Ahhhhh devrant... long time no see.

I just need to get something off my heart. The past two years, I worked for the same ISP in Germany, but now as a devops engineer. Well, popo hit the fan really quick lately..

First a good friend, team lead for one of five areas in Germany, quit his job. He was one of the nicest persons I knew, and he believed that all that five areas should work together and share dev resources. Thats why I work mostly in other areas as developer.

Shortly after, his deputy quit as well. I heard that this specific area, the management were a bunch of dicks, but wow!

A short while later, I learnd the hard truth, why those two good friends quit, and that brings me to this story. In a meeting I readied myself up to present my new plattform - a social room - to management. I got a lot of positive feedback from others and we thaught managment would approve of the project. But nope. "We can buy from external, we dont need to program ourselfs. In fact lets stop spending money on internal programming, we should outsource everything!"

I was baffeld... Wtf did i just witness? My team lead didn't say anything, and afterwards I didn't dare to question it, but I told most of my close dev friends and we all realizied, that the rumors were true... We will be shifting into project managment.

At this point, I realized that I wasnt having it, and made a linkedIn account, not because I wanted to switch jobs, but because, meh you never know.

One week ago, one of my bestest buddies said he will quit and join his team lead that left eariler this year, I was heartbroken. Me and our other buddy are devestated, because now we have to do everything he had done. Management didn't listen as we told them that nobody can maintain his code. I have so many projects, I can bearly keep up with them. Now I got a lead role for creating the server infrastucture for a huge project my buddy was working on. Only as specialist and not PM, but his Team Lead thinks I am replacing him!

Last week I got a message on LinkedIn, a consulting firm reached out to me to aquire me as a new consultant or devops engineer. They look great, only less vacation (26 instead of 30 days), 40h shifts instead of 38h and only slightly more base payment. I currently receive about 53.000€ a year, the new firm only grants up to 60.000€ a year for anyone. Otherwise, they look great.

With all my buddies quitting around me, work getting more while time developing decreasing, I don't know what the right thing to do is... There is no way I can get a payment increase in my current position. I always say "my workplace is save, but my work isnt". I don't want to do project managment.

Today I have a meeting with my team lead, she is really nice btw. This is an annual meeting where we discuss my future in the company etc. Shortly after, I have a meeting with the new firm to discuss a bunch of questions I have.

I dont know what to do...

Edit: I missed you, devrant

This better be the bestest update in the whole wide world

Microtransactions are ruining the AAA gaming industry. I have always liked a good fighting game. So I looked at Street Fighter 6. Base game is $60, better version is more, bestest version is way more. Plus from reading reviews the fucking game is riddled with microtransactions.

What happened to buying a fucking game and not feeling like you got ripped off? When you bought the fucking game you got the whole fucking game.

I am disgusted with what these big names are doing. Ruining a once less sketchy industry.

I have even seen games that start out good. Then after a few patches they introduce the microtransaction bullshit. The Conan games are like that. The main complaint is adding this bullshit for base game items.

I wonder how they think this is good for their player base. They just fired the dude at Unity over trying to fuck over customers. Of course the company cannot be trusted so a lot of bigger labels are jumping ship to other engines.

What kinda pisses me off is I will try and find a decent game on Steam and look and look and all I find is garbage. How did Steam turn into such a trash heap? I won't touch an EA game (which is where that CEO from Unity came from). It is too bad because I really liked Mass Effect.

tldr - gaming has turned into shit.

Best: take a job as a data analyst. 1 year later, re-write and re-deploy the entire backend following correct security concentions and well-hashed-out data models.

Worst: attempt to backup a hard drive using dd, just to accidentally brick the laptop (because it had some security layer the school put to prevent just that)

Bestest: use knowledge acquired at my "best" story to nuke windows on bricked laptop. Then extract the leftover data using dd and a series of recovery tools.

I just love it how team git & team TFS managed to migrate same fuckin project several times from one source control to the other and back.. and they all root for their source control as it's the bestest of them all.. yet when presented with specific conflict situation and asked how to most elegantly resolve it I get an 'ugh, I don't know, I've never worked with anyone else on a project let alone on intertwined parts so I never had to resolve conflicts.' -.- Dude, wtf?!

You know it's bad when you've planned a word addon thats sole purpose is to do mail merges.

I've done guides and shown people how to do them. Still comes to me the bloke in IT to do a simple mail merge because googling it is too complex.

It's going to be epic it will hold their hands let them know they are bestest cupcake out of the whole batch.

The progress bar will be a rainbow and each button will sparkle. Because If I get taken of my dev work to do another fucking mail merge I'll probably quit on the spot.

And I do not have the savings readily available to hold me over until I got a new job.

Knob sockets the lot of em.

Superlatives are overrated.

One day (maybe) I will understand how the "bestest IDE in the world" (cit.) can consume over 10Gb of memory just... for being open while not editing any file or anything.

Just in case you're wondering I'm talking about VsCode and yes I know it's not an IDE just in case you want to point out :-) It's just I see more and more people referring to it as it was one.