Some empty-headed helpdesk girl skipped into our office yesterday afternoon, despite the big scary warning signs glued to the door.

"Hey, when I log in on my phone, the menu is looking weird"

"Uh... look at my beard"

"What"

"Just look at this beard!"

"Uh.... OK"

"Does this look like a perfectly groomed beard"

"Uh... it's pretty nice I guess"

"You don't have to lie"

She looks puzzled: "OK... maybe it could use a little trimming. Uh... a lot of trimming". "I still like it though" she adds, trying hard to be polite.

"I understand you just started working here. But the beard... the beard should make it clear. See the office opposite to this one?"

"Yeah"

"Perfectly groomed ginger beards. It's all stylish shawls and smiles and spinach smoothies. Those people are known as frontend developers, they care about pixels and menus. Now look at my beard. It is dark and wild, it has some gray stress hairs, and if you take a deep breath it smells like dust and cognac mixed with the tears caused by failed deploys. Nothing personal, but I don't give a fuck what a menu looks like on your phone."

She looked around, and noticed the other 2 tired looking guys with unshaven hobo chins. To her credit, she pointed at the woman in the corner: "What about her, she doesn't seem to have a beard"

Yulia, 1.9m long muscled database admin from Ukraine, lets out a heavy sigh. "I do not know you well enough yet to show you where I grow my unkempt graying hairs... . Now get lost divchyna."

Helpdesk girl leaves the scene.

Joanna, machine learning dev, walks in: "I saw a confused blonde lost in the hallway, did you give her the beard speech?"

"Yeah" -- couldn't hold back a giggle -- "haha now she'll come to you"

Joanna: "No I already took care of it"

"How?"

"She started about some stupid menu, so I just told her to smell my cup". Joanna, functional alcoholic, is holding her 4pm Irish coffee. "I think this living up to our stereotype tactic is working, because the girl laughed and nodded like she understood, and ran off to the design department"

Me: "I do miss shaving though"

1) An increasing number of beards can be observed on the streets.
2) According to Netmarketshare, desktop Linux usage is at an all time high 2.18%.

Coincidence? I think not!

A couple of months back we were discussing sh with a third party vendor for a very large ass fuck system that another department uses. I had been called into the meeting because the entire I.T department counts on me to at least act as an assessor to the many issues that other departments might have.

the department for which i was working with manages the databases that our institution uses, and in this particular question the DBA (my best friend mind you) was part of the meeting.

Mind you, issues that the third party vendor were having were all fixed by our DBA, and he had documented and mentioned these items to me as I provided assistance to him through the 3 weeks prior to this meetings. Once such case was that we needed a transitioning as well as intermediary system for some processes to happen from one DB to the other and a lot of other technical babble. Well, the DBA used to be an excellent (fuck you) VB developer who recently re-learned the language into .net. He had shown me many of his old programs and even by the limitations of the language they were elegant and fascinating. They really are and ya'll devrant fam know that I ain't one to hate on tech at all.

When the DBA explained how he went around some of the issues by generating programs that could assist him, he mentioned the tech stack, I had coached him into knowing that being descriptive about the tools he used would be beneficial to everyone else. While he mentioned VB.NET the vendor snickered and my boy got quiet.

Then I broke the silence, fuck you. "what was that?" and the dude said "nothing, sorry"
So I said "no no, I want to know, I am not going past this point until you, the dude getting paid over $100 an hour for something YOU couldn't fix explain to me the little hehe moment you had"

The mfker went silent. then explained how he was aware that people were moving past vb.net and shit like that, me "imagine that, someone used a tech stack that your ignorance thought obsolete to fix something you could not solve, even though we are paying you for it, were it me or in my hands, and mind you i have direct access to the VP so this foolishness might change, I would have cut you and your little sect loose months ago, I have no patience, or appreciation from leeches like you or the rest of the "professionals" that work for your company or other similar entities, much less, as you can see, my patience runs even less when you people snicker at the solutions that our staff has to take when you all slack"

The entire meeting was uncomfortable as high heaven.

Fuck you, if someone I know manages to run shit on fucking liberty basic then so fucking be it. I will slap you 10 fucking times over, and then fuck your girl, if you try to put someone else down for the tech stacks you use.

I hate neck beards, BUT I hate fake ass neckbeards ever more

*Colin Farrell in true detective mode: FUCK....YOU

Sick of hipster nodejs devs with their beards and fucking guitars. You guys are creating a bad reputation for the rest of us.

2 Questions for guys [and gals, let's not be sexists..] with beards.

1. Why the beard? :)
2. What dev are you [bkend/fend/fstack, what lang.?]? Or admin?

I wonder if there is a correlation..

It's easy to see what a person in my company do just by looking at their clothing. Money-guys with blue shirts and shiny shoes, tech guys with washed out jeans and a t-shirt with print. Then there's the bosses of tech guys, a hybrid with washed out jeans, sneakers and a poorly fit blazer for meetings. And then we have the designers, with their neatly trimmed beards, wearing a scarf all year round. And at last, project managers.. kinda like the money-guys but with sneakers for better mobility, and their right arm locked in a "holding cup of coffee" posture as they move from desk to desk like vultures overlooking others work.

And they say there is no dress code

!dev

Long time, no rant. Why is facial hair so difficult to control? How do people even grow beards without looking like hobos all the time? Do I have to make some sort of sacrifice to a dark and malevolent entity?

Believe me, it's so much easier to keep on top of shaving body hair than taming face fur. Especially because your facial hair is, you know, on your *face* which means it's very visible. You can't hide it if you mess up. Unless you decide that wearing a balaclava is a good idea when going outside, like when going grocery shopping. Generally that isn't received too well though.

A question for all you grey beards and other more knowledgeable devs:

I work for a small grocery retail company. Work primarily as a dev, but also spend time doing I.T./HelpDesk stuff. My wife is a nursing student, and when she graduates in May 2018 she is wanting to move to a different location to work at a specific hospital, which would require me to change jobs. No problem, I'm fine with that.

Here is what I am wondering: I currently make a modest salary (for 23 years old I feel like I'm doing pretty good), but we are expecting our first child in April and I would like to be making more. Would persuing a different job for extra $$$ that I could potentially only be working at for around 8-ish months be a bad idea? Should I just stick where I am at until I actual HAVE to move?

Thanks in advance for any advice :D

!feature so i didnt found facial hair of needed lenght on devrant. avatars need more longer beards.

I swear to god of I have one more developer recommend EMAC to me I'm going to change my career back to marketing with the explicit purpose of rebranding EMAC users as the neck beards among developers! AARRHGHH

!dev
Wanted to get a haircut. My normal barber closed, so I just went to the closest one where arabic looking guys are working (as they are usually amazing with beards...) And you wouldn't belive it...
You need to schedule an apointment! Not just walk in, get offered something to drink, wait your turn and crack stupid jokes with the waiting guys...
Fuck!

!rant

for just fifteen dollars a day you TOO can help a poor beardleas man by sharing part of your beard today. All around the world beardless waifs are beaten, abused, and left out in the rain. They are hungry and cold. Please. For just twenty dollars a day you too can help one of these helpless beardless bastards. Everyday they get colder, and hungrier. Please, wont you have a heart. Even a small donation of fifty dollars a day can mean the world to these patchy faced gifts from god.

For just a hundred dollars a day you can make a difference.

"On the beards of an angel, fly away with me.."

#beardlives

!Rant
Question for all you wise neck beards:
I was talking with my boss in his office (I'm an intern), and he was saying one thing I need to work on is making more accurate estimates for when a project will be done. He asked if it was just an attempt to "paint a rosey picture" and asked if I was just afraid to be honest, to which I answered definitely not, I just didn't realize I was being that inaccurate. Any suggestions on how I can correct this? I feel like if I just overestimate by a lot i'm just going to give off a lack of confidence, but I also don't want my boss to think I am just lazing around and not working as hard as I could. Feel like I am in a pickle here.

Also, what are some tips you guys have for staying Focused/Productive? I do a pretty good job as it is, but any more advice would be handy :D

Happy Tuesday Everyone!