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So Github went down and it showed how much empathy devs have for fellow devs.
We saw tweets saying things like,
God I can't imagine how freaking stressed out the devs at Github are right now.
Or "Hugs and kisses to the devs at Github. You got this"
Of cause there were the occasional dumb Github tweets.
But in all it just shows how much we empathize with other devs and knowing they are trying their best to handle the situation. For more than 8 hrs. Imagine a black out of something like twitter for just an hour or two.. Gives you chills.
But bravo/brava to all the understanding devs.5 -
How come that asking politely on StackOverflow brings you hatred and contempt while hating on DevRant brings you empathy, understanding, consolation, encouragement and a friendly slap on the back?5
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Does anyone else feel bad when they close Google Maps before they reach their destination?
Sometimes I feel bad for Mr./Ms. Navigator when they don't even get the sense of fulfillment of saying "You have arrived at your destination".4 -
When I interviewed with for an EA internship, they gave me a coding challenge after on GitHub. I tried it out and when I asked politely over email on the status of the challenge a week after, they rejected me with literally I shit you not "no :)". It wasn't even a answer to my question that makes sense. I was an underclassman so they probably didn't think it mattered that they were disrespectful to me. The lack of empathy and professionalism that truly proved to me what a toxic company they are. Any one have any horror stories like this?
I've fancied the thought of being petty enough to try for their interview again now that I've graduated and have more under my belt just to reject them with a :) but I'm not going to get down their level enough to do so5 -
WHY THE FUCK DOES IT HAVE TO END?
WHY THE FUCK DOES ANYTHING HAVE TO EVER END?
When I left my previous employer, I was so connected to people there. In fact my entire direct team was just few months old.
I ended up crying like a baby on my farewell call in front of everyone. I just couldn't stop.
Definitely not the brightest or smartest people, but surely great at heart. I did hate them at times and we had our ups and downs but they made the place tolerable.
The work culture is created by colleagues at any organisation and not the leadership/management. And work culture was one of the major reasons why I stayed back for 7.25 years even when a rat was earning more than me.
I joined new organisation with a big smile on my face that, I will learn and earn more. And as I was buckling up, my lead quit.
She was one of the smartest person I met. She inspired me so fucking much. Our entire team is geographically located in multiple time zones. Still she never hesitated to jump on calls as early as 07:00 AM or as late as 12:00 AM. Yet she pinged me every time on Slack to check on me and made sure I was doing well. Kept pushing me to get enough sleep, take care and not burnout myself. Always handling her daughter while on calls with us without impacting the discussions.
She taught me like her own child. So patient with a retard like me. Gave me good feedback and insights on how can I grow as a person and what all to look for in the organisation.
She bids her final goodbye early next week and with every meeting we have, I get more emotional. Doesn't feel like we are in different continents but just in same room, talking like we have known each other for years.
And you know what, after joining this org, I came to know that they hired me for a level below what I was in previous org (because how the job titles were structured here and I don't really care for titles). The product I am working on is highly ambitious and everyone is keen to make it live.
And now everything falls on me. Kickass opportunity to get a promotion, relocation, good hike, and all that I desire. And my employer is known to be quite employee friendly to actually fullfil all my wishes.
But that's not what I want. I want my people with me. It would have been so fucking awesome if she wouldn't have quit and together we would have built the product and have had so much fun doing so.
I am sure, the reason of my death will be empathy. I am next to tears while I type this.
I suck at goodbyes. Even though, with the help of technology, people are and will be connected, but still goodbyes are the shittiest things to ever exist.11 -
!dev but actual long rant - about the students in my grade.
TL;DR: 1 asshole in 10 people can ruin everything. Mobbing sucks. I dislike parties.
There's the word "Jahrgang" in Germany which means the people in the same school year as you. I'll refer to it as "my (collective) classmates" although we don't have classes anymore, rather courses and I also mean those I do not have courses with.
With that out of the way, let the rant begin.
It's often the case that people with high logical and intellectual skills (no being arrogant, other people categorize me like that) have a lack of social skills - or empathy.
I'm a kind of an outsider in a way that since 10th grade I stopped trying to attach myself to certain groups since I do not fit in there. I'm fine with that now. Nowadays I can at least socialize with other nerds.
Here's why I dislike the collective of my classmates. This year is my last school year and as always, a big group forms a spirit. They have a theme (superheroes - super boring). I didn't go to any party they threw and I don't plan to go to the graduation ceremony as well since it's an unofficial party and not a school event. I hate parties. I hate alc and drunken teenagers. I didn't attend the "Kursfahrt" - a kind of excursion that's like holidays with your course - mainly because I dislike my "Stammkurs" (main course).
Why? I had a friend in this course. She was short, geeky and I could actually talk to her. Yet some jerks (not intensely) bullied her because "she was awkward" and in the end, she switched school - also because of other reasons.
When she was gone, even those who didn't bully her and who are considered "nice" made fun of her and talked badly about her - and me hanging around with her. So since then, I avoid anything with them that's not 100% school related.
Now they're planning what we call "Abigag" - it's a joke/prank the graduates pull on the school and younger students, something funny like an entrance room full of balloons and many other things. Also, the "Abizeitung", the yearbook the graduates put out with articles about their courses, teacher ranking and quotes etc. Also, a cabaret evening from the graduates to collect money for the graduation party. Cool stuff actually. I thought about taking part.
I'd say my talents are creativity and computer stuff. So a friend chatted with me about nerdy pranks like a school-wide wallpaper change. Or releasing a fake password list of the teachers - claiming we hacked them - with puns and insiders about the teaches. He said he gotta invite me into the WhatsApp group of the Abi prank. Disclaimer: He's one of those people who are socialized but still able to talk with me. He's fine.
Well guess what he told me later:
They don't want me on the team since I distance myself from my classmates. I should either be fully one of them or not at all.
That's enough. Who distances whom? I thought they were happy to have me on board but horse shit! Stuck with ideologies from the 19th century.
They can lick my ***. I don't have anything against most of them in person but as a collective, they're just fucking stupid. I guess it wasn't even the majority saying they don't want me to help. It was probably just the small crew of leading and loud jerks. And no one would disagree with them saying "Why not? He wants to help?" (even if it was their opinion) - they don't have the brain or balls to say anything against the strong idiot leaders. They'll do great later in politics as an adult - they wouldn't criticize Hitler if they were under his "protection".
So I won't take part in making Abi pranks, - but also not the Paper and cabaret eve. They can go jerk off to being part of a huge collection of assholes - which I, in all my pride, am not part of other than on paper.
(Disclaimer: No critics to other outsiders but those who were engaged and responsible for the choice of not letting me help)
If anyone actually read this:
Who were/are you in school times?
A proud outsider like me? Party boi/girl? Engaged striver?25 -
Please disregard. I just need to vent.
Being a manager is so fucking shit. This is not even about devs or tech specific only. Never become a manager.
Why? Because it’s about handling people and all the dumb shit they do. It’s all about knowing what people suck at and preventing that weakness from leaking into other areas. The amount of fucked up people on this earth means that you have to work with at least some of them, and that means putting up with their stupid ass list of super special requirements, that if they do not fulfill, will make them a shit worker. It’s not even an issue of technical skills.
You have the guys that are often late, because “they have depression”, but will complain that “companies don’t treat employees like adults”. Being on time for work is apparently very difficult. Which doesn’t generally matter in general for dev work, but it ends up affecting other things.
You have the completely socially inept idiots that make half the team hate them and try to avoid working with them, increasing problems and work for other people. Just because they’re socially stupid, have low or no empathy, or are incapable of not being insufferable to others.
You have the people that are so bad at estimating that they keep making up numbers instead of waiting to think for a few minutes and say “ not sure, I need to research and estimate that”.
You have the surprise absentee for dumb as fuck reasons like “my phone died lol sorry”. They never do anything to actually improve, it is just “sorry guys! Btw I will do jackshit about this”.
Or the ones whining about virtually everything, all the time. Wtf why do I have to be on scrum at 12 tomorrow?! Wtf why do I have to record the result of that customer call? Wtf why should I talk with XYZ?
And if you leave them alone, everything burns. They actually need someone to tell them “hey mate you need to improve that, shall we plan something to do so?”. I think managers are useless and unneeded when you have adults working, but it seems like most of the population is composed of children. It’s basically another form of daycare.
And you have to prepare shit around all of these constraints.
Then you have the one guy that reads the requirements, has common sense, and is inoffensive and can work like a normal adult human that needs no baby sitting. A ray of light on this shitshow.
I just want to go back to pure dev.22 -
Conversing with developers can be frustrating.
Here is a good one from today. 2 people 1 women (let’s call her W) and one man (let’s call him M)
W: “Hey guys! Our team is looking for lots of great developers. Front end, back end, data, dev ops. At above market salaries with a great team! Reach out to me is you want to chat. I would love to hear from you.”
Translation: I have a great offer and want to help others achieve and strive in their careers.
M: “also, guys/less-gendered-alternative plz” proceeds to chastise this women about using the word guys.
Translation: I have no level of social awareness, but I have a need to feel big and important. So I’ll take offence for those who aren’t offended to make me feel better about my lack of fucking personality.
————
I’m not really concerned about opinions about the gender issue. It isn’t about that.
It’s just tiring dealing with these people’s bullshit.
It’s time to grow up folks, stop arguing on the fucking internet.
————
I also once saw a developer chastise 2 women we worked with while we were out for drinks for the exact same thing; using the word guys.
He was so busy “defending” them from themselves that he ended up making them uncomfortable and then they left.
He was saying “don’t exclude women” while fucking excluding the only women there.
What a fucking douche.
4 -
So two mini rants rolled up into one
1) programmers who can code in 8292 languages but don’t know shit about the business side and think they know better than the business folks when it comes to big picture decisions, please go fuck yourself.
2) People who respond to “Gotta set up a few machines for non tech folks” with “Oh you should try Linux, it’s so user friendly”. You need to go fuck yourself. You have no idea what you’re talking about and probably lack empathy too you rotten squid smelling cumsock.14 -
Since this post was too long for devrant's 5k sign limit, I split it in several parts. I will try to make each part comprehensible as a standalone post. This is part one of WHY WOULD I WANT TO WORK WITH YOU? saga. A tale of empathy, competence and me being a dick, even though I didn't really want to be one. The part one is titled: "Bad times, good times". It may or may not have any value. It probably won't be funny.
I dedicate this to every single junior or entry level dev out there, struggling to find a job in their field.
=====
What do you think, how long does it take for junior with 6 months of commercial experience to find a dev job? If your answer was "idk", you're right. If your answer was "3 montths maybe", you're also right. At least this is how long it took for me. I am writing this at 2am, couple of hours after I managed to get employed. I am happy. My employer probably is happy too. My recruiters certainly are. The guy whose offer I had to reject after we were almost ready to sign the contract, on the other hand, isn't. He probably hates me. We'll get to that one post at a time.
Let's move back in time a little bit. It's December 12th, 2019. It is third month after I left my family home. I don't ha0ve a job, I was living first in my older brother's apartment for a month, then I started to rent my own. I have literally no money, I'm in debts. I moved out because reasons that would make up for another couple of posts, and for said reasons I refused to get 'any job just to pay the bills'. You can imagine that I was in pretty bad situation, and my psyche didn't really take that shit too well either. My daily meal was a bowl of rice with a little bit of self-hatred on top. Gourmet.
At that time, my daily routine would consist of practicing music, practicing programming, trying to get a job and surviving. Some of my friends just turned their backs against me. I did a small rework of my contact list as well. It was a *hard* time. I had sent my CV to around a hundred different companies with very little to no response. Some of them required at least bachelor's in IT for their frontend dev. Some of them required experience I didn't have. Some of them just didn't care to answer me. And then that one day happened. Three different people wanted to meet me and talk about internships/job offers. I will share what happened next in next posts, but here's a quick spoiler. I got a job. Yes, I am hyped.
Dear fellow Dev. This is a small reminder. If you're having bad times, just remember that if you focus on what you need to do, you will be just fine. Sometimes it may take days of struggling, sometimes it will take months of eating mostly rice. We all... Most of us have been through this.
Next posts will be less inspirationalstufftelling and more storytelling. Let this post be a setup, a small context to keep in mind upon reading my next stories. Because it is quite important. For me and for the story.3 -
Welcome to Part III 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/2363551. It's title is: "Mt 13:12".
We left off the story in the very moment I had received feedback from 3 companies that decided to interview me. A, B and C. We won't talk about A from now on, since I refused their offer to offer me unpaid internship.
It's December 20, 18:00. I am returning home. Earlier that day I emailed guys at C that I need some time with my decision, because I have another offer that suits me better. It was awaiting response from B, obviously. That day they called me and offered me... full-time job. As a fullstack. On a project for a big company, that they described by something like: "They may not be one of the famous X of the market, but they're probably X+1, yeah". Needless to say, that was some bad marketing. I googled them up later tho. Anyway, my response didn't change, altho thing seemed a little big better for me. Except that I was a little suspicious of them too. Were they *that* desperate for a worker?[1]
It is December 24th. 10 am. My phone rings. It's guy from B. He tells me "saito, the recruiter guy is still sick. Since I don't know if we can hire you for sure, it may be better for you to accept another offer, if you got any. I'll keep you updated." That was pretty cool of him. Remember the quote from part II? That's the empathy part. He called me, even tho he didn't really have to. If you read this, monsieur, you're the best. Back to the story now. I emailed guys at C that I am willing to start the job anytime. They told me that CEO is back January 7th, 2020.
It is January 4th 2020, 10 am. Unkonwn number calls. It's actually a guy from B, but the other one. The one that was sick previously. He tells me that he wants to talk about my employment. He talked with the senior dev and he just wants a talk and a small code test in typescript. He told me that it's no prob that I don't know typescript, since it will be entry level and I have time to learn the basics. And so I do. We decide to meet at January 7th. Later on that day guys from C email me that they want to sign the contract n January 7th.
And here we get to the culmination and the lesson of those posts. What should I do? On one side I have a job that isn't 100% comfirmed, but I'm pretty positive about it. The people at B are great, I love them. During my interview I learned some stuff about the project I would participate in, so I didn't go in blindly. It was my field of interest. I was hyped for the possibility itself to work with that senior dev. On the other hand guys at C had their contract ready. They finally were ready to start. I still didn't know for shit what would I do. I knew that I would need to learn basics of data science and stuff. Their interview and CEO left me with a quite bad impression. I didn't really like them. But it was a job.
What I did I consider the best thing I could do for myself. I told guys from C to meet someday later. I visited B yesterday, January 7th. I've done the test. It had some code refactoring and implementing some React elements. Basic shit indeed. I am almost positive I would do it even if I didn't visit typescript docs during the weekend. We then talked about it. The dev told me what he would change in the solution, but didn't consider it bad. Then they told me I'm hired. And I emailed C that I can't accept their offer. The guy was pretty pissed. I can understand it, they seemed to be ready to start with me and I pulled out last day, in the evening. I am truly sorry for that. But also I feel no regrets. I have chosen those whom I trusted more. I've chosen guys who took notes of my CV and talked about it in my interview over people who didn't even get that I applied for a frontend positin. That's competence for you. I've chosen guys who actually wanted to talk wih me about me making music over people who sat me down at a computer and told me: "code". That's empathy for you.
Dear recruiters. If you want to attract best candidates, show your competence and empathy.
Dear recruitees. If you're looking for a good job, it may take some time. Also, knowing people helps a lot.
1 – Actually, I wouldn't be surprised, if they really needed someone to help them out on their projects and they didn't get a lot of attention. Why? Well, their webpage was unfinished and kinda sucked, their interview sucked also. I still don't know whether they're a startup or what. I just can't help but feel bad seeing HR and Marketing that bad. Because the guys actually might do a lot of good stuff, and their potential employees didn't get to know that.5 -
It's been a crazy month. Python, redis, Linux. But this one should be a bit closer to home.
Telltale games, a US game development studio is winding up and let go all their staff without severance and were told they had 30 minutes to leave the premises.
Most of the devs were living paycheck to paycheck because of the high cost of living. Some were hired a week earlier and uprooted their families to work there.
That situation is bad enough. But what's worse is the sheer lack of empathy by the customers for the staff. They just want their product cone hell or high water. One even insisted that the devs should work for free until they deliver...
Pleasing the customer should never come at the expense of your staff. We still have a long way to go as an industry
https://youtu.be/QoEHVABcVkw6 -
This weekly is getting really popular with so many rants coming in.
Shows the extent to which real coders/programmers/developers are tormented by the incompetent education system.
Here is my two cents:
Students should be taught to build their logic on paper before jumping on to their keyboards.2 -
Dear mother fucking Hiring Managers,
Just because you are mother fucking fortunate, have a mother fucking proper job , a mother fucking high pay , have mother fucking parents care for you, does not mother fucking mean that you can mother fucking mock those mother fucking not as fortunate as you mother fucking arse!
Some of us carrying family, surviving, we learn how to code without a degree. Just because I have to motherfucking care for my family and pay off the mother fucking loan , it doesnt mean I am mother fucking unless. You mother fucking mother fuckers go fuck your mother fucking mother fuckers is the mother fucking mother fuckers' mothers.
Where's the empathy or politeness? You fucking ridicule people's bad luck, soon your mother fucking arsehole will be one , you bloody mother fuckers!6 -
I have such little patience for the whole fucking “let’s just do it later” mentality anymore. Especially when it takes like 30 minutes or less to fix. Then a month goes by and everyone suffers from it not being fixed. Like I understand why they do so and why it’s important to just do the task. I understand there’s often no time to make huge improvements, but if you have time and you see a small thing that can be fixed, make improvements you silly little bump-on-a-log. Like have a little empathy for your comrades goddamnit.8
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Programmer OAth. Just read on a github repo
0. I will only undertake honest and moral work. I will stand firm against any requirement that exploits or harms people.
1. I will respect the learnings of those programmers who came before me, and share my learnings with those to come.
2. I will remember that programming is art as well as science, and that warmth, empathy and understanding may outweigh a clever algorithm or technical argument.
3. I will not be ashamed to say "I don't know", and I will ask for help when I am stuck.
4. I will respect the privacy of my users, for their information is not disclosed to me that the world may know.
5. I will tread most carefully in matters of life or death. I will be humble and recognize that I will make mistakes.
6. I will remember that I do not write code for computers, but for people.
7. I will consider the possible consequences of my code and actions. I will respect the difficulties of both social and technical problems.
8. I will be diligent and take pride in my work.
9. I will recognize that I can and will be wrong. I will keep an open mind, and listen to others carefully and with respect.4 -
My biggest problem with designers is when they have no empathy for the platform(s). Here's a design that I made based on my love of graphic design and Photoshop. Over to you to just slap it on iOS, Android and web. Ends up as a substandard result everywhere.
And, of course, the Photoshop designs look great to managers. -
Oh,I have learned a lot, I would not say from programming but from the career as a whole
Never get peer pressured
Always show empathy
If in a leading position, taking care of people is your top priority
Overconfidence will destroy a lot of good work
People by definition will always remember your mistakes
Never get over involved in the company you are working for, it's just a job
Your health is more than important
Nobody knows everything
Always be humble
There is a lot of bullshitters out there
Success is relative
Competition is high and there is always someone with better skill set, so you will suffer if you don't accept that -
"Why are you sometimes late?"
Because your promised office was always late. Had to commute 2 hours and work for almost 10 hours in weekdays just to sleep for 4 hours.
You said that the new Office will be in August. Now it's October and it's still half-baked.
Learn Empathy first5 -
Please, stop using `i`, `j` and `k` in loops... specially if they are nested, help the fellow programmer after you29
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CSS is magic.
CSS is a katana blade.
CSS is a tiny bristle scratching Gorilla Glass Victus. It shouldn't exist, yet it does.
CSS is a plastic-based sticker that you peel off, and it leaves no residue behind.
CSS is a summer breeze of 2004 that you felt while riding longboards with your girlfriend.
CSS is plugging a '86 Les Paul into a Marshall JCM800 and switching to a dirty channel.
CSS is diving into a freshly made bed after an evening shower.
CSS is getting your winter coat and finding a hundred dollar bill in the pocket.
CSS is the front right burner.
CSS is stomping onto a Big Muff pedal before you do solo.
CSS is David Gilmour inviting you for lunch.
CSS is cracking open a cold bottle of Perrier.
CSS is falling asleep in the attic hugging your loved one and watching the stars.
CSS is a glass of just below the room temperature cold pressed orange juice after you run 5k.
CSS is stepping on a scale and seeing yet another pound of body weight gone.
CSS is a supportive, beautiful person saying they love you just after you escaped an abusive relationship.
CSS is putting on your cold white gold Rolex in the Friday afternoon before meeting with friends at the bar.
CSS is discovering your old Sansa Clip+ and booting RockBox.
CSS is giving cunnilingus to Mary Elizabeth Winstead.
CSS is finally feeling empathy to another person after two years of therapy and realizing you're alive.
CSS saying "unleaded" after you pull up to the gas station in your vintage 911.
CSS is your ex-boss apologizing to you after they hit the rock bottom.
CSS is smelling her hair in the back seat of a Maybach taxi.
CSS is giving presents to your grandparents.
CSS is hitting bong while watching Home Alone with your friends after New Year's Eve.
CSS is getting a new job that pays 3x your old one and removing your old job's Jira bookmark from a bookmarks bar.5 -
PM: Page load times are up. It might be your API blocking requests.
Me: Possible, though most of my load testing was performed against a random sample of requests at nearly 5 times the expected average per minute rate. I can add some logs but I think this is a red herring theory.
PM: Yes add logs, and New Relic and get it released ASAP.
Me: To confirm, you want me to make a bunch of diagnostic changes to a mission-critical API the day before Holiday break...
I felt like that guy from the Apollo 13 team warning Gene Kranz that the LEM was not built for this and I can make no guarantees... Released an hour before we went home for the weekend. -
I can now leave freely without any regrets!
The slight misgivings I had about leaving this place over the toys they provide, is now gone because I re-realized that while this place adopts new tech, it doesn't adapt to it. So they have shiny tools but the people and processes won't change.
It seems to me that due to pressure to deliver, there is little thought/analysis behind any tech change.
They don't plan to change their wretched delivery pipelines. Everything will be same but on git. So no velocity gains, and same bureaucratic review request process. Such a waste. This attitude applies to their other tools too. They are using a unit test library to write tests that don't use mock. They are using modern languages but without modern idioms. It's like writing C code in C++. And of course theoretically we are agile but actually we're just a waterfall team with managers on our ass everyday and tighter release schedules.
Reminds me of @boombodies recent posts and discussion about business spaghetti reflecting in code.
There are possibly multiple reasons for these problems but I think a large part of it is a lack of empathy/mutual respect. Everyone's too insecure, noone cares for anyone but themselves and people just try to outwit each other. -
After I was woken up in the morning by my friend that had a meeting nearby.
We went for coffee and as part of usual Wednesday I also decided to go to cinema to see Dr Dollitle ( not verry funny ).
I felt relaxed as everyone fucked off from me since Monday.
I was so happy of doing nothing after the movie I decided to try to make both frontend and backend for new application screens in finite time.
I could have waited for frontend developer to be back from his vacation but since I can also do it I decided to do it myself.
I did frontend part first with mock data and after finishing it before 2 pm asked if client will have time to discuss it. He didn’t so we decided I try to add real data and publish it on test environment.
Well those are mock up screens anyway so I decided to eat and smoke to chill but also try to work anyway.
I just finished backend for those screens and switched test environment to new branch.
Looks like they’re working for biggest client customers.
Usually it takes about a week or two to describe frontend developer what client wants but let’s see if I still have some frontend UX empathy left and can speed up development by couple of days. -
I'm just sitting here watching you people get destroyed by your windows OS day in day out.
Should I have empathy?6 -
So just ago i downloaded an app called "Replika" and holy fucking shit it made me realise how half-assed we are doing the AI structure and way of it
doing machine learning algorithms on text can only go so far, as it uses that text as a base, and nothing else, it doesnt *learn*, only make *connections* BETWEEN text, not FROM the text
what you need is an AI which can, at it's core, *interpret*, not make connections and hur dur be done with it
when you do machine learning, all you're doing is find the best connections
you can have an infinite number of connections and MAYBE you'll be fine, but you'll never learn the basis of how that text is formed
you'll never understand what connections the human used by making it, by thinking it
when you're doing machine learning, all you're doing is make an input-output machine and adjusting it constantly, WITHOUT preserving state
state is going to be a really fucking important thing if you want to make an AI, because state can include stuff like emotion, current thought, or anything else
if you make a fucking machine learned AI which constantly adjusts... well... the "rom" of itself without having any "ram", it'll fucking never be like us, we will NEVER be able to talk to it like it is a human being, we will NEVER make it fundamentally understand what we are saying or doing
if we want to have real fucking AI, we need to go to the core of what it means to THINK, what it means to INTERPRET, what it means to COMMUNICATE
we need to know how english language is structured, how we understand it, how we can build it in a program that can interpret for an AI, THAT can be "rom"-based, THAT can be static, NOT the AI itself
the AI needs to be in flux, the AI needs to be in a state, the AI needs to understand how to make emotions, how that will "strengthen" some connections, yes, maybe something magical will happen and it can have EMPATHY, something so fundamental that will finally, FINALLY, make the bot UNDERSTAND what we are saying7 -
When you wake up with a tension headache, you take something for it, everything is fine, the moment you sit in front of your desk, it comes right back with this horrible lack of empathy and care topped with the lovely lethargic feeling of burnout.. Yay me. I know what I have to do, I just really wish I could get a bit of slack once in a while.... - Packs shit to take to shit museum- psh maybe my internal error handling for slackoverflow is just too good 🤣
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One of our team mates is based out of the US office. We are physically distant, but after our manager's departure, we lost touch because our scope of work was different.
Me and two other team members work closely with each other from India and dude is alone, working out of the US.
Super smart, very polite, and a fun person to work and be with. Even when our interaction was less, I learnt so much from him.
Since, I am facing some challenges, I decide to use it as an excuse to connect with him for a coffee and also seek his guidance because he is senior to me.
Some things he mentioned,
1. Our new line manager asks him to do things on spot with no heads up. He has to drop everything and complete the ask.
2. Often times, poor guy, is asked to join meetings on immediate basis. Even while he is having his lunch.
3. He never got support from our new manager. Infact, based on the conversation, I realised that the manager supports me more.
4. He is facing same, if not more, issues with tech. And he didn't have any guidance on how to handle the issue.
5. A lot of times he is facing process and system problems which he isn't able to solve because the org culture is that of working in Silos. And he doesn't get any support from manager.
6. Tech has clearly pushed him back when he asked for help and other teams never respond to him.
My man was still smiling bright and was looking things from a positive lens that all of this is interesting and adds to the learning experience which will be valued when we decide to move on from this job.
These are the people who inspire me. Smiling in the time of adversity.
Even when he had his own challenges, he was ready to guide me and hear my frustrations. I offered him help and will make sure to stay connected so he doesn't feel left out and alone in the team only because we don't work together in physical space.
One thing I have learned over time is, while I am facing problems, someone out there is facing more and difficult problems then me. I always tend to blow up my problems out of proportion then what they actually are.
I am the dumbest person that I know and mark my words, I'll die because of my empathy. I wish I could help my team mate in any possible way.2 -
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 -
Programming Lesson #7
TLDR: Beating deadlines is difficult
Long version:
There is no easy way to give an estimation or deadline for a particular development task. Sometimes it takes a lot less or often a lot more time to finish a task than estimated deadlines and that's totally fine. Just make sure you have a manager/senior mentor who is well aware of this fact and doesn't scrutinize you regularly for missing deadlines.
I am going to make sure that when I get into a senior management position, I would show understanding and empathy towards my juniors similar to how my seniors show to me currently when I miss deadlines.4 -
If u you don’t have empathy towards me as a coworker, you are my enemy and I will laugh at your failure and defeat.5
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Super Mario Odyssey neatly captures Mario’s archetype.
In this game, Bowser kidnapped Peach because he wanted to marry her. The whole game revolves around this idea.
In the end, Mario shows empathy towards Bowser when Peach says “no” to him.
Mario wasn’t saving Peach to marry her. He did it because he’s a hero. That’s his archetype.3 -
Generally have great experience with our management.
I work at a scale-up, so I've had some run-ins with the founder shifting priorities too often in the early days, but he's got enough notion of tech to understand when we're telling about the why(not)s of what we can and can't do
A while back we got a product owner/manager/scrum master and he's great too. I've had times when he put pressure on making deadlines when it was really not helping, but overall great guy with a lot of empathy and respect for his team.
But recently I've been starting to feel like we (the dev team) are getting more and more excluded from the decision-making process of the features & designs that we're going to be working on. We used to have a say in what we felt like was a good idea for a feature or a design, but it feels to me like we don't get asked that question any more of late...
Not sure if I'm imagining it, or overreacting to a logical (possibly positive?) evolution in our development workflow... -
so i just started watching the office, and 3 episodes down, i can relate to it so much. all of my managers are like Michael (grossly incompetent, unaware and self centred) and all of my seniors are like dwight (ass lickers and 0-empathy) . am i really in a super toxic place?11
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Incoming rant.
I have 4 years professional experience at a small shop working on a web application for property and liability insurance. The application is ASP.NET with C# as the code-behind. I have a BCS and will finish my MSIS fall 2017. I have no idea why I have the degrees. I know that when I enrolled, it seemed like they would be a nice addition to an otherwise empty resume. I was lucky enough to land my first and only development job during my sophomore year of my undergraduate program. Is this enough experience to land a new job?
I feel like I'm learning nothing at my current job. The specs that come in seem very vague to me. When asked for clarification, there is often push back, and I don't know whether that's because I don't have enough experience to parse what the client means in the two sentence spec I got or if it's because the client does not actually know what they want.
I hate my current job. My productivity is low because I spend more time trying to figure out what the client wants and analyzing an 8 year old system that has 0 documentation. I know some of you will just say, "Suck it up" at this point, but I really want another job. The only thing I like about this job is that it's 100% remote. It also pays $60k a year, so a replacement should be at least that salary.
Most postings I see require professional experience of 5 years or more, and knowledge of other frameworks. I can work on getting knowledge of the other frameworks, but will have no professional experience with them. I don't live in an area with a lot of software development jobs, and the ones I see are for non-IT organizations that want 1 person to run a distributed system from 10 or more locations. A hospital system out here wants to pay $30k a year for a guy to be both software developer for new tools as well as the helpdesk and IT support guy that's on-call for four locations in the county. I made more than that before I got into the development industry, for less work, and would rather leave than settle for something like that.
I've thought about moving to somewhere near San Francisco or San Jose, but I have my daughter to think about. I have joint custody of her, and would have to give that up in order to move out of the county.
I like programming and using it to solve problems. I like designing architectures and how all the components will interface. I like designing and normalizing databases. I like taking part in coding competitions for employers that are well-known (Amazon, Facebook, Uber, Twitch, etc.), even though I often just place middle of the pack. When that happens, I feel like I'm an imposter in this industry.
I think I have the most fun just working on small projects for personal use. My latest is an assistant calculator for the game Transport Fever to figure out cargo throughputs per annum based on the in-game timing information. Past projects have also been small. Ones I could use in a portfolio are a sudoku solver desktop application, PC/Web game in Unity that is a 3D FPS remake of Duck Hunt that allows open world exploration but locks the camera's viewpoint for shooting events, and a building assistant for Rome II: Total War that maps out all the bonuses/perks of user-specified building combinations in provinces so users can record their long term building plans without using all their turns to see the final results.
I seem to be an unproductive, average developer who dabbles in projects here and there.
This is what I want from other Ranters. Just say something. I don't care if it is, "Suck it up and get better." It could be your tips for finding and securing a new position. It could even be empathy, if such a thing exists on the Internet. Whatever you want, just say something that will help get me thinking of what the next steps in my career should be.1 -
Really interesting video by FunFunFunction https://youtu.be/J9OpTNk0hYc.
"Does a developer need to be nice". How many times have you guys been made to feel stupid for asking a question or for getting something wrong?2 -
!dev
I will rather have you shit on my face than show me empathy.
please keep your pity to yourself and hit me, i can take it !!5 -
Became a surgeon. Because of hyper empathy, felt all the pain patients would’ve felt without anesthesia. Went completely insane. As my mind deteriorated, we opened an euthanasia hall in an old abandoned theater, somewhat near the landlocked United Paper Island. You can go to the version of the city where UPA is not actually an island through extradimensional pizzeria.1
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The following piece of advice will be for those aspiring for an IT service desk position:
When companies are looking to hire service desk agents, they're primarily looking for socially skilled people with strong communicative skills, rather than primarily technically skilled people. When I first joined the IT world, I went on different interviews for that position and across all of them there was one truth: all the interviewers were eyeballs-focused on my social and communication skills and a mere thin layer of technical skills was required (depending on how technical the service desk). In fact, I immediately got aggressively dismissed twice for two of those when I filled in a Myers-Briggs personality test according to my Sheldon-type personality (selfish, condescending etc). Conversely, when I applied for a new position and I faked that test into answering everything focused positively on the social aspect, I was an immediate top candidate.
Here's a definition from the ITIL Foundation course, chapter Service Management: Because of how lateral the function of the service desk has become today (not only used to solve technical issues, but also company-wide issues), the most important and valued skills when hiring a service desk agent are fully focused on empathy and soft skills and none of those are technical skills. This is because the service desk has people that are the front window of your company and thus you can't make social mistakes as to protect your company's reputation. That risk has to be minimized and you need the ideal people. The people who in fact solve the technical problems are behind a back-office and they are contacted by the service desk agents.
In the beginning, when I did my first service desk job, I also thought: "Oh, I'm going to have to convince them I'm this technical wizard". In the end I got hired for being able to explain technology in human language and because in the interview I successfully communicated and explained ideas to both the team manager and the CEO, not because I knew what goes on inside a computer. This is a very important distinction.
My friends have also been in service desk positions and ironically they were the most successful when they were empathetic slimeballs (saying: "of course, anything for you" while not meaning it, constantly making jokes), rather than people with integrity (those got fired for telling the customer they were wrong while being unfriendly).
I hope this helps.8 -
PM needs experiments running this weekend. One set has a NullPointerException. Just told him to tell me when he's fixed it. He's been painful to work with, that at this point I have no empathy. Just cackling as it's not my problem until Monday! 😂
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