I was getting bored and my salary had not changed for over a year. Answered a few headhunters' messages. Got an interview. Then - the second one. Got an offer with >2x the salary I was getting back then. I said I'll think about it

Came back to my office after that interview. 5 minutes later I got an outlook invitation for a performance review with my manager, scheduled for tomorrow.

During the review he appologised he had overlooked the fact that my promo and salary had to be bumped up a while ago. We had a nice chat [he is an amasing manager! I've learnt so much from him...] and he offered a 50% salary bump. There I go and reveal that I got an offer yesterday with 100% higher amount of € and asked if we could meet in the middle. He agreed :)

I was offered a lot and I asked for even more. And I got it! :) I've agreed to a 75% bump because I really like working here. It's an amazing employer.

Voice commands are the future!!!! .... God I hope not... Why do people like this obviously inferior interface?

A real conversation with Google assistant while driving, I got a text:

"Read text"
...
"Read text message"
*You have one text message from Dave. Would you like to hear it?*
"... Yes!"
* Hey what's up?*
"Reply"
....
"Reply to text"
*I don't understand*
"Text Dave!!!!"
"Message James using SMS. What's the message?"

GAH!!!!!!!! fuck you Google assistant! This is literally the only thing I use you for, so stop being so fucking bad at it!!!!

This isn’t gonna be a random because I do eventually get to a Tech and YouTube related topic.

YouTube is actually killing itself with all of the dumbass rules they’re implementing. Trying to child proof or limit educational content is genuinely a shit policy. The reason so many gaming channels are switching to twitch because it doesn’t try to censor you.

But now I don’t know if you’ve heard but YouTube updated their guidelines and they’re no longer allowing content that teaches people about Hacking essentially (and I hate putting it like that but I can’t remember the exact words they used Hacking just summarizes it) which is fucking ridiculous like what the fuck else, are they gonna stop allowing lock picking videos?

YouTube has always been an amazing FREE resource for people learning Programming, Cyber Security, IT related fields, and even shit like lock picking, cooking, car stuff, and all that stuff. Even sometimes when the tutorials aren’t as detailed or helpful to me they might be exactly what someone else needed. And Cyber Security can be a difficult topic to learn for free. It’s not impossible far from it, but YouTube being there was always great. And to think that a lot of those could be taken down and all of the Security based channels could either lose all revenue or just be terminated is terrifying for everyone but more so them.

A lot of people and schools rely on YouTube for education and to learn from. It’s not like YouTube is the only resource and I understand they don’t want to be liable for teaching people that use these skills for malicious purposes but script kiddies and malicious people can easily get the same knowledge. Or pay someone to give them what they want. But that’s unfair to the people that don’t use the information maliciously.

It’s the same for the channels of different topics can’t even swear and it’s ridiculous there’s so many better options than just banning it. Like FUCK kids nowadays hear swearing from their older siblings, parents, friends, and TV it’s inevitable whether someone swears or not and YouTube is not our parents, they aren’t CBS, so stop child proofing the fucking site and let us learn. Fuck.

TLDR YouTube is banning educational hacking videos and are being retarded with rules in general

Here’s a poster with a super short description of each one to help you keep track and find some new useful Linux tools.

Linux ❤️

I can't believe this company.

They want to stop using Certificates because it bothers the customer.

I had to use https because we were using service workers for a PWA.

I tried explaining we need them for the product to work, and also it's a basic security measure.

They were removing the certificates without my knowledge.

I found out because a colleague wanted a way to disable the service worker and asked me for help.

The manager said your not the boss of the company, it's not your company to make decisions.

Just do what they say, he tried to justify the decision from above, I said ok when was the last time you installed a certificate? he said never.
Ok, then what the fuck are you talking about, its 10 minutes to get a certificate letscrypt HELLO.

This company is very hierarchical 1900 style, I'm the person who does innovation in the organization, that's the most fucked up part, they say no to everything.
OMG, I'm going to quit.

There just asking to get hacked, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Is this common or are they morons?

(Interview for sde-3 position)
(continuation of https://devrant.com/rants/2132431/... )

Interviewer - *opens laptop. Gives a question.* solve this.

Me - *a bit surprised that such questions were being asked on a sde-3 level*
this is the 4th or 5th question from geeksforgeeks, isn't it? I know the answer to this. Do u still want me to solve it?

Interviewer - *not believing me* Yes

Me - okay. Well this *writing down the original solution mentioned on the site* is the verbatim code mentioned on the website, with complexity O(n^2).
However I feel this is not the optimal solution. Let me write a better solution.
*I provide a better solution*
This has a complexity of O(n log n) . What do you think?

Interviewer - Nope. This could be a lot better.

Me - okay. Let me see. Did some minor changes, added some caching (obviously this will have no effect on the base algorithm) etc
How about now?

Interviewer - nope. Still not good.

Me - okay. Can you tell me how to improve it?

Interviewer - no we are not allowed to solve problems for you. It is not our interview, it is yours.

Me - that makes no sense. Interviews are a two way street. I'd very much like to know the optimal answer to this.

Interviewer - okay
*copies down the answer from geeksforgeeks*
This is good

Me - *at first I thought this was a prank or something. *
I just mentioned this answer here.
Then I spent the next 10 minutes providing a BETTER solution.
May I know how yours is better?

Interviewer - this solution has 2-3 loops. Yours has a function calling itself.

Me - that's called divide and conquer using recursion mf!
Anyways let's take an example and do a dry run.

Interviewer - okay

*we do dry run*

Interviewer - oh yes. Yours ran faster. But it will run fast only sometimes.

Me - yes. Each time the algorithm rolls a dice to decide if it should run fast or slow. You have one goddamn awesome weed dealer man.
I got to go. Thank you for meeting me.

I'm trying to sign up for insurance benefits at work.

Step 1: Trying to find the website link -- it's non-existent. I don't know where I found it, but I saved it in keepassxc so I wouldn't have to search again. Time wasted: 30 minutes.

Step 2: Trying to log in. Ostensibly, this uses my work account. It does not. Time wasted: 10 minutes.

Step 3: Creating an account. Username and Password requirements are stupid, and the page doesn't show all of them. The username must be /[A-Za-z0-9]{8,60}/. The maximum password length is VARCHAR(20), and must include upper/lower case, number, special symbol, etc. and cannot include "password", repeated charcters, your username, etc. There is also a (required!) hint with /[A-Za-z0-9 ]{8,60}/ validation. Want to type a sentence? better not use any punctuation!

I find it hilarious that both my username and password hint can be three times longer than my actual password -- and can contain the password. Such brilliant security.

My typical username is less than 8 characters. All of my typical password formats are >25 characters. Trying to figure out memorable credentials and figuring out the hidden complexity/validation requirements for all of these and the hint... Time wasted: 30 minutes.

Step 4: Post-login. The website, post-login, does not work in firefox. I assumed it was one of my many ad/tracker/header/etc. blockers, and systematically disabled every one of them. After enabling ad and tracker networks, more and more of the site loaded, but it always failed. After disabling bloody everything, the site still refused to work. Why? It was fetching deeply-nested markup, plus styling and javascript, encoded in xml, via api. And that xml wasn't valid xml (missing root element). The failure wasn't due to blocking a vitally-important ad or tracker (as apparently they're all vital and the site chain-loads them off one another before loading content), it's due to shoddy development and lack of testing. Matches the rest of the site perfectly. Anyway, I eventually managed to get the site to load in Safari, of all browsers, on a different computer. Time wasted: 40 minutes.

Step 5: Contact info. After getting the site to work, I clicked the [Enroll] button. "Please allow about 10 minutes to enroll," it says. I'm up to an hour and 50 minutes by now. The first thing it asks for is contact info, such as email, phone, address, etc. It gives me a warning next to phone, saying I'm not set up for notifications yet. I think that's great. I select "change" next to the email, and try to give it my work email. There are two "preferred" radio buttons, one next to "Work email," one next to "Personal email" -- but there is only one textbox. Fine, I select the "Work" preferred button, sign up for a faux-personal tutanota email for work, and type it in. The site complains that I selected "Work" but only entered a personal email. Seriously serious. Out of curiosity, I select the "change" next to the phone number, and see that it gives me four options (home, work, cell, personal?), but only one set of inputs -- next to personal. Yep. That's amazing. Time spent: 10 minutes.

Step 6: Ranting. I started going through the benefits, realized it would take an hour+ to add dependents, research the various options, pick which benefits I want, etc. I'm already up to two hours by now, so instead I decided to stop and rant about how ridiculous this entire thing is. While typing this up, the site (unsurprisingly) automatically logged me out. Fine, I'll just log in again... and get an error saying my credentials are invalid. Okay... I very carefully type them in again. error: invalid credentials. sajfkasdjf.

Step 7 is going to be: Try to figure out how to log in again. Ugh.

"Please allow about 10 minutes" it said. Where's that facepalm emoji?

But like, seriously. How does someone even build a website THIS bad?

##REAL STORY##
Friend: Hey there, I have a Java Exam after one hour and I have a question for you.

Me: Great ! How can I help

F: They will give us a problem and ask us to solve it by writing a Java code.

Me: Okay,

F: That's it.

Me: Good, so were's the question.

F: Come on, of course I want to know how to solve it.

Me: Absolute Silence.

Me: friendsList.removeAll();

Client asks for redesign to look more like XYZ site.

I deliver a redesign to look more like XYZ site.

Client wants the site to look more like his old site. But different. Gives extensive instructions on how to design his website to his liking.

At some point, I think I'll be owing him money for his design/dev services, not the other way around.

What is it with these people?

My previous employer still (contractually) owes me $5k. I still have push access to the repo and prod servers. Should I add a reminder to the admin dashboard? (After yet another email reminder, ofc.)

I could also mail him an invoice, since I have his addresses. Then again, it has been about a year since I was supposed to receive it, so maybe I'll just file a lawsuit. 🙄

Should @Root sue her ex-boss?

29-year veteran here. Began programming professionally in 1990, writing BASIC applications for an 8-bit Apple II+ computer. Learned Pascal, C, Clipper, COBOL. Ironic side-story: back then, my university colleagues and I used to make fun of old COBOL programmers. Fortunately, I never had to actually work with the language, but the knowledge allowed me to qualify for a decent job position, back in '92.

For a while, I worked with an IBM mainframe, using REXX and EXEC2 scripting languages for the VM/SP operating system. Then I began programming for the web, wrote my first dynamic web applications with cgi-bin shell and Perl scripts. Used the little-known IBM Net.Data scripting language. I finally learned PHP and settled with it for many, many years.

I always wanted to be a programmer. As a kid I dreamed of being like Kevin Flynn, of TRON - create world famous videogames and live upstairs my own arcade place! Later on, at some point, I was disappointed, I questioned my skills, I thought I should do more, I let other people's expectations make feel bad. Then I finally realized I actually enjoy a quieter, simpler life. And I made peace with it.

I'm now like the old programmers I used to mock 30 years ago. There's so much shit inside my brain. And everything seems so damn complex these days. Frameworks, package managers, transpilers, layers and more layers of code. I try to keep up. And the more I learn, the more it seems I don't know.

Sometimes I feel tired. Yet, I still enjoy creating things and solving problems with programming. I still have fun learning. And after all these years, I learned to be proud of my work, even if it didn't turn out to be as glamorous as in the movies.

A young guy I work with burst into tears today, I had no idea what happened so I tried to comfort him and ask what was up.

It appears his main client had gone nuts with him because they wanted him to make an internet toolbar (think Ask.com) and he politely informed them toolbars doesn't really exist anymore and it wouldn't work on things like modern browsers or mobile devices.

Being given a polite but honest opinion was obviously something the client wasn't used to and knowing the guy was a young and fairly inexperienced, they started throwing very personal insults and asking him exactly what he knows about things (a lot more than them).

So being the big, bold, handsome senior developer I am, I immediately phoned the client back and told them to either come speak to me face-to-face and apologise to him in person or we'd terminate there contract with immediate effect. They're coming down tomorrow...

So part my rant, part a rant on behalf of a young developer who did nothing wrong and was treated like shit, I think we've all been there.

We'll see how this goes! Who the hell wants a toolbar anyway?!