Fuck open office spaces.

A few months ago I landed a super sweet job as a senior full stack developer, mainly going to work with their Python microarchitecture. The company pays well, has a sweet balance between freedom and responsibility, 30 days vacation etc.

During the recruiting process they walked me around the office that was super cozy with 14 devs in on large room and 10 people from marketing in another. They also mentioned that they would move and merge office with operations and customer service (around 100 more people) in a few months.

Life was good in the old office, I thought that this is the company where I will work for a looooong time.

Now we are in the new office and its fucking shit. No walls or FUCKING CEILINGS between departments. Right above my head there is balcony with customer service talking loud as fuck 24/7. Everyone that is not a developer is just so fucking loud.

I have to use earplugs AND earmuffs to get silence, or blast my ears with way to loud music. Every day around lunch I'm completely done mentally.

I know I'm extra sensitive to noise because of my ADHD, but seriously who the fuck thought this was a good idea?

All the devs have told our boss what needs to be done. If they listen i don't know. In the meantime I will start looking for a new job....

How I went from loving my job to wishing i dont wake up tomorrow just to avoid it.

Ive been a backend dev in the company im at for 2 years now.

First year was a blast, i loved my work so much, I used to get so many random features to do, bug fixes, campaigns, analytics, etc..

Second year i started getting familiar with the part of the code that has to do with Search in our music streaming app. Nobody wanted to work on it, so i wanted to take initiative and start doing a few tasks.

A few tasks turned into sprints, and sprints turned into months worth of sprints. And because the code was the definition of tech debt, and because it was so messed up that changing one thing can blow up everything else, working on Search was not too fun.

However, people seemed to be happy search tasks are no longer piling up and someone is handling them so that used to make me feel good about it. They also gave me so much freedom and i felt like my own manager because no one told me what to do (not even my actual manager) they just let me be and were happy i was handling the part they want nothing to do with. I was also given an intern to mentor and have her work on Search tasks with me which turned out amazing.

During the last few months, I completely rewrote search, made it 10 times more performant in such a neat way, made an inhouse dashboard to automate certain tasks so we wont need to waste developers on them (all of which were extra effort on my own time without being asked), all meanwhile still tending to the fixes of the old implementation.

I felt so accomplished, and in a way, i felt like a lead (even tho im not managing any employees, i had so much freedom and I was literally responsible for everything about Search and if i decide to play with the sprint task order i can even do that).

Then 6 or so weeks ago my manager left the company, and while i thought id be a standalone team / person (single person teams are not uncommon in the company) i was instead put under someone else. Someone who likes to micro manage the fuck out of me. I have been happy working on shit code because it was my baby, my project, no one interferes and no one tells me what to do and everyone would call me the search lead (unofficially). now if i dont report to that guy every two hours he calls to see if im working. preplans sprints i no longer have a say in, and im the only dev who knows the code so all tasks go to me. I feel i got demoted so fucking much. I felt like a lead on a project and now im back to being a normal code minion. From deciding everything about a project to blindly following a some irrelevant manager's opinion. (who btw is making Search worse) And after all the extra effort i put in, after actually caring, after actually embracing Search as my responsibility i get rewarded with losing everything i liked about my job...My Independence. From feeling like a lead to feeling demoted. I am so demotivated.

I love the company, but this is hell for me and this made me hate a job i always loved. I am thinking of talking to the CTO asking to work on other stuff because i no longer want this. If i am to be a code minion at least let it be on code i like, let me go back to dealing with PMs, fuck my new manager I dont wanna work with that guy he can take the project along with all its poopoo.

This rant is a confession I had to make, for all of you out there having a bad time (or year), this story is for you.

Last year, I joined devRant and after a month, I was hired at a local company as an IT god (just joking but not far from what they expected from me), developer, web admin, printer configurator (of course) and all that in my country it's just called "the tech guy", as some of you may know.

I wasn't in immediate need for a full-time job, I had already started to work as a freelancer then and I was doing pretty good. But, you know how it goes, you can always aim for more and that's what I did.

The workspace was the usual, two rooms, one for us employees and one for the bosses (there were two bosses).

Let me tell you right now. I don't hate people, even if I get mad or irritated, I never feel hatred inside me or the need to think bad of someone. But, one of the two bosses made me discover that feeling of hate.

He had a snake-shaped face (I don't think that was random), and he always laughed at his jokes. He was always shouting at me because he was a nervous person, more than normal. He had a tone in his voice like he knew everything. Early on, after being yelled for no reason a dozen of times, I decided that this was not a place for me.

After just two months of doing everything, from tech support to Photoshop and to building websites with WordPress, I gave my one month's notice, or so I thought. I was confronted by the bosses, one of which was a cousin of mine and he was really ok with me leaving and said that I just had to find a person to replace me which was an easy task. Now, the other boss, the evil one, looked me on the eye and said "you're not going anywhere".

I was frozen like, "I can't stay here". He smiled like a snake he was and said "come on, you got this we are counting on you and we are really satisfied with how you are performing till now". I couldn't shake him, I was already sweating. He was rolling his eyes constantly like saying "ok, you are wasting my time now" and left to go to some basketball practice or something.

So, I was stuck there, I could have caused a scene but as I told you, one of the bosses was a cousin of mine, I couldn't do anything crazy. So, I went along with it. Until the next downfall.

I decided to focus on the job and not mind for the bad boss situation but things went really wrong. After a month, I realised that the previous "tech guy" had left me with around 20 ancient Joomla - version 1.0 websites, bursting with security holes and infested with malware like a swamp. I had never seen anything like it. Everyday the websites would become defaced or the server (VPN) would start sending tons of spam cause of the malware, and going offline at the end. I was feeling hopeless.

And then the personal destruction began. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat. I was having panick attacks at the office's bathroom. My girlfriend almost broke up with me because I was acting like an asshole due to my anxiety issues (but in the end she was the one to "bring me back"(man, she is a keeper)) and I hadn't put a smile on my face for months. I was on the brink of depression, if not already there. Everyday I would anxiously check if the server is running because I would be the one to blame, even though I was trying to talk to the boss (the bad one was in charge of the IT department) and tell him about the problem.

And then I snapped. I finally realised that I had hit rock bottom. I said "I can't let this happen to me" and I took a deep breath. I still remember that morning, it was a life-changing moment for me. I decided to bite the bullet and stay for one more month, dealing with the stupid old server and the low intelligence business environment. So, I woke up, kissed my girlfriend (now wife), took the bus and went straight to work, and I went into the boss's office. I lied that I had found another job on another city and I had one month in order to be there on time. He was like, "so you are leaving? Is it that good a job the one you found? And when are you going? And are you sure?", and with no hesitation I just said "yup". He didn't expect it and just said "ok then", just find your replacement and you're good to go. I found the guy that would replace me, informing him of every little detail of what's going on (and I recently found out, that he is currently working for some big company nowadays, I'm really glad for him!).

I was surprised that it went so smoothly, one month later I felt the taste of freedom again, away from all the bullshit. Totally one of the best feelings out there.

I don't want to be cliche, but do believe in yourself people! Things are not what the seem.

With all that said, I want to give my special thanks to devRant for making this platform. I was inactive for some time but I was reading rants and jokes. It helped me to get through all that. I'm back now! Bless you devRant!

I'm glad that I shared this story with all of you, have an awesome day!

Why are Americans so stupid?

Date format: MM/dd/YY => what is this? It‘s not even in order

Length Units: Inch, Feet, Yard, Mile => good luck trying to convert in in a hurry without a calculator

Cooking recipes: cups, tablespoons, pinches => land of the freedom, especially for measurement errors

Temperature: Fahrenheit. => some dude who thought, „oh this is really hot, lets mark it 100“ and the other day „oh this is really cold, I got the 0 mark, sciene“

Weight: ounces ~ 28.34952 g, ton ~ maybe 907.xx kg, it depends

Time: Americans think the week starts on sunday, so they assume it does so for everyone else (f*** you american developer, designer, I mean you)

Football is football. Everywhere. In. The. World.

Politics: Trump, Weapons, health system, worker rights, ...

God, I hate America and their bs.

One time a former colleague reformatted all the code because he was very strict on code conventions.. so.

If (1==1)
{

Instead of

If (1==1) {

After some discussion on why he should never do this I denied him the rights to commit any longer..

Also..

One time a user requested a feature.. he wanted a drop down with some values without specifying where he wanted it. To our best knowledge we put it somewhere where we thought it would be usefull.. for instance when it is a car model drop down ypu expect it to be somewhere near a car screen right.. little did we know that he didnt have any rights to acces that screen at all hhahaha.. after that he came yelling in our room telling us to think for him.. in not so light words I told him that he should write his stories properly and that if he creates crappy stories he leaves me with a lot of freedom of interpretation of his stories so stop crying and get the fuck out of my room..

Its not that I get angry easily but I cant handle dumb people that do dumb stuff around me..

I thought that as a senior software engineer, I would have the time and freedom to solve various interesting programming problems.
In reality, I spend most of my time doing PowerPoint presentations.

If I ever start my own company, I'll build it on the basis of people not giving a single fuck about what others might think about them, especially management.

There will be no place for butthurt special snowflakes and predictable egoFucks! (credit to @MrJDev for that one)

It's interesting to me... a lot of the rants I see here are all like "just started this new job and this place is SO fucked". Talking about how there's no process, no source control, terrible code, etc.

I say it's interesting because most of the time the thought that goes through my head is "that sounds fun as hell!"

Like, spend as many years at a place as I have, a place where there's SO much process and SO many controls and all of that... you know, the whole "big enterprise" mindset... and the idea of being able to come in to a place that's kind of wild west and actually work to FIX the place, to have freedom to change direction and innovate and not be locked in to all sorts of rules, is kind of exciting.

(you know, assuming it's a place and a position where that's possible at all... but at this point in my career, I'd only take a position where I had that kind of authority from the start, and as long as I have the authority then I'm happy to take on the responsibility and I'm up for the challenge)

I can’t control my thoughts.

When someone says “wrap your head around” something, I imagine it. It happens every time.

It’s always 50/50. The one times the head of the person inside my head turns into a play-doh kind of sausage that wraps around a random object, usually a cube, and his face looks confused. It’s hard to separate his head from his neck and it terrifies me.

The other times the head appears extremely solid and has an overall round shape, then I subconsciously try to forcefully wrap it around that object but it doesn’t work and that person screams. It terrifies me even more.

Thoughts like this haunt me through my life. I hate it but I also somehow feel like I’ll miss it if they’re gone and at the same time I can’t decide whether it’s like a Stockholm syndrome towards that terrifying thoughts that are somehow both so personal yet so alien, or just my intuition lies to me again. Both of those possible reasons scare me even more.

My intuition is very valuable to me, I value it the same as I value the freedom of thought – above everything else. Those situations compromise both. Intuition is a major decision-making instrument to me, so terrible things will happen if I couldn’t trust it.

I don’t know what exactly I did wrong to become like this and I can’t remember when it all started

I'm thinking about what language to dive into next.
I already have a pretty good knowledge of Go and mediocre knowledge of C and Java.

So far I thought about...
1. CPP, as I need it for school and it runs on literally anything.
2. Rust, as is seems to spread and the combination of low-level, memory-safety and abstraction seems pretty appealing to me.
3. Kotlin, specifically kotlin-native, is it combines java-like high-level programming with native speed.
4. Nim, as it combines high-level techniques with c-like freedom.

What do you people recommended, or something completely else?

I had a pretty good year! I've gone from being a totally unknown passionate web dev to a respected full stack dev. This will be a bit lengthy rant...
Best:
- Got my first full time employment dev role at a company after being self-taught for 8+ years at the start of the year. Finally got someone to take the risk of hiring someone who's "untested" and only done small and odd jobs professionally. This kickstarted my career, super grateful for that!
- Started my own programming consulting company.
- Gained enough confidence to apply to other jobs, snatched a few consulting jobs, nailed the interviews even though I never practiced any leet code.
- Currently work as a 99% remote dev (only meet up in person during the initialization of some projects.) I never thought working remotely could actually work this well. I am able to stay productive and actually focus on the work instead of living up to the 9-5 standard. If I want to go for a walk to think I can do that, I can be as social and asocial as I want. I like to sleep in and work during the night with a cup of tea in the dark and it's not an issue! I really like the freedom and I feel like I've never been more productive.
- Ended up with very happy customers and now got a steady amount of jobs rolling in and contracts are being extended.
- I learned a lot, specialized in graph databases, no more db modelling hell. Loving it!
- Got a job where I can use my favorite tools and actually create something from scratch which includes a lot of different fields. I am really happy I can use all my skills and learn new things along the way, like data analysis, databricks, hadoop, data ingesting, centralised auth like promerium and centralised logging.
- I also learned how important softskills are, I've learned to understand my clients needs and how to both communicate both as a developer and an entrepeneur.
Worst:
- First job had a manager which just gave me the specifications solo project and didn't check in or meet me for 8 weeks with vague specifications. Turns out the manager was super biased on how to write code and wanted to micromanage every aspect while still being totally absent. They got mad that I had used AJAX for requests as that was a "waste of time".
- I learned the harsh reality of working as a contractor in the US from a foreign country. Worked on an "indefinite" contract, suddenly got a 2 day notification to sum up my work (not related to my performance) after being there for 7+ months.
- I really don't like the current industry standard when it comes to developing websites (I mostly work in node.js), I like working with static websites (with static website generators like what the Svelte.js driver) and use a REST API for dynamic content. When working on the backend there's a library for everything and I've wasted so many hours this year to fix bugs and create workarounds related to dependencies. You need to dive into a rabbit hole for every tool and do something which may work or break something later. I've had so many issues with CICD and deployment to the cloud. There's a library for everything but there's so many that it's impossible to learn about the edge cases of everything. Doesn't help that everything is abstracted away, which works 90% of the time but I use 15 times the time to debug things when a bug appears. I work against a black box which may or may not have an up to date documentation and it's so complex that it will require you to yell incantations from the F#$K
era and sacrifice a goat for it to work properly.
- Learned that a lot of companies call their complex services "microservices". Ah yes, the microservice with 20 endpoints which all do completely unrelated tasks?

hey guys i need advise.
I currently got a job that i love with a lot of freedom. but the payment is not good and i am concerned that the company won't be there in the next 5 to 10 years.

I am a 25 years old, self taught programmer and my current employer is the only one I ever worked for. Recently I browsed xing and found a company which searches an employee with exactly my skillset (they need someone for a specific ERP system in which I am damn good at). The company is half an our away - my current job 20 minutes away. Also I think because the person they are looking for is rare because you need technical knowledge of windows and doors and you need to know how to administrate this erp system plus knowing some programming stuff.
There is also a very big company 10 minutes (walking) from home where I could apply. I think at this company i would start lower but could maybe study and working for them with higher expectations in long term (just google Hettich in germany here in the village this is big)

The problem I currently have is the following. If the company I work for is closing in lets say ten years, then I am 35 without a degree. I have a girlfriend - want to marry her and getting a child.

I have holiday now and i will apply for both companies. I feel very uncomfortable doing this because the company I work for is the company of my granddad. I don't have the balls to tell him that even if i get a raise that does not solve the 35 years issue.

Well, first of all I will just apply. Lets see how much value I have.

But I thought that asking you all may give me some other input to take into account. What are your thoughts on this?

PS: just a formal "sorry for my english" and thanks for reading

That part of life when you screwed up a good interview. Took forever to solve an easy question. And guess what.. I thought I will be given freedom to select language. But had to stick to JavaScript.. I know JavaScript but having been doing Java lately .. interviewer was debugging with me.. 😞😞😞

Random learnings/realisations/hypothesis:

i have found a sense of happiness in weird symbiotic environment : being rich in a poor environment and live with a poor-but-secretely-rich lifestyle.

i call it the "sheep-hoodie" lifestyle: being a wolf in a herd of sheeps but not with a sheep's skin glued to your body. rather a hoodie so you can be a friendly wolf , ferocious wolf and a friendly sheep whenever you want to.

my 1 group of friends are in a sheep phase : struggling in their life , crunched on money, not saving a lot or focused on savings and stuff. At least that's what shows up from their discussions. however when we are together, i see that we are always supporting each other, and sharing resources/helping each other while having fun

my another group of friends have a wolf lifestyle:
they are insanely rich, if you want to party/do something with them at 'their' level, you gotta have a lot of cash to burn . they are wolves because they know how to sell their stuff, whom to sell and how to retain the info for success. i don't enjoy much with them as their solutions to life problems end up with something that involves a lot of money than effort.

So my lifestyle is to earn like them, but live like my broke friends. they think that am earning 20% of what i earn now, and am also in lots of debts and family crisis. someday my lie is gonna burst when i buy expensive stuff lol

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#2
i have realised that i have an OCD for silence and psychotic reaction to noise . for me ,
Silent Environment >> sex >> any relationship.
I might react so aggressively to noise while trying to focus that i may end up breaking the closest of relations with anyone

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#3
thinking of having 3 twitter accounts just to fix the problem of devrant not saving content of dormant accounts :
- professional : an id where i will share my professionally stupid questions, achievements, debates etc
- personal/partial-anon : an id where i will share my personal thoughts and stuff. it might also include devrant screenshots / embarrising content that i make here
- true-anon : a full anonymous account for my(some) extreme thoughts, trigger content and explicit researches

my current twitter feed is a mix of first 2, but making 2 seperate accounts might give me more freedom(the level of devrant) to express myself than what i do now (as my followers are also interesting people but mostly related to tech)
guess i should move my tech content there than my personal content.

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#4
making an early opinion about something should only be done to research for truth/content/conversion/hype . final opinion should always be made after you trust something with a research. for eg, initial opinion of Elon Musk was he being a bad guy, but now after seeing his crazy ideas and approach towards twitter, he looks like someone who can truly make it a money minting machine.

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#5
A simple perception towards making money as not being a bad thing does wonders at a management level and life .
liberal opinion of twitter layoff and later changes were emotional and blaming, but thinking from a business approach, his company partners(and whoever he likes) now have special golden badges to feel like VVIP and have an orgasm, while he gave a dummy melon to every person on earth to pay for feeling like a VIP and have an orgasm.
a brilliant tactic to make money without anyone calling the minting of money as BAD. genius

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#6
was randomly checkin Insta, saw an ex-collegue share a random deep thought quote, and i realised that i might have known her for just a week or 2 in college, but she had a very nice nature.

However, she was the daughter of a very rich ass dad and had almost everything in life. she gave a bit spoilt(for me) look, like someone who did ciggs or drink, but her talks then and our chats later just on chat gave me a very nice hustler vibe (the type of people i like: hustling and professional)

I indirectly asked her on a date and she agreed. so, this is something very interesting for me, as i am hopelessly single and full of judgemental opinions/ strict rules. share your tips and notes on how to have a successful date, and stuff that one must NOT do . much grateful if you do not come under rule 29 of internet and share your POV

To this day if I could do find the people who decided they'd break the rest of what is going on beyond the partial truth of people deserving punishment getting it I'd happily remove their skin a patch at a time over days if I thought our encounter wasn't a set up.

To take joy in slowly destroying not only freedom in this country but the good with the bad and all future prospects for everyone heh
And make some people look around and not even see an inkling of humanity in the gawking gabbing critters often commenting on their posts for example