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Today we have an exciting devRant announcement! As many observant members of the community have problably noticed, since launch we've been using the domain name devrant.io since the .com was already taken. Today, we're happy to announce, we now own devrant.com and it is now the official devRant URL!
How did this happen you ask? The devrant.com domain was already owned by a developer named Wiard when we launched devRant. It took a while to track him down, but when we did, turned out he saw the good we were doing and wanted to help the devRant community by generously offering us the .com domain for a very reasonable exchange (considering that we are a self-funded bootstrapped startup!).
Since Wiard recently started writing a blog on devrant.com, he had to find a new home for it. His new blog is https://sysrant.com and I encourage everyone to check it out! Great topical/educational dev/sys-admin related articles? Check. Someone who cares about the devRant community and allowed us to leave the firey hell that is .io? Check. So check it out!!
Some technical info:
This change is immediate and all devrant.io non-api requests will now redirect to devrant.com. We might have missed a few things (purposely or accidentely) so we're going to be going through and converting anything that's left. If you use the devRant API, your implementation should not break since API requests are meant to be excluded for now, but I highly recommend switching any API URLs to https://devrant.com so you can avoid issues in the future if we decide to stop redirecting devrant.io API requests. Also one note, there was an issue for about a minute after we turned on the redirected where some API requests to devrant.io might have 301 redirected to devrant.com. If an app you were using broke, try clearing whatever cache the 301 redirect might be stored in and the issue should go away.
Feel free to post any questions you might have here (and please let me know about any issues you might discover!), and once again, huge thanks to Wiard!71 -
Was lead developer at a small startup, I was hiring and had a budget to add 3 new people to my team to develop a new product for the company.
Some context first and then the rant!
Candidate 1 - Amazing, a dev I worked with before who was under utilized at the previous company. Still a junior, but, she was a quick learner and eager to expand her knowledge, never an issue.
Candidate 2 - Kickass dev with back end skills and extras, he was always eager to work a bit more than what was expected. I use to send him home early to annoy him. haha!
Candidate 3 - Lets call him P.
In the interview he answers every question perfectly, he asks all the right questions and suggests some things I havent even thought of. CTO goes ahead and says we should skip the technical test and just hire the guy, his smart and knows what his talking about, I agree and we hire him. (We where a bit desperate at this stage as well.)
He comes in a week early to pick up his work laptop to get setup before he starts the next week, awesome! This guy is going to be an asset to the company, cant wait to have him join the team - The CTO at this stage is getting ready to leave the company and I will be taking over the division and need someone to take over lead position, he seems like the guys to do it.
The guys starts the next week, he comes in and the laptop we gave him is now a local server for testing and he will be working off his own laptop, no issue, we are small so needed a testing stack, but wasnt really needed since we had procedures in place for this already.
Here is where everything goes wrong!!! First day goes great... Next day he gets in early 6:30am (Nice! NO!), he absolutely smells, no stinks, of weed, not a light smell, the entire fucking office smells of weed! (I have no problem with weed, just dont make it my problem to deal with). I get called by boss and told to sort this out people are complaining! I drive to office and have a meeting with him, he says its all good he understands. (This was Friday).
Monday comes around - Get a call from Boss at 7:30am. Whole office smells like weed, please talk to P again, this cannot happen again. I drive to office again, and he again says it wont happen again, he has some issues with back pain and the weed helps.
Tuesday - Same fucking thing! And now he doesnt want to sign for the laptop("server") that was given to him, and has moved to code in the boardroom, WHERE OUR FUCKING CLIENTS WILL BE VIEWING A DEMO THAT DAY OF THE PRODUCT!! Now that whole room smells like weed, FML!
Wednesday - We send P a formal letter that he is under probation, P calls me to have a meeting. In the meeting he blames me for not understanding "new age" medicine, I ask for his doctors prescription and ask why he didnt tell me this in the interview so I could make arrangements, we dont care if you are stoned, just do good work and be considerate to your co-workers. P cant provide these and keeps ranting, I suggest he takes pain killers, he has none of it only "new age" medicine for him.
Thursday - I ask him to rather "work" from home till we can get this sorted, he comes in for code reviews for 2 weeks. I can clearly see he has no idea how the system works but is trying, I thought I will dive deeper and look at all of his code. Its a mess, nothing makes sense and 50% of it is hard coded (We are building a decentralized API for huge data sets so this makes no sense).
Friday - In code review I confront him about this, he has excuses for everything, I start asking him harder questions about the project and to explain what we are building - he goes quiet and quits on the spot with a shitty apology.
From what I could make out he was really smart when it came to theory but interpreting the theory to actual practice wasnt possible for him, probably would have been easier if he wasnt high all the time.
I hate interview code tests, but learned a valuable lesson that day! Always test for some code knowledge as well even if you hate doing it, ask the right questions and be careful who you hire! You can only bullshit for so long in coding before someone figures out that you are a fraud.16 -
I was at my uncle's village.
Where getting internet is big thing,very far from main city.
I was talking with one shopkeeper.
I told him ,I am software developer.
He ask me questions that
"How can I improve my business using software?"
To help me figure out situation.
He told me problems he is facing right now.
Accounting/inventory management/contact's with big retailers.
He was so genuinely explaining it.
He don't want next billion dollar startup.
He want to solved his problem.
I am really impressed after that conversation because person who don't know what is excel is talking about ERP software.
I am going to develop that software.
#respect14 -
1. I agree to work with you on your startup idea because i believe in you.
2. I am the solo developer doing both the mobile apps, website, database and server side.
3.You call me shouting and complaining that i am too slow.
4. sudo rm -rf ~/your_project5 -
1. I join a company.
2. I get deeply involved in "how to run the company", and get nice compliments from both coworkers & management about my skills in conveying startup/scaleup advice & necessities to upper management.
3. With my ego inflated through all the sweet talk, I think "ah, what the hell, let's do this again", and I accept a Lead/CTO promotion. I have to join board meetings, write reports on quarterly plans and progress.
4. I get unhappy/stressed/burned-out because I really just want to be a developer, not a manager/executive.
5. Upper management understands, I give up my lead position, lock myself back into my coding cave.
6. I get annoyed because the requirements I receive become more and more disconnected from reality, half of the teams seem to have decided to stop using agile/scrum, the testing pipeline breaks all the time, I get an updated labor contract from HR by mail which smells like charred flesh, etc
7. The annoyances become too much to do ANY work. I yell at the other devs outside of the entrance of my cave. There is no answer, only a few painful moans and sighs.
8. I emerge from my cave. The city has turned into a desolate wasteland. The office is a burning ruin, the air sharp and heavy with black soot. Disemboweled corpses of developers litter the poisoned soil.
Product Managers dressed in stained ripped suits scream at each other while they try to reinforce concrete barricades with scotch tape and post-its. *THUMP* Something enormous is trying to break through. "Thank God, bittersweet, you're still alive! The stakeholders! They have mutated! We couldn't meet the promised deadlines! We've lost the whole mobile app department, and that kid there is the last of the backenders and he's only an intern! You're here to save us, right? RIGHT?".
In the corner, between the overflowing coffee machine and a withered cactus, a young boy has collapsed onto the floor. His face is covered in moldy coffee grounds, clasping on to his closed macbook for dear life, wide-open eyes staring into the void, mumbling: "didn't backup the database, and It's all gone" over and over.
A severely dented black Tesla with a dragging loose bumper breaks through the dried up vertical herb garden and the smoothiebar, and comes to a halt against the beanbags in a big cloud of styrofoam balls.
The CEO limps out, leaking blood all over the upholstery. He yells to the COO: "The datacenter is completely flooded with sewage! I saved the backup tapes though", holding a large nest of tangled black magnetic tape mixed with clumps of mud above his head.
9. I collect my outstanding salary and sell any rewarded options/shares for a low dumping price, take a 5 month holiday, and ask a recruiter about opportunities in a different city.14 -
Every day.
I am a PHP developer.
Yeah, "another PHP is awful" rant... no, not really.
It's just unsuitable for some ambitious projects, just like Ruby and Python are.
First of all, DO NOT EVER use Laravel for large enterprise applications. The same goes for RoR, Django, and other ActiveRecord MVCs.
They are all neat frameworks for writing a todo app, as a better-than-wordpress flexible blogging solution, even as a custom webshop.
Beyond 50k daily users, Active Record becomes hell due to it's lazy fat querying habits. At more than a million users... *depressed sigh*.
PHP is also completely unsuitable for projects beyond 5M lines of code in my opinion. At more than 25M lines... *another depressed sigh*.
You can let your devs read Clean Code and books about architecture patterns, you can teach them about SOLID & DRY, you can write thousands of tests... it doesn't matter.
PHP is scaffolding, it's made of bamboo and rope. It's not brick or concrete. You can build quickly, but it only scales up to a certain point before it breaks in multiple places.
Eventually you run into patterns where even 100% test coverage still doesn't guarantee shit, because the real-life edge cases are just too complex and numerous.
When you're working on a multi-party invoicing system with adapters for various tax codes, or an availability/planning system working across timezones, or systems which implement geographical routefinding coupled to traffic, event & weather prediction...
PHP, Python, Ruby, etc are just missing types.
Every day I run into bugs which could have been prevented if you could use ADTs in a generic way in PHP. PHP7 has pretty good typehints, and they prevent a lot of messy behavior, but they aren't composable. There is no way to tell PHP "this method accepts a Collection of Users", or "this methods returns maybe either an Apple or a Pear, and I want to force the caller to handle both Apple/Pear and null".
Well, you could do that, but it requires a lot of custom classes and trickery, and you have to rewrite the same logic if you want to typehint a "Collection of Departments" instead of "Collection of Users" -- i.e., it's not composable.
Probably the biggest issue is that languages with a (mostly) structural type system (Haskell, Rust, even C#/JVM languages to some degree, etc) are much slower to develop in for the "startup" era of a project, so you grab a weak, quick prototyping language to get started.
Then, when you reach a more grown up phase, you wish you had a better type system at your disposal...28 -
My asshole coworkers talking about how programmers without a degree are worth shit and cannot achieve anything in industry besides working from startup to startup.
Well, surprise, I'm sitting right next to them, in the same big company and I don't have ANY higher education at all.
Just because I prefer more hands-on experience than theory stuff doesn't make me worse developer than those bastards. I just learn more from working on something, than from sitting in classroom and taking notes.
Fortunately people at HR and boss also valued my previous experience when they hired me, but now having to work with those guys every day is killing me.13 -
I had an interview yesterday with the CEO of a startup going into Series A for the position of Principal Developer, remote. I've only ever heard of 'tech-bros', but I was unfortunate to meet one in-person. It went something like this:
CEO-bro: Good morning.
Me: Morning.
CEO-bro: It says here on your resume you live in X. That place is a shithole, and I have to look down on you because of that, bro. LoL.
Me: ......
(40 minutes of self-promotion pass)
CEO-bro: Anyway, we don't pay high salaries but offer bonuses for high performing staff instead. I'll ask HR to send you an offer.
Me: Let me think about it.
CEO-bro: One question bro. You have siblings?
Me: One.
CEO-bro: Parents still alive?
Me: No...what?!
CEO-bro: Yeah, me too. People like us don't let anything get in the way.
I wrote them an email this morning withdrawing my application 🤦🏽♂️11 -
FULLSTACK DEVELOPER
- A buzzword that startup companies use when they can't hire a lot of people. Multitasking all the way sucker!7 -
Friend asked me, "How does it feel being the CTO of a startup?"
Me: "I feel like the main character in one of those cartoons where train, going full speed, is running out of rail road, so he takes rails from behind the train and puts them in front. And the entire thing is on fire. And everyone you hire is trying to put it out with gasoline."
Friend: "Doesn't your CEO help?"
Me: "Well... He had never seen a train before, and he thought they operate on magic and wishful thinking. And he never realized they need rail track to even run. So... not really"
Friend: "So, it's pretty bad, ha?"
Me: "It's great actually. We just closed our seed round. We're about to launch beta. I might even get 5-6 hours of sleep this weekend 😅"10 -
---- Startup RantLife ----
A senior developer joined the team, let's name him Bob, and this guy is really good no doubts about that.
He made suggestions, some improvements, but Bob is always waving his hands and says out loud that some part of the code base is really really bad.
I kept quiet until one day I had to pair with Bob to check a feature. Guess what happened, as usual, Bob clenched his fist and start pointing that this code is super ugly.
So let's check the history of changes and boom, Bob was the main writer.
That moment, I was completely silent, trying not to smile as Bob came up with an excuse, he never admits that he is wrong, now he needs a scapegoat and he starts blaming the process, the planning...
I believe that being humble and saying sorry is a quality that it requires time to develop.
So don't be like Bob, please :)12 -
I'm 20, and I consider myself to be as junior as they come. I only started programming seriously in June 2016,and since then, I've been doing mainly Android Work, and making my own servers and backends(using AWS/Firebase nd stuff).
For the first time in life, I was approached by a recruiter for a company on linkedIn. They "stumbled upon" my Github profile and wanted to see if I was interested in an internship opportunity. This company is an early stage start up, by that I mean a dude with an idea calling himself the CEO and a guy who "runs a tech blog" and only knows college level C programming (explaination follows).
So they want me to make the app for their startup. and for that, I ws first asked to solve a couple problems to prove my competence and a "technical interview" followed.
They gave me 3 questions, all textbook, GCD of 2 numbers, binary search and Adding an element to the linked List, code to be written on a piece of paper. As the position was that of an Android Developer, I assumed that Java should be the language of choice. Assumed because when I asked, the 'tech blogger' said, yeah whatever.
But wait, that ain't all, as soon as I was done, Mr. Blogger threw a fit, saying I shouldn't assume and that I must write it in C. I kept my cool (I'm not the most patient person), and wrote the whole thing in C.
He read it, and asked me what I've written and then told me how wrong I was to write 2 extra lines instead of recursion for GCD. I explained that with numbers large enough, we run the risk of getting a stackoverflow and it's best to apply non recursive solution if possible. He just heard stackoverflow and accused me of cheating. I should have left right then, but I don't know why, I apologized and again, in detail explained what was happening to this fucktard. Once this was done, He asked me how, if I had to, I'd use this exact code in my Android App. I told him that Id rather write this in Java/Kotlin since those are the languages native to Android apps. I also said that I'd export these as a Library and use JNI for the task. (I don't actually know how, I figured I can study if I have to).
Here's his reply, "WTF! We don't want to make the app in Java, we will use C (Yeh, not C++, C). and Don't use these fancy TOOLS like JNI or Kotlin in front of me, make a proper application."
By this I was clear that this guy is not fit to be technical lead and that I should leave. I said, "Sir, I don't know how, if even possible, can we make an Android App purely in C. I am sorry, but this job is not for me".
I got up and was about to leave the room, when we said, "Yeah okay, I was just testing you".
Yeah right, the guy's face looked like a howling monkey when I said Library for C, and It has been easier for me to explain code to my 10 year old cousin that this dumbfuck.
He then proceeded to ask me about my availability, and I said that I can at max to 15-20 hours a week since my college schedule is pretty tight. I asked me to get him a prototype in 2 months and also offered me a full time job after I graduate. (That'd be 2 years from now). I said thank you for the offer, but I am still not sure of I am the right person for this job.
He then said, "Oh you will be when I tell you your monthly stipend."
I stopped for a second, because, money.
And then he proceeded to say 2 words which made me walk out without saying a single word.
"One Thousand".
I live in India, 1000 INR translates to roughly $15. I made 25 times that by doing nothing more than add a web view to an activity and render a company's responsive website in it so it looks like an app.
If this wasn't enough, the recruiter later had the audacity to blame me for it and tell me how lucky I am to even get an offer "so good".
Fuck inexperienced assholes trying shit they don't understand and thinking that the other guy is shitsworth.10 -
My 2 friends and me just started a company!!! I feel so excited, because I'm 17 and get to learn how to start a company, I always had that dream to be part of startup. My position is backend developer and db engineer working in apache and python for API's and MySQL for database. 😁😁😁😁😁16
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this image is fully authentic image of me as a single developer in a startup. All the used technologies in a single project.13
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What is the most ridiculous over-the-top "startup" thing you've been the victim of as a developer?
Alternatively, what kind of weird startup luxury would you absolutely love to have at your company?
For me, at various companies I've worked at/visited:
1. Hammocks & fatboy beanbags. Current employer has a "Netflix & Chill" corner with nice couches, and a small gym. I have encountered isolation/flotation tanks at the office of one of our partners... which is cool, but over the top in my opinion.
2. A fully automated aquaponics garden in the lunchroom. Was awesome, until some fish died and started to rot.
3. One hoverboard per employee, at previous employer. I splashed hot chocolate milk in an arc over three desks. A coworker broke his ankle while watching me spill chocolate milk.
4. Daily scrum standup meetings, on socks, in a big bouncy castle. Not kidding. Fucking ridiculous... (but secretly fun). That employer also had spiral slides between all floors, a tiny half-pipe with tiny skateboards, and someone who rode a unicycle way too much. It was a fucking circus. Stuck in the office of a Fintech company.
5. Soldering bench (at my current company), with drawers full of breadboards, servos and electronics components. Completely unrelated to my work, but it was my idea. It's just great to build a simple kits together with another random coworker while brainstorming platform features & refining specs... much better than meetings with bullshit slides.
6. Unlimited energy drink. Developed a serious caffeine habit (15-20 cans a day), and almost got a stomach ulcer. Not beneficial to employee health.
7. I really do love working from home + unlimited holidays. Just being able to honestly say "fuck you guys, I'm gonna get drunk and play games today", and at other times working until 4am and sleeping in the next day, or taking a week to work in a park in Rome... It makes work truly feel like my favorite hobby. Combined with a good sprints and curious/ambitious people, you can easily track productivity anyway.19 -
I'm a freelance iOS developer / UI designer and working on a pet related startup. I deal with lot of pets. My parents thinks that I'm full-time dog care taker.7
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To those that think they can't make it.
To those that are put down by those that don't understand you.
And to those that have never had a dream come true.
Not a rant, but the story of how I got into programming
I've always been into tech/electronics. I remember being told once that when I was 3, I used to take plug sockets to pieces. When I was 7, I built a computer with my dad.
There isn't a thing in my room that hasn't been dismantled and put back together again. Except for the things that weren't put back together again ;)
When I was 15, I got a phone for Christmas. It was a pretty crappy phone, the LG P350 (optimus ME). But I loved it all the same.
However I knew it could do a lot more. It ran a bloated, slow version of Android 2.2.
So I went searching, how can I make it faster, how to make it do more. And I found a huge community around Android ROMs. Obviously the first thing I did was flashed this ROM. Sure, there were bugs, but I was instantly in love with it. My phone was freed.
From there I went on to exploring what else can be done.
I wanted to learn how to script, so over the weekend I wrote a 1000 line batch (Windows cmd) script that would root the phone and flash a recovery environment onto it. Pretty basic. Lots of switch statements, but I was proud of it. I'd achieved something. It wasn't new to the world, but it was my first experience at programming.
But it wasn't enough, I needed more.
So I set out to actually building the roms. I installed Linux. I wanted to learn how to utilise Linux better, so I rewrote my script in bash.
By this time, I'd joined a team for developing on similar spec'd phones. Without the funds to by new devices, we began working on more radical projects.
Between us, we ported newer kernels to our devices. We rebased much of the chipset drivers onto newer equivalents to add new features.
And then..
Well, it was exam season. I was suffering from personal issues (which I will not detail), and that, with the work on Android, I ended up failing the exams.
I still passed, but not to the level I expected.
So I gave up on school, and went head first into a new kind of development. "continue doing what you love. You'll make it" is what I told myself.
I found python by contributing to an IRC bot. I learnt it by reading the codebase. Anything I didn't understand, I researched. Anything I wanted to do, google was there to help me through it.
Then it was exam season again. Even though I'd given up on school, I was still going. It was easier to stay in than do anything about it.
A few weeks before the exams, I had a panic attack. I was behind on coursework, and I knew I would do poorly on exams.
So I dropped out.
I was disappointed, my family was disappointed.
So I did the only thing I felt I could do. I set out to get a job as a developer.
At this stage, I'd not done anything special. So I started aiming bigger. Contributing to projects maintained by Sony and Google, learning from them. Building my own projects to assist with my old Android friends.
I managed to land a contract, however due to the stresses at home, I had to drop it after a month.
Everything was going well, I felt ready to get a full time job as a developer, after 2 years of experience in the community.
Then I had to wake up.
Unfortunately, my advisors (I was a job seeker at the time) didn't understand the potential of learning to be a developer. With them, it's "university for a skilled job".
They see the word "computer" on a CV, they instantly say "tech support".
I played ball, I did what I could for them. But they'd always put me down, saying I wasn't good enough, that I'd never get a job.
I hated them. I'd row with them every other day.
By God, I would prove them wrong.
And then I found them. Or, to be more precise, they found me. A startup in London got in contact with me. They seemed like decent people. I spoke with their developers, and they knew their stuff, these were people that I can learn from.
I travelled 4 hours to go for an interview, then 4 hours back.
When I got the email saying they'd move me to London, I was over the moon.
I did exactly what everyone was telling me I couldn't do.
1.5 years later, I'm still working with them. We all respect each other, and we all learn from each other.
I'm ever grateful to them for taking a shot with me. I had no professional experience, and I was by no means the most skilled individual they interviewed.
Many people have a dream. I won't lie, I once dreamed of working at Google. But after the journey I've been through, I wouldn't have where I am now any other way. Though, in time, I wish to share this dream with another.
I hope that all of you reach your dreams too.
Sorry for the long post. The details are brief, but there are only 5k characters ;)23 -
Having to argue with team members inside my head.
I have a one-man startup, so I have all these imaginary team members who specialise in different things so that I can concentrate on whatever I am doing for that day.
But it seems my developer side of me hates the manager and UX designer these days for making changes half way through the project.
Oh yeah, and my accountant side thinks I'm spending too much. Fuck you, I needed that money.4 -
So today I basically "lost" the chance to enter this remarkable security StartUp. The dream made true... a couple of Python nice scripts, the logic test that wasn't that big, everything was going well.
I met the CEO, damn! He seems to be a great dude. But suddenly, a wild co-founder appeared.
The dude started to talk about money and how he didn't perceive me as a Senior developer (not even if my results were telling him the oppositive); he ended up with: you seemed to be Mid-advance.
I was like: Ok, I understand. Wasn't that big because I knew that I could have demonstrated my skills.
Then he asked about my salary expectations, I answered to him my realistic expectations, that to be honest, it wasn't a lot of damn money! Because, I really was expecting a chance to learn more, have bigger challenges, bring value, etc.
He said: Okay let me check this with my partner. But, that was a week ago.
Anyway, today I received an email from the CEO, with the typical apologize telling me that the vacancy will be paused by the moment.
Oh, I didn't mention that one friend of mine is working there and he told me a couple of hours ago that they have hired a Junior developer because he was willing to accept what they wanted to pay him. Puff it broke my heart, but I wish him luck because even though I was dying to be on that security StartUp, I’m not at the point to accept a misery of money to work harder, I just felt frustrated with that stingy guy.14 -
I recently joined this big MNC after shutting down my own startup. I was trying to automate their build process properly. They were currently using grunt and I favor gulp, so I offered to replace the build process with gulp and manage it properly.
I was almost done with it in development environment and QA was being done for production.
In the meantime I was trying to fix some random bug in a chrome extension backend. I pushed some minor changes to production which was not going to affect the main site. That was in the afternoon.
This Friday my senior rushed to me. It was like he ran six floors to reach me. He asked, did you push the new build system to production, I refused. He then went to the computer nearby and opened the code.
It was Friday and I was about to leave. But being a good developer, I asked what's the problem. He told me that one complete module is down and the developers responsible for them left for the day already and are unreachable.
I worked on that module multiple times last month, so I offered my help. He agreed and we get to work.
The problem was in the Angular front end. So we immediately knew that the build process is screwed. I accidentally kept the gulp process open for anyone, so I immediately rebuilt using grunt and deployed again, but to no success.
Then I carefully analyzed all the commits to the module to find out that I was the one who pushed the change last. That was the chrome extention. I quickly reverted the changes and deployed and the module was live again. The senior asked, how did you do that? I told the truth.
He was surprised that how come that change affect the complete site too. We identified it after an hour. It was the grunt task which includes all the files from that particular module, including chrome extension in the build process.
He mailed the QA team to put Gulp in increased priority and approved the more structural changes, including more scrutiny before deployment and backup builds.
The module was down for more than 5 hours and we got to know only after the client used it for their own process. I was supposed to be fired for this. But instead everyone appreciated my efforts to fix things.
I guess I am in a good company 😉4 -
I worked with this guy at a startup one time, and just to annoy me, he would write commit comments describing how I was such a bad developer, or how I was such a horrible person. After like the 15th time he did this, I decided to be totally unprofessional and do the same for him... our commit comments quickly turned into a conversation where we would just insult each other (as a joke).
The original developers of the startup no longer work there (including me and him)... I wonder who's reading those comments now.3 -
Yes! you made a difference.[image]
P.S.
started working at a startup as an intern(android app developer), Most of my work is like debugging the code, new feature implementations.
And the codebase is full of this kind of shit(even worse) plus literally zero documentation(not even for API's), not even a single line of comment in complete project(40K-50K), not any unit test/ UI test.
The funniest thing is when I ask for documentation he(boss | *) said: I am documentation.8 -
Favorite/most hated language? (I love a good flame war)
Why did you quit your previous job / Moment you've considered quitting your current job?
Why do you think Linux is so much better than OSX? (Ahh yes I feed on apple flavored hipster tears)
What side project are you currently working on?
If you had the best teams and unlimited funds, to be used only on a serious project using both Blockchain, IoT and AI, what would you create?
If you forgot how to code, what other career would you pursue?
What is your "I was so busy wondering if I could, that I forgot whether I should" concept/idea/project?
How many chicken eggs would fit inside the moon if it was hollow? (I like retarded interview questions)
If you started a startup, what unique perk would you offer your developer employees?
Do you under- or overengineer?
Most unnecessary feature you ever had to create?
Most necessary feature your boss/client denied to approve?15 -
Building a business can hamper one's development urges!
I have been building stuff since 2008. Took my first job in 2012, won a hackathon at Yahoo right after that. Got an amazing team to work with! Our team converted the hacked product into a proper product using Django and AngularJS. Those were the fun days. At that time AngularJS had just come out and I was under the dilemma to use Angular, Ember or backbone. But with all this came the responsibility to build a business out of our product. It didn't happen eventually though.
So I moved on to cure my entrepreneural itch and went on to start up an e-commerce startup along with my day job. It started getting good traction and I finally left my day job to focus completely on it. It's a sticker marketplace and I had to focus a lot on the actual physical product, improve the quality, tackle business development and stuff etc. In all this, my habit of creating stuff with code kind of got the back seat. Everyday, I see such exciting technologies come up and I want to try them out. I have been itching to create a native app using react native. Try to build a skill for Amazon Alexa.
On one side I am happy that I have been able to build a brand and become the largest sticker marketplace in India providing super awesome reusable stickers, but on the other hand, managing the business on a daily basis is killing the developer in me :(
Does anyone else building a business which involves a physical product also face a similar problem? I think I should just take up weekend hackathon type problems and try to solve them using the technologies I want to learn. Example, I have been meaning to build an app for our company. I think I will start with that!
I have been following devRant for quite sometime now and it has been awesome. Finally, signed up and ranted today! 😊😊5 -
My first ever interview for a developer position involved waking up around 9am to a call from an unrecognized number.
I answered and realized it was someone from a startup I applied to just a day before.
Instant phone interview with tech questions on React and Angular, and I BS'd my way through it, knowing almost nothing about either. Got the job, somehow.6 -
So sometime back I was working as an android developer for a startup managed by a guy who wasn't much of a techie. The team wanted a share image to facebook option in the app, which required FB SDK integration into the app, which in turn will increase the app size and request more permissions. On discussing this with them and asking for the app secrets, they said that I'm being ridiculous, and denied me from giving the app secrets, citing the reason 'They're called secrets for a reason'.3
-
[long]
When searching for internship via school I found this small startup with this cute project of building a teaching tool for programming. There were back then 2 programmers: the founder and the co-founder.
Then like 1 week before the internship started, the co-founder had a burnout and had to get off the project, while the company was so low on budget the founder, aka my new b0ss, had to work separate jobs to keep the company alive. (quite metal tbh)
It's funny because I'm a junior developer, 100%. I've been coding as a hobby for around 8 years now but I've never worked in a big company before. (No exception to this workplace either)
First project I get: rewrite the compiler. The Python compiler.
"But wait, why not just embed a real compiler from the first case?"
-nanananana it's never simple, as you probably know from your own projects.
The new compiler, as compared to existing embedded compiler solutions out there, needed these prime features:
- Walk through the code (debugger style), but programmatically.
- Show custom exceptions (ex: "A colon is needed at the end of an if-statement" instead of "Syntax error line 3")
- Have a "Did-you-mean this variable?" error for usage of unassigned variables.
- Be able to be embedded in Unity's WebGL build target
All for the use case of being a friendly compiler.
The last dash in the list is actually the biggest bottleneck which excluded all existing open-source projects (i could find). Compliant with WebAssembly I can't use threads among other things, IL2CPP has lots of restrictions, Unity has some as well...
Oh and it should of course be built using test-driven development.
"Good luck!" - said the founder, first day of work as she then traveled to USA for **3 weeks**, leaving me solo with the to-be-made codebase and humongous list of requirements.
---
I just finished the 6th week of internship, boss has been at "HQ" for 3 weeks now, and I just hit the biggest milestone yet for this project.
Yes I've been succeeding! This project has gone so well, and I'm surprising myself how much code I've been pumping out during these weeks.
I'm up now at almost 40'000 lines of source and 30'000 lines of code. ‼
( Biggest project I've ever worked on previously was at 8'000 lines of code )
The milestone (that I finished today) was for loops! As been trying to showcase in the GIF.
---
It's such a giant project and I can honestly say I've done some good work here. Self-five. Over-performing is a thing.
The things that makes me shiver though is that most that use this application will never know the intricates of it's insides, and the brain work put into it.
The project is probably over-engineered. A lot. Having a home-made compiler gives us a lot of flexibility for our product as we're trying to make more of a "pedagogic IDE". But no matter that I reinvented the wheel for the 105Gth time, it's still the most fun I've had with a project to date.
---
Also btw if anyone wants to see source code, please give me good reasons as I'm actively trying to convince my boss to make the compiler open-source.
Cheers!4 -
After 3 months and around 5 projects at my new job, I've finally come to the realisation that the developer in charge and I disagree on everything, all tech stack/browser compatibility decisions are made completely blindly and no matter what, the lead (full stack) dev refuses to take any of my frontend expertise/knowledge on board.
how did a startup become this rigid and terrible?
I already want to quit.2 -
After I spent 4 years in a startup company (it was literally just me and a guy who started it).
Being web dev in this company meant you did everything from A-Z. Mostly though it was shitty hacky "websites/webapps" on one of the 3 shitty CMSs.
At some point we had 2 other devs and 2 designers (thank god he hired some cause previously he tried designing them on his own and every site looked like a dead puppy soaked in ass juice).
My title changed from a peasant web dev to technical lead which meant shit. I was doing normal dev work + managing all projects. This basically meant that I had to show all junior devs (mostly interns) how to do their jobs. Client meetings, first point of contact for them, caring an "out of hours" support phone 24/7, new staff interviews, hiring, training and much more.
Unrealistic deadlines, stress and pulling hair were a norm as was taking the blame anytime something went wrong (which happened very often).
All of that would be fine with me if I was paid accordingly, treated with respect as a loyal part of the team but that of course wasn't the case.
But that wasn't the worst part about this job. The worst thing was the constant feeling that I'm falling behind, so far behind that I'll never be able to catch up. Being passionate about web development since I was a kid this was scaring the shit out of me. Said company of course didn't provide any training, time to learn or opportunities to progress.
After these 4 years I felt burnt out. Programming, once exciting became boring and stale. At this point I have started looking for a new job but looking at the requirements I was sure I ain't going anywhere. You see when I was busy hacking PHP CMSs, OOPHP became a thing and javascript exploded. In the little spare time I had I tried online courses but everyone knows it's not the same, doing a course and actually using certain technology in practice. Not going to mention that recruiters usually expect a number of years of experience using the technology/framework/language.
That was the moment I lost faith in my web dev future.
Happy to say though about a month later I did get a job in a great agency as a front end developer (it felt amazing to focus on one thing after all these years of "full-stack bullshit), got a decent salary (way more than I expected) and work with really amazing and creative people. I get almost too much time to learn new stuff and I got up to speed with the latest tech in a few weeks. I'm happy.
Advice? I don't really have any, but I guess never lose faith in yourself.3 -
Off to the funeral of a family member of mine today. He was one of us, a developer for a cool little startup in London. I'd much rather be wrestling with bugs and support tickets today 😔5
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I am a firmware developer with 4 years experience. C and sometimes assembly is my bread and butter.
Like 2 years ago, I was really interested to make a switch to application development. Got referred by my friend to her startup.
But I was a bit rusty with my data structures, high level languages and interpersonal skills.
The first question was to find the number of occurences for each word in a paragraph. The language choice was Java. But I was allowed to use C++ since it was the closest relative to Java that I knew.
And I started implementing a binary search tree from scratch and started inserting each tokenised word into it, wrote a traversal algorithm.
The interviewer, luckily, was a patient guy. After I completed my whole mess, he asked is it possible to do this in a slightly better way with constant time access without traversal.
I said yes, we can with a hash table but I dont know how to implement one. He replied I dont expect you to implement the hash table but see you use it. I asked him if I am allowed to used the standard library, for which he said ofcourse.
*facepalm*.
Finally I understood his expectation, referred cppreference.com and used an unordered_map.
Later there were some quesion on databases for which I tried my best to answer. And I frankly replied that I am not comfortable with JS frameworks as of now. Got rejected.
So the mistake is I never asked basic questions like what is the time complexity expects, if I was allowed to use standard library, didnt spend some extra time on studying stuffs needed for the domain switch and most importantly I panicked.7 -
When I cost the company half a million.
We recently got incubated and signed up for an accelerator programme, it was a life changing moment for me especially after having worked with my startup unpaid for almost a year. So naturally, it meant a lot to me.
But my friends / colleagues had to leave for a trip leaving me to work along side this other startup in the same batch. They needed a front end guy for their web stuff so we naturally offered our services except they needed me to work on Angular and I didn't know jack shit about it but pretended I did.
I couldn't reach out to my friends for help because I felt bad and wanted to prove my worth, and I pressured myself to the point where I called the client our batch mate brought on board making him leave.
I lost credibility as a professional, trust as a friend and my place at the office because it's gotten extremely awkward to go back there.
I fucked up my one way ticket out of my current certain household circumstances and realized I'm just a shitty developer who's all talk and no show.9 -
After getting a fund for my startup company as a PHP Developer, they changed the app to Django and fired all the Technology team. (O_o)7
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Long long ago, I had a dream to start a startup.
Till today I'm not able to find an idea.
Then, I realized ideas cannot be forced. They come when they come.6 -
Just wanna to share my story:
I just quit my job 2 months ago to ramp up my own startup. I will be funded with 2k Euro per month for 1 year to prepare the founding of my startup. Basicly that means i got one year to build backend/frontend/app. I have a friend that is doing some nontech related stuff like business development and shit. Sounds good until now i guess.
But:
Developing all that stuff in a one man show as a junior-like developer is really hard. I did not find another dev who wanted to join me as a sideproject or something.
Do you guys think thats even possible to ramp up all this by myself or am i to optimistic? I mean, i learn a lot atm, but i am a bit scared to fail too.
That should not be whining or shit, just gathering some input of you guys.
(excuse typos and stuff as i am not a native speaker :) )17 -
I was interviewed for a brand new startup, which is now worth +$20m, and I really liked the idea and founder behind. When I met with her, I was blindsided by another developer, who was gonna ask the questions (which is fair!) - I simply weren't informed.
The meeting went on, and seemed great, however we started talking about bug tracking, and I mentioned that I liked "New Relic" (no more!!) and he, the developer, obviously did not, as the mood suddenly changed and he started bitching about it being expensive, and that there were better alternatives.. The meeting endes shortly after, and I was told by the founder that she'll contact me.. Never happened. However I was told by the developer who was hired instead of me, that "another application was rejected due to personal preferences"..
May be small problems to anyone but me, but I just find it disgusting, and it's typical developers to be so high and mighty about their choises ("X language sucks, you should use Y")
I don't blame the founder at all, and I've supported their company since (minus ranting about the shitty product that they ended with)3 -
I’ve been interviewing with a startup for a Frontend Engineer role. In the interview they said they didn’t have a designer, that their founder and other devs do the design work. I thought “ok so they are still putting something together and don’t care much if the UI is crappy”, and still proceeded with it. I do the take-home test, it took a lot more than the 1-2 hours they said it should take (these estimates never seem realistic), I thought I did a pretty good job and send it back to them. I then got an email back from one of the founders, they really liked the code and my approach, but the UX was not good enough. He asked if I would be willing to iterate on it if given some direction? The direction: design your own version of our product. I refused. I thought this was a developer position, not a designer position.7
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> Startup: ok listen up, we got this super cool thing we want to do with Twilio. Doesn't get any easier: some calls to book a restaurant, you ask for booking data and save that on some db.
> iHateForALiving: I'm on it. We got a couple weeks of development, never worked with Twilio, but should be easy enough
> Startup: Hold it big guy, we can't just write code like this. There's this OTHER developer with a super cool framework he wrote himself, it supports OAuth2 and multitenancy, written in Huskell, microservices to authenticate several apps all working concurrently in our environment, some orchestrator, cloud computing on AWS, you're going to love it. There's this Postman project with 200-something calls (the ones I need for my project, one and only consumer for those APIs, are 5 including the login)
> iHateForALiving: You are aware you'll have approximately six clients and they'll pay some 30 bucks each per month, aren't you?
> Startup: You don't understand, this infrastructure is CRITICAL for the future of our company
> ffwd 6 months
> iHateForALiving: guys we had this 2 weeks project and it's taking months, I'm ready, what is going on there?
> Startup: someone killed our DB, the OTHER developer pushed on git the access credentials :(
THE FULL MOON IS DRAWING NEAR AND THE FUCKING WERECODERS STRIKE AGAIN! -
Wooaaah job offer as cto and shareholer in startup... or senior developer in established business.
How can i even make that choice.7 -
Me and my developer friend worked with my ex-colleague with this fitness directory website because he promised to give us {{ thisAmount }} upon the {{ completionDate }}.
He was my friend and I trusted him.
It took me weeks of sleepless nights building the project. I had a full-time job that time, and I worked on the project during evenings. All went well, and as we reach the {{ completionDate }}, the demo site is already up and running.
A week before the {{ completionDate }}, he hired his new wife as the COO of the startup. It was cool, she keep noticing things on the site which shouldn't be there, and keeps on suggesting sections that has to be there. I was okay with it, until I realized that we are already a month late with the deadline.
Every single hour, I get a message from them like, "it's not working", "when can you finish this feature?", blah blah blah.. and so on.
I got frustrated.
"I want my fucking life back", I told them. No one cared about the {{ completionDate }}, the sleepless zombies they are working with and our payment. They keep on coming up with this "amazing" ass features, and now they are not paying because they said "it's not complete".
Idiot enough to trust a friend. I was unprotected, there was no legal-binding document that states their obligation to pay.
My dev friend and I handed over the project to this web development company which they prefer, and kept a backdoor on the application.
I kind of moved on with the payment issue after a month. But without their knowledge, I kept an eye on the progress and made sure that I still have the access to their server, DNS, etc..
BUT when they announced the official launch on social media, I realized that I was on the wrong train the whole time.
They switched to a different server.
They thanked all the people involved with the project via social media, EXCEPT me and my coding partner who originally built the site from ground up. A little "thank you" note from them will make us feel a little better. But, never happened.
I checked up the site and it was rewritten from originally Laravel 5 to CodeIgniter 1. That is like shifting from a luxury yacht where you can bang some hot chicks, to a row boat where your left hand is holding the paddle whilst your right hand is wanking yourself.
I almost ran out of bullets.
Luckily, CodeIgniter 1 was prone to SQLi by default.
I was able to get the administrator password in plain text and fucked with their data. But that didn't make me feel better because other people's info are involved.
So, I looked for something else to screw with. What I found? A message with the credit card details.
Finally, a chance to do something good for humanity. I just donated a few thousand dollars to different charity websites.3 -
Just closed a TOP PRIORITY ticket with "as designed"..
After a 1 minute talk with the developer who wrote this code, I found it is actually deliberate..
So I just closed the ticket..
but what really bothers me is:
That developer, is sitting right next to the QA.
HE IS SITTING RIGHT THERE..
We are a small startup company, everyone are sitting around the same table..
communicate much?1 -
This is my first post. I felt like if I'm wrote this I'll just be a big fat crybaby, but i need to release this pressure from me.
I've been pretty burnt out past 6 month.
So a little bit backstory here, I've come from broken family, and currently on my 7th semester of college. But I've been part of small startup as mobile apps developer for a year and a half now.
6 month ago, it just a year of recovery from a toxic relationship that basically ruins my college life. I have really bad GPA (bad score for being absent from classes), basically no friends, and a barely passable (or even bad) skill in Android Dev. Then I got new girlfriend that really supportive for me. But after 2 months, her parents ask me if I would marry her or not. because if not, I have to broke up with her (We're in Indonesia and both of us is Muslim, so outside marriage relationship is kinda in "grey area" depend on who you ask). So I have to choose to marry her or not, and I choose the marriage. I think I have enough saving and just enough income to support both of us.
Then it's been a downward spiral from there.
The startup that I've been working on were in a pretty bad shape. I've been underpaid since the beginning (and that's not really a problem for me at that time, that's my choice and I blame no one) but abysmal growth and some miss management force us to scale back and makes me basically in a non-paying jobs.
So I take college break for a semester and been trying to find projects here and there for marriage savings, but because the weak employee protection here, lots of the projects I have completed have yet to pay the fee (even until today). And even if they paid me, most of it were really low paying jobs (we're talking $200 per 3 weeks project here, to be fair, for our average GDP, it's not bottom-low).
And the deadline is approaching, our marriage date is settled in (very) early January 2019, and i've been in this "not yet graduated but needs job" limbo. Most of employer here still has the old "Degree Based" Job specs, and not "Skill Based" one. so because de-jure I've still a "College Student" no Job listing is willing to take me in. I've apply to almost 30 Job Listing and just get interview once, and still failed because I can't move to the company area, too far and have too expensive living cost vs the salary ($300 living cost vs $450 salary, while i need to give money to my girlfriend back home for a living).
So I switch my direction to Competitions with Extra Job offering as a Bonus, and I've been pretty close to winning one, held by CIMB Bank, but still failed. It's little bit better now because CIMB came interested with me but there is red flag which I need to graduate with decent GPA before July 2019, and in current GPA? it's practically impossible.
Can it getting worse? oh it can. Remember I come from broken home family? it's inherently hard to keeps communication with both of my parents that to this day still despise each other. And while my mother is still supportive to my marriage, my father isn't. He even basically disowned me last week because my one-sided decision to marry my girlfriend, and blame my mother for being the "bad influence" for me.
And now, today, December 16th, and I'm still in this weird Limbo and have nowhere to go. with $0 in my pocket (have spent all of my savings for marriage preparation) And our marriage is approaching. I almost given up.23 -
So I was in an interview for a web developer position in a startup and the interviewer said to me "Do you think you'll be able to help the guys with CAD design?" I have no idea what to say. Does this guy even know what a developer is??!?!? I mean not that I dont know how to use CAD, but I'm applying as a DEVELOPER, not a product designer8
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Really?
Far far away in a small startup, one developer was brave enough to try to fix the beautiful iOS application (hmm, nothing fancy just a broken, patched and served behind a wrapper).
To do so our hero needs, of course, a testing iOS device.
So the guy went searching for the testing device and asked around, then he returned to his desk shocked when I asked him what happened the guy told me literally:
- "Can you believe it? The boss gave the testing device to his fiancée"
and now guys you know why bugs in startup application take a while to fix :/1 -
I work in a bitcoin startup , my fucking boss really wants everyone to use ubuntu because of security and all , the bad thing is i am the only guy who knows how to install and deal with it , so when any one joins or has some problem he always bugs me and the thing is i am an android developer not a sys admin and now he fucking want to get 2 factor in ubuntu desktops when they log in16
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Startup companies be like "we are hiring full stack developer"
Full Stack Developer = the entire IT department 😏3 -
you wanna know what the most hilarious shit is? hackernews users AKA the 6 figure startup bros that "rule the world" in terms of code and software...
trying to argue the best way to build a website 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
here's some select quotes:
"I believe the most minimalistic and productive way is to just use php"
^ this guy must not know its 2023 now
"Unless you are a web developer I don't see the point of a CSS framework, it's much easier to roll your own."
^ this guy must not know the pain and suffering that is 'rolling your own' in CSS
"Sadly, I just don't have the time to generate the content I wanted to do, so the site sits."
^ this guy just... wait, what?
but you know what? these guys clearly know WAY more than me in terms of software, it's good they get infinite salad bar and prime rib every day at silicon valley's best and brightest!
please fucking kill me i want it to end16 -
>be web designer at last company
>be put into marketing Dept
>do everything from design to dev, working closely with engineers in IT Dept
>whyamihere.png
>leave to join new tech startup
>get job title "Web Developer"
>startup forms a new marketing Dept
>be put into it3 -
Rant r = new Rant(Rant.TEAM_PROBLEM);
Three months ago, a senior, one year older than me, decided to join me in doing startups. He said he's good at finance stuff (his parents are fund managers), and he is interested in startups just like I am. He treated me very nicely, so I gladly accepted him.
I'm currently working on many projects, and some of them won me quite a few awards, most notably on the national competition. I also got invited into startup incubator programs, met some awesome people and offered free scholarships at universities in my country.
He frankly said he joined because he wanted to learn about startups and have those "privileges" too, and I'm cool with that.
Anyway, the problem is that I'm the one doing all the work. He's really nice, doesn't claim anything whatsoever, but the thing is he doesn't have any skills whatsoever except soft skills like communicating. So, I'm horribly tired from working alone.
My tasks mostly involves full-stack development, such as planning the specs, designing and developing frontend for mobile apps and progressive webapps, developing microservices for the backend, up to deploying and maintaining the servers. It's a lot of work for a single person to handle in such a short timeframe.
Not only that, but I'm also the one handling the business/marketing part, albeit I'm still learning. From doing paperworks, pitches, business models, up to creating advertising materials for the product.
I'm obviously not the smart ones like the people out there, but I keep focusing on improving my skills.
So, he said he could help me, and I let him try. What did you think he did?
He made pitch decks using default fucking PowerPoint themes, shooted a demo video with his phone cam in 320p potato resolution and expect me to "add some effects", gives me loads of requirements when all we needed was a simple feature, copying and pasting prior documents in my paperworks which doesn't make any fucking sense at all, and quite a lot more.
Also, he said I should stay in the developer zone only while he maintains the business, whilist he obviously can't do much in the business part either. Seriously...?
I'm okay with his lack of experience, considering he's nice and all, unlike the other business guys I've met in the previous rants. However, I keep questioning myself why he is here in the first place when I'm the one doing everything anyway.
What should I do? Maybe just keep him and recruit more experienced people to join us, as he's not that much of a burden? What do you devRanters think?
Thanks for reading, fellow devRanters! 😀8 -
I have been working on an app for the startup i co-founded as only developer fulltime for the last 8 months...
I have yet to buy my first bread from the money i dont earn..
woops...2 -
Worst experience: being laid off when the startup I worked for lost a deal. I loved that project :(
Best experience: my new company sent me to USA for a few days to meet the client. I've gained a lot more of confidence on my spoken English. I've didn't use it in years, so I was worried. Perhaps you wouldn't think it's a "dev" experience, but English is actually a required skill for a developer who has it as a second language.1 -
!rant
Is it a bad thing if you are very dearly attached to your job/company?
Makes it extremely hard to move on4 -
I had my first ever dev interview yesterday, at a local cybersec startup(FullStack Python position)
I think it went smooth, they said if we continue the process they would give me a small dev task to complete to prove my abilities, and asked how much time of notice to give my current employers before leaving.
I can't wait to leave 4 years of sysadmin and finally move on to be a (professional) developer! 🤞3 -
So I work for a company that does outsource, this company is pretty nice, but I don't get to see it too often. The one where I'm outsourcing though is the one where I spend all of my time.
Now, this company is a kind of a startup working with AI and Deep Learning (but not if statements :o ), but I came here as a full stack python developer that should implement their AI modules into real apps (mainly web apps).
Everything sounds good untill now, I learn lots and I'm doing what I wanted: python development. The problem is: management + one kiss ass guy.
The amount of work that should be done and the deadlines that should be kept are so messed up that I end up working extra hours, sometimes even in weekend, just to get it done. I'm the only apps developer there, so passing my tasks is not an option. I tried to talk about this, but I was met with a "loser can't keep up even with these few tasks..." kind of attitude.
Moreover, there is a guy that would do anything for the boss's attention, so he speaks everyone there behind their backs (and we all know it, but he's the favorite and he actually knows his stuff so we can't do much about him).
Now the question: what should I do? I only have 5 months here (so leaving would put a hole in my CV, I don't even know what to answer at this interview question "why are you leaving"), plus that the managers from these two companies are highschool friends which means that if I go and ask for a different project, the atmosphere at work will change (maybe this is overthinking already, but I can't help it). Also, last week I could barely get through the days without crying from stress.
TL;DR: I learn a lot from this company, but the deadlines are killing me and my stress level is at an all time high. I want to leave, but I kind of can't because I want my CV to look good.
So yeah, this is my first real rant, feels good to put it out there16 -
I am just sick of the things that's been going on.
Joined a mid level startup as full Stack developer working on angular and node js . Code base is too shit and application is full of bugs(100+ tickets are being raised for bugs)
Since the product owner(PO) wants to demo the application he is pushing for bug fixes.
UI code:
1. Application is not handled for responsiveness all these years, it is now being trying to address. Code base is very huge to address though .
2. The common reusable components of UI has business logic inside. Any small change in business logic we are forced to handle in common components which might break up on another components.
3. Styling in 40+ components are made global. Small css change in component A is breaking up in component B due to this
4. No time to refactor.
5. Application not at all tested properly all these years. PO wants a stable build.
6. More importantly most of developers have already left the company and we are left with 2 developers including me.
I am not in a position to switch due to other commitments adds up a lot to frustration11 -
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! -
I worked at a startup that indulged in pair programming thing. Where as a junior, you'd be partnered with a senior developer.
My mentor, always insisted on having shortest variable names possible, so that the "size of codebase" will be very small.
It was a nightmare going through his code and understanding what's he's done. Best part, no comments as well.
In a way it has primed me to go through any codebase possible.5 -
!rant this is just a shoutout, how fucking happy I am. Clean code valued over fast but hacky push of features!
Backstory. I work for a startup. Long story short a guy with an idea needed a developer. I've worked for about a year without pay but now since we're live I get paid. Recently a new field of bussiness came up. I told tge guy with the idea (a.k.a. my boss) that we either could just "hack" the current code to just make it "fit" well kind of... Or refactor our main code base, as requirements where changing at least monthly and we just built on top of the monolith.
Don't get me wrong. It still isn't perfect. However I was able to refactor the main business logic for the last few days, as he understood, it's an investment into the future.
Good guy!
P.S. On another note: happiness or happyness? :O1 -
Just met a startup that has a programmer intern but no IT supervisor. I felt so sorry for her that I decided to show her a few cool tools that she can use in her work.
She was still using Xampp, Google Chrome, command prompt and paper trails (for all of the passwords she had to manage to different accounts)
Shown her how to use Docker, Git Bash and WSL, FireFox Developer Edition, VS Code (if she decides to not use that unregistered Sublime Text editor) and LastPass (personal preference).
Best of luck!2 -
# Retrospective as Backend engineer
Once upon a time, I was rejected by a startup who tries to snag me from another company that I was working with.
They are looking for Senior / Supervisor level backend engineer and my profile looks like a fit for them.
So they contacted me, arranged a technical test, system design test, and interview with their lead backend engineer who also happens to be co-founder of the startup.
## The Interview
As usual, they asked me what are my contribution to previous workplace.
I answered them with achievements that I think are the best for each company that I worked with, and how to technologically achieve them.
One of it includes designing and implementing a `CQRS+ES` system in the backend.
With complete capability of what I `brag` as `Time Machine` through replaying event.
## The Rejection
And of course I was rejected by the startup, maybe specifically by the co-founder. As I asked around on the reason of rejection from an insider.
They insisted I am a guy who overengineer thing that are not needed, by doing `CQRS+ES`, and only suitable for RND, non-production stuffs.
Nobody needs that kind of `Time Machine`.
## Ironically
After switching jobs (to another company), becoming fullstack developer, learning about react and redux.
I can reflect back on this past experience and say this:
The same company that says `CQRS+ES` is an over engineering, also uses `React+Redux`.
Never did they realize the concept behind `React+Redux` is very similar to `CQRS+ES`.
- Separation of concern
- CQRS: `Command` is separated from `Query`
- Redux: Side effect / `Action` in `Thunk` separated from the presentation
- Managing State of Application
- ES: Through sequence of `Event` produced by `Command`
- Redux: Through action data produced / dispatched by `Action`
- Replayability
- ES: Through replaying `Event` into the `Applier`
- Redux: Through replay `Action` which trigger dispatch to `Reducer`
---
The same company that says `CQRS` is an over engineering also uses `ElasticSearch+MySQL`.
Never did they realize they are separating `WRITE` database into `MySQL` as their `Single Source Of Truth`, and `READ` database into `ElasticSearch` is also inline with `CQRS` principle.
## Value as Backend Engineer
It's a sad days as Backend Engineer these days. At least in the country I live in.
Seems like being a backend engineer is often under-appreciated.
Company (or people) seems to think of backend engineer is the guy who ONLY makes `CRUD` API endpoint to database.
- I've heard from Fullstack engineer who comes from React background complains about Backend engineers have it easy by only doing CRUD without having to worry about application.
- The same guy fails when given task in Backend to make a simple round-robin ticketing system.
- I've seen company who only hires Fullstack engineer with strong Frontend experience, fails to have basic understanding of how SQL Transaction and Connection Pool works.
- I've seen company Fullstack engineer relies on ORM to do super complex query instead of writing proper SQL, and prefer to translate SQL into ORM query language.
- I've seen company Fullstack engineer with strong React background brags about Uncle Bob clean code but fail to know on how to do basic dependency injection.
- I've heard company who made webapp criticize my way of handling `session` through http secure cookie. Saying it's a bad practice and better to use local storage. Despite my argument of `secure` in the cookie and ability to control cookie via backend.18 -
Recently shifted from startup culture to an established organization as a Javascript developer. It has been 3 weeks haven't written a single line of code here or any other related work. Employees pick a suitable source of entertainment (mobiles,netflix) and stick with it whole day and go home. Coming from a fast paced startup environment, I get creeps due to such an eased out approach towards work, can't believe I am getting paid for this 😂, as I was working my ass off during my last employments.
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Seeing how cool the community's work stories here, and how they know a lot and how they work in organized companies makes me feel like an absolute piece of shit who's lacking a lot of industry skills.
Remotely working for a startup that lacks any sense of organization, CTO is a volunteering web developer who never shows up. A lone wolf I am. I never signed to be a lone wolf. A product that is based on an absolute garbage product that is in turn based on another utter garbage product. It feels so much pain every time I have to deal with that garbage that I end up watching some stupid anime instead. Decent salary for a junior, very friendly people, and a very empowering non-profit cause but still... technical side is just shit and I don't think I can keep with this.
Sigh :(6 -
At a startup where the software was built haphazardly because the developer thought he'll lifelong be the sole maintainer. The dude antagonized me at every turn and refused to help with familiarising with his code. He eventually left majority of the work for me, and dedication to work continued to dwindle until he threw in the towel
After his departure, we surprisingly grew fond of each other, discussing code concepts at length. He was in the habit of refusing to read any of the articles I sent him, or answer open ended questions citing the claim that they require thinking and he was busy. I didn't take any of this to heart
But it accumulated and I deleted his number. I didn't bear him any ill wishes but it wasn't respectful to myself for him to remain in my space. Some day, I was looking for a point raised during our conversations and went rummaging through our chats. Going down memory lane opened scars I'd long forgotten. I was embarrassed to see the way I forgot all about it. I should never have had anything to do with someone like that
He contacted me for a favour just less than a year after I deleted his contact. I didn't even think of declining. But this evening, I randomly remembered how he saw a defect in my code, promised me that the code will fail in production and resisted all pleas to point out what it was. I don't know if I hate him for his dastardly acts. What I feel deepest is sadness/bitterness that I got to experience all that2 -
So uh, after a gruelling job search, somehow I managed to bypass junior level and became a lead full stack developer on a meaningful project (not at a startup, either). 🤯1
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---Startup Rant---
Being a senior developer doesn't grant the privilege to join a team and starting a drama out loud that everything is bad and you don't like it.
First, if everything is perfect there is no need to hire you.
Second, think about the value that you can bring to the team instead of making them feel bad, how can you prepare an improvement plan and start to learn the factors and reasons behind those decisions.
What's funny, it that the same guy after a couple of months starts introducing bad fixes and he says it's ok for the moment, it's not good but it's okayish, I wish I had a time machine for those developers!1 -
Weeks ago, a change went into production. For some reason, we can't implement our own changes or create new databases in production, we have to have a whole different department do it. This would be great except for one thing:
THEY CAN'T THINK FOR THEMSELVES. I've had to tell them how to run scripts I wrote. I've had to tell them how to fix problems that arise.
Back to that script ran three weeks ago or so. It didn't add permissions to allow me, the system and application developer to see the stored procedure, much less run it. Application can't run it. Thankfully the application works without it.
Fast forward to tonight. My change that I'm attempting to implement is the creation of the stored procedure, because nothing could see it, I assumed it didn't exist... reasonable, right? Database folks tells me it exists. They then tell me they can't give me nor the application permissions because it doesn't ask for it in the change plan.
Excuse me.... WHAT FUCKING WORLD DOES IT MAKE SENSE TO CREATE SOMETHING AND HIDE IT FROM THE CREATOR LET ALONE THE APPLICATION SO IT CAN'T USE IT?! FUCKING THINK. WHY WOULD I WASTE MY FUCKING TIME TO TALK TO YOU OFFSHORE PIECES OF SHIT AT 10PM WHEN I'D RATHER PLAY VIDEO GAMES.
I'm so fucking done with enterprises. Someone with reasonable job security at a startup, please hire me. You will probably pay me more fucking money than this company does anyway.
Now on to my second change of the night. Thankfully I don't have to rely on anyone outside of me... so I won't be wasting my fucking time. -
Hey! This is a followup to my last story.
TL;DR: I thinking of quitting my old job, got an offer at a startup, about the same pay, but much better working conditions.
First of all, the meeting with my lead. It was a performance report on her side to me, and I got 100 to 110% in performance in all points. My lead said "this team without you wouldn't be this team anymore" - which makes me feel a little bit bad for her if I decide to quit. She is a great team lead, but I don't belive the old company is worth my time anymore.
Now to the new company. Shortly after that performance report meeting, I had a call with the ceo, and what do I have to say besides: What a cool dude. He listened to me, asked me questions about my previous jobs (not just as programmer) and so on. But because first looks are deceiving, I went to their office last thursday. And wow. Their are exactly what I imagined them to be. Cool, young folks, 100% tech enthusiasts, and open minded.
One of the new hires in the new company wanted a 6 months internship between his studies. Instead they offered him a full time job - for the 6 months. They even offered me to pay back my scholarship that I will own my old company for leaving early. This is awesome.
The only things that will be worse than my old job are, that I have to negotiate payment instead of yearly increases, 4 days less paid vacation, so only 26 days, and 40h weeks. And they have no workers council, which isn't good, but it's not the worst either.
I got them fixed on 57.000€, not including an up to 10.000€ annual bonus. The way you achieve your bonus seems good to. It's split in two parts, internal and external bonus. Internal bonus is when you engage with internal events like tech calls, sharing your knowledge on your main IT topics, etc. External Bonus is a bit more complicated, but also straight forward. You work on projects for customers, and if you have less than 3 weeks a year that you dont participate in an project, you get the full bonus.
Last friday, I filed a request for a certificate of employment from my current team lead, this is odd for her because I have never done it before, and she asked why I requested it. I said to her that we can talk about it, and she agreed but didn't call me, yet.
Lastly, another good friend of mine will be employed by my team soon, but for a fraction of the payment that I currently receive! He is doing the exact same work, and even worse, he is doing project managment for his main developer project too! And is getting less paid... I just cant...
Yesterday we needed to update a few cloud instances, the only other person who knows about setting up CICD and our OpenShift Containers than me is only in part time and works two days a week, his trainee didn't know anything, so it's up to me. This isn't hard or anything, but it shows that this system our mangement maintains will fail soon, maybe even with me going? I sure hope so tbh.
One of you guys said, I should go to my team lead and negotiate a higher pay, but the truth is, that because we are a big ISP we have an collective agreement for payment and are grouped by tasks (which is bull shit btw, because I'm doing tasks much higher paid than currently). This also means that I cannot simply jump in another group, and can only increase my current pay to about 115%, which is done automatically every year by 5% up to 115%. Anything above is considered extra, but I don't think they will go with it.
I will decide this week about my future at the old company, but I really don't know what to do...2 -
confession time:
I am php laravel developer with little knowledge about nodejs.
I got selected by one startup as nodejs developer.
frankly I am not better nodejs developer than my competition who were rejected.
I completed oral interview with my nodejs theory knowledge at a time of technical round , they gave us task to create crud with fantastic front end and nodejs mongo as a back end.
I developed front end in bootstrap but at a time of backend, I just copy paste code from github.
and changed everything variable and other proof to hide reality. in mean time other candidates were actually coding everything then I took time to understand this code and I submitted after few candidates.
in last round they ask me to explain code which I explained properly and I get salary 40k/month INR.
I know it is cheating but I wanted this job badly.6 -
Worst tech ever? I will say, but don't throw rocks before I explain. Xcode. Why? Try to use it on MacBook 2008. And after that, compare it to Android Studio on same machine. But at least, I can just say "Compiling" to PM and play games on phone. And even "I don't give a fuck about how urgent it is. IPA build takes 15 minutes."
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I have been interning at a tech company as a software developer. And it is a paid internship program where I haven't got any stipend for the past months. I have to pay rents, bills, even my transportation too. So o decided to startup a tech company along with my friends. Later this month we are launching our first product.3
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My Startup Stack now looks like this on production env !! LOLjoke/meme full stack developer startup webdev devops open source startup hell production product joke
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Developer dilemma:
1) Tell people that they don't need code to get their startup idea off the ground
2) Make up an excuse to code something useless -
I just don't get it.
Been looking for a new job for 2+ years and have failed at every opportunity. Numerous white board interviews, code challenges, hours upon hours wasted. Just can't seem to make the next move. I believe I have my soft skills down because I am able talk and do meetups just fine but either I'm too junior or something else is going on.
What started all of this was my latest rejection that I thought I had in the bag. Sailed through all their questions, did a live code thing, all of that being for 3+ hours. As it's called a final interview with them. Not to mention they're a startup, figured their standards might even be a bit lower than normal since they're needing people. Yet, still got rejected.
This sort of stuff, I'm seriously considering just leaving tech in general and probably just go do a outside job. With supposedly everything going for me like working in a hot job market, in a growing tech town, experience, and doing extra coding on my own time to beef up my portfolio. Doesn't matter. Still continious rejection. Lol in fact how I even got my current job was through completely unconventional means and based on that, I think it's done me more harm than good, which is why I'm trying to leave my current job and go into a place where I can be a better developer.
As of now, back to the grind of trying to find something.7 -
Hi developers.... so i just feel like posting this post
I'm a self-taught developer its been 6 years now and i managed to get myself a job this year at a tech startup and they actually developed this developer department just for me..... with the promise that if i manage to get this department up and running I'll get a higher position as the company grows
So it's been 4 months now and i think i'm doing exceptionally well as a developer since I'm the only developer in that organization..... and some how I feel like if i use my problem solving skills to work on other real world problems not just code and designing systems..... like bringing solutions to real none code related problems i could actually achieve more and make a big difference
but I'm actually learning a lot and hope i'll become more and do more within this organization and grab that top position role3 -
I started fully exploring different aspects of tech in a middle school technology class where the teacher gave me a good grade as long as I did something that could be useful or interesting. I learned how to design webpages by playing with inspect element, and then decided to make my own with Notepad. One of my friends showed me how to use Sublime Text, and I found that I loved programming. Other things I did in there included using two desktops with NIC's wired directly to each other with an old version of Synergy and a VNC server, and at one point, I built a server node out of old dell Optiplex desktops the school had piled in a storage room.
Last year in high school, I took a class on VB.net and made some money afterwards by freelance refreshing legacy spaghetti, and got burned pretty badly by a person offering $25,000 for a major POS to backend CMS integration rewrite. The person told me that I had finished second, and that another dev had gotten the reward, but that he liked my code. A few days later, I was notified through a *cough*very convoluted*cough* system of mine by a trigger that ran once during startup in a production environment and reported the version number as well as a few other bits, and I was able to see that *cough*someone*cough* had been using my code. I stopped programming for at least six months straight because I didn't want to go back.
This year in high school, I'm taking the engineering class I didn't get into last year, and I realized that Autodesk Inventor supports VBA. I got back into programming with a lot of copy-paste and click-once "installers" to get my modelling assignments done faster than my classmates. Last week, one of my friends asked me to help him fix his VB program, which I did, and now I'm hooked again.
I've always been an engineer at heart, but now I'm conflicted with going into I.T., mechanical or robotical engineering, or being a software developer.
A little long, but that's how I got to where I am now. (I still detest those who take advantage of defenseless programmers. There's a special place for them.)7 -
Funny how people freak out when I offer free stuff (in exchange for feedback) as I introduce myself as the CEO.
But when I tell them that I'm a developer, they all accept it without a single doubt.
Since I'm doing both, I can call myself whatever, but this just shows how little trust people have towards management of ANY company. So I can't really blame them.
CEOs, please stop being fucking greedy and do something that can change the life of at least one person in a positive way.
My vision for this startup is to produce as many opportunities for people so that they can feed their family and have a place to call home.
Edit: I've seen this one CEO buy an expensive car on company lease when he received an investment. Guess what his employee told me next. I fucking LOL'd.3 -
Hi there fellow Devranters,
I am new here but my problem is pretty old. You see i stumbled into coding totally by accident. That was about 5 years ago. I have been learning ever since.
But the problem is that each day I just feel less and less of a programmer, more of a failure. I started with python, from sololearn to various ebooks.Then C++ and finally Ruby. But I still feeal weak.Despite the projects that I have worked on I still don't feel good enough. Most especially in Ruby.
I have a friend who is also into coding and coincidentally started about the same time as I did.The difference is that he learnt at university and I am self-taught.We used to talk a lot but we don't anymore,I feel too ashamed, an impostor even. I am scared he'll ask me something and I won't know anything about it.And I once taigjt him OOP. Right now I can't even code a hello world program without reading a whole ebook on python just to be confident.
We had dreams with my friend on a dozen or so projects that would have put us on the software dev map, but I keep avoiding him so much we have barely started any. I am afraid he'll find me too amateurish to work with.
I learn everyday to expand my knowledge,I have subscribed to a gazillion software related stuff on all social media platforms I happen to be in.But deep down I feel insufficient. I have been going through rants since the few hours I joined and it doesn't sound gibberish to me.Neither does other people's code when I go through it.But I am ashamed of mine I end up deleted after it runs successfully.
I just don't feel like a software developer, I don't even know what it takes to be one even. I learned 10 languages focused on 3, laughed at memes only devs get, used linux and loved it too but still I feel like an impostor. I used to be happy about all the things I taught myself, I onced dreamed of working at Google and later having my own startup back home.Now my friend and a couple of his friends have a small start-up and I feel ashamed of myself.
I don't feel like what I know is enough and learning only makes me feel worse, so bad I am scared of coding again now.Yet I just can't stop learning, I feel incomplete when I don't do anything dev related,but I don't even feel my speed is fast enough when I type on my keyboard.
😥😥6 -
Why do German companies hate paying interns decent wages?
I just had an interview for an internship at a decently funded startup, and they proposed MINIMUM WAGE as a salary. Acted like it was the most normal thing in the world, too.
I do have a Bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering and some actual working experience as a developer, yet they suggested they’d pay me even less than that if they were legally allowed to. Is that their way of saying they don’t want me after all? They did invite me to a second interview.
I get that interns generally aren’t as productive as senior devs who spend years on a certain project, but minimum wage? Fuck that!
Luckily, they’re just the first company I talked to, but I do feel a little offended.15 -
Guest-user: finished my angular js 3 days course. Next have to start learning how to write API's using angular. Any heads-up?
Sudo-user: wow.Order raspberry pi from Amazon and build rocket. Let's go to moon next month 🤦🤦🏼♂️ -
Something about my experience in a startup that I co-founded as a developer is that I feel like everyone always depends on me for almost everything. So when I just want to jump in and code, I have to be worried about who's gonna call me for what tedious reason. It really gets to me.
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I loved you Xamarin.Forms I really did.
I defended you everywhere... Released 5 apps.
You FUCKING SUCK, no svg support (no none of the apis work), startup time is FUCKING insane, i could go on for hours......
Please any Android Developer out there is there any smooth transition to native? (Dont tell me about Js bullshit)
Help me fell the Native Power of Android.
Show me that apps don't need 20 seconds to start.7 -
Rant one of monday!!
Monday stand up meeting....
Reviewing jira tasks
Front end:" well, I dont think that is a priority but IM NOT TEST DRIVEN DEVELOPER SO...."
Jira task? Local env for testing in minikubes.
Ahhh the cool startup isssss sooooo cool he takes decisions about that, model the app or even estimates the deadlines of the product (the product not jira tickets)
Isnt it cool? Why not give that power to juniors? Why not tell them they dont need to learn and junior is just something they label to pay cheap for them?1 -
The story of how I knew I did the right thing leaving the start up I was an employee of.
It was a great place to work when I started, we had a plan and we were are working hard to make it. But pretty soon I realised that things weren't 100%. We kept altering the product and focusing on the wrong things. Our backlog grew faster than it was completed.
Pretty soon a launch planned in April was pushed back over and over again, until we finally released in November, and instead of being first on the market we were last.
We pivoted hard and I didn't believe in the new product so I quit.
The last week on the job I was finishing up some stuff and when our PO (who also was a programmer)was deploying the things I had done to production something went wrong. Now I had just integrated *his* new authorization service and I had a hunch it wasn't deployed. But he sent a message over slack with a bunch of code alterations that was the "problem". Along with some passive aggressive words about how I wasn't professional and didn't take ownership of the product.
I only added an error log that asked if the authorization service was deployed, and 10 minutes later he came up and said good job, no mention of what was fixed between now and then.
I have no regrets leaving that place. -
Being a Tech Co-Founder is both boon and a bane.
Boon: You know how to build it.
Bane: You just start building without thinking.
We often crave I will be using Redis😍😍, Kafka, Load Balancer, Muti Layer Neural Net
"Dude", Whatever you are building does anyone want it or not. Tell me that first.1 -
When the CTO/CEO of your "startup" is always AFK and it takes weeks to get anything approved by them (or even secure a meeting with them) and they have almost-exclusive access to production and the admin account for all third party services.
Want to create a new messaging channel? Too bad! What about a new repository for that cool idea you had, or that new microservice you're expected to build. Expect to be blocked for at least a week.
When they also hold themselves solely responsible for security and operations, they've built their own proprietary framework that handles all the authentication, database models and microservice communications.
Speaking of which, there's more than six microservices per developer!
Oh there's a bug or limitation in the framework? Too bad. It's a black box that nobody else in the company can touch. Good luck with the two week lead time on getting anything changed there. Oh and there's no dedicated issue tracker. Have you heard of email?
When the systems and processes in place were designed for "consistency" and "scalability" in mind you can be certain that everything is consistently broken at scale. Each microservice offers:
1. Anemic & non-idempotent CRUD APIs (Can't believe it's not a Database Table™) because the consumer should do all the work.
2. Race Conditions, because transactions are "not portable" (but not to worry, all the code is written as if it were running single threaded on a single machine).
3. Fault Intolerance, just a single failure in a chain of layered microservice calls will leave the requested operation in a partially applied and corrupted state. Ger ready for manual intervention.
4. Completely Redundant Documentation, our web documentation is automatically generated and is always of the form //[FieldName] of the [ObjectName].
5. Happy Path Support, only the intended use cases and fields work, we added a bunch of others because YouAreGoingToNeedIt™ but it won't work when you do need it. The only record of this happy path is the code itself.
Consider this, you're been building a new microservice, you've carefully followed all the unwritten highly specific technical implementation standards enforced by the CTO/CEO (that your aware of). You've decided to write some unit tests, well um.. didn't you know? There's nothing scalable and consistent about running the system locally! That's not built-in to the framework. So just use curl to test your service whilst it is deployed or connected to the development environment. Then you can open a PR and once it has been approved it will be included in the next full deployment (at least a week later).
Most new 'services' feel like the are about one to five days of writing straightforward code followed by weeks to months of integration hell, testing and blocked dependencies.
When confronted/advised about these issues the response from the CTO/CEO
varies:
(A) "yes but it's an edge case, the cloud is highly available and reliable, our software doesn't crash frequently".
(B) "yes, that's why I'm thinking about adding [idempotency] to the framework to address that when I'm not so busy" two weeks go by...
(C) "yes, but we are still doing better than all of our competitors".
(D) "oh, but you can just [highly specific sequence of undocumented steps, that probably won't work when you try it].
(E) "yes, let's setup a meeting to go through this in more detail" *doesn't show up to the meeting*.
(F) "oh, but our customers are really happy with our level of [Documentation]".
Sometimes it can feel like a bit of a cult, as all of the project managers (and some of the developers) see the CTO/CEO as a sort of 'programming god' because they are never blocked on anything they work on, they're able to bypass all the limitations and obstacles they've placed in front of the 'ordinary' developers.
There's been several instances where the CTO/CEO will suddenly make widespread changes to the codebase (to enforce some 'standard') without having to go through the same review process as everybody else, these changes will usually break something like the automatic build process or something in the dev environment and its up to the developers to pick up the pieces. I think developers find it intimidating to identify issues in the CTO/CEO's code because it's implicitly defined due to their status as the "gold standard".
It's certainly frustrating but I hope this story serves as a bit of a foil to those who wish they had a more technical CTO/CEO in their organisation. Does anybody else have a similar experience or is this situation an absolute one of a kind?2 -
I'm 22 years old and 1.5 years into my first Startup Job. (and second Dev job)
I feel kind of uncomfortable now and I would like to ask your opinions.
I'll start with the work related description of my situation and later add a bit of my life situation.
I develop as hobby since I can think. I'm pretty engaged and love to do things right. So I quickly found myself in the position of the de-facto lead fullstack Developer.
Although, to be clear, were only a few devs - which are now replaced by not so many other devs. I feel often like the only person able to design and decide and implement in a way that won't kill us later (and I spend half of my time fixing technical debt).
I mostly like what I do , because it's a challenge and I feel needed. I learn new things and I am pretty flexible in work time. (but I also often work till late in the night, sacrificing friendship time)
But there are so many things I would love to do and used to do, but now I have no motivation to develop outside of my job.
I don't really feel that what my company is doing is something I find valuable. (Image rights management)
I earn pretty well - in comparison to what I'm used to: 20€/hour, Brutto 2.800 / month for 32 hours a week. In Berlin. (Minus tax and stuff it's 1.800€). It's more than enough for what I need.
But when I see what others in similar positions earn (~4.000), I feel weird. I got promised a raise since nearly a year now. I don't feel I could demand it. I also got the hint that I could get virtual shares. But nothing happened.
Now what further complicates the situation is that I will go to Portugal in April for at least half a year, for joining a social project I love. My plan used to be that I work from there for a few hours a week - but I'm starting to hesitate as I fear that I will actually work more and it will keep me from fully being there.
So, I kind of feel emotionally attached - I like (some of) the people, I know (or at least believe) that the company will have a big problem without me. (I hold a lot of the knowledge for legacy applications) .
But I also feel like I'm putting too much of myself into the company and it is not really giving me back. And it's also not so much worth it... Or is it?
Should I stick to the company and keep my pretty secure position and be financially supported during my time in Portugal, while possibly sacrificing my time there?
Should I ask for a raise (possibly even retroactively) and then still quit later? (they will probably try to get my 1 month of cancelation period upped to 3).
Also, is this a risk for my "career"?question work-life what? purpose startup safety hobby work-life balance life career career advice bugfixing7 -
TL;DR: This year I changed job to a quite toxic company and because I have to work for two different clients in parallel I'm burning out. I need suggestions about telling about my mental health to my employer or request to change clients because of their incompatibility
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At the begin of this year I changed work from a small startup (which was nice, but they didn't pay very much) to a consulting company and since then I'm experiencing my first burnout.
Just to give some context, the first month or two months in this new position were nice: the project I've been put on was difficult, but the other people in the team were very kind and helped me navigate through the codebase. After there quiet months, I've been put on a second project (in parallel with the first one), same domain but different client and the two clients must not know that I work for other clients. This doesn't work particularly well because both of the clients require me a full--time presence and both the teams have the tendency to call you without any warning and without setting up a meeting on calendar and beacuse of this I pass 3/4 of my day on such useless meetings (which many of them I have to be present at the same time, and sometimes one meeting is in English and one in Italian) without getting any job done and now both my leads are getting frustrated by my delays.
To make it all worse, when I was contacted from the headhunter it was for a mobile developer position, but because of my previous position my employer thought that I could temporary work on one java project because there was scarcity of developers and I could be a nice fit.
I'm not sure if I sum up my situation clearly of it's confused (I'm sorry about that), but tomorrow I plan to call my employer to tell him that I can't take it anymore and something has to change, I just don't know if I should put it on the incompatibility of the two clients, my mental health or both6 -
I was studying a lot the last year, i learned a lot about Machine Learning/Deep Learning, Data Gathering, Data Analysis, ETL, Model Architecture Design, Training, Fine Tuning, Backend Development, DataBases, API Development, ORMs, Rest, GraphQL, OAuth, CI/CD, Docker, Deployment to Production environments like Heroku, Git and more stuff i dont remember while writing this. I built and keep adding stuff to my Github Portafolio.
Im not able to get a job. I started looking for jobs as Data Scientists, no response never. I take a look at freelancer sites, nothing seems to fit my skills. And when there is a minimal fit, they always want a Full Stack Web Developer, i dont know Frontend Development, i dont like do it.
Dont know what to do or how to land any job.
My options aeems to be:
1.Learn Frontend Dev and work as Full Stack in underpaying freelance jobs
2.Keep applying to Remote-Only startups, but they still wants people with 3+ years of experience.
i cant work in my city, here are not any company startup hiring no one, we are 30 years in the past here.
What you do in my place?10 -
What's the smallest size start-up company you would work for? The American dream, of course, is to own your own company. If that option were off the table, would you work as a developer for a startup company that only had 3 other employees, including the CEO?4
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Welcome to post 2 of WHY WOULD I WANT TO WORK WITH YOU?, a saga of competence, empathy and me being dick, even tho I didn't want to be one.
This is a follow-up to: https://devrant.com/rants/2363374 It's title is: "Oh, you can post only every 2h. Didn't know that". I also didn't know that the rest of my rant would be put into a comment. For consistency tho, this time I am still splitting the story.
A wise person once wrote in their book: "People judge other people by two things: Empathy and competence." This may not be an accurate quote, but it carries the same message. Also, I don't really remember who was the author. I only know they were probably quite wise. Anyway, I just wanted to share that sentence. Have a moment and think about it. Or don't. Here's my story:
A was a software house that looked pretty promising. They were elegant, their page and offer looked nice. Well, unless you consider the fact that they offered me internship. Unpaid. But I decided to meet with them anyway, since I had hope that I could negotiate some sort of paid internship or a job contract even. I did my homework after all, and I was confident I am able to keep up with their requirements. I arrived a little bit... no, way to early. One damn hour. Whatever, I waited. I was greeted by a woman. We had a cultural conversation, she had a list of 12 questions I needed to answer, as a form of a test. We begun. First question: How do you change a value in Oracle Database? "Wait a minute", I thought, "What kind of question is that?". Why in seven hells would you want your frontend developer to know how to handle oracle db? Well, I gave my answer, I did lick some of that SQL in my life. Next question: Java stuff. The bloody gal didn't even care to check what position I am applying to before the interview! At this point I didn't really have very high hopes. A shame on them forever.
The story of B and C is connected and a little bit more complicated. More on that in part 2. B stands for Bank. A big corporation then, by definition. A person I know decided called me that day and told me they're hiring, that he referred me and that they would like to arrange a meeting. And so we did. It was couple of days before Christmas. C was a software house again. Or a startup. Idk really. Their website wasn't finished so I couldn't read anything useful up on them. They didn't tell me much about themselves either. They also started with "unpaid internship".
In C, they would greet me and instantly sit me down next to a mac laptop and told me, "hey, do this stuff in python". What the fuck, not again... I told them that I am frontend dev, they guy said "it's no problem, you said you know python, it's a simple task". And yeah, I did host some apps in Flask and I did use psycopg2. It was in my CV. But never, ever, have I mentioned knowing heuristics nor statistics. I'm no data scientist, monsieur. Whatever, I tried, I failed a little bit, I told them that maybe if I did want to spend half of my day there I would finish this task, but back then I was way too nervous to focus and code. I told them what should be done in code and that I just was unable to code this at the very moment. They nodded, we said goodbye and I was sure not to hear from them ever again.
In B, I was greeted by a senior frontend dev. He told me the recruiter is sick and he couldn't come, so we're talking alone. I can buy it. We sat down in said meeting room, and he asked me if I wanted a drink. No thx, I had digested so much caffeine during last 24h, next dose could be an overdose. And then, he took out my resume printed in paper. With notes on it. With some stuff encircled. That bloody bastard did his homework. We spent over an hour, just talking in friendly atmosphere. It was an interview, but it was a conversation also. We shared our experiences, opinions and it went just perfect.
On December 20, I was heading home for Christmas. My situation looked like this: A called me they could offer me only unpaid internship. I was getting kinda bored of rice and debts, tbh. I gracefully rejected their generous offer. B didn't give me feedback yet(it was a most recent interview, so I didn't expect any message until after Christmas anyway). C told me that they could give me internship, but I managed to convince them to make it paid internship. After three months of very bad times, things were starting to get better.
On part III we will explore further events of my very recent past. That post will be same amount of storytelling and possibly a lesson for those who seek an employer and for those who seek an employee.6 -
Ok so as the only developer in a tech startup who is mostly self-taught i've decided to take the initiation and do some online certificates and diplomas
bagged 2 now
1 Python programming
2 Business frameworks and IT for Orgs2 -
I'm getting to the point where I'm going to have to specialize in either front-end or back-end and move away from being a full stack developer. At least that's my thought since the startup is growing. Of course there's always the option that I get placed as a lead to oversee a whole project, but that's not guaranteed.
Startup world problems.4 -
I recently entered a new job as a software developer for a hot-in-market startup, and they are offering a huge amount of money to maintain just one app
The reason why they are offering that much money is because it is a hybrid app written in closurescript, they are willing to pay for learning closure but just maintain the app
So yay?2 -
My LinkedIn became full of senior developers while none of them have the basic qualifications to become a junior developer in a rising startup.
Now may I ask how many coding hours do developers need to move from “junior” to “senior”?
Is there an organization that gives those certificates?
Who gave it to you? Who promoted you to “senior”?
Can we stop feeding our egos with fake titles and live a little bit in the present?9 -
So my boss wants me to develop a complete business management solution + mobile app. (It’s a startup project based company). She doesn’t want to use dubsado / asana / etc and wants me to take the best of all and custom build it for her.
Now I was a mobile app developer. Native iOS and android + recently learnt flutter. No backend or web or api skill.
But screw it, I wanted to learn laravel since a long time anyway so that I could be an independent developer.
So I have agreed and started it...
Bitten more than I can chew? Time will tell...what do you think?10 -
Today, i finally got my desired job as Android developer in a startup, earlier i was working as a php developer to pay my bills. I told my pm about me quitting this week and man he congrts me from getting out this shitty job.
Now m just waiting for my salary before i quit. -
we want you to be
- full stack developer (you do everything front end, back end)
- dev ops/SRE (you can sort out the deployment CI/CD pipeline, cloud platform services AWS/GC/Azure whatever)
- architect (you can design the software as well)
all in 1, you gotta be multiple roles/departments
good luck getting this experience on the job (hell in a startup is not for everybody and certainly not for me)
also why the fuck companies who aren’t startups ask for this idk
not sure if i missed any roles/competencies so far , don’t forget you need like >=3 years of experience possibly in every field for entry roles and more for anything higher than that9 -
How many late invoices are acceptable for a developer working in an early stage startup before they should stop believing in their own team?
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at the co-working space where I work today there was an argument between the CEO of this startup and their developer.
not really sure what it was about but at the end the developer was getting really frustrated and he shouted: "I'm telling you REST means HTTP!!".
I think all the developers around vomited on their keyboard.2 -
LinkedIn is a really nice tool and website... and then there are people who contact you to become the only developer in a new startup and work for free in exchange of company shares, that at this moment are worthless. Wtf5
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Note: In this rant I will ask for advices, and confess some sins. I will tell my personal story- it will be long.
So basically it has been almost 2 years since I first entered the world of software development. It has been the biggest and most important quest of my life so far, but yet I feel like I missed a lot of my objectives, and lots of stuff did not go the way I wanted them to be, and it makes feel frustrated and it lowered my self esteem greatly. I feel confused and a bit depressed, and don't know what to do.
I'll start: I'm 23 years old. 2 years ago I was still a soldier(where I live there is a forced conscription law) in a sysadmin/security role. I grew tired of the ops world and got drawn more and more into programming. A tremendous passion became to burn in me, as I began to write small programs in Python and shell scripts. I wanted to level up more seriously so I started reading programming books and got myself into a 10 month Java course.
In the meanwhile I got released from army duty and got a job as a security sysadmin at a large local telco company. Job was boring and unchallenging but it payed well. I had worked there for 1 year and at the same time learned more and more stuff from 2 best friends who have been freelance developers for years. I have learned how to build full-stack mobile apps and some webdev, mainly Android and Node.js. However because I was very inexperienced and lacked discipline, all of my side projects failed horribly, and all attempts to work with my experienced friends have failed too- I feel they lost a lot of trust for me(they don't say it, but I feel it, maybe I'm wrong).
I began to realise I had to leave this job and seek a developer job in order to get better, and my wish came true 6 months ago when I finally got accepted into a startup as a fullstack webdev, for a bit lower wage but I felt it was worth it. I was overjoyed.
But now my old problems did not end, they just changed. My new job is a thousand times harder and more intensive than the old one. I feel like it sucks all the energy and motivation that was still left in me, and I have learned almost nothing in my free time, returning home exhausted. My bosses are not impressed from my work despite me being pretty junior level, and I feel like I'm in a vicious cycle that keeps me from advancing my abilities. My developer friends I mentioned earlier have jobs like I do and still manage to develop very impressive side projects and even make a nice sum of money from them, while I can't even concetrate on stupid toy projects and learning.
I don't know why It is like this. I feel pathetic and ashamed of my developer sins and lack of discipline. During that time I also gained some weight that I'm trying t lose now... I know not all of it is my fault but it makes me feel like crap.
Sorry for the long story. I just feel I need to spill it out and hope to get some advices from you guys who may or may not have similar experiences. Thanks in advance for reading this.2 -
As the only developer in the startup team. I am really sick of explaining "how it works" and "how to execute"...
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Hey guys. I am in a situation where I need to decide wether to take on a new project or not. And if not, how to turn down that client so that I would not burn any bridges. So I need your opinions on this matter in order to make the final decision.
To make things clear heres some background info. 10 months ago I quitted my fulltime position in another EU country and went back to my own home country. 10 months forward till today and I have my own ltd company which currently has 5 projects. Its doing pretty well money wise. All projects combined, I already earn more then I ever did and I need to work max 10 hours a week since all projects are remote projects so I dont waste time on useless meetings and etc. However I dont feel fulfilled or challenged anymore because surprise surprise doing well paid projects doesnt guarante your sense of fulfillment.
So I noticed that I have lots of spare time which I spend diving into rabbitholes with hobby projects. I decided that its time to scale my company and take on more projects and maybe even hire more people.
So I started searching for other projects I could work on (prefferibly remote projects or flexible ones where I could come in 2-3 days a week in office and work remotely rest of the week). Reason being that I am already out of sync with fulltime position lifestyle and I am totally result oriented, not punch in my hours and go home oriented.
For exampleIf i get my weekly tasks I prefer to do them in 1-2 days (even if it requires doing double shifts which rarely but happens) but then I want to have rest of the week off. Thats how my brain works and thats how Im wired. I cant stand fulltime positions especially in enterprise bigger companies where I come in and do maybe 2 hours of actual work everyday because of all useless meetings and blockers from backend/etc. Its soul crushing to me.
So I posted linkedin ads and started searching for new clients/projects. One month ago I went to an interview for an android project in a startup.
The project looked interesting enough. Main task was to rewrite their android app from java to kotlin. Apparently their current current app was built by a backend developer who wants to focus solely on backend.
So during the interview they showed me their app which was quite simple frontend wise but not so simple backend wise from what I was able to figure out.
Their project lead (also a backed guy) asked me my estimation of price and completion of task. I told them maybe 2-3 months to do everything properly.
Project lead was basically shocked because all other candidates told him they can rewrite the app from java to kotlin in 2-3 weeks. I told him that everything is possible but his app quality will suffer and for a better estimation he would we would need to sign an NDA so I could evaluate the costs. So we ended the interview.
After that we kept in touch for one month (it took them one month to google a generic NDA and sign it digitally with me).
So heres the redflags I noticed:
1. They dont respect my time. Wasted 1 month of my time and after signing NDA gave me 2days to estimate their project and go to a meeting and give them detailed info about what I can offer. I thats not a brain rape then I dont know what it is
2. They are changing initial conditions we talked about. We agreed on rewriting the codebase and be done with it. Now they prefer a fulltime worker who would be responsible for android app as his own product. So basically project lead was not able to find a fulltime dev so now hes trying to convert me (a company owner) to his fulltime worker.
3. Lack of respect. During the interview he started speaking in his own native language to me with some expression (he seemed pissed off at that moment when he switched languages).
4. Bad culture fit. As I said Im used to relaxed clients and projects where I dont need to be chained to a desk a monitored and be micromanaged. I mean lets sign a contract give me access to your codebase and tell me what to do, I will produce results and lets be done with it.
5. Project lead is a backend guy who doesnt understand how complicated android apps can be. No architecture and no unit tests are in his frontend app. He doesnt care about writing proper app since he ships it in his own device so he doesnt need to worry about supporting custom devices or different api levels of android and etc. But not having any architecture? Cmon.
So basically I am confused. Project lead needs a fulltime dev but hes in contact with me in hopes that I would sign a fulltime contract. But how I can work fulltime if all what I can see are redflags?
Basicaly I thinkthis was a misundersanding. Im searching for fulltime remote projects and hes offering fulltime inhouse projects. Project lead never outsourced so hes confused as well.
As you can see decision is already basically made to turn him down, I just need to know how to tell him to fck off in the most polite manner and thats it.6 -
So here is an interesting story.
The company that I work went in collaboration with another company and as my company is a small startup we had only 2 employees. We had to do 2 different projects during the collaboration period.
I was put in-charge of an android application (At that time I had no experience of android development and it was one of their most important project without any guidance)
I was doing work of two companies and getting paid by one and I was getting shit from the company that we were collaborating with.
As a developer I value tasks and deadline but the company issued a new rule that I should stay in the office from 9-6 (strictly) which I didn't oppose. But the senior developers here stay strictly 9-6 but work only for about less 2 hours a day and get valued more.
I used to love working on weekends improving myself in the process but working over time is not valued by the company.
( BTW I completed their project in about 1.5 months ) -
Imagine a "development" environment with no vcs, no APIs, no general hierarchy for db admin or software development, no test environment. Well this was my first job.
Quite literally a dumpster fire.
I know I'm not a world class developer but I still think this was beyond unacceptable for a software startup.2 -
I started working for a startup as Server Administrator/ System Integrator beside university to get some dollars with easy work and nice people.
((I Know two of the C*Os so I got a had feeling with this. Besides the upcoming story I'm still really happy with my position and career chances here. God bless my Department which has the most funny/rude guys, love you.))
tl;dr:
Guy fakes his Skillset and fuckup whole department, can´t do most of his basic tasks. I had my first and hopefully last interaction with this bastard.
Heres how everything started:
I was more and more involved in the leading processes and decisions.
Heard about a story where and why the whole dev-department was kicked out of his position because they were crappy developers. And cant just believe the stories they told me about the former Dev-Lead
Now I met the former "Development Lead"
I was brought in because we in the IT wondered why he would like to share his local machine password with colleges. After some questions he came out with the Reason.
He is doing home-office for some days a week now and wants his colleges to be able to start his "software". (already confused by that)
The "better IT-guy" in me offered help for automatic deployment CI/CD stuff so that they can use it as an inhouse service.
BIG OOF incoming:
"The code is not in git because I wanted to clean it up before"
"My IDE is the only place where my PHP crap work is running"
"The 'PHP-software' is to complex for this"
My Lead and I were completely speechless,
I understand the decision to kick this "dev-Lead" from the lead position down to a code monkey/ script kid.
Now I´m thinking about getting my Hands on the Lead position after my exams because if such bastards with no clue about basic stuff, no clue about leading, no clue about ci/cd, no clue about generic software stuff get the job I would easily be the "good IT-guy" with more responsibility/ skill.
Now I sit here, hate people that fake their skills and set back work of colleges for multiple months and never asked for help or advice.
And the little "Bastard Operator from Hell" in my just wants to delete all his files, emails account during a migration to completely demotivate the person who failed to be responsible for a team nor their projects.rant ci/cd php administrator startup script-kid i hate people unskilled skill faker lead developer devops5 -
I hate that i feel like I should be coming up with the next great tech innovation just because I'm in the industry. The onus is put on us to create the next Facebook and make a success of it, when no one would expect an electrician to create the next light bulb or a store worker to create the next great product. Why do we put this pressure on ourselves?rant startup tech developer devrant pressure success we can't all be the next zuckerburg random idea1
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I never had too much professional experience but I'm feeling so lost during this sprint. New senior developer is running laps around tasks while I'm still struggling with the new code review process we adopted, and still taking my time to understand tasks, I feel useless and even fearful of losing my job as the company (which is a growing startup) starts hiring more people.6
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Not my CS lecturer but my ICT teacher in high school convinced me that it would be a great idea to go study CS at University. It was the best decision of my life as I'm now happily working full time as an Android developer for a startup. Couldn't imagine myself doing any other well paid job and being this happy.
Sadly I never got to tell him where I ended up post graduation but I did get to tell him that I secured myself a good placement year when I was at university when I found out he was sick.
He was so grateful of me getting in touch and I'm glad I managed to get to say thank you to him before he passed away.
Leukemia fucking sucks. RIP. -
Well it's not exactly a startup idea but something that I and my team built during my first-ever hackathon.
The theme was to build some tools for developers to improve their speed and be more productive.
In our team we were some bunch of students who just knew how to build a basic front end and a little bit of backend and we came up with an application that lets developer query any command line shortcut through his voice and the website will return the keyboard shortcut for that. For example the developer can ask what is the shortcut for splitting the view into two halves in vs code and the website will look it up in database and give back the shortcut
Now when I look back it feels so funny. I still remember that the judges gave us a funny look but they appreciated our efforts as we were too young to be there.. lol
btw If anyone is curious about the project it is present here ..
https://github.com/LaurenAssistant/... -
TLDR: I don't feel the need to be working at top product companies anymore.
Brief:
The craze to be a developer in top product companies has literally worn off for me in the past few months since I am working from home.
Like if I have to continue this WFH lifestyle it literally won't matter if I am working for a top product company or a startup...
The priority has shifted towards
1. A good team
2. A well-natured and polite manager
3. A flexible working culture which is better suited for remote work
4. And obviously a good salary🤑5 -
I am tired of switching my role at a startup where I work. I was primarily hired as a backend developer but some times i have to handle sprints, i have to become machine learning engineer, a devops engineer and now even frontend. Yuck. I am sòoooooo tired..6
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Market Research. Is killing me.
I’m a developer, let me just develop. But of course in order to develop we have to have a good understanding of our customers and what they want/need.
As a startup we literally are just cold messaging every freelancer we can find and it is a lovely process 😂
So I guess if anyone here is a freelancer and would like to help us learn more about the landscape mind taking a minute and filling this out for us?
https://forms.webonauts.co/form/...
It will save our fingers from those extra taps and awkward social interactions2 -
is this normal?
I work in a small startup, we have only 6 developers.
Recently some changes were announced that a developer was promoted as the engineering manager and the second one as a team leader.
This sounds good and promising but isn't this somehow early at this stage and scale?
Did you guys had similar experiences where you end up having 3 managers (like me in this case) in a small startup?5 -
Is a masters degree in IT worth it? I mean I've just started my masters in Software Engineering after my Computer Science bachelor's and I expected to learn something useful from it. So far they have taught only bullshit and stuff that I haven't found useful since I've started my IT career 3 years ago (now I am the team lead at a small startup, and I consider myself a really good developer). To summarize, is a masters diploma useful? Will it help me with anything, give that I've started working as a developer (freelancer, didn't know much back then) when I was still in high school (CV bragging rights)?8
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I got my last job (current job) exactly 3 years 3 days back. That was 2nd interview of my life with 2 days of interview process having 1 round. Then I was hired as 1st developer of the startup.
Funny thing is that 1 month before I got this job, one person approched me to develop an internal system for his company, but cancelled the deal once he knew I hadn't worked anywhere. -
!rant
I work currently on a little startup and something that bothers me it's that even though I've been telling them I'm a Backend developer, they want me doing Frontend.
So, I beg to you, fellows, any recommendations on books or tutorials to learn CSS good practices, design, scrolling animations and whatsoever?4 -
Ok... Able to pry myself away from fallout 76 and fire up for some programming...
Van't decide whether I want to build my game engines debug and root dev tools how I thought, thinking of building the engine to almost behave like a VM but not quite, it still is compiled just like a normal game but has a built in developer terminal that actually acts like an extra operating system/BIOS that can be left to boot the games assets and everything like you would have for an end user or the startup can be interupted to initialise the terminal prior to everything being loaded...
Following the osdev Wiki tutorials to actually build the dev terminal itself but just unsure whether or not to impliment this system the way I think or not... Opinions?1 -
I'm looking for some Remote work to do as freelance or "startup", low pay is alright if there is not too much pressure. I'm a Front end developer who's trying to actually apply some of my React knowledge, maybe someone can take me "under his/her wing" :) , HTML, CSS and Javascript (jQuery) are no problem. If anyone has any pointers or recommendations, I'd appreciate it. Thanks2
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Hi, I'm a junior developer who's looking for his first front end job.
I have just finished my 8 months internship as a front end developer in a startup in Paris.
Now I have some opportunities which allows me to work in Paris, Luxembourg or Shangai.
I speak English French and Chinese.
I hesitate a lot now, if you are me, which city you will choose to get your first job there, and why?1 -
Hi Guys if you can share your opinion/experience in what I wrote below it would help me a lot, thanks !
Im a full-stack developer with 4 years of experience, worked with different technologies in backend, frontend, mobile etc.. so I have general knowdgele of how systems works and how they should be built.
So I work as CTO in a startup, Im for almost 2 years here I started here with minimum salary (I decided that, because they said to me we are startup and such things so I wanted to help) 2.2k Euros and it has been almost 2 years without pay rise, so last month I asked for pay rise, but they said to me that they dont have money and sent me +300 euros as gift.
One week ago I wrote to them again (co-founders) that I have a lot of pressure and I dont know if I can handle all of that for much time he told me that I got +300 euro pay rise (which it was gift from them in first place, I refused them to sent this to me), but TODAY CEO and Co-Founder wrote to again me asking if I accept +300 euro pay rise because they can afford to pay me 2.5k or if I dont accept this they can sent me 2.2k again (they think that 2.5k is maximum that they can pay me right now and that this is enough for me).
I want to ask you guys what would you do, would you accepting something like this, considering that right now Im only dev here (yes Im only dev) and Im taking care of these(yes all of these) :
1. Company Website (react js)
2. Web Admin Panel (that clients use to manage their data)(react js)
3. Web Application (that visitors use to see client data)(react js)
4. Widgets (some code that is integrated into clients websites it's same as application, but integrated directly to client website)(react js)
5. Backend of all 3 apps mentioned above (asp.net core)
6. AWS Architecture( some of services : Cognito,Lambda,RDS,API Gateway,CloudFront,S3)
7. DevOps Role
Also consider that I didnt take holidays for 1 year now working on weekends too :)3 -
I am 13 y/o dev, not in college
two years of experience as an ML intern at a startup, a year of experience contracting as a SWE
I go and try to get internships at a larger company, and just get rejected
people say my resume is fake (nothing to say except IT IS NOT)
they cite labor laws (this I get)
the most frustrating thing though is that I see all these devs with much less experience than me, the only difference being that they are older and in college, getting internships at FANG COMPANIES. most of these people have never had an internship or worked as a developer in any way
one of the most frustrating cases came on a contracting project, where there was this other college dev, who was the worst I have ever worked with
he needed help with EVERYTHING
his python env,
"wHerE dO I IntEgrATE my CoDE?",
1.5 months into the project, he had not pushed a single USEFUL line of code that was actually what was needed from him
and guess where he is heading this summer?
jane street
and yet I cant even get a single interview, with internship season coming to an end?9 -
(Asking for someone I’ve been mentoring.)
TLDR; Looking for recommended resources on how to code email templates from scratch.
I’ve been helping a friend transition their career from sales to web development and recently he applied for a position as a jr developer for an ecommerce startup. They liked him and they’re willing to create a new position for him where he’ll work with both the marketing department and the development team. He’ll start with building email templates for the marketing department and eventually move on to development as he grows his skills. I’d really appreciate it if I could get some recommended resources for learning how to code email templates from scratch and from PSDs. This would be a life changer for him and I’m trying to do as much as I can to help me out.4 -
I'd heard about Project Managers being overpromising and dishing out short deadlines but we just got one dumped on us by a fellow developer for something our startup and theirs agreed to work on...
We gotta remake two fully function admin dashboards and the company's app on top of having our own startup shit to work on.
Kill me. -
Once upon a time I worked for a startup in school as one of two developers.
I learned many technologies in this role. I built massive front end systems, debugged back end systems. They even gave me a little section on their site that was all about me and giving me credit for me work. The only actual employee was the "CEO, owner, and designer". A team of three in total.
Inevitably the company went under but the site remains. A skeleton of a dead dream. The CEO took my name and info off their website and took credit for all the work I put months into. I was never paid, never giving any recognition whatsoever for the work I did.
I'm not looking for an award or anything like that, but like bro?!?? I built your companies interface for free and you throw me out like trash.
Wtf is being a developer?!?4 -
I think for this one i had higher expectations which let to me being disappointed. Was a fun experience nonetheless.
So i am junior dev in a bigish company and i am pretty comfortable where i am, its challenging enough and fun enough. Pay is fine nothing out of ordinary but perks are nice.
But this job is the one i got out of college and it did feel that i got really lucky as i was preparing for leetcode and what not but the interviewer was pretty linient and asked me technical questions out of my cv. The questions were mostly about what i used and all felt quite easy and i was offered a role with a decent salary. Since then i have been working and learning and thing been pretty stable.
Recently i was hinted at a promotion by my manager so i have been working towards that. I have in the past got a lot of messages on LinkedIn from different recruiters but never tried because i was satisfied with my job and my visa condition made it a little tricky to hope jobs ( i work in eu as a non eu citizen). But i did fantasize that if i could just get an interview with a decent company and clear the technical round without much preparing and get offered a decent package just to inflate my ego and maybe use that to increase my current package.
So i got another message on LinkedIn and a startup was looking for a developer and i gave it a go. I asked the recruiter what is the expected compensation and he instead asked me. I said i want a big enough increase tk even consider leaving my comfortable spot, so i am looking for more than 35-40% increase If they can then i am willing to try. The recruiter said that their range is between 25-35 but can try 40 if the interviews goes well.
I went ahead with it and gave the interview, the first one was simple and the next one was supposed to be technical and was told its not leetcode but i will have to implement a feature into a project live on the video call. Which i did with some success, i was quite clumsy but i was able to do it with tests passing sl i guess that was fine.
I was really happy that i didnt prepare much and still passed a tech interview. I was recently told about the offer, its around 40% more than my current but there are no yearly bonus or even health insurance. If i consider the bonus and health insurance then the offer becomes like 20% increase. Considering i am already expecting a promotion and some salary increase this offer seems really lack luster.
Just wanted to talk about all this, can you get a really big jump generally or is it only 15-25 ?1 -
Hi So I need some solid advice from you all wonderful people.
I think i am now ready to look into job side of this world, but have lots of doubts , read my story.
I have been learning android for last 2 years. Most of the time i have been trying to understand how stuff works in android , but i have also gained a few other skills ( python programming, kotlin/flutter basics data analysis basics, testing, some graphic designing, aweful web dev ,etc). But i really want to work with Android. I don't have any specific Salary figure in mind, but i guess my knowledge is better or atleast par with most of the good android developers.
So i want to know how is this fresher/placement thingy work?
1.) GETTING KNOWN? : How can i make some good android based company aware that I am available for hiring? Should i start emailing every android related company that i know of? Should i start listing my profile on recruitment sites like linkedin or internshala? This year it is being said that companies will come for placements. From the status of my college, they are going to give me way to less $ , nd i know am not going to like any of them, but i guess i have to sit for them too.
2.INTERVIEW OR DIRECT PLACEMENTS? A little pre-context: i am currently starting my 4th year in clg. Afaik , 4th year isnt that strict and their can be leniency in terms of attendance. But my college is a place full of political cun*s in the name of directors and HODs and I don't know if they are again going to enforce the old 75% mandatory criteria. Plus if the company is from a different state/country , then my attendance would definitely not suffice.
So mainly i am unsure if somehow a company hires me, i would be able to start immediately. I heard that there are interviews for job recruitment after which the candidate is binded with an agreement to do some months training followed by permanent working after college completion.
This type of agreement is very much suitable for me, since from what my friend tells me, trainings can be lenient and understanding regarding exam preparations nd stuff.
So what do company usually chooses? Binding a fresher on immediate working basis or do they consider graduate completion?
Also, i suck at competitive coding. Do i need to polish myself on that or some company is willing to give me chance on the basis of my other skills 🙈(okay, no kidding , that's a serious question. I need to either work on getting better in competitive or build more apps based on that)
3.) ANDROID OR EVERYTHING? From what i have heard, working as a professional fresher is more like being an allrounder than being a domain specialist. But as i already stated, i really dig android and that's no small framework. I may di other stuff too, but won't interest me nd my output might be less efficient than expected.
So freshers can really be asked to do any stuff? Or can i still be in the area i like being into?
4.) COMPANY OR START-UP? Yeah, this is a general debate starter. Ignoring the business side of the conversation ( job safety vs more salary, experience, etc) the thing that's most important for me is the presence of a team. I want someone to assign me a task, whose vision i could follow, from whom i could learn, and some other people who are supportive and doing the same amount / similar work that am doing . This is so much import8 for me that i can easily ignore other factors for a better team. I once took a call from a startup ceo who hired me, a 2 month old android beginner at that time, as the "lead android developer"
But if am being on a team where i am supposed to do any random stuff that is assigned, then obviously this whole point of "visionary, helpful leader, guiding team, "etc goes moot9 -
I started programming pretty young, launched many small businesses (from gaming to eCommerce, nothing really successful), by the time I got to my engineering school to get my CS degree, I already had a good knowledge base and I was way advanced than the other students, I even could learn faster alone compared to having a teacher and fixed hourly classes. But now after graduating, I become a developer at a startup (a story for another day), I totally lost my motivation to learn, to programme and to start side projects. Maybe it's become boring or maybe I just hate being an employe.
Did you ever feel that way?3 -
!dev
Seems like working in a start up is more tougher than i thought it will be.
Damn it's is taking a lot to keep up now a days.
Need advice to balance out thing.
Before this startup thing I was a freelance developer.1 -
How difficult is it to decide for your own future?
It's a month that I'm in total panic 'cause of a difficult choice I have to make about my job.
I really need some external opinions and points of view from other developers, maybe more experienced than me (I'm a medium-junior JS developer).
The situation is as follows:
1) I work as a Frontend Web Developer for a wonderful enterprise-like company with 100+ employees, where the individual rights are fully respected, there are no whatsoever pressures and there is a peaceful paradise-like atmosphere most of the days. I also love my teammates, which is something rare because I often dislike other humans.
2) I received a proposal from a Fintech startup, which required me a long time to complete a complex programming test they gave me. They look all very young, modern, fast and passioned about their job. But they are only living with bank's investments and are not producing any money at the moment. Also, I don't know if Fintech will be a successful field in the future.
3) I received another proposal, from a Healthtec startup this time, which has a lovely mission in the medical field, has received millions of investments, it's gaining some KK net each month but has a team of only 2 developers (3 with me if I accept). I know one of the developers and I remember he had issues of not getting paid months ago.
What's the problem with the first company? I totally dislike the product we are building, the development stack (fully Microsoft-based), the company's view (they still sell and think about software like in the 90's) and how the repository is managed. Everyday there are huge problems that end up blocking the frontend work and the final product is super ugly and works only if you know all the quirks behind it.
It's an old-fashioned desktop app with inside Chromium which should execute some components like graphs, tables, forms and shit like this. Every component is configurable through a property editor which is an utter giant mess of collapsed menus. I also suspect that the company's main business model is based on the difficulty to use this software (because they sell licenses and courses to use it).
There are no modern UX/UI concepts applied at all, nor they seem to care about it.
Each time I propose something there is a huge chain of approval-waiting that end up in a stale mate.
Also, it's useless to show my frustration about all these issues because I count very little in a so populated office.
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TLDR: I need to choice if staying in a Enterprise Microsoft-based and old-fashioned company, but in which the atmosphere is paradisiac or accept the risk to work for a Fintech or a Healthtec startup.
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What would you do if you were in my situation? What's for you the most stable field in the future?
Many thanks for the attention!6 -
I'd like to ask you guys for a suggestion: I've been working for about 10 months at a friend's little startup as a front-end developer.
There are only a couple of developers in the team, while the CTO and some other senior devs are either absent or passing by sporadically, as they actually are not part of the team, with all the problems that this entailed, so for various reasons I didn't much enjoy the company in terms of organization, culture and growing opportunities, to say the least.
A couple of weeks ago a rather renowned company interviewed me, and told me they like my attitude and could consider to take me onboard in a few months as a fullstack developer, provided that in the meantime I level up my backend skills.
Now, I'm struggled as on the one hand I would leave my friend's company, but on the other hand, the latter company's working culture seems great, and I expect the compensation to be higher as well.
What would you do if you were in my situation?
Thanks for any suggestion :)2 -
Plz help me to choose between two offers.
First one is a services provider firm where I would get to work alone on projects for clients. The con is their is no Senior Android Developer's in the firm
Second one is a startup where I will be working with a team on their product.
Points to be noted :
1) I am a fresher
2) both companies are offering me same position (Android Developer ) and salary.4 -
I just got myself working with the worst developers I could ever know, they don't know nothing about dry, kiss principles... They built an entire platform using Zend framework but they don't used mvc layers right and there is no backend validation most of the time, besides many other true newbie developer problems. I just came to this job and from and Rb/Python background and I can't live with this piece of code. They have 20+ years in the market while I'm just a guy with 5 or 6 years. What should I do if I can't convince the startup owners they are bad as hell waste of money?1