A client called me today saying their custom website I built for them is down. It just shows a 403 error now. They said they just wanted to update the prices. I asked what changes they made before it crashed. She said, "I couldn't figure out how to change the prices, so I just installed Wordpress, and now it doesn't work!" They completely deleted the entire website using cPanel and replaced it with a partially installed Wordpress.🤦

Manager: Does anybody having any money saving ideas?

Dev: By switching our supplier from X to Y we could save $10,000/year and they have much better customer service.

Manager: So? I’m looking more for savings opportunities in the +$100k range. That’s a small idea, I’m looking for *BIG* ideas.

Dev: Do you have any big ideas?

Manager: No, but I really really want to save big money like that. I thought you would have something worthwhile.

Dev: $10,000 still a lot of money

Manager: I guess…. Ok we can do it. But don’t bother me with peanuts like this again.

Dev: ??? You asked me buddy

Hey everyone,

During some backend improvements to the devRant infrastructure, some of our async queue processors (SQS) stopped working which caused many notifs to not go out/stop working. Unfortunately our alerting didn’t pick up on this since there were still queues being processed (just not specific ones) and some aspects of notifs working. Big apologies for this issue!

It is now resolved, and while very delayed, no notifications were lost and all were processed after the queue processors started up again. Sorry for the bulk notifs, but we wanted to make sure all that were supposed to go out went out.

Additional alerting will be put in place to prevent this from happening again.

Thanks for your patience!

A seasoned colleague just wrote this and I think it was very valuable:

On tech debt:

So the big challenge with technical debt is making non-technical management (CEO, COO, CFO, directors) understand what it means, and just how it operates. Sometimes it actually makes good sense to incur technical debt to get to market sooner, just as it sometimes makes sense to borrow money to get cash now and repay that loan later with (hopefully) resulting greater revenues from that investment. But just like a loan, tech debt always has to be paid some day. The longer the tech debt goes, the more expensive it gets. And also like a loan, the cost compounds, like compound interest on a loan. Tech debt should always be chosen with a clear plan to pay it off at some point in the not too distant future. The longer one waits to pay it, the more expensive it gets.

So a porn company just bought the vidme domain and set up a redirect for all old vidme urls.

As a result, many websites like the Washington Post got porn videos embedded on a couple places.

This is so fucking hilarious. Maybe there's a slim chance they learn the lesson and stop shoving shitty autoplaying videos into their news articles.

https://vice.com/en/article/...

If only you were as straight as you are now

post malone
get malone
put malone
patch malone
delete malone

Just got laid off from full-time salaried position due to various business circumstances. I absolutely loved working there because they paid well, are low demand, they were 100% remote before it was COVID cool, and they didn’t micromanage anyone. Will continue to work for same employer but on hourly work order basis. I’m fighting the “provider” urge to find something else full-time as quickly as possible. My wife, who’s also working part time, says I shouldn’t be in a hurry and take my time to find just the type of job I really want. She’ll even go full-time while I search.

I’m the luckiest unlucky guy.

I was hired as a senior software engineer. During handover I found out I'm actually replacing the CTO.

I queried why he was leaving and got a simple "just want a break from working" which I found odd.

Fast forward and now I also just want a break from work, permanently. This place has followed every bad practise and big no-no out there. Every bit of software is a built in house knockoff janky piece of crap that doesn't work and makes people's jobs 5000 times harder.

The UI looks worse than Windows 3.1, absolutely horrendous code formatting, worst database structure I've ever seen.

The mere mention of using a team communication tool results in being yelled at from the CEO whom communicates purely via email, who then gets annoyed when you don't reply because they sent the email to a client instead of you.

We get handed printed out "tickets" to work instead of the so called "amazing in house ticket system" built using PHP 5 and is literally crammed into an 800x600 IFrame. Yes a F$*#ing IFRAME!

It's not like we have an outdated TFS server that has work items we can use...

Why not push for changes you say. I have, many times, tried to suggest better tools. The only approval I've gotten is using PhpStorm. Everything else is shutdown immediately and you get the silent treatment.

The CEO hired me to do a job, then micromanages like crazy. I can't make UI changes, I can't make database changes, why? They insists they know best, but has admitted multiple times to not knowing SQL and literally uses a drag and drop database table builder.

Every page in the webapps we make are crammed into 800x600 iframes with more iframes inside iframes. And every time it's pointed out we need to do something, be it from internal staff or client suggestions, the CEO goes off about how the UI is industry leading and follows standards.. what in the actual f....

Literally holding on by a thread here. Why hire a CTO under the guise of being a senior developer but then reduce the work that can be done down to the level of a junior?

Sure the paycheck is really nice but no job is worth the stress, harassment and incompetent leadership from the CEO.

They've verbally abused people to the point they resign, best part is that was simply because the CEO made serious legal mistakes, was told about it by the employee then blamed it on others.

Story of me trying to connect to a colleague from neighbouring team with 12 hour difference timezone:

Me: Hey! Shall we catch up to discuss a feature that will help us dominate the world?

She: Sure.. what time works for you?

Me: Since we have timezone challenge, I'd say boundary times would be good so none of us have to stretch.

She: umm.. good..

Me: How about 07:30 PM your time?

She: oh sweetie.. evenings don't work for me.. I want my evenings free..

Me: fine.. how about 07:00 AM your time?

She: no darling.. I am not a morning person..

Me: GO FUCK YOURSELF BITCH. I CAN'T COMPLY WITH EVERY TANTRUM OF YOURS.

And with that.. I didn't respond to her invites which were either super early for me or super late. Let her keep waiting..

Juniors with ego are shittiest folks to work with.

Thursday
PM: Hey why is A delayed? It should be top priority.
me: I just completed B, and C which were also top priority but got scheduled earlier, so I thought they..
PM: Agh, yes. But can you then finish A by the end of week? it would be very important!
me: No, I unfortunately don't think I'd have enough time by the end of wee..
PM: Why? This should be *the* top priority task. You should not start other tickets before A is done.
me: Exactly. But I *just* started. And. I. don't. have. enough. free. hours. left. this. week.
PM: But why?!
me: So just on Friday I have these 5 meetings here..
*shows calendar*
PM: Ok... OK! Then don't attend those before you are done. This should be more important.
me: Ugh, oh-key...are you sure?
PM: Yea, just let who invited you know that you can't attend and feel free to cc me in, I'll explain A is most important atm.
me: Ok, thanks, but that won't be necessary.
PM: What? Why?
me: You invited me to the Friday meetings.

Obviously I had to attend all 5 meetings today and A is pushed back to next week. :)

Best: the tool that works for the job.
Worst: the tool that doesn’t.

Example: Ruby is great for scripts and web dev, but simply doesn’t work for graphics engines.

Example: SQL is great for fetching data (etc.), but it is absolutely terrible for business logic.

Example: XSLT is great for lowering your faith and your will to live, but it is absolutely awful for literally every other purpose.

So HR invited us to a mandatory hour long talk on why rest and relaxation is important for work efficiency.

On a Saturday.

You can’t make this shit up.

Wholesome anti-rant.

There’s this Indian chick at work that I really, really do not get along with. Fortunately she’s on a different team so we have practically zero interactions. Her code was always decent, maybe upper junior level? but I went away fuming almost every time we talked.

However, I did a release security review today (I’m down from five/six per month to one) and read through quite a bit of her code. It was clean and easy to read with good separation, clear naming and intentions, nothing was confusing, etc. It was almost beautiful. Had I any emotions I might have shed a tear. I sent her a message and let her know :) I actually learned a better way of doing a couple of things from it.

She has grown so much as a dev.

Dev: I’m taking a vacation next week

Manager: Good you need a break! I’ve put together a list of tickets for you to action during vacation since you’ll mostly be free during that time

Dev: Do you know what vacation means?

Manager: Well I work during *my* vacation

Dev: You write non-answers to emails and interrupt devs with status questions that are easily answered by a single glance at the kanban board. Also, you’ve just assigned a month’s worth of storyboard points to me on my week long vacation. We’d get more work done if you didn’t “work” during your vacation.

Manager: Well it all needs to get done! It’s the only way we can catch up and get ahead of schedule.

Dev: Why do you exist again?

Got laid off my by old employer back in 2019 because they have their priorities completely wrong.
Got a mail today whether I could fix something for them (ofc, they wanted me to do it essentially for free).
One of the websites I built for a customer back when I still worked there had a massive bug (that I was aware off and patched in later versions of the library causing it).
They never updated it so, I told them "just update the library".

Apparently, the idiot that was in charge of maintaining said site after I left didn't know how to and completely broke everything.
The hilarious part: While I setup everything using stuff like Docker and Git to make rollbacks easy...
That idiot went back to FTP and manually upgrading the databases through PhpMyAdmin :^)
He nuked the entire site.
Database? Gone.
Codebase? Borked (installed a version with a lot of breaking changes without properly reading the migration guide).
And knowing that shit company, they don't have any backups either.

They said "I wasn't needed because we have other good devs" when they laid me off.
Uhu, I can eh... see those good devs doing their job :^)

"When designing an interface, imagine that your program is all that stands between the user and hot, sweaty, tangled-bedsheets-fingertips-digging-into-the-back sex." - Randall Munroe

CEO "If you make costs to build a home office for covid, please be aware that you can fully declare your bills, and you'll retain ownership over the ordered goods. Please all buy some good desk chairs and keyboards, so you can work ergonomically"

6 months later, CFO: "Bittersweet, why did you try to declare €35000? What are these invoices even? Concrete rebar?"

Me: "CEO told us to build a home office. I got permits from the town to dig a souterrain layer under my house. This is just for the foundation, the bills for drainage pumps, sheetpiling, geothermal heat exchangers, insulation, flooring, electricity and of course desk & chair will follow later"

CFO: 😳

(To be fair, I really did make those costs, but was just trolling by uploading all the material bills)

QA: When I open the app I get this strange error message that includes "No data connection could be established" near the start of it.

Me: I'll clean up how thats displayed, but the error means your phone doesn't have internet connection.

QA: No that can't be it, I do.

Me: You screenshot shows no WiFi or 3g / 4g symbols.

QA: No those are never there, please investigate.

Me: I have investigated and found that every other one of your screenshots had a WiFi or a 3g symbol. Example: <link>. Please check your connection and try again, i'll clean up the error display.

PM: Oh i've had an issue something like this before. We really need to show users an error screen. We can't just leave them on this screen with no error message at all.

Me: ... we have an error, thats what QA is complaining about, its not loading the text and displaying the error object.

Anyone else want to not pay attention and complain about something else that doesn't make sense? ... no? ... ok good, back to work then

I. FUCKING. HATE. MOBILE. DEVELOPMENT.

I already manage the data, devops, infra, and most of the backend dev.

We had a mobile guy. He was great. I never had to think about it and kept moving quickly on my work. #SpecializationOfLaborFTW

He left. Why? Because they wouldn't give him a small raise despite being one of the best mobile engineers in the firm. WTF.

I made the mistake of picking up just enough slack on this workflow in the interim such that I'm, apparently, the fucking god-damned release manager, fixer of pipelines, fixer of build configs, fixer of anything where someone just needs to RTFM for a half-hour to not fucking break things.

Now, 8 months later...and, apparently, Fortune 500 companies are too fucking god-damned cheap to pay for someone who actually knows WTF they're doing for a very reasonable thing to have at least one dedicated set of eyes for.

I never wanted to be a mobile dev.
I never will want to be a mobile dev.
And I certainly don't want to manage your HALF-FACE-FUCKED detached expo configs.

There's a reason I never intentionally involved myself in mobile. All the way down, it's just shitty cross-compilation, transpilation, dependency-hell, brittle-as-fuck build processes so we can foot-gun and mouth-gun react-native and expo and babel and whatever the fuck else cargo-culted horseshit into the wild.

And why? What's the actual fucking root cause? The biggest white elephant that ever fucking elephant-ed? It's because Apple and Google decided to never collaborate on a truly-native cross-platform SDK--where engineers could write native code that compiles to native binaries that's simply write-once, run-everywhere. They know they could have done that, and they didn't. So what'd they get back? Expo--a too-cleverly-designed backdoor/hack--more-or-less a way to circumvent the sane release process software has usually followed: code -> executable -> deploy. Or code -> deploy (for interpreted langs). Expo's like "keep your same executable, we're just gonna to do updates by injecting new code into it whenever we want". Didn't we learn anything with web? Shit gets messy real quick? Not to mention: HEY EXPO, WE WERE ALREADY BUILDING NATIVE APPS, YOU SHORT-SIGHTED FUCKS. THANKS FOR LURING OUR CTOs INTO FORCING EXPO DOWN OUR THROATS W/ THE IMPLICIT (BUT INCORRECT) TOO-GOOD-TO-BE-TRUE PROMISE THAT WE CAN HAVE WRITE-ONCE, RUN-ANYWHERE WITHOUT ANY BUY-IN OR COOPERATION FROM THE ACTUAL TARGET PLATFORMS.

And, we just, like, accept this? We all know it's garbage engineering. The principles we learned in the classroom aren't just academic abstractions--they actually yield real-world results--and eschewing them yields real-world failures. Expo is tightly-coupled to high-heaven, with leaky abstractions six-ways-to-christmas, chock-full of foot-guns, and fails the most basic test of quality: does it, "just work?"

Expo is fucking shameful and it should fucking die. Its promises are too bold, its land-mines too many, its future-proof-ness is alway, always, always questionable as fuck and a risk to every project that uses it.

You want a rant? This is my fucking venue, 'tis not? Well, then this is a piss and vinegar rant straight from my blood-red, beating fucking heart:

EXPO FUCKING SUCKS. AND IF YOU'RE A FAN, YOU FUCKING SUCK TOO.

I once worked until 8am to get a demo ready for a client of the client. I knew the client was a bit thick, so I made some comprehensive video demos and sent them over to him, to save him trying to demo it himself. I wake up at 11am with him screaming down the phone at me:

“It doesn’t work, none of it works!”

“What do you mean?”

“I go to login and I can’t enter anything.”

“I haven’t sent you anything to log into...wait, are you trying to log into a video? Tell me you’re not trying to log into a video of a login page.”

“Uh...oh hang on, it just worked. Ok no pr-“

“No wait, what do you mean it worked?”

“I logged in fine.”

“It’s a video. You can’t log into a video.”

“Uh...alright, bye mate, thanks!”

The moral of the story is: never assume any level of intelligence on the part of a client, even if they exhibit signs of it at first. If they are paying you they will forget how to tie their own shoelaces.

So I told my wife one week ago: "Yeah, you should totally learn to code as well!"

Yesterday a package arrived, containing a really beautiful hardcover book bound in leather, with a gold foil image of a snake debossed into the cover, with the text "In the face of ambiguity -- Refuse the temptation to guess" on it.

Well, OK, that's weird.

My wife snatches it and says: "I had that custom made by a book binder". I flip through it. It contains the Python 3.9 language reference, and the PEP 8 styleguide.

While I usually dislike paper dev books because they become outdated over time, I'm perplexed by this one, because of how much effort and craftsmanship went in to it. I'm even a little jealous.

So, this morning I was putting dishes into the dishwasher, and she says: "Please let me do that". I ask: "Am I doing anything wrong?"

Wife responds: "Well, it's not necessarily wrong, I mean, it works, doesn't it? But your methods aren't very pythonic. Your conventions aren't elegant at all". I don't think I've heard anyone say the word "pythonic" to me in over a decade.

And just now my wife was looking over my shoulder as I was debugging some lower level Rust code filled with network buffers and hex literals, and she says: "Pffffff unbelievable, I thought you were a senior developer. That code is really bad, there are way too many abbreviated things. Readability counts! I bet if you used Python, your code would actually work!"

I think I might have released something really evil upon the world.

Someone, I have no idea who, commented on my personal project that he wanted to pick up one of the issues.

Then, he followed through and fixed it and sent a PR.

Feels good man.

I got fired.

Worst job I ever had, they extended my probation period, called me "over maintenance", said my work was good but not good enough for the effort, If I take a lot of care doing my work then it's "over preparation", if not good enough then it's "not detailed enough", I don't ask enough questions? I must be unmotivated, I ask too many? I take up too much of other people's time.

Fuck them all. I hope they get a taste of their own medicine.

Me: Optimize a sort & match method in backend because users complain it's a bit slow.

Coworker: These algorithms are both O(n), so they're identical *closes PR*

Me: *start zoom call* "Heeeeeeeeeey Iiiiiiiiiii wouuuuuuuld liiiiiiiiike toooooo diiiiiisscuuuuus thaaaaaaaat puuuuuuulllll reeeeeequuuueeest yooooouuuuu cloooooossseeeed"

Coworker: "wtf are you doing, why are you talking so slow"

Me: "No matter whether I talk fast or slow, the information still reaches you in O(n) time, so why are you complaining"

I fucking hate it when people misunderstand the purpose of (or abuse) big O notation. It's an estimate of how an algorithm SCALES once the set increases in size, in which case you leave out both less significant terms and constant factors.

But those terms and factors are important when you're talking about the DIRECT PERFORMANCE of the algorithm on fixed-size sets, instead of SCALING to larger sets.

1n and 10n are both O(n), but 10x performance on a job that used to take 10 minutes is still significant.

Becoming independently wealthy and telling my employer I no longer require their services.

Marketing: it's not working...

Me: *fixes bug and pushes changes in less than 5 mins*

Me: Well it's working for me

Marketing: strange... it wasn't working 5 minutes ago...

I love their faces of confusion haha

I'd like to extend my heartfelt fuck-you to the following persons:

- The recruiter who told me that at my age I wouldn't find a job anymore: FUCK YOU, I'll send you my 55 birthday's cake candles, you can put all of them in your ass, with light on.

- The Project Manager that after 5 rounds of interviews and technical tests told me I didn't have enough experience for his project: be fucked in an Agile way by all member of your team, standing up, every morning for 15 minutes, and every 2 weeks by all stakeholders.

- The unemployment officer who advised me to take low level jobs, cut my expenses and salary expectations: you can cut your cock and suck it, so you'll stop telling bullshit to people

- The moron that gave me a monster technical assignment on Big Data, which I delivered, and didn't gave me any feedback: shove all your BIG DATA in your ass and open it to external integrations

- the architect who told me I should open my horizons, because I didn't like React: put a reactive mix in your ass and close it, so your shit will explode in your mouth

- the countless recruiter who used my cv to increase their db, offering fake jobs: print all your db on paper and stuff your ass with that, you'll see how big you will be

To all of them, really really fuck you.

PM: That screwdriver you built me is really nice. I like how it works with all screws and bolts, does the work itself, etc., but I simply can’t get it to paint, and I really need it to cut my sandwich. Can it cut my sandwich?

PM: Also, since you finished it, the neighbor’s can opener doesn’t work, my dog got fleas, and our screw supplier ran into shipping issues. Fix these ASAP!

Bonus:
Also, remember that hack I forced you to do despite you telling me it wouldn’t work? Yeah it isn’t working. You need to fix that too.

My local ISP was saving their database backups in an unprotected folder which was literally domain.com/backups

When I downloaded it contained thousands of their clients data.

Reported it to them and got 2 years of internet/tv services for free.

They wanted to hire me but I was still studying in my first year of uni in another city.