Have been thinking of a new job opportunity so started looking and applying a few places. I have mostly been interested in senior software eng positions so had a few calls with companies directly and some recruiters. Seems to be mostly going well and normal.
However received a tech test from one place and one of the questions in the test was "Name 5 microsoft office products and give examples of each with benefits of its use". I am not even paraphrasing it, rhat was exactly how they worded it with 5 bullet points below to provide answer. I am just baffled as to understand if that was a joke or someone had no idea how to test someone for senior position.
I felt bit cocky so answered with "office 365 (or go linux and use freeware or open source)" and left it at that.
Let's see what (if any) feedback I get. 😂😂😂

Extremely frustrated with the release process and versioning system at my current company. Don't know if this is same everywhere or the half ass release managers can't think of a better way here.

Basically for any client raised issue that can't wait for next release are built as a hotfix. However hotfixes are never bundled togather or shiped to other clients. This is causing a vicious chain, two clients raise two separate issues on same version. Instead of fixing them as single hotfix (however minor the issues) we create two hotfix versions for each with only their issue. A week later same clients come back with the issue the other raised. Once again instead of bundling what is now effectively same code we build hotfixes on top of the clients respective branches. We now have two branches to maintain with same codebase. No matter how serious issue, the hotfix is never made generally available and always created on client's specific hotfix version.

Now that was an example for only two clients, in reality we have released five patch versions of a product in last 2 years. Each product version contains about a dozen artifacts (webapps, thick clients, etc) with its own version. Each product version being shipped to various clients. Clients being big banks never take a patch of product even if it fixes their issues and continues requesting hotfix. We continue building hotfixes on client branch and creat ever increasing tech debt. There is never a chance to clean up or new development. Just keep doing hotfix after hotfix of same things.

To top if all off, old branches are still in svn while new in git. Old branches still compile with ant new with maven. Old still build with java 5,6,7 while current with 8. Old still build from old jenkins serve pipelines while new has different build server. Old branches had hardcoded integration db details which no longer exists so if tou forget to change before releasing it doesn't work.

Please tell me this is not normal and that there are better ways to do this? Apologies I think I rambled on for too long 😅

Just logged into the devrant desktop site first time today. WTF is up with the background-color when any rant is opened, it was so bright my eyes hurt instantly. The combination of background color and the fonts along with dark theme enabled is abomination on the name of dark theme. The background isn't even consistent and switches to atleast four different bright colors based on type of rant (I think). Has it always been that bad? or am I missing some trick to be sane?

Sent a fully constructed sql statement to someone expecting at least 4 rows however received reply "the result is empty" with a screenshot of empty result set from sql-developer. I kept cross-checking the where clause thinking I mixed something up.

After a few back and forth emails suddenly noticed the screenshot I received initially and I see all of the strings in where clause are lowercase. I reference my version and it is correct. When I asked her why are the strings in sql lowercase and that if she has tried the exact sql I sent in the email, the response "I didn't think it mattered what case the sql was in".

I am lost for words. The worse part is, this is someone who is supposed to go on site as part of their job and help clients setup, explain and train how the software works. This includes explaining how software intreacts with database tables 🤐