I'm a tech lead for a digital agency.

Digital agencies are universally known for being shite. Why? Because they typically push through sub-optimal code with very little testing over tiny deadlines for maximum profit. Maybe I've just had bad experiences but this is the 5th digital agency that I've worked at that does this bollocks.

I am currently sitting on a Teams call at 8:39pm because the fuckwit project/account managers are unable to face up to the big scary client and ask them terrifying questions like "Is this bug a blocker for the deployment?" or "We don't have enough time to fix/change these things, can we delay another day?". They just assume that A - We will work into the evening, and B - that all the issues are P1 and that we should all 'pull together' as 'team players' to get this done in time.

No, Me and my team have to work into the evening for seemingly free because these pricks can't do their jobs properly.

The funniest thing of all? When I speak to the CTO about overtime payment he tries to make me feel bad about "we don't typically pay for overtime..."

Fuck Everyone.

Time to find a new contract.

Algorithm online tech tests need to get in the fucking bin.

Fuck Codility, fuck Testdome, fuck HackerRank.

This is not how you test developers!

Things that annoy me about my current place:

1 - Only 3 people out of a team of 12 developers are allowed to purge akamai, or merge pull requests to master on any of our 200+ websites. Apparently this is because us contractors are not allowed because the permanent employees have to be accountable for the code.

Despite this, no-one actually reads the code. You just throw up a request in the slack channel and boom, instantly 30 seconds later someone approves it, even if its 500+ lines of code.

2 - I've pushed for us to move to agile instead of waterfall, and got declined (which is fine), but the reasoning was that the dev team are not 'mature enough' to work that way. Half the devs here have 5+ years of experience so I don't get the problem here.

3 - There is zero code reviewing process in place. I just watched as a developer's 300 line merge request was approved within 8 seconds of it going live. No-one is allowed to comment on the code review or suggest changes as this would 'slow down development'. Within that 300 line merge request were tons of css being aimlessly commented out, and invalid javascript (introducing both bugs and security issues) that were totally ignored.

What is your thoughts on these above points?

Am I too narrow minded or is the development manager clueless?

A couple of goodies here:

1 - The guy that said 'I prefer to work remote so noone can bother me. I will never answer my phone if you try to call me, and emails will only be read the second I arrive at work and never again. Do not disturb me at all. I decided not to bother him again with another interview request.

2- I personally interviewed at a gaming company in Dundee, Scotland and they wanted me to create a JS application, on video call to them, on Google Docs, and that they had set aside 3 hours for this whilst they watched me and ate lunch. I apologised, said that was the most absurd thing I've ever heard of, and cancelled the interview and hung up without saying bye.

How the fuck can any sort of developer think that's okay to try to make people do?

Well I've been at a new company for the last 6 months now, and I've just discovered that job is still being advertised.

I just found out that the company that i've just started contracting at has the entire of wordpress inside of a repo for quite a few of their sites.

Fuck me now.

When you test in production

We've recently employed a new lead dev that seems to have a problem in that his solution is always the correct solution.

On a typical day, whenever I push code up for review via pull request, every single ticket I work on, he has something that has to change which doubles the amount of time of each ticket.

I'd be fine with this if the other 2 developers also think he's a bit of a headache in terms of his opinion but a lot of the time, there is always.. ALWAYS something that has to change because his method is better than mine.

For example, just now I pushed up some code that literally just adds in the user's email to the view which is already in the store for that action/effect anyway. I added one line of HTML.

He comments saying that I need to change the way it gets the email by doing a different request in the effect, to get the current user id, and from that match it against the email address, and THEN display it in the view.

This ticket took me 5 minutes. He's making me make it 30-60 minutes (to understand his requirement and implement it).

Is this normal? Am I over reacting?

Opinions please!

I'm so excited! A company in Scotland has just offered me a role, where for the first 2-4 weeks I'll receive Angular training.

My question is - how difficult did you find angular to learn? Were there any concepts you struggled to understand?

How the hell am I meant to get a new job in Edinburgh/Glasgow so I can learn React/Angular/Vue when no-one will hire someone without experience in those frameworks?!

I was in 2 roles back to back and in that time, every single Front End Development role now available in the market requires commercial experience in React/Angular/Vue in order to proceed.

Even the 18k Grad/Junior Development roles require commercial experience in some sort of JS Framework yet I'm certainly not a Grad/Junior.

HOW DOES ANYONE USE IT COMMERCIALLY IF THEY'VE GOT NO EXPERIENCE.

I'm doomed.

For the record, I'm a Front End Developer with 3 Years of experience with personal study experience in React.

So here's my problem. I've been employed at my current company for the last 12 months (next week is my 1 year anniversary) and I've never been as miserable in a development job as this.

I feel so upset and depressed about working in this company that getting out of bed and into the car to come here is soul draining. I used to spend hours in the evenings studying ways to improve my code, and was insanely passionate about the product, but all of this has been exterminated due to the following reasons.

Here's my problems with this place:

1 - Come May 2019 I'm relocating to Edinburgh, Scotland and my current workplace would not allow remote working despite working here for the past year in an office on my own with little interaction with anyone else in the company.

2 - There is zero professionalism in terms of work here, with there being no testing, no planning, no market research of ideas for revenue generation – nothing. This makes life incredibly stressful. This has led to countless situations where product A was expected, but product B was delivered (which then failed to generate revenue) as well as a huge amount of development time being wasted.

3 - I can’t work in a business that lives paycheck to paycheck. I’ve never been somewhere where the salary payment had to be delayed due to someone not paying us on time. My last paycheck was 4 days late.

4 - The management style is far too aggressive and emotion driven for me to be able to express my opinions without some sort of backlash.

5 - My opinions are usually completely smashed down and ignored, and no apology is offered when it turns out that they’re 100% correct in the coming months.

6 - I am due a substantial pay rise due to the increase of my skills, increase of experience, and the time of being in the company, and I think if the business cannot afford to pay £8 per month for email signatures, then I know it cannot afford to give me a pay rise.

7 - Despite having continuously delivered successful web development projects/tasks which have increased revenue, I never receive any form of thanks or recognition. It makes me feel like I am not cared about in this business in the slightest.

8 - The business fails to see potential and growth of its employees, and instead criticises based on past behaviour. 'Josh' (fake name) is a fine example of this. He was always slated by 'Tom' and 'Jerry' as being worthless, and lazy. I trained him in 2 weeks to perform some basic web development tasks using HTML, CSS, Git and SCSS, and he immediately saw his value outside of this company and left achieving a 5k pay rise during. He now works in an environment where he is constantly challenged and has reviews with his line manager monthly to praise him on his excellent work and diverse set of skills. This is not rocket science. This is how you keep employees motivated and happy.

9 - People in the business with the least or zero technical understanding or experience seem to be endlessly defining technical deadlines. This will always result in things going wrong. Before our mobile app development agency agreed on the user stories, they spent DAYS going through the specification with their developers to ensure they’re not going to over promise and under deliver.

10 - The fact that the concept of ‘stealing data’ from someone else’s website by scraping it daily for the information is not something this company is afraid to do, only further bolsters the fact that I do not want to work in such an unethical, pathetic organisation.

11 - I've been told that the MD of the company heard me on the phone to an agency (as a developer, I get calls almost every week), and that if I do it again, that the MD apparently said he would dock my pay for the time that I’m on the phone. Are you serious?! In what world is it okay for the MD of a company to threaten to punish their employees for thinking about leaving?! Why not make an attempt at nurturing them and trying to find out why they’re upset, and try to retain the talent.

Now... I REALLY want to leave immediately. Hand my notice in and fly off. I'll have 4 weeks notice to find a new role, and I'll be on garden leave effective immediately, but it's scary knowing that I may not find a role.

My situation is difficult as I can't start a new role unless it's remote or a local short term contract because my moving situation in May, and as a Junior to Mid Level developer, this isn't the easiest thing to do on the planet.

I've got a few interviews lined up (one of which was a final interview which I completed on Friday) but its still scary knowing that I may not find a new role within 4 weeks.

Advice? Thoughts? Criticisms?

Love you DevRant <3

Hi XXXX,

Thanks for speaking to me earlier,

If you could send me the following details we can really get the ball rolling with the recruitment process.

• Any jobs you have applied for or interviewed (I need company name and position)

This stops me re applying you for jobs you’ve already applied for

• Any key elements an employer has to have for you

• A name phone number and position held for references at your current contract.

If we can get these over asap then we can start the ball rolling and get you a new position in the most time effective manner.

Kind Regards,

Brainless Lazy Back-Stabbing Recruiter.

Recruiters call me and be like "I'm looking for a Python Developer to work in London with 5 Years of experience - Is that something you'd be interested in?"

I respond with - "Sure.. only if you can tell me where the f**k you found the word Python on my CV or ANYWHERE online."

1 - I've got ZERO experience in Python...

2 - I've got 3 Years experience in development regardless of being in anything Python related...

3 - I live 1-2 hours away from London...

Come on guys - Do you even read CVs before you blindly call? How shit are you!?

If I spent all my time calling candidates that had no relevance for the role I'm recruiting for (most likely to get call times up) back when I was a recruiter, my boss would have my nuts for lunch for making the agency look bad.