Linux sucks.

Now now, chill. I'm using it as my main OS for a few years now. I know what I'm talking and this title is a bit click-baity, but this just has to go out there:

1. It's usable as a Windows replacement just fine - FALSE. XFCE4 is years old and buggy as hell especially on multi-monitor set-up, Gnome3 gets stuck more often than my Windows 98 machine used to, KDE is like a rich kid on meth. Plug in Bluetooth headphones? Well no, sorry, you have to research that online, since you'll probably need to install some packages for it to work. Did I say "work"? Well no, because after more research you realize that Debian on Gnome3 on gdm3 launches pulseaudio on its own, so you have 2 instances of pulseaudio, and one of them is stealing your headphones sometimes and you either have no sound or shitty sound. How do I know that you ask? The same way I know everything else - every time you try to do something new on any Linux, it involves a ton of research. Exciting research, don't get me wrong, but at this point it looks more like a toy than a reliable desktop computer operating system.

2. And why am I using pulseaudio? Why not alsa? years ago people were discussing on forums that pulseaudio is old and dead, yet here we are with new LTS release of Ubuntu still shining with Pulseaudio. How about several different service management systems being deprecated by new ones, each having different configurations and calling methods? Apparently systemd is old and lame now. It's a mix of 10 year old software that works badly, with a 5 year old replacement that works worse, somehow trying to live under the same roof. Does it work? Ask my headphones who sound like a fucking dial-up modem.

3. Let's talk about displays, shall we? xorg is old and deprecated, right? We got Wayland that's mostly stable. Don't know what that is? That's just basic knowledge for Linux. And when you try to install network-manager, it also tries to install Mir toolkits. Because why the fuck not install 3 display managers when you want a network manager, of which one is old and dying, one is young and stupid, and another is an infant that died of cancer?

4. Want to integrate with Google Drive? Yeah, there's a tool that mounts the drive as a local directory. Yeah only for Ubuntu. Want it on Debian? You need to compile it. Oh wait, it's on Ocaml, because fuck mainstream languages, we're hipsters. How do you compile Ocaml? Well you need to have Ocaml on your system, dummy. How do you do that? Well you need to compile Ocaml. Ok, how do I do that? Well, git clone, download and install some dependencies, configure, make... oh sorry, you're using libssl1.0.2g when you need libssl1.0.1f, nope, sorry, won't work. Want to install libssl1.0.1f? Why? You already have the "g", stupid! Want to remove libssl1.0.2g? Bye-bye literally everything that you have on your PC. But at least you got the "f". Does it work now? Well no, because you need libssl1.0.2g for another dependency to work.
And all I ever wanted was to get a fucking document from google drive (not nudes, I promise).

5. Want to watch a movie? Let me tear that screen in half and make the bottom half late by a couple of frames, because who needs vertical sync, right? Oh you do? Well install the native drivers maybe. Oh you have? Welcome to eternal Boot to Recovery mode, motherfucka!

---------------------------------

Yeah, most of the times things work just fine. But the reason I know what those things are and how they work is not curiosity. The reason that I know the inner workings of Linux much better than the inner workings of Windows, is because in those few years that I've been using it full time, it has caused me 10 times more headache than I have ever experienced with other systems. And it's not the usual annoyances like "OMG it rebooted when I didn't ask it to", but more like "Oh, it won't work and I need 2 days to find out why" kind of stuff, because even if you experience the same thing again, it's always caused by some new shit and the old solution won't work any more.

I still love it, and will continue to use it. I don't know why really. Maybe because I'm not afraid of fucking it up any more? Maybe because I can do what I want in it and recovering will be easier than on Windows?
It's a toy for me, after all these years. And I also use it for professional reasons.

But whenever someone presents it as a better alternative to Windows, I just want to puke.

I recently joined the dark side - an agile consulting company (why and how is a long story). The first client I was assigned to was an international bank. The client wanted a web portal, that was at its core, just a massive web form for their users to perform data entry.

My company pitched and won the project even though they didn't have a single developer on their bench. The entire project team (including myself) was fast tracked through interviews and hired very rapidly so that they could staff the project (a fact I found out months later).

Although I had ~8 years of systems programming experience, my entire web development experience amounted to 12 weeks (a part time web dev course) just before I got hired.

I introduce to you, my team ...

Scrum Master. 12 years experience on paper.
Rote memorised the agile manifesto and scrum textbooks. He constantly went “We should do X instead of (practical thing) Y, because X is the agile way.” Easily pressured by the client to include ridiculous (real time chat in a form filling webpage), and sometimes near impossible features (undo at the keystroke level). He would just nag at the devs until someone mumbled ‘yes' just so that he would stfu and go away.

UX Designer. 3 years experience on paper ... as business analyst.
Zero professional experience in UX. Can’t use design tools like AI / photoshop. All he has is 10 weeks of UX bootcamp and a massive chip on his shoulder. The client wanted a web form, he designed a monstrosity that included several custom components that just HAD to be put in, because UX. When we asked for clarification the reply was a usually condescending “you guys don’t understand UX, just do <insert unhandled edge case>, this is intended."

Developer - PHD in his first job.
Invents programming puzzles to solve where there are none. The user story asked for a upload file button. He implemented a queue system that made use of custom metadata to detect file extensions, file size, and other attributes, so that he could determine which file to synchronously upload first.

Developer - Bootlicker. 5 years experience on paper.
He tried to ingratiate himself with the management from day 1. He also writes code I would fire interns and fail students for. His very first PR corrupted the database. The most recent one didn’t even compile.

Developer - Millennial fratboy with a business degree. 8 years experience on paper.
His entire knowledge of programming amounted to a single data structures class he took on Coursera. Claims that’s all he needs. His PRs was a single 4000+ line files, of which 3500+ failed the linter, had numerous bugs / console warnings / compile warnings, and implemented 60% of functionality requested in the user story. Also forget about getting his attention whenever one of the pretty secretaries walked by. He would leap out of his seat and waltz off to flirt.

Developer - Brooding loner. 6 years experience on paper.
His code works. It runs, in exponential time. Simply ignores you when you attempt to ask.

Developer - Agile fullstack developer extraordinaire. 8 years experience on paper.
Insists on doing the absolute minimum required in the user story, because more would be a waste. Does not believe in thinking ahead for edge conditions because it isn’t in the story. Every single PR is a hack around existing code. Sometimes he hacks a hack that was initially hacked by him. No one understands the components he maintains.

Developer - Team lead. 10 years of programming experience on paper.
Writes spaghetti code with if/else blocks nested 6 levels deep. When asked "how does this work ?”, the answer “I don’t know the details, but hey it works!”. Assigned as the team lead as he had the most experience on paper. Tries organise technical discussions during which he speaks absolute gibberish that either make no sense, or are complete misunderstandings of how our system actually works.

The last 2 guys are actually highly regarded by my company and are several pay grades above me. The rest were hired because my company was desperate to staff the project.

There are a 3 more guys I didn’t mention. The 4 of us literally carried the project. The codebase is ugly as hell because the others merge in each others crap. We have no unit tests, and It’s near impossible to start because of the quality of the code. But this junk works, and was deployed to production. Today is it actually hailed as a success story.

All these 3 guys have quit. 2 of them quit without a job. 1 found a new and better gig.

I’m still here because I need the money. There’s a tsunami of trash code waiting to fail in production, and I’m the only one left holding the fort.

Why am I surrounded by morons?
Why are these retards paid more than me?
Why are they so proud when all they produce is trash?
How on earth are they still hired?

And yeah, FML.

I don't want to write clean code anymore :(

I read Clean Code, Clean Coder, and watched many uncle bob's videos, and I was able to apply best practices and design patterns
I created many systems that really stood the test of time...

Management was kind enough to introduce me to uncle bob clean code in the first place, letting us watch it during work hours. after like one year, my code improved 400% minimum because I am new and I needed guidance from veterans...

That said, to management I am very slow, compared to this other guy, they ask me for a feature and my answer would be like "sure, we need to update the system because it just doesn't support that right now, it is easy though it would take 2 days tops"

they ask the same thing for the other guy : "ok let me see what I can do", 1 hour later, on slack, he writes : done. he slaps bunch of if-statement and make special case that will serve the thing they asked for.

oh 'cool' they say -> but it doesn't do this -> it needs to do that -> ok there is a new bug,-> it doesn't work in build mode-> it doesn't work if you are logged in as a guest, now its perfect ! -> it doesn't work on Android -> ok it works on android but now its not perfect anymore.

and they feel like he is fast (and to be fair he is), this feature? done. ok new bugs? solved. Android compatibility ? just one day ... it looks like he is doing doing doing.

it ends up taking double the time I asked for, and that is not to mention the other system affected during this entire process, extra clean up that I have to do, even my systems that stood the test of time are now ruined and cannot be extracted to other projects. because he just slaps whatever bools and if statements he needs inside any system, uses nothing but Singleton pattern on everything. our app will never be ready-for-business, this I can swear. its very buggy. and to fix it, it needs a change in mentality, not in code.
---------------

uncle bob said : write your code the right way, and the management will see that your code generates less errors, with time, you will earn respect even though they will feel you are slow at first.

well sorry uncle, I've been doing it for a year, my image got bad, you are absolutely right, only when there is no one else allowed to drop a giant shit inside your clean code.

note: we don't really have a technical lead.
-------------------
its been only two days since my new "hack n' slash" meta, the management is already kind of "impressed" ... so I'll keep hacking and slashing until I find a better job.

I have got a new director at work. My previous director had to retire already, the man was already feeling it and he had been on the institution for more than 35 years....I am 30, so this tells you how much the man has been there.

This new dude.....has the presence of a Caterprie (Pokemon) or an Oompa Loompa. In contrast, the previous director felt like a 4 star General (never been in the presence of a 5 star since those occurrences are world war rare) but I had respected that man so much and loved working with him. I really did loved my boss, he was stern and professional, but kind and friendly to his staff, fiercely protective, no one took advantage of I.T while he was there, he would literally fight for us and took our word before anything else. The man was, well, a true man. A true leader.

He took a chance in putting me as the head of my department, but he had faith in me, and coached me and trained me as much as he could. Had the requirement for his position not been a masters he himself told me that he would have loved to make me his successor, even when I would constantly tell him that I was scared shitless of the work he did and the amount of things he did for the institution, to me this is a very laaaaaaaaarge cowboy hat to fill (this is Texas, he wore a hat, the saying is normally "shoes to fill", but fuck it)

This new guys looks away when the other managers are speaking to him. He constantly interrupts us. He constantly tells us about how the other institution in which he was (rival might I add) does X or Y, its fucking annoying to the point that me and the other managers have a drinking game, for every time he references his old institution we drink one beer over the weekend. It is Saturday night and I am 36 in in total (this is my favorite part of it tho) and it is just annoying.

His train of thought makes no sense to me:

"This application, where did you buy it? we tried purchasing one on Y when I was still there but found none"

Me: "Well, since it was a new government mandate and had nowhere to go we had to develop it in house"

Him: "We had tried to purchase what you guys had but found no place that sold it, so why didn't you try purchasing it?"

Me:.....well, because it was brand new, purchase it from where? We also don't like dealing with vendors that manage these sorts of things because every new requirement takes them weeks to produce on very high budgets, historically, my department has only had maintenance fees for the software that we have and even those applications crap themselves all the time and they take weeks to answer back to us.

Him: So you decided to develop it in house instead? we would never do that! back at y we purchased everything our engineers never really developed anything!

Me: Well then, what is the purpose of having engineers if they are not going to actually develop an application?

Him: IF there is something out there that is better then why should you reinvent the wheel?

Me: For this one I did not reinvent the wheel, I am not talking about creating a programming language from scratch, but how does custom solutions that specifically feed the needs of the institution to be produced otherwise? The department has developers for a reason, because they have very specific needs in here that can only come from a team of developers that are in house satisfying those needs.

Him: Well our engineers never had to do that. Sure projects sometimes had to put on holds because the vendor was busy, but such is the nature of development

Me: No it is not, the nature of development is to create things, it is one thing for my team to go through bugs and software considerations, it is another for me to not provide a service because some random company is taking two weeks on a $300 dllr an hour contract to put a simple checkbox on a form. If a project fails the board is not going to care that some vendor is not doing their job, they are just going to blame me, if that is the case then I would much rather the blame be actually mine than some sucky third party "developer" also, your engineers where not even engineers, they were people with a degree that purchased things, that's it, please do not compare them to my guys or refer them as engineers in front of me, they are not.

Him: Well, maybe.

MAYBE?!! motherfucker I did not kill myself learning the ins and outs of architecture and software engineering on my own time after my fucking bachelors in C.S for your codeless background ass to tell me MAYBE. My word IS the fucking WORD here, not yours. Fuck me I really dislike this dude's management practices.

The shitty part? He is not a bad person, he is not a bad dude that is out to get us, just a simple minded moron with no place as a leader.

I know leaders, I know what a leader is, this is not one.

I've caught the efficiency bug.

I recently started a minimum wage job to get my life back in order after a failed 2 year project (post mortem: next time bring more cash for a longer runway)

I've noticed this thing I do at every job, where I see inefficiency and I think "how can I use technology to automate myself out of this job?"

My first ever application was in C++ for college (a BASIC interpreter) and it's been so long I've since forgotten the language.

But after a while every language starts to look like every other language, and you start to wonder if maybe the reason you never seriously went anywhere as a programmer was because you never really were cut out for it.

Code monkey, sure. Programmer? Dunno, maybe I just suffer from imposter syndrome.

So a few years back I worked at a retail chain. Nothing as big as walmart, but they have well over 10k store locations. They had two IBM handscanners per store, old grungy ugly things, and one of these machines would inevitably be broken, lost or in need of upgrade/replacement about once a year, per location. District manager, who I hit it off with, and made a point of building report with, told me they were paying something like $1500 a piece.

After a programming dry spell, I picked up 'coding' with MIT app inventor. Built a 'mostly complete' inventory management app over the course of a month, and waited for the right time.

The day of a big store audit, (and the day before a multi-regional meeting), I made sure I was in-store at the same time as my district manager, so he could 'stumble upon' me working, scanning in and pricing items into the app.

Naturally he asked about it, and I had the numbers, the print outs, and the app itself to show him. He seemed impressed by what amounted to a code monkeys 'non-code' solution for a problem they had.

Long story short, he does what I expected, runs it by the other regionals and middle executives at the meeting, and six months later they had invested in a full blown in house app, cutting IBM out of the mix I presume.

From what I understand they now use the app throughout the entire store chain.

So if you work at IBM, sorry, that contract you lost for handscanners at 10k+ stores? Yeah that was my fault (and MIT app inventor).

They say software is 'eating the world' but it really goes to show, for a lot of 'almost coders' and 'code monkeys' half our problem is dealing with setup and platform boilerplate. I think in the future that a lot of jobs are either going to be created or destroyed thanks to better 'low code' solutions, and it seems to be a big potential future market.

In the mean while I've realized, while working on side projects, that maybe I can do this after all, and taken up Kotlin. I want to do a couple of apps for efficiency and store tracking at my current employer to see if I'm capable and not just an mit app-inventor codemonkey after all.

I'm hoping, by demonstrating what I can do, I can use that as a springboard into an internal programming position at my current gig (which seems to be a company thats moving towards a more tech oriented approach to efficiency and management). Also watching money walk out the door due to inefficiency kinda pisses me off, and the thought of fixing those issues sounds really interesting. At the end of the day I just like learning new technologies, and maybe this is all just an excuse to pick up something new after spending so long on less serious work.

I still have a ways to go, but the prospect of working on B2B, and being able to offer technological solutions to common and recurring business needs excites the hell out of me..as cringy and over-repeated as that may sound.

while(freeTime == true) {
if(iHavePlans == true)
waitUntilDone();
/*
* TODO: Fix bug that causes
* coding to call the gaming and
* relaxing methods so often...
*/
code();
}

1. Manage my time better.
2. Find motivation to wake up and go to work.
3. Fake more smiles.
4. Kick ass hole (L)users in the throat when they piss me off...
5. Attend anger management.
6. Stop making shit lists.

In all honestly I need to dedicate more time to my personal clients and stop allowing my primary job’s frustration to drain my motivation to take care of their needs. It’s not fair to them that I chose the life I have. Find myself and attempt to love myself again. Create more time to focus on my health and goals. Surround myself with people that have goals and want to better their life. Find someone to share life with.

Then, with my luck; throw it all away and repeat these steps like a broken record.

This is my first post. I felt like if I'm wrote this I'll just be a big fat crybaby, but i need to release this pressure from me.

I've been pretty burnt out past 6 month.

So a little bit backstory here, I've come from broken family, and currently on my 7th semester of college. But I've been part of small startup as mobile apps developer for a year and a half now.

6 month ago, it just a year of recovery from a toxic relationship that basically ruins my college life. I have really bad GPA (bad score for being absent from classes), basically no friends, and a barely passable (or even bad) skill in Android Dev. Then I got new girlfriend that really supportive for me. But after 2 months, her parents ask me if I would marry her or not. because if not, I have to broke up with her (We're in Indonesia and both of us is Muslim, so outside marriage relationship is kinda in "grey area" depend on who you ask). So I have to choose to marry her or not, and I choose the marriage. I think I have enough saving and just enough income to support both of us.

Then it's been a downward spiral from there.

The startup that I've been working on were in a pretty bad shape. I've been underpaid since the beginning (and that's not really a problem for me at that time, that's my choice and I blame no one) but abysmal growth and some miss management force us to scale back and makes me basically in a non-paying jobs.

So I take college break for a semester and been trying to find projects here and there for marriage savings, but because the weak employee protection here, lots of the projects I have completed have yet to pay the fee (even until today). And even if they paid me, most of it were really low paying jobs (we're talking $200 per 3 weeks project here, to be fair, for our average GDP, it's not bottom-low).

And the deadline is approaching, our marriage date is settled in (very) early January 2019, and i've been in this "not yet graduated but needs job" limbo. Most of employer here still has the old "Degree Based" Job specs, and not "Skill Based" one. so because de-jure I've still a "College Student" no Job listing is willing to take me in. I've apply to almost 30 Job Listing and just get interview once, and still failed because I can't move to the company area, too far and have too expensive living cost vs the salary ($300 living cost vs $450 salary, while i need to give money to my girlfriend back home for a living).

So I switch my direction to Competitions with Extra Job offering as a Bonus, and I've been pretty close to winning one, held by CIMB Bank, but still failed. It's little bit better now because CIMB came interested with me but there is red flag which I need to graduate with decent GPA before July 2019, and in current GPA? it's practically impossible.

Can it getting worse? oh it can. Remember I come from broken home family? it's inherently hard to keeps communication with both of my parents that to this day still despise each other. And while my mother is still supportive to my marriage, my father isn't. He even basically disowned me last week because my one-sided decision to marry my girlfriend, and blame my mother for being the "bad influence" for me.

And now, today, December 16th, and I'm still in this weird Limbo and have nowhere to go. with $0 in my pocket (have spent all of my savings for marriage preparation) And our marriage is approaching. I almost given up.

I haven't felt an urge to post on here in a while just because things have been going so well. But this month, is just not that kind of month anymore.

I'm upset. I'm upset by how I've been uprooted from my routine. I know I shouldn't be that bothered by it and things always change. But what the fuck is this company thinking to be using it's own fucking home baked ticketing system!

WHAT THE EVER LIVING FUCK IS THIS SHIT!

Let's go over the issues it has
1. I can't fucking email my clients through it
2. all emails are not recognized automatically. In other words each new email creates a new ticket if it does not have the tracking number attached to it.
3. I have to fucking hunt around in my inbox that is now bombarded by every email that is created for this ticketing system. Slap on a fucking tracking number. And then HOPE TO FUCKING GOD that the person on the other end doesn't erase the subject and cause the system to create a new ticket just for it.

Let's go over Zendesk which they've decided to decomission.
1. I. DON'T. HAVE. TO. DO. ANY. OF. THAT. FUCKING. SHIT.
2. That's it. It's fucking simple

Seriously. They forced me off of my original platform because this company already had a "ticketing system", if you can even fucking call it that, working.

And just if you weren't aware, all of this change happened because my company got bought out. It got bought out by this behemoth company that isn't willing to let me continue using a system; that has been very efficient, mind you, and instead make me use their system.

I. FUCKING. HATE. THIS.

Every fucking day! I have to do this stupid bullshit of emailing clients from my personal work email instead of on the direct ticketing system.

When I first started using this thing I actually thought I could use it to email the clients. For a solid two weeks I was "communicating" to clients through their ticketing system. Only to find out that the entire time those clients were not getting my actual fucking email! WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?

Then these guys tell me after the fact. "Oh that's strange... We never noticed that you can't send emails through it... We always just had used our work emails."

Are you fucking jerking my chain! You guys have literally been sitting in this slimy pit of hell for so long that you don't even know there are better options out there!

You don't have to fucking live this life!!

I don't think I'm going to make it. Something needs to change. And I know upper management isn't going to do it, because I fought hard to try and keep Zendesk. They are not keeping it. After this next quarter it is officially gone.

I'm trying to think of coding solutions to make my situation better... But I shouldn't have to fucking do that! There are perfectly good working solutions out there, and this company doesn't want to budge because "that's the way we've always been doing it"

I'm going to fucking rip out my hair.

Have you ever gotten a task where you have to modify some existing code, and to get it to work the way it needs to you have to write some ugly ass code?

And I'm talking FUGLY ass code. The kind where every brain cell you have screams to refactor it all so that your code won't be so ugly and you can live with yourself. But you only wrote it that way because some numbnuts who was fired a year ago designed it that way, and left zero commentary or documentation on his reasoning ("sELf-dOcUmeNtiNg cOde, bRuH!").

It doesn't pose any sort of risk with regards to security or resource management or efficiency, or really even faulty logic. It just looks fucking awful, my brain can instantly see better ways to design it and I don't want history to tie my name to it.

But also the system is being gutted and retired within a matter of months, so maintenance won't even be a concern; and you know that you have a lot of other large tasks that need your attention too, and to refactor will ultimately prove to be a time sink.

I mean ultimately, I know what I need to do, but I guess it's a pride thing. Just makes me feel icky.

Alright, I'll try writing about my recent experience without getting too emotional.

A few months ago, I started a tech job in London and immigrated here for that job. I was glad this company wanted to sponsor a visa, as that was a requirement for me to live here.

Unfortunately, after only a few months in, I learned that the company I joined wasn't quite as nice as I thought it would be. Bullying seemed to be part of the culture. On occasion, I saw coworkers crying. One of my close coworkers was dangerously close to burnout and then "left with mutual agreement". The environment felt like a high school cafeteria. People were drinking heavily early in the afternoon and people were leaving almost at the speed of a revolving door.

I recognized very early on that this was not a healthy environment for me, but as I just signed a rental agreement for a year, and spent a large amount to move here, I was kind of trapped.

Very early on, I was told that the two people before me in the same role were let go right before their probation ended. That scared me off, for reaching out to management or HR. I didn't have the financial needs to lose my job, and due to visa restrictions, therefore would have to leave the country.

When my probation was about to end, and I learned that my performance was good, I decided to provide feedback to my manager. I only mentioned a few things, but still enough. The manager seemed receptive, but it did not seem like he was actually willing to approach the problem itself.

Sometime later, I spoke to HR, explaining some of the issues, and explained my intent to resign. The rep pretended to care, but it did not seem sincere. At the same time, I reached an agreement with my landlord, so I believed I had enough money to safely move out of the country.

A few days after I resigned, the HR rep told me that I owed the company a large amount of money. A part of it was in the contract, which I accounted for. Another part, she was claiming, but was not properly defined in the contract. It said something, but it was confusing. I got a checked later with a legal advisor, and from what I understood, the company would never be able to make me pay that extra amount. This simply because of the contract being so vague.

I told the rep multiple times in the initial meeting about the flaws in the contract, but she ignored everything I said. I then made a counteroffer trying to get her to back off. She then put that in writing, but manipulated my words and kept out all the arguments I made about contract flaws, and my departure being the company's fault.

I didn't receive a reply to my counteroffer for days. It was stressing me out as this could mean I would run out of money soon. Only a few days passed before I got a medical emergency at work just because of the stress all of this caused me.

I saw a doctor and immediately got 2 weeks of sick leave. When I contacted the company again, I was able to terminate my contract, without returning to the office. However, they still didn't want to waive the extra amount of money.

The HR rep pointed out in written communication to my lawyer, something in the trend of "if something wasn't clear in the contract, he should've just asked for details". In that same correspondence, it also stated that they were offering 'as a favor to me' to reduce the extra amount to only a third of it.

Since I never actually wanted to go to court anyway, I decided to settle with that. Now I'm packing to move out of the country, without a job and soon to be completely broke. If I would've stayed where I were and never moved to London, and never worked a day for the past 7 months, I would've had more money on my savings account than I have at this point in time.

I hope I at least learned something from this. I don't think I will move somewhere with a company-sponsored visa again anywhere soon...

Thanks for listening. Ranting does make you feel better :)

I’ve now discovered that management actually decides for themselves what software engineering is. 🧐

It is getting increasingly common that in different architectural groups the decision has already been made… by management…without actually passing through our review… as a little more senior blokes and gals.

Not even a discussion? On the fit?

That leads me to the conclusion, since I consider the management (at least the two or three closest layers) are morons, good at talking but not really knowing anything about what we do (we kind of take stuff and make other stuff from it by using energy and other stuff in HUGE FUCKING FACILITIES AROUND THE PLANET), that even they did not make the decision. It was forced upon them. They did not decide either! Because they can’t! Because they are idiots all of them!

I have not investigated this issue but this is the logical conclusion. Or not.

Recently, for instance, decisions were made to route information flows by some tech. Some new tech. At some place in our eco-system. At a certain time. And, if we were to have reviewed this initiative in our process we would have said:

”Well, I hear you! But we are not going to do that right now because WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING HUGE GLOBAL PROJECT THAT CHANGES PRETTY MUCH FUCKING EVERYTHING AND WE CAN NOT JUST IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING EXECUTION PROCESS OF THE PROJECT CHANGE THE FOUNDATIONS OF MESSAGE ROUTING BECAUSE WE LACK THE NUMBER OF HUMANS TO DO THE FUCKING JOB. So, we need to take a look at this and to get a better understanding when we can make this happen.”

What is the point of having this step in our organization if it is just pass-through? What is the point? Meetings? Just having meetings? Spending time mastering the organizational skill of administrating meetings? Feeling important? Using big words (holistic being my favourite)?

Below, juniors devs are being hired doing stupid stuff that does not need doing. For months and months.

I believe now that half of the dev staff does not need to be there and three quarters of the team, service, delivery (etc) managers are unnecessary. I mean, the good juniors are going to change jobs soon either way and we are stuck in this vicious cycle where we are not being allowed to be innovative in software engineering. Stability is of the essence here but the rate of our releases are just silly slow. I would say that we are far, far away from any track that leads us to where we want to be. Agile. Innovative. Close to business. Learning. Teaching. Faster. Stability despite response to implementing changing business needs.

And then there are the consultants…

*sigh*

I’m really getting fed up with the situation I am in!

I was brought in as a development lead, which in my eyes and from the sound of it leading on the technical delivery, inspiring and leading technical development decisions and generally leading my team (one additional dev) in the delivery of work items and user stories which the PM or Business analyst produces..

Then it “evolved” into what felt more like a development manager where I was reporting to senior management on KPIs and stuff, I sucked it up and did it.

Then they brought in two new people which they call application specialists. These people spend all their time managing existing off the shelf applications, communicating with the vendor, running user groups where they work with our users on moving the product forward and planning the configuration and enablement of new functionality.

Because they are “developing” the application (in the same way a child develops, or the same way a story line develops and evolves) they fall under me..

So now I spend a split amount of time developing software and also managing what I can only explain as project managers, product owners...

Oh but then it gets better!! Now they want me(as well as our info sec lead and our infrastructure lead) to be a kind of all round delivery lead, gauging the requirements of a project, reporting in its risks to senior management, resource planning, everything a PM does! And also be the technical person delivering these projects!

Honestly, it’s seriously starting to take the fucking piss!

I am a technical programmer, a pretty good one if I say so myself, the developer reporting to me is good but needs hand holding which I am ok with! But would never be able to deliver an element of a product by himself in line with what we expect in quality of code..

Why would anyone think you take a person built and only interested in doing a technical role and make then a generic all round manager of a project??

I know why they did it! It’s because there are other managers in our department paid the same “level” as me, but because of their management responsibility’s , I however feel I am paid this much for my technical experience and abilities, thy are just blanket covering everyone the same at this level.

You would never get a manager at this salary scale with the technical skills they need, and you would never get a technical person with the skills interested in doing that type of management at this salary scale!

I’m just a mug and they know it!

So fucking angry!