!dev

Bought a house. 😊

When pandemic hit in 2020 I found myself out of work. Until then I used to have a java based pirate gameserver of a MMORPG as a hobby.

When pandemic hit I noticed that online players count increased from like 70 to 200 without much advertising because purely of people being stuck in home. So i decided to scale and spent 2 years with that. What a wild ride it was.

So i invested a bit in ads, managed to reach around 500 online players, opened my own company and launched a couple other successful spinoffs of that gameserver.

First year it was a goldmine but I was doing 10-14 hour days because I had to take care of everything (web, advertising, payment integrations, player support and also developing the server itself, ddos protections and etc.). I made quite a bit of money, saved for a downpayment for mortgage and got an apartment.

Second year I noticed that there was a lot of competition and online players count dropped, but I double downed on this and invested a lot into the product itself and spent most of the time developing a perfect gameserver that would be the big bang while also maintaining existing ones. Clasic overengineering mistake. As you can guess, I crashed and burned on all levels, never even managed to launch my final project because simply the scope was too big and I had trouble finding decent devs to outsource it to, since it was a very niche gameserver.

In the end I learned a lot especially about my own limits and ownership, now Im back to being a dev but working as a contractor.

I believe having actual business owner experience allows me to have different perspective and I can bring more to the table rather than focusing on crunching tasks.

Fucking fuck you fucking fucked up fuckery.

I got fired and signed mortgage at the same day. Well looks like next two months going to be fun.

Time to get drunk.

Probably the most awkward feeling call happened to me just recently.

I was to interview a guy that's like 10 years older from me with 10y more experience in mostly unrelated tech. I was prepared to have some respect for the guy, and was a bit anxious, but that changed quickly.

The first fucking thing he says, on the fucking job Interview is essentially "I've worked in tech for 20 or so years, and I don't appreciate being tested" great start .. needless to say, I tried to reformulate all my prepared Interview questions so they sound as casual as I could while still trying to get him to tell me *anything*. Most of the time I just felt like "why are we even here dude, you clearly don't care about any of this"...

About 12 or so questions later It was finally clear that none of his experience is useful, and even the exp he has sounds like past companies kept him around as a number...

I want to try a few more edge cases, hoping to find anything we could work with, when he calls me out on it and says "Well now you're testing me, I don't like being tested" at which point I pretty much gave up on the dude and let my HR colleague talk.

Then out of nowhere the guy brings up his mortgage, and how he needs money, and how no one wants to give him a job, and that if we don't want him, we should just tell him now.

Then he starts asking how many people we're interviewing, which is obviously stuff we can't answer, I just said "normal amount" to dodge the question at first, but that just made him more closed off and he just silently remarked "so you can be picky..."

That was one of the most painful interviews I had so far. Me and ny colleague pretty much instantly agreed that he's not a good culture fit for us. Probably not a fit for any company really, not with that attitude.

PS: it was a video call, though he had his camera turned off at first, so it was only me with a camera for half the call. He turned it on just about as I had enough of him.

Manager: You know you really shouldn’t pay off your mortgage faster than you absolutely have to. It’s the cheapest money you’ll ever get!

Dev: I’d rather work towards being debt free. Besides my RRSP (401k) is already maxed out

Manager: RRSPs are a scam! TFSAs (Roth IRAs) are way better

Dev: My TFSA is maxed out too

Manager: 😡 You still shouldn’t pay off your mortgage!

Dev: …

Early in my database developer career, I started a new job at a mortgage company. I was poking around the code, just getting familiar with things.

One script identified properties in certain states/territories for special handling:

AND STATECD IN (‘PR’, ‘HI’, ‘AL’)

I thought “Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and ALABAMA?? One of these things is not like the other…”

Yeah, that was supposed to be Alaska (AK)… But they’ve been special-handling properties in Alabama for years.

Worst: I lost development contract - probably due to covid - after 4 years of work. I got email when I was at bank seconds before signing mortgage for my first apartment.
I signed it anyways as a technically unemployed person without income looking at the world collapsing.

Best: I gained new contract with 40% money raise. Fuck yeah !

So apparently I own land in dubai. Like three separate mortgages based on the email I received.

Your request (Mortgage Registration)
with request number xxxxx / 2024
has been completed
and you can print your issued certificate from this [link]

I've stripped out the numbers and link.
After confirming it was safe I followed through on a old spare cellphone, and yep, I own three mortgages for properties in dubai.

Except obviously I don't.
Someone used my name, an american, to register mortgages in dubai. *Nice* properties according to the pictures.

What started out as a scam email, or what looked like a scam email, went to an actual government of dubai website, with real mortgage registrations.

How in the fuck does that happen?

The only thing I can think of is someone committed identity fraud, and/or an alphabet agency went through the list of known political dissidents, set up a bullshit mortgage in a questionable territory, and are now using that as a pretext to monitor 'extremists with foreign ties.'

All that for some guy on the west coast that hasn't attended a political rally in his entire life.

Must have been that sign I held at sixteen years old by the side of the road that said "bush lied us into a war, and people died."

or maybe it was that time I told a really enthusiastic obama supporting police officer that it amazed me obama had time to win the nobel peace prize what with all the bombings he carried out against foreign civilians.

I know a developer who works for a Mortgage Company, and he is dangerously incompetent. He used to work for my boss before I did and we both told his new boss how unqualified he is, but because he's able to get things "done" they think he does a good job. But I've been in the code and their entire system could any day just completely Fall Apart and they could be in a lot of trouble and we tell them this and they don't listen to us.

I HATE my work but I STILL go to work because I need money to pay-off mortgage.

Me and my gf are looking for a house. Since we’re both on temporary contract we want a declaration of intent. For arranging a decent mortgage. My gf get’s called and signed within a day, getting compliments and a thumbs up.

I get called after three days; yeah eh we need to talk about this. I can’t sign this right now. A talk with both director and HR. Let’s get stressed...

I took mortgage and need to pay it off

Boss: Use the same template that site [X] is using for this project.
Me: [X] is WordPress. Our project is asp.Net/C#. I can't
Boss: Why?
Me: You can't put a round peg in a square hole!
Boss: Why?
Me: [thinking about mortgage] I'll do it.
Boss: Why didn't you say so in the first place?
Me: [die a little inside]

Not dev related.

I am fucking tired of the house buying process in the England. Honestly it is such shambles that I don't think I have ever encountered anything like this. Nothing is ever predictable, everything and everone works at random timescale and nobody gives a fuck of you as a buyer even if you are paying crazy money. Apparently we are meant to be moving next Monday but contracts haven't been exchanged, my mortgage broker gave incorrect solicitors details to the bank so they are having to redo some paperwork, the buyer of our current place has not responded for last week to confirm the date, the seller we are buying from has been jumping up and down to exchange and here I am with no certainty.

My anxiety and frustration levels are through the roof for last 10 days. I can't wait for it all to be over. I don't think I am ever buying another house unless the process changes. Just needed to vent my frustration somewhere

Got my first legit side-gig as a developer (like had to write an SOW and everything): my kids' pediatrician is amazing, but shes switching to a concierge practice, meaning she wont take any insurance, and shes going from about 1500 patients down to about 200. I already pay my mortgage-worth in insurance on a monthly basis, so we were prepared to say adios to her. At my daughter's last appointment, she pulled me aside and said "what can we do to keep you guys as patients?" and i somewhat jokingly suggested "I dunno, need any websites written?"

As a matter of fact, she did: she just fired her practice's web developer, who gave her a shitty wordpress site and fought like hell to avoid any further maintenance or updates for her. She hates the site's current layout (no surprise there) so she is basically giving me full control over a rewrite.

No user logins, no worries about compliance with PII or any of that. Literally just turning a brochure wordpress site into an angular app, hosting it on her own server and eventually building an admin page where she can change the banner text and upload new images.

And my kids will get free, top-notch health care.

There's little irritations that happen when working with clients over time that let you know that they're stuck in the past and definitely not the kind of client you want to have long term.

My personal favorite example:

"Can we put an icon that shows the weather on the banner of the website?"

Note: I don't make "websites," information portals, content pieces, etc.

It doesn't to matter what type of application it is; time tracking, HR, mortgage application, industrial control system, etc. I don't know why, but every single client I've ever had where I've been saddled with one or more people who have no business being anywhere near the term "stakeholder" asked for this stupid, banal, 1995 web portal fuckery. Their shitty little mushroom stamp contribution wasting everyone's time.

What's worse, they want it be prominent in the screen real estate. It can't just be a responsibly sized waste of space like the screenshot's top example (from a company whose entire business is weather, nonetheless). No, it has to be the busiest fucking thing in the control space, as in the example inferior.

Or maybe I'm just wrong and people desperately want to know if the sky is going to piss on them if they leave the cave.

Anyone else have a pet peeve in regards to recurrent, pointless functionality?

Hey Code-tards,

We're announcing a new update to our software `FUCK YOU` to include a new 'feature' no one asked and would give a FLYING FUCK about, but we were sitting on our MOTHERFUCKING ASSES and had to justify our salaries somehow.

So this new feature really just makes your life horrible by taking away or breaking all useful features you were PERFECTLY HAPPY with before, but FUCK YOU if you aren't happy with it and don't throw half of your salary our way every month.

Remember our library you were perfectly OK with, that u integrated in your codebase? DEPRECATED from this second onwards. WHY? BECAUSE FUCK YOU ! That's WHY.

Oh yeah, and one last thing before we make your life a living hellhole, give us your SSN, credit card(s) and mortgage payments to us, you money-hungry CUNT. Haven't you heard the phrase already? YOU WILL OWN NOTHING AND YOU WILL BE HAPPY.

me: Dad I got a job! It's...

dad: great! you can help pay mortgage!

me: oh shit, should have said nothing..

never have I ever:
boomers:
- never have I ever cheated on my husband!
- never have I ever paid my mortgage on time!
- never have I ever left my car uninsured!

zoomers:
- never have I ever found a logically sound justification to continue living
- never have I ever had a social interaction without voices in my head telling me my whole life is a secret plot to betray me spectacularly at the end
- never have I ever coped with the realization that the fabric of my reality itself is nothing but assumptions that hardened into beliefs
- never have I ever felt that my life after I started to take my prescriptions is something but a bland, ironed out shadow of what a functioning member of society should feel

I’m terminally short of cash.

I can pay the mortgage and everything else, but I’d like a bit more for a rainy day fund.

My question is, how do you get into doing some freelance work?

I’ve looked on places like Freelancer, but it seems to be full of people offering £100 for a fully working amazon clone etc.

Such a business!

Feeling overworked and underpaid, as my skill set improves I find myself less and less willing to do actual work, I consider my payscale far to low for my ability and as such I work far less than I probably should. My partner is doing well though, I guess that’s what I get for working with a start up.

Here’s hoping I can land a new job soon with that chunky pay raise I deserve.

On a positive note, I got pre-approved for a mortgage today so that might mean I can move into an actual home instead of this land lord bullshit.

Stupid fuck shit. I am living in a tiny apartment right now but have a better paying job to afford a better apartment where my fucking workspace is not in my tiny bedroom. I really need and wish for a dedicated workspace now because office is pandemicwise closed since a year, but guess what my hometown is having a housing boom and constant influx of rich young professionals or newly weds with lots of cash from them or their parenrs/family. And everybody is buyigh up apartments like crazy. If u want to have a good apartment now u already need to settle for life with a high mortgage or pay half of your salary away for rent. Unfortunately the pay does not accomodate for that but is on the level of 10years ago. Aaand as a single iam fucked royally from taxes and everybody else. Fyi: hometown berlin and Hamburg germany.

I start a new job Monday, it feels so great to be out of my old place.

But it also is kinda weird, cause my old job helped get me to where I am now. I along with my brothers and dad were evicted before I started my old job as an intern.

But 6 months into working there and staying with my grandparents, and I got hired full time making $5 more than my dad makes. Me and my dad built up enough savings to own a place. My credit score was higher, and I was working for a title company so my boss gave me a BIG employee discount (this was early into things before I realized how 2-faced she is) if it was my name going onto the mortgage so that's what we did. His savings my credit score and the discount allowed us to get a place 1 bedroom bigger than the old house meaning no more sharing a room with my brother for the first time in my life.

And because of that discount after all was said and done we still had enough in savings to cover rent for a good bit and not have to stress like we did in the last months before we were evicted.

That allowed us to build up savings, start putting more into the mortgage and start paying it down slightly faster, (50 extra a month isn't a lot but it's also not nothing to sneeze at).

I got into the stock market and about a little under a year later i have $150 in unrealized gains gains with a market value of $365 in my stocks.

I also bought a server with the leeway I got from this job and the stability of the new home environment and started toying around with that teaching me I have a major interest in homelab and self hosting which is a part of what helped me get the new job.

This seems like a lot of ramble sorry but it's just weird, 1 job changed my life, and even due to that I couldn't wait to leave it and now that I am I feel kinda regretful at how happy I am to be leaving after how much this job did for me.

But yeah, I couldn't stay another day with my boss. Glad to leave, but also really grateful for everything the job did for me.

Laravel, Symfony...

It doesn't seem to matter what framework I pick to learn next. I rarely get past the Installation step where I have to install and learn a bunch of command line tools first.

It makes me realize I no longer want to be a web developer as even the biggest step I can reasonably make in my career will still not result in an income change significant enough to pay for a mortgage, and the smallest step still expects me to understand all of these command line tools for seemingly no payoff whatsoever.

I feel stuck and depressed looking at all the toxic positivity on LinkedIn. I cannot fathom the amount of indoctrination that must be going on between all these people chirping about how great it is to work for their company.

I was today years old when I learned about "shadow jobs". This is where companies list jobs without any intention of hiring anyone. You could also call them "fake jobs", or "lies". Why they do this is anyone's guess. Maybe they want to look like they're expanding for their investors or something. Maybe they're harvesting resumes to train AI. Maybe they're just bored, and this is how the sick fucks get their jollies now that it's harder to find snuff films on the public internet. I wonder if HR didn't exist, would asylums still be popular? Is HR as a field just a way to keep prison populations lower?

For me, this is more of a matter of "want" to change jobs, over "need a job". For example, I've got a friend who is a way, way, way better programmer/developer than I could ever claim to be, and he's been fighting tooth and nail to get the time of day from some of these companies. Despite his extensive academic background, professional credentials, and high levels of skill and competence, he's been out of work for months now. At least they're going to "keep your information on file" though, right? Can definitely pay a mortgage with that.

Maybe I don't get it, but if you're hiring, post the JD. If you're not hiring, shut the fuck up and stay off the job boards. Everyone wins, except for the recovering snuff film addicts in HR.

So, we're preforming a re-write an application. It's on an application (actual mortgage application, not 'app') that has 4 different entry points. We have the most common entry point converted to our re-written application with plans to have the next couple done over the next several weeks. Yesterday, the old version broke. It was under the impression that it could grab any row that matched the borrower and then check against a hash of that data to see if it could proceed. It can't. You can't hash data set 1 and expect it to be the same as the hash for data set 2. Not a thing. When asked, the only answer we could give right away was "We'll fix it, give us a couple of minutes" and "Sorry, bad {{appName}} is bad. We don't know root cause yet. We'll let you know when we do." Was pulled aside by my manager and told my answer was unsatisfactory and I shouldn't give answers like that. I get it, "Bad {{appName}} is bad" isn't great, but it's not like we were going to give that and leave it! We needed some time!

2019 - The year I try freelancing as a contractor and doing some paid side projects as an alternative to permanent employment. I'm sure it'll be ok, I've only got a mortgage to pay and a young family to feed! 😬

Seriously though, looking forward to getting a wider range of experience and having some in-between contract down time. What are your experiences of contracting?

On the other hand, I really dig the new MacBook. Anyone knows a good mortgage plan?

So basically I joined this new android dev job 3 months ago. I did android dev for 2.5 years and then had a gap of 1.5 years where I did game development so Im comming back into android dev as "junior" however Im tryharding to prove myself and reach mid level as fast as I can.

I had it planned like this from the beginning: original plan was to do really good during probation period so I could ask for a raise (which I did). Now while Im waiting for answer (which will take 2-3 weeks) I need to keep the show going so I am sacrificing evenings to accomplish goals. I ham going to these teambuildings, I am volunteering in this job fair event and Im joining bars with the not-so-social devs 1-2 times a week just to "fit in" and be noticed. After getting a raise I plan to take it down a notch and somehow relax....

During the usual work week I rely on stimulants (coffee/cigarettes/concerta) to get me through the days and then I use xanax or alcohol to relax. Worst part is that I am totally drained exhausted after long working week. I dont want to go out with my girlfriend. My libido is at its lowest and we do it maybe max 2 times a week and it feels like a chore to me. It feels like I exist only for this job and only to please everyone around me and it drains me out completely.

I feel like I am burned out. I wish I could just quit this job and run away somwhere warm for 6 months to chill alone and take it easy and recover but I cant. Im stuck in a trap. I have to pay off mortgage, I have to pay off bills. I am approaching 30's soon and I became fat and balding, I want to loose weight, I wanna get a hair transplant to at least enjoy my 30's properly. Im only 28 but I already have a lot of grey hair just because of immense ammounts of stress I have to deal daily because of my ADHD and anxiety. Also my gf is kinda dissapointed that I havent proposed her in 3 years of our relationship. I feel so much pressure and obligations to the point where I feel that theres no point in living if I just exist for the needs of others. I cant imagine getting married and having a child now - life is already complicated chaotic mess as it is.

I dont't know why I throw myself 150% at projects and hyperfocus so much to the point where it becomes my priority in life? Am I compensating for my lack of executive functions by throwing lots of effort and care in hopes that I will be validated? How to learn to take it easy instead of always thinking that what Im doing is not enough?

It's not even the problem of this job. Its just me. I had my own company for 2 years and I was dealing with same burnout problems...

I was doing android apps for a year and a half, but then during the pandemic my hobby gaming projects blew up and I had to quit my fulltime job and focus on them. Spent last year working for myself. I managed to save enough money and got a mortgage for my apartment. Now I feel accomplished what I wanted and Im tired of working alone on my own projects. Its sad doing all these mental gymnastics and not having anyone else to share the results with.

I'm considering getting back into part/full-time position. Main reason is the social aspect, as well as stability. I'm tired of stress, too much responsibility. I want a better work/life balance. Also I think I need a position where they would allow at least 2 days a week working from home.

How to recondition myself and first of all to motivate myself to get back into the rat race? I haven't done android app development in a year and a half, I'm rusty af. I'm a junior at best right now. Also in the past year I got fat and I'm too conscious about my beer belly lol. Thinking of loosing weight and sharpening my app dev skills first, only then applying.

Can anybody advice anything?

When does the bank decide to take their site down for maintenance? Payday. I'm not alone in this boat, millions of people get paid today (It's the last business day before the 15th!)

Not only can I not see what's in my account, but I can't pay the mortgage, the car payment, or a bunch of other bills.

Of all the fucking times to pick a maintenance window, somebody had to not be thinking about this.

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!