It’s really painful how non technical people think all technical stuff is the same.

The amount of times I’ve been brought in to help someone with a printer or WiFi network.

I didn’t do a computer science degree for this.

I’m also pretty sure my last two bosses think fixing the printer is the same as creating large scale systems.

My last boss wanted me to build a Vr chatbot despite spending the last few years building web servers and react/redux apps. I mean I can probably figure it out and it’ll be fun, but don’t think I’m gonna get this done in a week with all my other responsibilities too.

My new boss wants me to singlehandedly build a massive marketplace system that would probably take a team of ten, several years.

Fed up of being around non technical managers who don’t listen to me with my feedback.

Time for a new chapter in the new year.

My client recently asked for help with a product idea he has. He already got his lead developer to hack a proof of concept together.

My client knows I have more time and would start progressing the whole project. He says that he is fed up of all of these huge plans for some huge product...

I said ok, let's start getting the next few features on and using the product with the team.

He then said he wanted a big plan for the whole thing... so I said the whole point was to just get on with it and see how we get on as there are so many unknowns.

Somehow, due to a lack of other work, I have decided to help make a proposal that is far too long for this project. Would have just been better to get on for a few days and make a MVP of the product that works.

Instead I am waiting to see if this latest proposal will actually land me this work...

I'm pretty sure all of this back and forth is proof I don't want to work for this client!

It’s really painful how non technical people think all technical stuff is the same.

The amount of times I’ve been brought in to help someone with a printer or WiFi network.

I didn’t do a computer science degree for this.

I’m also pretty sure my last two bosses think fixing the printer is the same as creating large scale systems.

My last boss wanted me to build a Vr chatbot despite spending the last few years building web servers and react/redux apps. I mean I can probably figure it out and it’ll be fun, but don’t think I’m gonna get this done in a week with all my other responsibilities too.

My new boss wants me to singlehandedly build a massive marketplace system that would probably take a team of ten, several years.

Fed up of being around non technical managers who don’t listen to me with my feedback.

Time for a new chapter in the new year.

#whosHiring?

Tech support meow

Saw this in my inbox this morning from my boss.

He doesn't normally get involved with css...

I bought the new dell xps15 57 days ago and now it’s ducked (pun intended).

Last week the screen stopped working. I powered off and back on. Then I get a cpu failure light sequence.

I call dell. To my surprise they have given me next day support for free. The guy comes the next day.

He says he will come between 4-6pm. at 615pm he phones me and says he will be late. I hang out at work to wait for him.

Finally at 730pm he comes and doesn’t have a screwdriver for the laptop. So he leaves to go buy one. 8pm he comes back. It takes him an hour to replace the motherboard by which time I just want to check it works and then go home. It seems good and we both leave the dark office at 930pm.

The next day I notice the sound isn’t working. He also hasn’t closed the laptop properly and there is a dent on the right hand side.

Despite dell giving me next day support it takes a week for them to come back with a solution.

I now have to send it off to them and I’ll be a week without the laptop...

It was incredible when it was working. But laptops aren’t great when they don’t work!

Perhaps I should have got a Mac...

I managed to get a new dell XPS 15 with uhd display, 16GB RAM and a nice i7 for work.

My boss previously asked for advice from me for which laptop to get, he ignored my advice which was for him to get a nice surface book pro for his excel activities

Instead he got a shitty Mac book air (who are these people who like the airs?). As his cto I was upset he didn’t trust his tech guy to choose him a powerful laptop that was useful.

Anyway, he saw my new laptop this week and a contractor was admiring it. My boss then said why didn’t you tell me to get this one? (The surface pro is the same spec but with tablet and pen ability).

What a dick. I’m still mad he didn’t listen to me. And now he is saying I never told him.

Macs are shit btw. This dell is great and I don’t know how we lived without uhd screens before.

I spent the last 3 months trying to hire new developers for my team. I found someone experienced who is great and a graduate, who is, well, a graduate.

For some reason he thinks he knows everything about our framework he has never used and seems to think he knows how everything works in our codebase which he has never seen.

That’s fine. I’ve had my share of cocky developers.

But what confuses me is that when I ask him what critical bugs are left, he reels off two significant ones. I ask what it will take to fix it. Of course he says he knows how to fix it. So I say great. Then fix it and let’s move on to a more fun part of our project.

Suddenly he didn’t know where he problem was and so I told him he had to investigate and come back with something concrete.

It’s just frustrating managing this developer who is deceitful.

What's in the box?

Which god does dairy pray to?

*~~~~~~~~*

Cheesus

What's the best framework?

++ if you solve it

(Neat solution)

#noHints

Boss: Google Excel sucks!
Me: You mean Google Sheets.
Boss: Whatever, there used to be formulas for the cells, just like offline Excel, but now it has some weird text like a web address...
Me: You're looking at the web address bar. Look down 20px and you have the cell formula.
Boss: Oh! Still, I don't like this Online Excel!

My boss is technically restricted shall we say.

As the cto I have also been designated office IT guy. Which means apparently fixing the printer. Which is ok I guess. I mean it's bullsh*t but hey.

Anyway, about 6 months ago he said he needed a new laptop. He lives his life in excel and outlook, and even though the whole company uses google docs for everything he still exports everything to excel, makes a copy, then saves it back to drive so everything gets out of sync.

It's a fun problem that I have banned everyone from doing obviously but he continues.

Anyway, anyway, he wanted a new windows laptop naturally. I said to spend about £700 on a decent machine rather than buying something cheap that will frustrate and not last long.

He doesn't listen and gets some old windows 7 machine for £300. It's an alright spec for 2009; he must not have got the memo about it being 2017.

4 months go by and he says he needs a new laptop because this one is too slow (not least because he opens 400 chrome tabs and never reboots his machine). Anyway, I fix the problem of uninstalling all his bloatware and it runs quicker but he has his heart set on a new machine.

He insists.

I suggest he spend the money this time so he literally doesn't buy a new one in 4 months. I suggest the surface book that's £1200. A little overpriced but he will love the touch screen, it's powerful enough and it's windows. Ticks all the boxes for him.

He suddenly decides he wants a Mac.

I tell him it will be a nightmare for everyone if he does that.

He insists.

I suggest the Mac book pro as I've had mine for 6 years now and it's still going strong. It's a little more expensive than the surface but it will last.

He then says he wants the air.

I say they haven't updated them in ages and they aren't actually that powerful.

He insists.

That night he just buys an air from the Apple Store.

WHY THE FU*k ARE YOU ASKING ME FOR ADVICE IF YOURE NOT GOING TO LISTEN YOU MOTHERFUC*er. WASTING MY TIME AND YOURS.

Was very close to rage quitting when he wanted me to back up his old machine but didn't bring in his hard drive and didn't want to put it in the cloud. #whatDoYouWantMeToDoWithYourOldPornCollection

To top it all off I ran some benchmarks and my 6 year old Mac book pro is more powerful than his "brand new" air.

There's beta puns out there.

I was dressed up as an UDP packet for the Halloween. I don’t think anyone got it, but I couldn’t tell. #humour

Have a great Halloween :)

My boss caught me out the other day. He asked which browser do we test on. In our documentation it's ff chrome and ie10. In reality it's not ie.

I opened ie for the first time in a long time the other day to find a crap load of bugs. Including the attached.

When I fix other people's code

Been using a really useful third party library for over a year now. Been great. Until I wanted to do one thing programatically which wasn't possible and without spending a fair bit of time editing this version of the library.

The new version of the library does what I want. But it changes how everything else interacts with it.

Feeling really down about spending ages working that out and then realise I still have another few days of integration at least. </rant>

I prefer hard rock myself!

There are 10 types of people in this world!

Consulting

Found a coworker's unattended Mac? Let us freak em out (err prank em out).

Open the terminal app and type:
crontab -e

Append:
*/30 * * * * say -v whisper "I am watching you"

Save and close the file. You're welcome. Linux user replace say with espeak command ;). Credit https://twitter.com/JZdziarski/...

The struggle used to be real.

My life too.

This is scarily accurate!

I played a prank on my coworkers. Covered the bottom sensor of the mouse with part of a post-it note. I went home for the night.

The following morning My boss was the only one in at first and spent an hour unplugging and plugging it back in. He was just about to go out to buy another mouse when someone else came in, immediately looked at the bottom, chuckled to himself and took it off.