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AboutPhD Student - Data Analytics
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Skillspython, C++, agent-based modelling, data assimilation
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LocationLeeds
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Joined devRant on 11/9/2019
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Next week I'm starting a new job and I kinda wanted to give you guys an insight into my dev career over the last four years. Hopefully it can give some people some insight into how a career can grow unexpectedly.
While I was finishing up my studies (AI) I decided to talk to one of these recruiters and see what kind of jobs I could get as soon as I would be done. The recruiter immediately found this job with a Java consultancy company that also had a training aspect on the side (four hours of training a week).
In this job I learned a lot about many things. I learned about Spring framework, clean code, cloud deployment, build pipelines, Microservices, message brokers and lots more.
As this was a consultancy company, I was placed at different companies. During my time here I worked on two different projects.
The first was a Microservices project about road traffic data. The company was a mess, and I learned a lot about company politics. I think I never saw anything I built really released in my 16 months there.
I also had to drive 200km every day for this job, which just killed me. And after far too long I was finally moved to the second company, which was much closer.
The second company was a fintech startup funded by a bank. Everything was so much better than the traffic company. There was a very structured release schedule, with a pretty okay scrum implementation. Every team had their own development environment on aws which worked amazingly. I had a lot of fun at this job, with many cool colleagues. And all the smart people around me taught me even more about everything related to working in software engineering.
I quit my job at the consultancy company, and with that at the fintech place, because I got an opportunity I couldn't refuse. My brother was working for Jordan Belfort, the Wolf of Wallstreet, and he said they needed a developer to build a learning platform. So I packed my bags and flew to LA.
The office was just a villa on the beach, next to Jordan's house. The company was quite small and there were actually no real developers. There was a guy who claimed to be the cto of the company, but he actually only knew how to do WordPress and no one had named him cto, which was very interesting.
So I sat down with Jordan and we talked about the platform he wanted to build. I explained how the things he wanted would eventually not be able with WordPress and we needed to really start building software and become a software development company. He agreed and I was set to designing a first iteration of the platform.
Before I knew it I was building the platform part by part, adding features everywhere, setting up analytics, setting up payment flows, monitoring, connecting to Salesforce, setting up build pipelines and setting up the whole aws environment. I had to do everything from frontend to the backest of backends. Luckily I could grow my team a tiny bit after a while, until we were with four. But the other three were still very junior, so I also got the task of training them next to developing.
Still I learned a lot and there's so much more to tell about my time at this company, but let's move forward a bit.
Eventually I had to go back to the Netherlands because of reasons. I still worked a bit for them from over here, but the fun of it was gone without my colleagues around me, so I quit last September.
I noticed I was all burned out, had worked far too much, so I decided to take a few months off and figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I even wondered whether I wanted to stay in programming.
Fast forward to last few weeks. I figured out I actually did want to work in software still, but now I would focus on getting the right working circumstances. No more driving 3 hours every day, no more working 12 hours every day. Just work close to home and find a company with the right values.
So I started sending out resumes and I gave one recruiter the chance to arrange some interviews too. I spoke to 7 companies in the span of one week. And they were all very interested. Eventually I narrowed it down to 2 companies and asked them for offers. And the company that actually had my preference offered me significantly more than I asked for, which settled the deal.
So tomorrow I'm officially signing with them, and starting next week I'll be developing in Kotlin, diving into functional programming and running our code in serverless environments. I'm very excited! -
Why do HR people ask stupid questions like the following ones? Everytime I get those questions, I have imaginary answers like the ones right after each question.
Why do you want to work here?
- Obviously, because I need the money to survive. I'm not here because I love working for you and having to endure your stress. I'm not that type of a kinky person.
Are you flexible?
- Why? Do you want to annoy me when I'm sleeping in the middle of the night because of a sudden deadline or because a god damn employee didn't show up?
Do you see yourself as a perfect fit for both developer and tech support roles?
- Read my fucking resume, moron. I applied for a developer role. Nothing else.
Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
- As if you would care. It's none of your business, but since we are at it. I see myself as your manager in 5 years. Hope that you like that thought.
We didn't bother reading your CV. Would you like to tell us about yourself?
- Nope. Have a nice day and suck my dick. I'm leaving.
Can you give us your phone number and the phone number of your girlfriend?
- I didn't know that I am selling my soul to your company by accepting this job offer. I'm not your slave and you will not call me whenever I'm enjoying my private time.
What's motivating you?
- Money and the peaceful vibe at work when you are shutting the fuck up when I'm fully focused during my projects.
How do you handle stress?
- I dick slap everyone infront of me.
Do you see yourself as a hard worker?
- Nah, I'm not interested in sucking dicks, eating her ass and bending over to get a little bit of a raise.11 -
The new guy:
- I'm a big fan of effectiveness and efficiency. The faster can you do the task - the better.
- naah, typing in the terminal is soo inefficient. Typing, remembering commands, parameters, paths... That's such a drag! Such a lag! Having a button I could click to do the job is far better!
- OSS is the root of all the evil!
- I'd like to try linux once again. I like it, hopefully I won't need to spend another couple of weeks setting up dual-gpu power management and searches for an Intel wifi's dual-antennae driver.
- I need a bluetooth mouse for my laptop. Using trackpoint or a touchpad is a nonsense [I agree abt the trackpoint]. Using a keyboard/typing for navigation?!? That's utter nonsense!
- I'd like to try i3wm, it looks effective and efficient
it's happened within the last month and I'm still trying to compile all this input into his preferences. So far I'm getting too many conflicting errors13 -
So, I’m a software engineer at one of the FANG companies, and a “friend” from college that I haven’t talked to in years suddenly messages me, asking for my work email. I’m like, why would you ever need that? And he replies, “I’m gonna send you an email with a link, can you open it from your work computer? I’ll pay you for doing that, and it’s totally legal.”
Yeah... how about fuck no.
He blocked me after I refused.11 -
Recruiter:
... the bank purchased a 3rd party tool and hired a 3rd party development team to add some features to the tool. That external team hired their own 3rd party team, and now there are 400+ bugs in the system. Would you like to work as a test-automation lead on this project?
Me: Fuuuucck no.5 -
A lot of times during holiday parties, I meet new people.
Afterwards, often a quick group chat is created to share pictures with all the people there.
Every goddamn time we come at this point again where this is done and since WhatsApp is nearly considered a requirement to function in society (Netherlands) and I refuse to use it and other mainstream media...
The moment that I have to explain why I don't use WhatsApp arrives, yet again. I don't find it awkward anymore but it doesn't improve the atmosphere and getting called paranoid for the rest of the party also isn't the most fun thing ever!
In the end I usually get the pictures emailed.14 -
More talking with manager today. If i wanted to check out the 200+ issue backlog to see if there is anything i can pick up.
I was just laughing. I already do that on a weekly basis. It’s not that i dont want to work! -
When a complaint form doesn't work on a website..
Is that a bug or a feature?
Oh and the online chat is a bot.2 -
One of our devs seems to love "attribution" comments in anything he writes.
private void foo() { //Author: John Cribbins
...public static final int FOO_BAR = 21; //Author: John Cribbins
I mean, I get it for an author tag at the top of a file, but certainly not on every field or method. Is this some kind of weird thing newer devs are encouraged to do these days?!9 -
Root encounters HR at her new job.
So, I left my job a few weeks ago. I was pretty sad about it, so I didn't want to write anything about it. It was a great place to work, with great managers, decent coworkers, and interesting work. I also had free reign over how I built things, what to improve, etc. Within about four months, I authored over half of the total commits on their backend repo, added a testing suite with 90% coverage, significantly improved the security (more accurately: added security), etc. but I got a job offer that allowed me to work remotely, and make well over six figures (usd). I couldn't turn it down, even though I wanted to. So, I left. I'm still genuinely sad about that. I had emotions and everything. 🙁 I stayed on long enough to finish the last of the features for their new product launch, and make sure everything was stable. I'm welcome back whenever, though they don't want to have remote employees, and I want to move, so. that's probably not going to happen. sigh.
Anyway, I started my new job this week. Rented an office (read: professional closet) and everything! It's been veritable mountains of HR paperwork so far. That's all I've done besides some accounts setup. I've seriously only worked on and completed one ticket so far in two and a half days, and I still have six documents/contracts to sign! (and benefits; that'll probably take my weekend.)
But getting an I9 thing notarized? Apparently I only have three days before I'm legally unemployable by them or something, idk. HR made it sound ridiculously dire and important, and reminded me like five or more times. I figured it was just some notary service; that takes like 10 minutes, right? So I put it off until my second day so I didn't have to disappear in the middle of my first day. Anyway, I called a bunch of notary services on day 2, and apparently only like 5% of them both do notary services this time of year and aren't booked full. And of those, probably another 5% will notarize I9 documents.. No idea why it's rare, but whatever, I'm not a notary.
The HR lady assured me that I didn't need any special documents; I should just go there, present my IDs, and the notary will provide or draft documents for everything else. Totally doesn't sound right, but fine; I'm not a notary nor will I ever work in HR, so I'm not very knowledgeable about this. So, against my better judgement I decided to just go anyway. I called around and finally found a place that wasn't closed, busy, or refusing, and drove over there. Waited. Waited. Waited. Notary lady was super slow in every single action. (I should mention that it's now 10am, and I have a meeting with the Senior VP of Engineering [a stern, stubborn old goat who enjoys making people feel inadequate] at 12:30pm.) The notary lady looks like she's an npc updating in slow motion (maybe at 0.25x speed?) and can't seem to understand what I need. Eventually, she tells me exactly what I had assumed: if there's no document, she can't notarize said document, and she doesn't have an I9 for the company I'm trying to work for. (like, duh.) So I thank her for proving the flow of time is variable, which she ignores in slow motion, and drive back home. It's now about 11.
I message the same HR lady, and the useless wench gawks in surprise and says she's never heard of that ridiculous request before. It took prodding to get her to respond every time, but after some (very slow) back and forth, she says she wants to call the notary personally and ask what they need. I waited around for another response that never came, and eventually just drove to the notary place again to have them notarize the required ID documents. That plus my chat history with HR should be enough to show that I bloody well tried, and HR just shit the bed instead. I finally got them notarized at like 12:10, and totally broke the speed limit the entire way to the office, found the last remaining parking spot, and made it to my office just in time for the meeting. seriously, less than two minutes to spare. Meeting was interesting (mostly about security), but totally made me facepalm, shout "Seriously!? What the hell are you thinking!?" and make slapping motions at some of the people talking. I will probably rant about that next.
But anyway, I'm willing to bet that the useless wench won't get back to me before the notary closes, if at all, and will somehow try to blame it completely on me if I bring it up again. Passive aggressive bitch. She's probably thinking: "If I don't help her with these mandatory legal processes, it'll be her fault she didn't get them done in time. I mean, they're so easy! She's just doing it wrong." I fucking hate HR.13 -
I made the perfect situational joke:
I was explaining physics to a coworker and stating that the only particles that are important for everyday life are protons, electrons and neutrons.
CW:" What about neutrinos? You don't care about them?"
Me:" No, I don't. Wanna know why?"
CW:"Yes, tell me."
ME:" Because, they don't matter!"1 -
Just recalled the time we sent the new apprentice developer to HR for a "verbal agreement form" to request his birthday off. HR Came back down with him unsure as to where to find the verbal agreement forms.
"Well, that's not very funny." - HR2 -
Half life 2 runs smoothly in a 12 year old PC with Nvidia 8500, 1 GB RAM, and a dual core.
A FPS with wavy water reflection, body physics and huge designed maps which is updates every fucking frame.
Today I can't run smoothly an IDE with 8 GB of RAM and 4 cores.
A program which only reacts to events stutters if I write at more than 3 letters per sec.
I wanna go back. Can we go back? Lets keep the new hardware and go back with the software pleeeease.20 -
Yeah, if my so called "friends" can just stop making me feel guilty for staying in with my son instead of going out having beers in pretentious clubs, with music blasting at a billion decibels that we can't even have a decent conversation.
If you could just stop; that would be great.
I'm sorry I have to work. I'm sorry I can't leave my 6 year old alone in the house on a school night. I'm sorry I don't have an army of maids to look after him. I'm sorry I don't have personal drivers to take him to school. I'm sorry if your family or your wife's family is so fucking rich you're basically a kept man and now bored out of your wits.
Please, just fuck off with this toxic behavior. We are not in our 20s anymore.
Thank you.7 -
My friend silently quited his job. He simply stopped coming to work and that is OK, because his contract expired last Monday. He worked for very bad company, where everyone was braging about how awesome dev they are and know everything better than him. Since company forgot to talk with him about contract renewal or to find a replacement, they are now in big troubles because braggers broke production and none know how to fix it :)6
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Is there a practical way to predict the crowd density of a place in real-time?
I was thinking of some way to scrape social media activities and using the geolocation tags to predict the crowd in that particular area?
But I am looking for a more accurate alternative!
Please help!!
All ideas are welcome12 -
Motherfucking website style JavaScript rant ahead.
Just tried to register some travel tickets, at FlixBus. Of course alternatively I could go for a train but those would be more expensive. So yeah.
Turns out that the website loads JavaScript from 20 domains including 3 required CloudFront ones (those are the most annoying because it's not possible to tell by the domain what it would be doing). But alright, I'll take it. Web 3.0 amirite?
So I go and find myself a nice bus, add it to my cart.. oh shit it's the wrong one. Change some parameters, hit return.. well guess what. Turns out that in all their JavaScript glory they couldn't implement that much. Awesome!
Go to another site to get another ticket for my travel back, only to find out that while they couldn't implement return, their webdevs are apparently skilled enough to get a giant boner on blinking "(1) Almost ready!" in the site's title, when changing to another tab and there happens to be stuff in the cart. Do you really think I care about that shit! Don't distract me and let me get my shit done!!!
So, to all you webdevs who would pull something like this and wank on it too. Guess what motherfucker. That purchase got cancelled through the power of JavaScript wank, because there's no way I'm supporting that dystopian junk. Guess what, when people shell out money at your shitty online shop, they may want a quarter-ass decent UX too. And no notifications or any of that wank, you hear me?
But yeah fucking Web 3.0!!! Give me a fucking break.8 -
Me: Can you lift an elephant with one hand?
Bing: You really can't because even the strongest human cannot lift an elephant that has one hand.
Yahoo: Elephant FC vs Oklahoma City - today 15:00GMT.
Baidu: 你不能 你不能 that is how you can.
Yandex.ru: Americans killed the Elephant whilst pointing hands at Russian spy.
DuckDuckGo: Elephants have privacies too and lifting one can bridge DDG policies.
Ask.com: Lifting an elephant is a Metaphor.
AOL.com: No result yet. Subscribe to our Newsletter to get latest updates.
Google: (google.com) wants to access your location.5 -
Me: so zero is an integer meaning it means the number value equivalent of nothing but it’s an integer and actually represents a number that exists. Null means the number doesn’t exist and is not an integer.
Idiot in the back seat: So ThEyR’re tHe SaMe5 -
One of my former coworkers was either completely incompetent or outright sabotaging us on purpose. After he left for a different job, I picked up the project he was working on and oh my God it's a complete shitshow. I deleted hundreds of lines of code so far, and replaced them with maybe 30-40 lines altogether. I'm probably going to delete another 400 lines this week before I get to a point where I can say it's fixed.
He defined over 150 constants, each of which was only referenced in a single location. Sometimes performing operations on those constants (with other constants) to get a result that might as well have been hard-coded anyway since every value contributing to that result was hard-coded. He used troublesome and messy workarounds for language defects that were actually fixed months before this project began. He copied code that I wrote for one such workaround, including the comment which states the workaround won't be necessary after May 2019. He did this in August, three months later.
Two weeks of work just to get the code to a point where it doesn't make my eyes bleed. Probably another week to make it stop showing ten warnings every time it builds successfully, preventing Jenkins from throwing a fit with every build. And then I can actually implement the feature I was supposed to implement last month.5