Join devRant
Do all the things like
++ or -- rants, post your own rants, comment on others' rants and build your customized dev avatar
Sign Up
Pipeless API
From the creators of devRant, Pipeless lets you power real-time personalized recommendations and activity feeds using a simple API
Learn More
Search - "crushing"
-
So, I grew up on the US/Mexican border, in a city where saying there's no opportunity is like saying the Titanic suffered a small leak on its maiden voyage. There were two kinds of people in said town: Mexicans trying to find something less shit than juarez and white trash reveling in their own failure. I came from the latter, for whatever that's worth.
I graduated high school when I was almost 16 years old. Parents couldn't really afford to support three kids and pay the rent on the latest in a long line of shit holes we migrated in and out of. If being a serial eviction artist is a thing, my family were savants.
I applied to college and got accepted only to be told by my father that he didn't see the need. Turns out the only reason he'd helped me graduate early was so I could start working and help pay his bills. I said okay, turned around and tossed a bag and my shitty af spare parts computer into the back of the junkyard Vega I generously referred to as a car and moved cross country. Car died on arrival, so I was basically committed.
Pulled shifts at two part times and what kids today call a side hustle to pay for school, couch surfed most of the time. Sleep deprivation was the only constant.
Over the first 4 months I'd tried leveraging some certs and previous experience I'd obtained in high school to get employment, but wasn't having much luck in the bay area. And then I lost my job. The book store having burned down on the same weekend the owner was conveniently looking to buy property in Vegas.
Depression sets in, that wonderful soul crushing variety that comes with what little safety net you had evaporating.
At a certain point, I was basically living out of the campus computer lab, TA friend of mine nice enough to accidentally lock me in on the reg. Got really into online gaming as a means of dealing with my depression. One night, I dropped some code on a UO shard I'd been playing around on. Host was local, saw the code and offered me a job at his firm that paid chump change, but was three times what all my other work did combined and left time for school. Ground there for a few years until I got a position with work study at LBL that conflicted too much for it to remain mutually beneficial. Amicable parting of the ways.
Fucking poverty is what convinced me to code for a living. It's a solid guarantee of never going back to it. And to anyone who preaches the virtues of it and skipping opportunity on grounds of the moral high ground, well, you know.12 -
'Coding and Crushing It.' playlist on Spotify is all I need. Seriously, try it out, you'll feel like instantly changing all your handles to CodeLord27 once you press play. https://open.spotify.com/user/...6
-
Want a backend in Node? You got it. PhP using the plethora of frameworks available? No problem.
Feeling like a gipsy guitarrist and want to lay it down with Django? Good taste!
In a hurry and need your startup off the ground with React integration in rails? Piece of cake.
Feeling springy and want you some coffee and Java with your app? A la carte.
Wanna pull my leg and force me to do .net? Mm ok if you insist.
You sure you want Perl with that? Ok no problem.
.....but you sit me and my awesome powers of backend mastery and force me to do css and design all week and you literally destroy my soul......this shit is soul crushing I swear.....7 -
Getting zero encouragement or positive feedback from my boss is really killing me from the inside. There isn't even a negative feedback. There's absolutely nothing.
PhD is such a lonely path as it is, and being ignored by your advisor is just...soul-crushing.
I did a collaboration with my friend from another lab, and even though her lab is bigger and crazier than ours, her professor found the time to compliment our work and even told us he will present it in a presentation he gives in Meta. Really, it's not that hard to say a kind word here and there.4 -
Sometimes I want to slap myself.
I’ve been making progress with my voice activated TV remote project - coz you got to use a Google Home and a Raspberry pi for something right? Right??
Anyway, when the API you have written suddenly stops working and you’ve spent hours trying to solve it, it is really soul crushing when you realise you’re using a class variable incorrectly
I’ll just go cry now, while I control my tv 😥😎
Class TVAPI{
Private $tvIP = “192.xxx”;
Private $args = $this->decodeArgs($_GET);
Function of tvVolume(){
exec(“python tvRemote.py {$tvIP} {$this->args}”);
}
}2 -
My job feels (and acts) like a soulless void.
Wow, that sounds like lyrics to an emo song for adults. screw that.
But it's still pretty accurate: While I have quite a few coworkers, and they're at least somewhat chatty, they never seem to respond to me, or even notice me. I see them talking, but anything I do or say gets ignored. It goes into the void and disappears.
I talk in the off-topic channels. People talk around me.
I make comments on releases. No responses.
I talk about music I've been addicted to. No responses.
I talk about food and cooking -- a popular topic at work. No responses.
I respond to an invitation to join the security team. No responses. (well, an empty deferral)
I release various features, some both my boss and a coworker described as "soul-crushing." No thanks, priase, appreciation; honestly, no one even seemed to notice.
I build useful utilities and functions for other devs to use. Nothing.
I optimize the scripts everyone uses on a daily basis, and mention it to others. Still nothing.
The void eats my efforts, and occasionally spits out parcels of work for me to do. The only responses I recieve from the void are when I ask about its parcels of work. When I send them back completed, nothing happens -- unless they need more work. If they do not... nothing.
My previous job was friendly and nice and rewarding.
The job before that was Hell.
This one feels like Purgatory, but ... somehow emptier.rant this doesn't help my burnout this doesn't help anything. the void this doesn't help my depression10 -
We've all had shitty jobs at one point or another, maybe some of us already had software engineering experience while having to work in a different field for a variety of reasons.
Well check this shit.
At one point(during my second year of school) for various reasons I had to work in retail. For those that know, retail can be a soul crushing experience...the trick is not letting management to convince you that it is an actual good job, it is not, and I have respect and sympathy for everyone currently working in it. The mind numbing retarded customers that we get are absolutely fantastic in every sense of the word.
My position in retail was as a phone salesman, for MetroPCS (which for all of y'all european ninjas is one of the low end phone carriers here in the U.S) and the people that we get as customers where I live are normally very poor which apparently in Mexican culture stands for annoyingly ignorant (I am Mexican myself, so I can really vouch for this shit)
One day a customer came in telling me that there was an app that he was using that kept giving him troubles, it was a map application for truck drivers. Now, obviously, this had nothing to do with my line of work(phone salesman) and as such I normally tried to explain that and let them be, but I imagined that it was a settings issue so I reluctantly agreed to help him. I explained to him that the app was no longer maintained and that the reason for it was probably that the developer abandoned it and that he would just have to look into the app, upon closer inspection the app itself was nothing more than a wrapper over google maps with trucker icons and a "trucker" interface, he was using the app as a GPS navigator and he could as well just have been using google maps.
The conversation was like this:
Me: Well this app is no longer supported, it will probably be taken off the google store soon, you can look for something similar or just change to Google maps
Retard: What? no! I came here in order for you to fix it, Metro needs to fix their own apps!
Me (in complete disbelief): We have no control over third party apps, and even for the ones that we provide the store has no control over them. But this app is not ours and so we can't really do anything about it.
Retard: Well WTF should I do? I have been having many issues with youtube and spotify, shouldn't Metro fix their Google store?
Me: Those apps are not ours.....wait, you seem to believe that we own youtube and spotify, those are not ours
Retard: How the fuck they are not yours! its your phone isn't it?
Me: Eh no.....Metro does not(at this point I was sort of smiling because I wanted to laugh) own youtube or spotify or the play store or even this phone, metro does not own Android or Samsung(his phone was a samsung core prime)
Retard: Well You need to fix this
Me: No I do not and I can not, the developer for this app abandoned it and has nothing to do with us
Retard: Well call the developer and tell him to fix it
At this point I was on a very bad mode since this dude was being obnoxiously rude from the beginning and it annoyed me how he was asking for dumb shit.
Me: Did you pay for this app?
Retard: No
Me: So you expect that some developer out there will just go about and get working for something that you did not pay for?
Why don't you just use Google maps as your GPS?
Retard: Don't be stupid, Google has no maps
At this point I show him the screen where there is a lil app that said maps, pressed it and voila! map comes to life
Retard: Well....I did not know
Me: Yeah....but I am the stupid one right?
** throws phone for him to catch
Me: Have a good one bud.
And my manager was right next to me, he was just trying to control his laughter the whole time. I really despised working in there and was glad when I left. Retail man.......such a horrible fucking world.7 -
I used to work IT in an entertainment startup, and now I’m an iOS dev at a big entertainment company. Several people from my old company have been reaching out to eagerly tell me about their new app idea I just have to hear, asking me to help code their app— and have even hinted at me quitting my nice safe job to join their great new startup that doesn’t even exist yet.
I know this must happen to app devs all the time. What do you say?
How do you deal with telling these nice people who just don’t understand it doesn’t work that way, without crushing their dream? I have a coffee meeting planned to tell one of them “You should learn to code so you can make a proof of concept,” but I fear that won’t be received well.
What’s the standard protocol for telling people you won’t be able to code their magic app idea?10 -
Trying to program at all when your soulmate that you've been together with for over 14 years moves to her mother because of relationship problems. And suddenly you feel like a truck is crushing you constantly. Ah fuckit11
-
I almost died of hypothermia as a kid. My drunk grandpa went out to drink even more with his friends, forgetting about me and leaving the stroller with me sleeping out there on the street. It was negative forty-two degrees Celsius. I was one year old.
I made it, but developed an awful pneumonia. By some kind of miracle, I made it again, but at the expense of becoming a really weak kid. I had two more pneumonias during high school, plus one case of sinusitis.
Told my grandma I got ear pain in the morning. We went to our local clinic. The doctor there said I have to be hospitalized RIGHT NOW, otherwise it might turn into a life-threatening meningitis. By the time we’re in the hospital, the pain is already unbearable. My vision becomes blurry and dark, I hear my pulse in my head, I lose the sense of time. At that point I’m laying on the hospital bed, motionless, quietly sobbing while the terrible pain is swallowing me, a tiny kid, whole.
I’ll never forget the sound of a sinusitis needle crushing through a porous bone inside my head. A glass worth of pus rushing out. The pain immediately going away.
All that because of one man addicted to alcohol. This is why I don’t drink.3 -
I was experimenting with a load test suite called 'Siege' to build and scale increasingly complex searches against our new site search engine. I assumed that an old iMac couldn't have generated a crushing load against the beta servers and I learned two things the day I wrote and started that script before heading to lunch:
1) Beta and Production shared MSSQL instances
2) That single iMac was more than enough to take the whole production site down... -
I dedicate this to all of those hr gurus from top tech companies that rejected me cause they think I won’t fit their culture despite me crushing all their technical interviews, fuck them and their soft skills stupid questions.
I won’t fit there anyways cause I can express my own thoughts using sarcasm and irony and I’m not scared of doing it cause I don’t care about your amazing company culture that prefer robots not people with a little sense of humor. I don’t care about my failures cause there was so many I don’t give a fuck. And by the way if you ask me why I want to work in your amazing company I would always say cause you asked me to work for you and now you treat me like shit. Then 10 years later you blame everyone for toxic culture lol.2 -
MENTORS - MY STORY (Part III)
The next mentor is my former boss in the previous company I worked.
3.- Manager DJ.
Soon after I joined the company, Manager E.A. left and it was crushing. The next in line joined as a temporal replacement; he was no good.
Like a year later, they hired Manager DJ, a bit older than EA, huge experience with international companies and a a very smart person.
His most valuable characteristic? His ability to listen. He would let you speak and explain everything and he would be there, listening and learning from you.
That humility was impressive for me, because this guy had a lot of experience, yes, but he understood that he was the new guy and he needed to learn what was the current scenario before he could twist anything. Impressive.
We bonded because I was technical lead of one of the dev teams, and he trusted me which I value a lot. He'd ask me my opinion from time to time regarding important decisions. Even if he wouldn't take my advice, he valued the opinion of the developers and that made me trust him a lot.
From him I learned that, no matter how much experience you have in one field, you can always learn from others and if you're new, the best you can do is sit silently and listen, waiting for your moment to step up when necessary, and that could take weeks or months.
The other thing I learned from him was courage.
See, we were a company A formed of the join of three other companies (a, b, c) and we were part of a major group of companies (P)
(a, b and c) used the enterprise system we developed, but internally the system was a bit chaotic, lots of bad practices and very unstable. But it was like that because those were the rules set by company P.
DJ talked to me
- DJ: Hey, what do you think we should do to fix all the problems we have?
- Me: Well, if it were up to me, we'd apply a complete refactoring of the system. Re-engineering the core and reconstruct all modules using a modular structure. It's A LOT of work, A LOT, but it'd be the way.
- DJ: ...
- DJ: What about the guidelines of P?
- Me: Those guidelines are obsolete, and we'd probably go against them. I know it's crazy but you asked me.
Some time later, we talked about it again, and again, and again until one day.
- DJ: Let's do it. Take these 4 developers with you, I rented other office away from here so nobody will bother you with anything else, this will be a semi-secret project. Present me a methodology plan, and a rough estimation. Let's work with weekly advances, and if in three months we have something good, we continue that road, tear everything apart and implement the solution you guys develop.
- Me: Really? That's impressive! What about P?
- DJ: I'll handle them.
The guy would battle to defend us and our work. And we were extremely motivated. We did revolutionize the development processes we had. We reconstructed the entire system and the results were excellent.
I left the company when we were in the last quarter of the development but I'm proud because they're still using our solution and even P took our approach.
Having the courage of going against everyone in order to do the right thing and to do things right was an impressive demonstration of self confidence, intelligence and balls.
DJ and I talk every now and then. I appreciate him a lot.
Thank you DJ for your lessons and your trust.
Part I:
https://devrant.com/rants/1483428/...
Part II:
https://devrant.com/rants/1483875/...1 -
First time back to work today after a month long break. It was soul crushing. I don’t know if I’m permanently burnt out or just seriously disenfranchised with the corporate world but I would have thought after a holiday I would be energised and ready to go. It turns out after coming back to work I feel exactly the fucking same! Tired, exhausted, discontent, irritable and most importantly BORED. I am bored spending 8+ hours a day at a computer chair responding to emails and teams messages! Has anyone felt like this before? Did you ever overcome it? I’m worried as I’m getting older I’m losing my love more and more for programming whilst simultaneously hating the concept of work more and more.5
-
Best:
Leaving my work in the soul crushing dog eat dog world of transportation and logistics for higher education software for colleges and universities .
I work at a college and I fucking love it and love my team.
Worst:
The soulc crushing dog eat dog world of transportation and logistics where I worked as a backend developer and lead mobile developer. Not only did it made me hate and despise native android development, but it also made me despise the human race as a whole. Watching a motherfucker letting go of employees that he knew personally (as in bbq with their families and shit) because my software automated a large portion of their work(it was meant to make it easier for them for that i was originally told) was absolute and total bullshit and i still carry that fucking remorse with me. After that I vowed never to do that sort of bullshit work again....sort off. No one gets fired at this institition for it. Logistics sucks big monkey dick and the people there are the absolute fucking worst. Every single motherfucker i met was a fucking shark, all of them and they would not think about fucking people over if it saved them some money.
Yeah, that even tops the military and that was fuuuull of fuck fuck games and other similar fuckery.2 -
Since graduation, I have worked in IT for 2 years, mostly in testing and implementation side. Finally I got a developer position in the field I wanted (Data Engineering). I had never thought that it would be such a soul crushing experience. My current company is very notorious for its bad management practices, but there is indeed a bigger picture to this. The IT industry in general has devolved into a gigantic ponzi scam built on exploitation and BS. Quality of solution and quality of work was replaced with a ‘Does it work now?’ approach with zero contingency. And the fact that geeks and nerds are naive only helps the white collar crooks to exploit them as code monkeys. Fuck all of this!1
-
My biggest regret was leaving school for the workforce. I had aspirations of climbing the corporate ladder and maybe even being a leader or CEO someday myself.
It unfortunately took me too many years to realize it’s all a complete scam. You end up wasting away working on the most soul crushing of stuff, all to support someone else’s dream, and the people on top are not those who deserve to be there, but those who schemed and manipulated their way to the top. They often have zero idea what they’re doing and you end up having to do their job for them, while they take the credit and the big bonuses.
I had (and still have) many brilliant ideas for creations, but not one of my employers has cared about anything other than their bottom line. You are nothing but livestock to them, and they will treat you as such.
I wish now I’d just stayed in school and worked on my ideas and theories in an academic environment. If you think for a second companies will give a shit about you, think again.1 -
I can’t be the only one who feels an overwhelming sense of crushing loneliness on Friday evenings.8
-
I had contact with the BenQ support recently.
On my small GV1 beamer, the auto switch off timer cannot be canceled by pressing a button. So I wrote them, that this is maybe a bug.
That was the answer:
"Thank you very much for your inquiry.
Insects entering the monitor through vents are a common problem that is not covered by the manufacturer's warranty as it is not a manufacturing problem.
This problem is known to all monitor manufacturers.
The cause of the problem is usually that the monitor is used in a dark environment without a secondary light source being activated.
If the insect is still alive, you can lure it out with a light source (the monitor should be turned off and cooled down).
If the insect is dead in the monitor panel, wait until it is completely dry. Then you can carefully press on the screen, next to the insects (avoid crushing them) and it should fall into the panel and leave the visible area.
Nevertheless, please send us a picture where we see the problem you are telling us, I inform you that the picture must be less than 2 MB in size."5 -
So after 7 months of soul crushing searching I was able to land an awesome job I never thought I'd get! I didn't really get hired for my projects, I think I was more of a culture fit that knew enough of what they were talking about. My colleagues are awesome, helpful people but they are also clearly way ahead of me as devs. I know that many new hires have similar feelings and it's more a matter of drive + time. I understand that and I'm ready for the marathon ahead of me but I have one HUGE concern... I don't understand unit testing. I've never written unit tests in JavaScript or Java (just on paper I wrote random assert statements for a college exam question that somehow turned out correct). More importantly, I don't understand when to write unit tests and what my main objectives should be when writing them. At work they talk about unit testing like it's just as basic as understanding version control or design patterns, both of which I have had no problems asking questions about because I at least understood them generally. I come here looking for resources, mainly things I can go through over the weekend. I understand that I'm going to have to ask my colleagues for help at some point but I DON'T want to ask for help without any solid base knowledge on unit testing. I would feel much more comfortable if I could understand the concepts of unit testing generally, and then ask my team members for help on how to best apply that knowledge. I'm sorry for begging, I'll definitely be looking for resources on my own too. But if anyone could point me to resources they found to be helpful & comprehensive, or resources that they'd want their co-workers to use if they were in my position I would be very grateful!!!!4
-
Today I dont feel that good.
I have only 1 month of my holiday temporary job left. After that Im going to university, the place that i have been dreaming about, the place where finaly i would finish my projects, where i would meet people like me that could support, help me with my passions.
I have no idea where i got that wave of saddnes. Normaly i dont feel that way. Job is unconfortable and sometimes stressing a bit but it is not the end of the world.
I just want to stay in confy bed for the whole day but i cant, i need that money for uni.
I tried to code yesterday but i just couldnt focus! Always when i try to finish the project, no matter what it is i just lose my motivation, its just gone.
Sometimes I wonder if that university is going to be as good as i was imaginig it, after numerous rants on devrant about their uni im not so sure... That dosent help me with my mood.
Is my terrible mood caused by loneiness? bad diet? or lazyness?
I just dont know... I just want to feel better. I just want to survive that month somehow, without that crushing feeling and constant depression.3 -
YouTube or Anime, I don't know which is worse for mental health
Crushing procrastination vs destructive seduction, pick your poison11 -
At a previous job, I worked on a multi-vendor e-commerce website. It used Magento2 as an API and a separate application we built with Node, Express, and React that consumed it to avoid using Magento's frontend.
The whole stack used should be a rant in itself but our checkout process was dependant on work done by some contractors in India. In short, this entire checkout process would break multiple times a day with no way on my end to fix anything, and that's what I had to reply with every time a bug ticket would come in; which is honestly the worst reply ever to a huge issue like that.
After several attempts of pitching the idea and being turned down for building the checkout in-house to remove the dependency and work on even streamlining the process, the product manager of the brand said as quote "Well the checkout isn't really that important".
At first, I was kind of speechless. How is the functionality of actually buying a thing in an online store NOT important? Shouldn't that be the most important?
Then I realized over time that the only thing they cared about was being a Nascar version of a website, essentially being a canvas of ad space that sellers on the marketplace could buy and paying money just to list their items.
I hated working on that project, and that made it so much more soul-crushing. Gotta chase that revenue right? -
Do you ever get this soul-crushing feeling inside you that says you haven't achieved enough or you don't make enough money?
For context, I've been a dev for 6 years now and make a lot more money than when I started, which was $1000 USD annually. (Third world country).
I used to think that making more money as I grew with experience would drive this feeling away but it hasn't.20 -
🔥👽🤘🏻
I've been CRUSHING it lately, so stoked!!!
**Also, this means that in the near future something will crush me because I have a few subjects on deck I need to lock down.
1. Deno
2. TypeScript(deep dive)
3. CPP (currently 75% done with my 2nd masterclass, first one complete)
4. Multi-platform local device storage (Sqflite/mongoDB/shared preferences/Hive)
5. REST/api/requests/json management && application
6. Implementing Firebase authentication using Apple, Twitter, and mobile OTP
7. Cloud functions && server scripting/automation
8. Intro to embedded systems/OS/kernels
9. Steadily improve my code style, design strategies, and build patterns that are team friendly && provide easier code base maintainibilty
10. Influence, teach, and/or spark the interest of someone new to development in any possible- all that matters is getting new people on board, making sure they are stoked about, and last but not least making sure they feel welcome in the community and are able to start off in the right direction.
cheers, ya fockers!!!! -
Assigning me to another project because my current project is soul crushing is only helpful if you ever let me stop working on the current one. Otherwise I just have a new set of meetings to attend where my only contribution is that I didn't get anything done, and probably won't today either.
-
how do you tell a junior dev on your team there code is shit and please don't push to the main codebase without approval first,
without crushing them and and sounding like an ass cause there a good person just a n00b developer8 -
JavaScript is shit! The only JavaScript frameworks I've liked so far is Angular 2 onwards all the way upto 5, and that's only because it's in TypeScript. Fucking JavaScript! How did it even get here!? So anything with JS, please save us all the gut wrenching, testicle crushing, ass fucking without lube pain.... fuck JavaScript!1
-
OH MY FUCKING GOD. I HATE
H A T E
ACQUIA SITE STUDIO.
"Let's make a low-code 'solution' for developers who barely can stand working on Drupal as it is, and make the completely easy and perfect process of styling a website, COMPLETELY UNBEARABLE!"
Yea this is a great idea, experienced developers can now spend hours trying to fucking find where a single style is coming from. Oh it was too easy to cmd+f a stylesheet or a codebase to find something particular? Yea FUCK THAT. Lets turn EVERY SINGLE STYLE into a unsearchable .yml file where every style definition is now a machine hash. WAY easier to use. Isn't it so cool to fucking click on styles from a dropdown where they come off the edge of the screen. FUCK whichever stupid fuck came up with this dog shit nonsense. I fucking HATE this soul crushing work.2 -
Learning New Design Patterns...
When all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Arg.
Recently, my code in almost any controller is like so:
return (new MyFancyClass($param))->methodThatHandlesIt();
that can't be the solution to everything.... although it kind of is
how can I beef up on patterns and avoid crushing a screw into the wall without realizing it's not a nail4 -
This not a rant, but I want to ask you some advice from you the community.
Before that I want to tell you about me. I have an invisible handicap. I'm half-deaf. I have some moderately severe loss between ~500 - 3000 Hz. To give you some idea, its in the range of clock ticking, whispering, piano notes, pronounced letters (m, n, p, h, g, ch and sh sounds), leaves crushing or waving in the wind.
I use hearing aids, however I can't always count on those because if it's too loud (ex: airplane flying over the building), I can't hear the voices that are speaking in that moment. Or sometimes the tubes where the augmented sounds are passing to my ear are repleted because of humidity. So I don't hear 100% better but rather in the range of ~70 - 80%.
I'm going to need to do an internship next year to finish my studies. Since I will take interviews, I want to ask you if I should mention those details to my interviewer or keep it very simple and tell him that I use hearing aids?
I ask you this because I know people with hearing aids had problems to find a workplace because the interviewers feared the "unknown". Some needed to sign up for help for handicapped people to receive a workplace. For them it is a downside because they are tagged as "handicapped" in society.
I know here are some interviewers and I wanted to know some advice from them as well from you guys of the community.
If you want to know more about hearing loss, feel free to ask questions.3 -
I’ve been working at my company for about 3 years now and under 2 managers. In my time I’ve grown to be a technical anchor and SME in multiple facets of our architecture. First manager was cool and I could really see my development under him. Then he gets promoted and I get a new manager. New manager just rides me and bleeds me dry, all while telling me “you’re just a couple months away from Senior” for like 2 years. Every time I meet with him he still says I’m not ready even though I step up and do more and more and more. He’s never satisfied. Then we recently had a shift in the roles in the company where there’s a new intermediate role in between my role and Senior which I was gunning for. After a few more months he says to me “Congratulations, we finally opened up a position to promote you… to this other role that you didn’t want”.
Naturally, I’m pissed. So I start looking at open reqs for the Senior role I’m looking for. I applied for a job and interviewed for it. I “aced” the Senior interview. The new team wants to bring me on. They tell HR that they want to hire me. Now HR is pushing back saying “hey now, you can’t just SKIP roles like that” even though it was an open requisition that I applied to, not even an in-line promotion and also they just opened this intermediate position I’m skipping like 3 months ago and again I’ve been here for 3 years. So even after crushing the interview and the other team loving me I still won’t get the job because of stupid corporate bureaucratic bullshit.2 -
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, I realised that I know my manager personally. He has left the team. The thing is, I thought I was crushing on him instead it's just knowing him. I never had any personal conversations. Now, there is nothing I can do to interact. I do not want to seem as someone who likes him as that looks desperate. I know it's not a platform of this kind of posts but any advice? During the whole 1 year lockdown I haven't interacted much with anyone except him and someone from my team. I really see his insta profile 3 times a day. Think about him a lot. Again, do not have a crush, just want to know him more so I get to know if he is nice person to have in my life. Any advice?9
-
Searching for a job is a terrible, soul-crushing experience. Take advantage of local meetups and tech-job-seekers groups to help keep your morale up.
During the interview: if you don't know something, that's ok. Don't get rattled by it. Some questions are designed to see how you think, not to see what you know. -
I've been replaced twice by wix and squarespace. This is pretty soul-crushing. Both were free lance jobs. Where the user got impatient and insisted that I make constant changes on the fly. I'm relatively new and still in school.
Has anyone else been replaced by a website generator? How do you rebound/recover?8 -
if non dev boss walks in to my office one more time to tell me how I'm crushing it, I will lose my mind. for the love of God, just let me work undisturbed, and stop trying to be my 'bro'.
-
HP Fortify is utter bullshit vaporware and the fact that it has any influence on my development cycle is soul crushing.1
-
I posted a few days prior about how I was starting CPP because I had been crushing all my other higher end stuff (Js, Python, Flutter/Dart, etc.) and that CPP was gonna destroy me. Haha I'm doing alright, but I need to find something to use CPP for in order to determine when I will need this besides games or say building a browser engine. Could use a little direction as to what I could be working towards. I have NOT encountered a problem that I need it for yet, but I wanted to familiarize myself with it because it's an essential language regarding full stack. I am a solo dev!2
-
Most of these windows lovers here exist just because windows haters don't have a solid reason and follow up on those who actually do have good reasons to hate windows.
Moral of the story: Don't hate windows just because you think all the devs hate it. Come up with some decent reasons to avoid gamers and microsoft warriors from crushing your rant.23 -
The cost of energy in the EU combined with 10% inflation (but not salary increase) has become crushing to the point offices and households shut off heating and use battery lamps and candles for light. Avg. Year total for energy is over 9000€ in Belgium! At this rate we will burn through our savings for basic utilities18
-
There will come a day when a Tesla car will be so intelligent that it will short the Tesla stock right before crushing into a truck.3
-
What's the best way to deal with constant dread? I deployed code after following every procedure, got every kind of thumbs up from QA and now it's my fault our 2012 admin site borked. Should I point out all the obvious flaws (again), or should I give up on our stagnant-ass developers and systems?
The fear of showing off anything new is crippling. I wrote up a Pyton API to hook into our current pipeline over lunch breaks but am worried if I even raise it as an option it'll just be cast aside and lost to time, regardless of business value. -
This is a repost of an original rant posted on a request for "Community Feedback" from Atlassian. You know, Atlassian? Those beloved people behind such products as :
• Thing I Love™
• Other Thing You Used One Time™
• Platform Often Mentioned in Suicide Notes, Probably™*
Now this rant was written in early 2022 while I was working in an Azure Cloud Engineer role that transformed into me being the company's main Sysadmin/Project Manager/Hiring Manager/Network Admin/Graphic Designer.
While trying to simultaneously put out over 9000 fires with one hand, and jangling keys in the face of the Owner/Arsonist with the other, I was also desperately implementing Jira Service Desk. Normally this wouldn't have been as much of a priority as it was, but the software our support team was using had gone past 15 years old, then past extended support, then the lone developer died, then it didn't work on Windows 10, then only functioned thanks to a dev cohort long past creating a keygen....which was now broken. So we needed a solution *now*.
The previous solution was shit of a different tier. The sight of it would make a walking talking anthropomorphised sentient puddle of dogshit (who both eats and produces further dookie derivatives) blush with embarrassment. The CD-ROM/Cereal Box this software came in probably listed features like "Stores Your Customer's First AND (or) Last Name!" or "Windows ME Downgrade Disk Included!" and "NEW: Less(-ish) Genocide(s)"!
Despite this, our brain/fearless leader decided this would be a great time to have me test, implement, deploy, and train everyone up on a new solution that would suck your toes, sound your shaft, and that he hadn't reminded me that I was a lazy sack enough lately.
One day, during preliminary user testing I received an email letting me know that the support team was having issues with a Customer's profile on our new support desk. Thanks to our Owner/Firestarter/Real World Micheal Scott being deep in his latest project (fixing our "All 5 devs quit in the last 12 months and I can't seem to hire any new ones" issue (by buying a ping pong table)), I had a bit of fortuitous time on my hands to investigate this issue. I had spent many hours of overtime working on this project, writing custom integrations and automations, so what I found out was crushing.
Below is the (digitally) physical manifestation of my rage after realising I would have to create / find / deal with a whole new method for support to manage customer contacts.
I'm linking to the original forum thread because you kind of need to have the pictures embedded in said reply to get really inhale the "Jira-Rant" ambiance. The part where I use several consecutive words as anchor links to tickets with other people screaming into the void gets a bit sweet n' savoury too - having those hyperlinks does improve the je ne say what of it all.
bit.ly/JIRANT (Case Sensitive)
--------------------------
There is some good news at the end of this brown n' squirty rainbow though!
Nice try silly little Jira button, you can't ruin *my* 2022!
• I was able to forget all about Jira a month later when I received a surprise vacation home! (To be there while my Mom passed away).
• Eventually work stress did catch up to me - but my boss thoughtfully gave me a nice long vacation! (By assaulting *while* firing me (for emailing in a vacation request while he was a having a bad (see:normal) day))5 -
Need advice about switching to contracting.
TL;DR;
So I had 2 years of exp as an android dev, then I had a 1.5 year gap from doing android and now for the past 6 months Ive been doing android again fulltime. Im thinking of switching to contracting due to my debts and boring project and life crushing slow corporate processes in my current fulltime job, so I need tips and advices as to where should I start looking for new contracting gigs and in general what should I pay attention to. If it helps, I am based in EU, but am open to any EU/US gigs.
Now the full story:
Initially when I joined my current fulltime job after a break I had zero confidence, lowered my and employers expectations, joined as a junior but quickly picked up the latest standards and crushed it. Im doing better than half devs in my scrum team right now and would consider myself to be a mid level right now.
Asked for a 50% bump, manager kinda okayed it but the HQ overseas is taking a very long time to give me the actual bump. I have been waiting for 10 weeks already (lots of people in the decision chain were on and off vacations due to summer, also I guess manager sent this request to HQ too late, go figure). Anyways its becoming unnaceptable and I feel like its time for a change.
Now since I have mortgage and bills to pay, even with the bump that I requested that would leave me with like maximum 700-800 bucks a month after all expenses. I have debts of around 20k and paying them back at this rate would take 3 years at least and sounds like a not viable plan at all.
Also it does not help that the project Im working on is full of legacy and Im not learning anything new here. Corporate life seems to be very slow, lots of red tape kills creativity and so on. I remember in startups I was cooking features left and right each sprint, in here deploying a simple popup feature sometimes takes weeks due to incompetence in the chain. I miss the times where I worked in startups, did my job learned nre skills and after 6 months could jump on another exciting gig. Im not growing here anymore.
So because my ADD brain seems to be suited much better for working in startups, and also I need to make more money quick and I dont see a future in current company, I am thinking of going back to contracting. All I need right now is to build a few side apps, get them reviewed by seniors and fill my knowledge gaps. Then I plan of starting interviewing as a mid level or even a senior for that matter, since I worked with actual seniors and to be honest I dont think getting up to their level would be rocket science.
Only difference between mid and senior devs that I see atleast in my current company is that seniors are taking on responsibility more often, and they also take care of our tools, such as CD/CI, pipeline scripts, linters and etc. Usually seniors are the ones who do the research/investigations and then come up with actual tasks/stories for mids/juniors. Also seniors introduce new dependencies and update our stack, solve some performance issues and address bottlenecks and technical debt. I dont think its rocket science, also Ive been the sole dev responsible for apps in the past and always did decent work. Turns out all I needed was to test myself in an environment full of other devs, thats it. My only bottleneck was the imposter syndrome because I was a self taught dev who worked most of my career alone.
Anyways I posted here asking for some tips and advices on how to begin my search for new contract opportunities. I am living in EU, can you give me some decent sites where I could just start applying? Also I would appreciate any other tips opinions and feedback. Thanks!3 -
For those of you who went to universoty or college or other form of slavery mindwashing creative crushing freedom crushing institution,
what cool things did y'all do for your Graduation projects?
PS. with this whole correct usage of words movement I've decided to replace "you guys" woth "y'all" for the sake of a universal gender irrelevant specifier. Thank you for your sincere understanding. ~Board of Pointless statements and existences.7 -
Whay is there so many seniors on LinkedIn with Open to work overlays? It is kinda crushing to see that?5