Incompetence of people around me drives me mad. I see a piece of shit code and I can’t stop myself from improving it.
Also better developers around me. I need to find out how they’re better and beat them

My LinkedIn is usually pretty quiet. Recently I've received quite a few messages from recruiters. Some of them put numbers in and I look at them, well, the market looks hot.

I like where I am but doesn't hurt to have a look around eh? So I went through some interviews and shit. No preps, not trying to please anyone, being completely honest. And out of the 3 I tried, 1 got to the final round.

Before the final round, the recruiter kept harassing me (it's their job really) about what my "bottom line" is. She said they really liked me but I'm not up to their expectation as a senior role. So they want to proceed with a non-senior role, then climb my ladder up. I told her, I don't give a shit about the title. The she said for that, the salary will be "adjusted" (reads reduced). I told her, look, I said I wouldn't bother if the offer is anything less than X amount of money. Then she said but this company would offer 10% bonus, which will add up , mind you, "close to" X. She said she wanted to know so we don't waste the director's time (as the final round is to meet the bloody director).

I said, if I need to disclose my bottom line before going to this, which is pretty much my negotiation, then let's call it off. No point wasting my time either.

The next day I received the last call from her. They fucked right off.

I know everyone here already knows. But let me experience be another example of how a plague recruiters is. I don't have any experience like this before but this is probably a fucking lowball case too.

Why do you ask “can you {do this/that}” when “no” is not an option? Why don’t dare dare to say “please {do this/that}”?

Yeah nah I’m still gonna say no. But fuck your hypocrisy too

someBoolean = (condition1 && condition2 ) ? true : false;

O.M.G....

Our QA is acting like a customer, or even more... Pushy, demanding, some times rude... you name it

On the flip side, we have a real (cruel) world scenario in testing. Not too bad I think?

This is probably not a popular comment, but here are the reasons I sometimes do not like working from home.

- if I don't get food, the kid starve
- if there's a meeting, the kid decides to play piano
- I have to watch delivered food that needs refrigerated to rot, while I really want to focus on that mudafukin bug
- if misus is not sleeping during the day, there is a 50% chance I smell something burnt in the house

Feel free to add to this list

As a developer, how important to you that you have the choice of tools/platforms to do your job?

I've worked on some companies that don't give a damn as long as you get the job done, while some frown upon it because they haven't tried anything other than what they have and are skeptical. Some are completely locked because their products are platform specific so it makes sense for dev to work on the same platform.

Thoughts?

Okay so my ticket got rejected because the on screen texts are not in the correct case (upper/lower). Totally fair because nowhere in the spec are those texts defined. As a developer I am also responsible for what "makes sense" for the user.

I'm just gonna say this next time I ask for a raise.

I rebooted a device that everyone uses
It has not come online yet
It's been an hour, and counting...

What a good timing we're all working from home eh?

substr, substring and any variants

Confusing af. Added 5-sec of Dev time every time I use them because I have to look up just to make sure.
Why can't they be the same? If they're the same, why are they different?

It's my end of probation and I just got demoted, from originally "Senior dev" to "dev".

My manager found it a bit difficult to tell me but funny enough, I am completely fine with it apart from the little dent on my pay check. Let me talk about the bad first: money. I believe I have been on the lower end of the market pay range anyways so this step-back gives me about 5% cut, which is acceptable and fair enough.

And the good? Quite a bit. When I got this job offer 6 months ago, it was when everything literally went to shit. I was upset with a somehow not so smart but stubborn tech lead and I desperately wanted to quit. Then I got the offer, which even after 2 interviews I still didn't recall it was a job ads for "technical lead". The manager thought I was not there yet but wanted to keep me as a senior dev. Then, this pandemic almost took away this job. My manager brought my case to the CEO and convinced him to keep me, by saying a lot of good things about me (which I think might not be true for the tech side...)

Throughout the whole 6 months I have been working remotely from home. WFH is not new to me, just this time it's very challenging as I was starting a new job. I have been struggling to keep my pace. All people in the team are nice. However if I don't reach out, no one would notice I need help. And with zero knowledge for this job, I got stuck with "I don't know what I don't know". This ranges from company culture, practice, new tech.. everything. So, that's how this 6 months feels long, but also short.

In our review meeting I think my manager finally realise this. Otherwise he would have gone for the "terminate employment" option. Taking away the "senior" title also takes away the expectation of "I should know XYZ", which I don't. I told him I am kinda happy with it because this sets me up for a more comfortable position to catch my breathe. He told me he noticed my improvement along the way. I told him yes I have been putting in efforts but just given the situation it's not as quick as anyone would expect. We're on the same page now.

So compared to my previous job, I got paid less. But in return, I get many more opportunities to expose myself to new tech. I get a good team who are respectful and open-minded. This is exactly what I was looking for and the drive for me to quit my previous job.

Not to mention I got a reality check. This is also an indicator for me starting to become an imposter, which is the thing I despise most in the industry. I don't want people to value me for how many years I have got in my career. I want to prove myself by what I am capable of. If I'm not there, I should and will get there.

And the last thing which I'm not very keen but it's 100% worth mentioning, is that my manager said I should aim for taking the "senior" role back. He said the salary raise is waiting when I get there. But... Let me just take my time.

Gundam

Which of the following can successfully lead a company for digital transformation?

A) CEO
B) CTO
C) Covid19

mvn ... -DskipTests=true

Shut up

End of financial year in Australia
Purchased IntelliJ Ultimate
The cost will be tax deductible
Nice

I was not happy with the way my team lead made those technical decisions. I couldn't do much about it. Hit with frustration, I switched job.

What a coincidence, my new employer is exactly his old employer. Although I liked the company with my impression from the interview, knowing this fact made me nervous. What if this is the place that bred him into what he is today?...

Turned out the reality is not cruel. I'm joining a team that is formed way after he left. And this new team is expected to bring changes to the old-fashioned existing product (or simply a revamp/remake if you call it).

And it's interesting for me to now come to understand the poor decisions he has made. I said I "understand". This does not mean I agree with him now. His approach makes sense when I look at the old-fashion product I am working on. But it still feels wrong in many ways for the product he is now in charge of.

There, I witness that someone with experience is not necessarily smart.

This is the same guy who said "That's why I don't like to catch exception."
FYI https://devrant.com/rants/2420797/...

"...what I'm looking at... uh... wait this is ridiculous... what is this... how do I update this..."
This new guy I'm supposed to bring up to speed constantly mumbles like this. He's just talking to himself. But it's so annoying that it's like he's constantly asking me questions.

I heard scary thing.
A tester found an issue yesterday. He came to the dev and reported about it. Apparently the only feedback message was "something went wrong". They spend almost an hour hunting down the cause for that. It turned out the error message was from one of the try-catch. I do not know much details apart from that. At the end, the dev lead said this (which he had said before).

"That's why I don't like to catch exception."

So we're approaching the end of WebStorm license subscription. Got notified about renewal. Then there's this question... Should we

1. not renew, use the fallback version (2018 something) because we don't need that many updates anyway and renew next year to get essentially a 50% off discount, or
2. renew and get the 20% off discount?

Asking for my boss lol

I've been seeing job ads saying they look for people who are "good at node.js" or similar (e.g. guru, expert...) What does that mean? I only use npm when I do my reactjs projects. Does that count?

Just got an email from HR asking everyone to put in leave for Christmas by TODAY.
Christmas is like a month away...
Before this email, there is no similar announcement whatsoever informing we have to put in leave by certain date.
It's lucky I checked my email (because I basically ignore it unless someone comes and tells me he's gonna send me something through it). It's luckier I got my Christmas plan sorted.
But... What if I'm still figuring out what to do for Christmas? Is this reasonable?

My fellow dev (a younger guy) and I have been having a lot of disagreements with the lead dev (obviously a more experienced, older guy).
We can have arguments with him all day long, to explain and convince him that he's not that right, or not right at all.
Or we can keep silent and wait for shit to happen.
I'm already applying the stfu strategy myself... Because the other way round is exhausting.
At the same time, naturally, I'm looking for opportunities somewhere else. And, naturally, in those job ads, they state "X years of experience".
This further sets me off.
I'm sick of having an argument shut down because someone has X more years of experience, at a higher position, thinks he is better.
I am starting to hate people who boasts his years of experience instead of having the real knowledge and skills to create value.

Create value, not work
Can't believe I'm asked to do something that I feel is absolutely worthless
Okay, yes I know I need to get paid...
Let's just say I don't share the vision with whoever came up with these tasks

I've been working on a project which has been understaffed (from the beginning, now I know).

All the newly hired guys, who are more experienced than me (in terms of how many years of work experience), use Eclipse.

I use IntelliJ.

I don't think I can make them switch to IntelliJ.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how frustrated should I be?

!rant

Not sure if it's appropriate here...
I think I am getting more affected by the "depression"... Lower productivity, restless sleeps, etc.
I quoted "depression" because I think it's a medical term that I need to get diagnosed before confirming it. I am thinking maybe I need to see a doctor on this but don't know where to start.
Any Hong Kongers here, sharing the same feel?...

Isn't it just great when there have been unrealistic deadlines chasing you and you keep missing, every day, for over a year?

Meanwhile this guy on the other team just talks on phone all day long for personal matters, no giving a shit to progress.

Yeah I know it's none of my business. But just get the fuck off my face. The mumbling is so annoying.

And he's also that guy I keep bitching about because of his desk finger drumming and keyboard smashing.

co worker repeatedly knock on his fucking desk like it's nobody's business

Fuck timesheet
It's bad enough someone fucking disturb you in the middle of great thoughts. What's worse, you're QUESTIONED where the fuck your time was spent. So you need to work out how much time you have been disturbed, and put in the fucking timesheet!
What a fucking joke! As if we have too much time for meaningful stuff.

Just learned that yesterday someone suggested putting the dev team on "workspace", when I was on leave.

My first question, "what the hell is workspace?"
"It's a remote environment..."
Okay I get it. Are you kidding me? Doing development on remote desktop?

My second question, "Why the hell did someone suggest that?"
"We have had issues with devs using MySQL but the target prod will be using PostgreSQL. That caused issues, inconsistencies... And we found some issues after deployment."

Okay so much for DB agnostic. I called it out that everyone now install PostgreSQL on local. Problem solved, hopefully.

Why we had MySQL in the first place? Yes DB agnostic is one of the reason. The other being I'm more familiar with MySQL so it's quicker to perform tasks (like "can you clone that environment for me" and "can you fix the data on XYZ"). But that's trivial.

Just some ridiculous suggestion that set me off.

Got a gift from my friend. It was from an Indiegogo project. It worked fantastically until it has broken recently.
Although 1 year warranty was promised according to the site, the fact that it's from Indiegogo means that's non existence (I'd say if you actually receive the thing, you're very lucky). So I disassembled it and had a look.
Now I'm thinking maybe I just need to hack my way in to find out what that blown chip is and if I can replace it.
I am also disgusted by the Chinese printed on the IC...