Client: We need to add a field to the model that serves as a unique identifier

Dev: You already have one, it’s the _id property

Client: We want another! This one is for a task number so we can make a connection between the database record and our ERP.

Dev: Ah I see. I can add that for you. Is this truly a unique identifier or will you be using the same ERP identifier for multiple database records?

Client: I already said it’s a unique identifier. One ERP record to one database record, end of story! To do otherwise would be absolutely ridiculous! You should think for yourself before you ask silly questions.

Dev: My apologies I just want to make sure to clarify exactly what the requirements are.

**6 months later**

Client: HOW COME I CAN’T ASSIGN THE SAME UNIQUE IDENTIFIER TO MULTIPLE DATABASE RECORDS??? CAN’T PROGRAMMERS GET ANYTHING RIGHT EVER??

Dev: …

Today I discovered that we have a CSV export button for an order transaction system, on a page which is completely disconnected from the rest of the website.

It is only being called by an internal server, used by our Data department.

They run selenium to click the button.

Then they import the CSV into a database.

That database is accessed by an admin panel.

That admin panel has an excel export button.

Which is clicked by our CFO. But he got bored of clicking, so he uses IFTTT to schedule a download of the XLS and import it in Google Sheets.

That sheet uses a Salesforce data connector.

Marketing then sends email campaigns based on that Salesforce data...

😒

I remember seeing Silicon Valley and watching Big Head do nothing at a big company and thought that was never possible.

Working at a FAANG company for 6 years and just completed 3 months of sitting around doing nothing, with 6 more months to come.

Life is indeed stranger than fiction.

"Do you easily get offended?"

"We have a bro culture here. [Some other stuff and examples] So do you think you can fit in here?"

"Tell us about a time you had to communicate with people who are not as technically capable as you."

I can remember more but cba tbh.

By default, GitHub uses the term "master" for the primary version of a source code repository. Developers make copies of the "master" on their computers into which they add their own code, and then merge the changes back into the "master" repo.

"On Oct. 1, 2020, any new repositories you create will use main as the default branch, instead of master," the company said.

Oh my god. Can you people just fuck off with your arbitrary terminology changes?!?!?

!rant

Just became a dad again for the second and third time.

Healthy twin baby girls!!!

Why on Earth are printer drivers so huge? Seriously, 1GB to print, Epson? There are entire distros of Linux that take up less than that!

I hate how willing companies are to let someone go over money.

I’ll use a real life example with someone I knew. This person joined a company at the entry-level developer and worked up to a senior level. His pay rises were around 3% per year with around a 5–7% promotion raise (there were two of these).

At this point, 4–5 years after joining, he was making far under what a senior developer salary was in his area. Eventually, he interviewed on the team of a friend at another company and was offered a 40% increase. Four-Zero. CRAZY.

What the company did is baffling to me.

His boss said they may be willing to increase 5%, but there was no way they could even match what the other company offered, let alone beat it. The benefits were better at the new company, but he would’ve stayed with the original for a salary match.

So he left…

But what did the original company do? Hired a new senior level developer for the same dollar amount the dev was offered at the new one, then lost about 6 months ramping up that developer due to a super complex code base, and the new developer turned out to be much less capable than the one they just let go.

So wtf? It’s flat out stupid on the company’s part. Some sort of effed up pride or something.

They’d rather let someone walk out the door, knowing it’ll cost just as much to replace them, plus losing literally tens of thousands of dollars on ramp up time, and they gamble on getting a capable developer instead of a known, proven, loyal developer.

Thankfully, the younger tech companies understand this, and many pay people appropriate to level and talent, regardless of what they were making before they advanced to that level.

Me: code quality is important

Everyone: <no shit given>

Director: code quality is important

Everyone: yes, it is very important, hurray!

Fast forward few weeks/months...

Me: why this function accepts 14 arguments?

ShitDev: yhm, you know, we need to fix it... maybe

Me: why this exception is swallowed?

ShitDev: oh, really? yhm, yhm

Me: why this function is copy-pasted and repeated (20 LoCs)?

ShitDev: yeah, true, but we wanted to make it fast.

Me: Dear director, this project sux and its quality is shit.

Director: you're exaggerating, it can't be that bad, it works, right?

Me: <polishing CV>

ShitDev: got praised for delivery

When I told someone to read the docco+wiki and ask me if there were problems, for them to come back every five mins to tell me "so, how does this all work?"

I wrote the wiki and it was A-Z. There's nothing I knew about the product that wasn't in the wiki.

It took me so much self-control to not bash his head into my monitor.

One of the many problems with AWS free tier is the obfuscation of expenditure by design. This is NOT OK.

This is huge progress in almost 0 time!!

I'm so fucking done with all those "woke" YouTube programming tutorials like: "Why you should NEVER use else statements", "Why functions should ALWAYS return a value", "Why switch statements are actually EVIL" and stuff like this
I swear to fucking god

Okay, seriously, are there some secret question-asking ninja skills i am lacking, or does some people just insist on confusing people and wasting time?

I was working on this small bug. Super tiny. Basically a counter that was way off since it counted some duplicate values. Simple, right?
I decided to ask a clarifying question to the lead dev, since i am still new to the company. Really simple. Do we remove duplicate values, do we ignore them in the count when they occur, or is it actually working as expected?

He decides to answer with a long message on what the issue is. That is not what I asked, so I ask again in a slightly different way, thinking he didn't understand the question.. and he answers the same, in a slightly different way.

We go back and forth like this for 30-40 minutes, until I got tired of it and directly asked "I am asking what solution we want, not what the issue is"..
He finally picks option A. Fine. I made the adjustment and pushed my code. He checks it out, and apparently it's wrong.

After a long series of questions (again), it turns out the solution he now describes is exactly what I listed as option C...
A bug that should take 10 minutes to fix ended up taking over 2 hours. Awesome waste of time.

How most recruiter emails go these days:

- Hiring multiple senior lead engineers <— That’s me
- 180k+ <— I like it.
- Must have experience with AWS, GCE, AND Azure <— Okay, you’re looking for a unicorn
- Kubernetes expert
- Experience with Rust, Node, and .NET <— What type of fucking company are you?
- Must be on call and 25% travel <— Why?
- Preferred: experience with printer repair, Raid Arrays, CAT5, and Microsoft Access <— Y’all fucked up somewhere a long time ago. I’m out.

What is the thought process which goes behind wearing a mask on a video call meeting?
[a] virtue signalling
[b] Idiocy
[c] <insert your answer>

Hm... I wonder which one is the top performer

Everyone be like "I started programming at the age of 2 and my first ever spoken words were “for...each”".

We get it, child prodigy.

Don't mind me I'm just salty that I only discovered programming after taking the wrong course at uni which coincidentally had an extraneous Fortran module.

Taught by managers who are too eager to hold "meetings which could have been emails", developers have now fully succumbed to holding "webinars which could have been a readme".

Hmm.. I've noticed a trend in teams at companies: they always seem to have similar personalities, rather than similar skills.

For example, if the team leader is a pathetic, pretentious, sarcastic, frigid, lifeless loser who pretends he's happy, then he usually has a herd of equally pathetic and frigid losers following him. I notice that every time I apply to a company that has such a group, they instantly disqualify me as a member. Interesting, interesting..

The same goes for a company that has down-to-earth people like myself, then the team is usually a down-to-earth manager and down-to-earth, warm-hearted colleagues.

It all makes sense now.

(after morning coffee) Today I’ll change the world and write the most elegant and revolutionary piece of code ever.
(end of day, after 8 zoom meetings and 5 gdocs comment rounds) guess i’ll do these 2 PR reviews tomorrow.

Guy: *hands me sheet of paper* What does this code do?
Me: *looks through code written on the paper* Well, most likely segfault.

*awkward silence*

EDIT: devRant April Fools joke (2021)
-------------------------
Hey everyone,

@trogus and I are happy to make an exciting announcement. With the rapidly increasing success of NFTs, we've decided the devRant community shouldn't miss out on this compelling new paradigm for user-generated content. So, we will soon be offering all rants as NFTs at auction.

To kick things off, we're going to first be offering the first ever rant posted to devRant (https://devrant.com/rants/489/...) at auction for a starting price equivelent to $100,000 USD. We think this is a fair starting price for such a significant piece of devRant history, and we anticipate the final sale price to be significantly higher.

We look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts on this new direction for the devRant community, and we can't wait to see the Rant NFT market take off!

Sincerely,
@dfox & @trogus

DO NOT let employers demoralize you into staying with the company.

I've been with this one company for about 2 years. Everything was great, despite being underpaid, and having a lot of responsibility (I was the only front-end developer maintaining 4 big eCommerce sites).
One day about 2 months ago, I got a better offer. Better pay, more freedom, and way less stress (Customers screaming in your ear vs. no customers at all).

I talked to my team lead since I wanted my company to have a fair chance to counteroffer - I was fairly comfortable after all, and I felt like it would be a nice gesture.
If my team lead had just said "No, sorry, we can't counter that offer", there's a big chance that I would have stayed with them anyway. Instead, I got a fairly uncomfortable and personal rant thrown back at me.

He basically said that I should be happy with my salary, that he didn't feel like I had much responsibility, and that "I wasn't the type of person companies would hire for that salary".
He ended by saying I might as well stay, as there was no going back if the new place didn't work out - basically trying to tempt me with job security.

I told him that I would think about it. The worst part is that I actually did, since his rant really made me feel somewhat worthless as a developer. Luckily I came to my senses, and sent my resignation the next day.

I talked to an old coworker today, and they are still unable to find a developer who wants to take the job. I see that as justice :)

tl;dr: If a company tries to make you stay by demoralizing you - Run.

Guys!

I got a job offer! I start the 26th! (Assuming all goes well)

PEOPLE. DO NOT LIE ON YOUR RESUME. IT. IS. NOT. WORTH. IT. Ok, backstory.

We had a guy apply for this position at work. It really needed to be filled but also required someone with just the right certifications, so hiring the first schmuck to come along Was not an option.

We search high and low and as time passes without an acceptable applicant we become more desperate and open to negotiation. Basically, you name your price, we’ll agree to it at this point.

So finally a guy comes in, got everything we need but one minor certification. No problem. He can get that on the job, he doesn’t need it to start. He’s hired.

So he quotes us a salary 10% above our top range of what we’d usually pay a guy for this position, we don’t care. He gets it. Plus a housing allowance.

So we’re getting him registered with a place to handle his certification process and they call his four year institution to verify his transcript. We work with hazardous materials and a four year degree in a relevant field is required. It’s standard for the certification training institution to check. Especially when it’s a prestigious big name place like this guy had. And here I used to think that was paranoid of them.

They call and tell us the school says they have no record of him. We do some digging. He was never registered there. I’m like “that’s not possible, his professor is a listed reference. We call that reference.

He worked on a project with this man, he never taught him. Is very fascinated to learn this man has been presenting himself as though he attended the university. Asks to be delisted as a reference.

So long story short it comes out this guy did have a degree in this field, just from a less prestigious university.

The insane thing is, he would’ve still gotten the same job and salary package if he’d been honest about his university!

It is a loss for all involved. He doesn’t have a job. We don’t have anyone working in this position. It’s really unfortunate. Don’t lie on your resume people. Your employer will find out and the risks are not worth the benefits.

Licensing is so freaking weird and stupid.

I mean, I just forked this repo with an Apache license, so I could update a .json file.

"You must cause any modified files to carry prominent notices stating that You changed the files"

Plain JSON allows no comments.

I'm going to jail.

So my marketing dept request us to perform a SQL injection to someone's bank account. I refuse to do it.

1. Most bank no longer use Relational Database , they use something like NoSQL Database.

2. Even if the bank Use Relational Database system, I assume their security must be high, validating my session maybe...

3. I am not going to do shit like this for illegal purposes, well this task sounds super illegal to me

4. Hacking is not a part of my job description. I was hired to be a Senior Fullstack Mobile App Developer.

This is screwed up !

In my freelancing job, I got this as a source code ? Really? Are you guys serious? Is this a joke?

I made myself a meme 3 years ago....