What is your favorite method to prentend you're working?

@N00bPancakes I'm scared of links posted without a description. 😢

@heyheni This one is safe ;)

Meetings

I like to work when I pretend I'm working. I find time moves much slower if I'm trying to come up with something else to do.

Working

@heyheni just bc it has a description doesn't mean it actually describes what the link was intended for ☻

I am fixing problems with my computer.

the actual faking-faking? Well, back when I was still working at the office, after lunch I used to get lazy for like an hour or so. So I'd try to find someone for a ping-pong session. If everyone was busy, I'd open up a few terminals, open up some logs and pretend to be reading them, randomly alt-tab'ing between my terminal and the browser, browsing through SO questions that happen to catch my eye. Not once has anyone (even tech-savy) considered me faking :)

But if I'm really lazy and I don't have to pretend (my preferred way to spend that hour after lunch), I'd just open up vim and work on my scripts I'm using to automate like 70% of our BAU tasks (if not more!). Now I've got another goal -- automate 90%+ ! It's possible and now, that I've found a way to access some data I needed for that task, I'm very excited to get started! Not my actual role per job description (hence not doing my actual work per-se and fits this question), but gonna be hell of a fun!

@netikras are gonna deep dive into machine learning for automating the rest of the ~20%?

@heyheni naah, just some additional automation utilizing APIs of the tools we have.

i.e. using the HP LoadRunner's REST API. And then fetching the data to analyze it myself, rather than using the Analysis tool (which only works on Windows). Generating reports, comparisons, matching the SLA. And then it could be extended to finding some related anomalies, errors' statistics in logs. If I'm still on this project when all this is done - who knows, maybe I'll also make an appD integration. That way I could automatically detect differences between different components' RTs, req/sec counts to automatically identify which components slowed us down. And then I could .......

Simply put - endless possibilities. Even without an AI :) Frankly, I don't need AI there - a simple statistics' comparison fits the bill very well.

I think I could automate as much as 95% of our BAU. And no, I'm not worried about my job security, because someone will have to stay and maintain the automaton ;)

@netikras
The impressive part is your loadrunner does anything. Most places I've engaged with that used it, I've had to answer questions like "how to authenticate so we can load test?" Fantastic way to get a "load testing consultant" rider.

Someone on youtube said "just grab some papers and walk through the office, people will think you're doing something".

I think it works only in big companies

@SortOfTested well to be fair, there's a separate team maintaining the LR :) I'm only "a user", so I don't have to think "how to authenticate" :)

And our client is quite serious about its product's performance: thanks to us, the Perf Engineers, it's the only company in that part of the world that stays functional during certain events (when all the others die with 503s and 504s :) ) and spends millions of $s for performance. I did some math some time ago - the client must be spending millions of $s per-anum just for LR alone (knowing the VUs' capacities and amount of LGs we have and amount + intensity of tests we run). So no wonder we don't have to worry about the "how to login to the LR PC" part :)

A bug has happened, I fixed it.

@M1sf3t sounds dangerous 😄

Actually working...
Otherwise the job must have been truly boring all along.
In that case, I'd immediately write my resignation.

@SortOfTested any mention of Loadrunner triggers my ptsd