Join devRant
Do all the things like
++ or -- rants, post your own rants, comment on others' rants and build your customized dev avatar
Sign Up
Pipeless API
From the creators of devRant, Pipeless lets you power real-time personalized recommendations and activity feeds using a simple API
Learn More
Search - "nre"
-
Pet-peeve: fellow devs who think scoffing/dismissing/not-my-probleming before actually understanding the issue is a sign of intelligence; newsflash: you are being lazy, disagreeable and unprofessional.1
-
That moment when: you lift your gaze from your phone to understand the sudden quiet is because your expert opinion is needed in the meeting.
-
To you who enjoyed the Gif/Jiff, Sequel/EsQueEll, Git/Jeet grandiose debates, comes the new phonetic conundrum: DevREnt vs. DevRUnt. Soon, in monitors near you.6
-
That moment when: you realize your team has introduced a fatal flaw and lacks the foresight to understand it. The countdown has begun.2
-
What is DevRant's business model? It's a really great community, and I'm interested about how it's monetized (or plans for the future)4
-
When your peers lack the technical depth to promote their ideas, you bet they're honing their social skills in those confidential 1-on-1s.
-
Screw Scrum, screw it very much. Is it a task or a story? Oh let's make it a story to track points. What are points, really? *20 minute grilling always follows* Well they're kind of a roundabout way of talking about time without talking about time, mkay? But last time 2 points took you a day, what gives now? What do you mean points are for internal use, but how will management plan ahead for next quarter? Ok, let's mix in all those new people, and propotionately bump the expectation for the sprint, mkay? Yeah, they did 34 points per sprint over there, we'll just add those in. Oh, and by the way, after the 4-day estimation session we had where everyone was seizuring, I scheduled us at 645 points for the coming quarter, mkay? Don't worry, I added 15% for the "unexpected dtuff" so you're safe. Fuck you scrum, scrum-fall, whatever you are. Lost a dev lead role once for being honest about it after a year with a team that loved me, and projects completed more or less on time. Been reconsidered for a dev lead role for being honest about it in another place. Somebody else peddle this kool-aid, this one prefers a walk-on role in the wall to a lead role in the cage.5
-
Need advice about switching to contracting.
TL;DR;
So I had 2 years of exp as an android dev, then I had a 1.5 year gap from doing android and now for the past 6 months Ive been doing android again fulltime. Im thinking of switching to contracting due to my debts and boring project and life crushing slow corporate processes in my current fulltime job, so I need tips and advices as to where should I start looking for new contracting gigs and in general what should I pay attention to. If it helps, I am based in EU, but am open to any EU/US gigs.
Now the full story:
Initially when I joined my current fulltime job after a break I had zero confidence, lowered my and employers expectations, joined as a junior but quickly picked up the latest standards and crushed it. Im doing better than half devs in my scrum team right now and would consider myself to be a mid level right now.
Asked for a 50% bump, manager kinda okayed it but the HQ overseas is taking a very long time to give me the actual bump. I have been waiting for 10 weeks already (lots of people in the decision chain were on and off vacations due to summer, also I guess manager sent this request to HQ too late, go figure). Anyways its becoming unnaceptable and I feel like its time for a change.
Now since I have mortgage and bills to pay, even with the bump that I requested that would leave me with like maximum 700-800 bucks a month after all expenses. I have debts of around 20k and paying them back at this rate would take 3 years at least and sounds like a not viable plan at all.
Also it does not help that the project Im working on is full of legacy and Im not learning anything new here. Corporate life seems to be very slow, lots of red tape kills creativity and so on. I remember in startups I was cooking features left and right each sprint, in here deploying a simple popup feature sometimes takes weeks due to incompetence in the chain. I miss the times where I worked in startups, did my job learned nre skills and after 6 months could jump on another exciting gig. Im not growing here anymore.
So because my ADD brain seems to be suited much better for working in startups, and also I need to make more money quick and I dont see a future in current company, I am thinking of going back to contracting. All I need right now is to build a few side apps, get them reviewed by seniors and fill my knowledge gaps. Then I plan of starting interviewing as a mid level or even a senior for that matter, since I worked with actual seniors and to be honest I dont think getting up to their level would be rocket science.
Only difference between mid and senior devs that I see atleast in my current company is that seniors are taking on responsibility more often, and they also take care of our tools, such as CD/CI, pipeline scripts, linters and etc. Usually seniors are the ones who do the research/investigations and then come up with actual tasks/stories for mids/juniors. Also seniors introduce new dependencies and update our stack, solve some performance issues and address bottlenecks and technical debt. I dont think its rocket science, also Ive been the sole dev responsible for apps in the past and always did decent work. Turns out all I needed was to test myself in an environment full of other devs, thats it. My only bottleneck was the imposter syndrome because I was a self taught dev who worked most of my career alone.
Anyways I posted here asking for some tips and advices on how to begin my search for new contract opportunities. I am living in EU, can you give me some decent sites where I could just start applying? Also I would appreciate any other tips opinions and feedback. Thanks!3