to be called fullstackchris… though very briefly... don't know why i was ever worried about the old clowns i used to work for knowing my identity here

i’m a host of react round up, and also an ex-futures trader (that life is / was hidden on Twitter), I’ve recently quit because I’m ALSO still building 4ish SaaS products including The Wheel Screener (wheelscreener.com) and CodeVideo (codevideo.io), over my LLC, Full Stack Craft (fullstackcraft.com)

oh yeah, and on top of that i have a full time job in Switzerland (read: not poor boi 38 or 40 hour work week, 42 minimum)

so yeah, its a fucking lot of shit to do and sometimes it’s too much! glad i have this place to vent

so, don’t be too harsh on me… really, 99% of my bitterness comes from the approximate 5 years of my working life (2018-2023) were taken from me by lying business folk type who actually didn’t know what the FUCK they were doing or talking about, even after promising me they did (at two different companies). Listen, I’m all for people telling me iTs a RiSkY VeNTuRe; i get it. But if you say everything is rock solid (like funding, my future employment, etc.) and it is not, then fuck you; you’re just lying to my face, it has nothing to with management vs employee, engineer vs. non-technical - you’re literally just a *bad person* (sorry, mechanical engineering genes and honesty to the core - sue me) To be sure, I was partially at fault - too optimistic, and too gullible, and I’ve have since learned my lesson. but still working on it. (obviously)

but things are look up - my company is running better than ever, the current job is great with insanely smart people

In the end, it’s always the hardcore engineers who are the most honest, hardworking, respectful, and the best to work with - you people know who you are…

Until then… see you in the next rant!!!! 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

Dutifully signed,

🤡

My tip for staying productive: **Don't**

Take a break. Take a few. Have a nap. Take a stroll outside. Enjoy life.

Life's too short. If you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong.

Fuck productivity.

I feel like i am being forced to own a shitty module in our codebase.
It was developed by previous owners and they made a frankenstien monster out of it: Its one part of codebase that is very huge, does not follow the code standards, is making complex kinds of api calls and using very niche components. It gets bugs once in a while BUT IT WORKS.

It fuckin works and is one of the important steps before customer purchases a company product, so kinda part of revenue generation flow.

But this module was never a part of our codebase which we would usually touch. it was owned by another team, they would add enhancements , new features to it and fix the bugs .

When i joined the team, i was once asked to help those guys as a "resource" because they wanted to get something shipped and were low on bandwidth. So i just worked on one of the screens, added a small bugifx and voila, task is done and am back to other part of the app.

But now out of random, they decided to pass on the ownership to ur team, gave a small KT which didn't really explained a lot of actual codebase, but rather the business functionality of it(and that too poorly). And my TL is saying that i should own it because "I worked on that module before"

I don't know how to deal with this frankenstien monster. Earlier a bug came and i was out of my wits to understand why this bug came. their logging is weird and not explaining a lot, their backend devs help provide aws logs but those aren't very helpful either .

the best i could do was declare that their technical approach is wrong and we should modify it, but that idea was quickly squashed.

ITs quite possible that company isn't going to change this module or add any new features further. but everytime a bug would come, i would be getitngfrustrated looking at their frankenstien monster

Why don't scientists trust atoms?

Because they make up everything!

Why are people from Norway so good at editing files in Linux?
Their ancestors are vi-kings.

About 5 years ago I stopped pirating and started supporting companies by buying subscriptions or software ( mostly games, apps I use at work, tv shows / movies streaming services ). If it requires payment, I paid the price.

Companies started to screw both customers by delivering shitty products and employees by laying off ( I'm not in a big company, never will be but I feel bad for all the employees that are in this situation )

Started pirating everything, closed almost all of my subscriptions, currently building my home server for git, local ai and anything I need.

Now I'm planning to do some research to find some good replacements for cloudflare and a friendly host provider that is not all greed and doesn't have a history of massively laying off employees just because they overhired or overpromised.

Fuck you greedy capitalist pigs.

People who make "tutorial" videos on youtube where they copy and paste literally EVERYTHING, should get their channel banned.

I allowed this guy to present with my PC...
the mf closed my browser..!!!!!

Fun fact: “zip folder” in the UK locale of Windows is called “postcode file”.

I started writing a rant about my boss a while ago.

Never sent it.

Woke up to signal messages from her to our core team signal group that she’s been let go.

Starting to think maybe there is a god, because she was really pissing me off and micromanaging and making me want to quit my awesome job.

Also the new boss doesn’t want to bother making a job description for me but instead wants me to let him know what path I want to take, which certifications , etc.

Also got a maxed out m3 MacBook Pro today. The sleek black edition. My team is going to get our Dowding team logo etched into it.

Today was better than Christmas. Almost best day of my life.

We are living in a simulation. If you don't believe it, I can't do anything mate.

Happy New Year everyone 🦁🍾🎄🎁❤️❤️❤️

I know ive been a dickhead at times (or all the time) and will probably continue to be but thats because this app is like my personal psychotherapist. U guys are my therapists and i appreciate that.

Thanks for all the the moments. Looking forward to making more and new ones in this year ❤️

2024

I didn't think this were true when I started out programming in the field, but now that I've been working for a few years, I've discovered this:

While your technical expertise does matter, it does not weigh as hard through as how likeable you are; that's right, likeable. You can be an idiot, yet if you make people like you and pull the right strings, people will think you're this grand genius (while you're not!). How perception matters..

Soft skills matter somewhat, but I discovered they can make or break it. I noticed people like to be idiots and frolic around instead of taking things seriously that need to be taken seriously.

Here I am, with my expertise. People don't like me - and it makes them judge me the wrong way, like I'm stupid. Yes, imagine that, you with more skills, being looked at as stupid by idiots with little the fewer skills.

It would be neat if I were valued for my skills, not how much someone likes me!

This industry is... disappointing.

Honestly, who codes like this? This should be outlawed.

TL;DR: I don't like working with 'most' Indian people. And some stories supporting that written below:

=====================================
A client calls me directly to get features/fixes done on their site. No middle management shit at the company I was working at, at the time.

So I quit the company, but the client has my phone number. So he starts texting me to get more work done. I tell him "I work for money, if you can pay me that, I'll do all the work you ask of me".

They praise my blunt-ness and say they will discuss it. And I never heard from them ever again!

=====================================
Client reaches out to me and gets me to work for them for 2 hours/day and pays me INR 8,000 (about 95 USD) a month. I say fine, I'll do the work.

I do the tasks as they say for 3 months then I ask for a raise to INR 10,000.

They start pointing out mistakes in my work, and they say they're not seeing the "dedication" in me. Only when I asked for the raise. Not before that, mind you.

=====================================
Vice President of the company tells me that he saw me in his dream the night before.

I've told this one before so I just threw that in.

=====================================

At the end, I do like some Indians that I work with. It's just that most of them try to massively underpay you, or want to get the most work out of you as fast as possible and sometimes both.

I don't find AI interesting. It's boring. I don't hate it.

Just built libcurl from source on Windows and was able to add it to my c++ project and use it. This is a grand accomplishment because:

-You need to use the correct command prompt (Visual Studio command prompt)
-You need to use the correct correct command prompt (Visual Studio command prompt 64 bit version)

And throughout the whole process every resource kept telling me to just use a package installer. But I stayed strong and put the work in!