I'm hiring and I'm fucking done with recruiters buttering up skills etc and sending me BS candidates.

Interview earlier today...
CV: MySql skill level 10 (out of 10)
Reality: Can't write a simple JOIN!

Yesterday...
CV: PHP 6+ years exp, self proclaimed ninja/jedi/oracle.
Reality:
[Me]: Write me a function to map an array to x.
[Ninja]: What's an array?

I've come to the conclusion that the type of dev I want on my team is highly unlikely to be looking for work much less using some piece of shit shady agent to find work so I need to hunt him / her down personally and can use the phenomenally large recruiters fee as a hiring bonus / incentive.

Only problem now is finding quality full stack devs in the area (Johannesburg, South Africa).

I'm thinking of posting a 'challenge' job add to filter out good candidates - some kind of code challenge to be solved that gives them my contact info. Any one have any creative ideas I could try?

Boss was in India demoing an app I wrote from scratch, minus a printer feature I insisted was necessary. Get a call from my boss: “I don’t need you to tell me you told me so, I need a printer and supporting functionality”

Being a dev in South Africa (at the time) meant that availability wasn’t the best. I drove out to a supplier, got the required hardware (on personal funds) and wrote the library. Had it all done and updated in 24 hours.

My boss refused to pay for the printer or give me any time in lieu. Started looking for jobs the same day.

"Can we build an app that works only in South Africa, for multiple clients, with no WiFi connection, each app contains an entire website and database to use offline, where any changes to one database synchronises every client's app, and also save those changes to our servers?"

These clients are hundreds of miles apart and on the other side of the world.

Wow, great!

I hate this country!
This was the third time this month that the power cables got stolen. Looks like it is going to be takeouts and project planning on paper tonight.

Special Awards: In a previous life, I employed a South African gentleman by the name of Jack Howell. He had a thing about finding other South African ex-pats, and could often be heard asking people on the phone “Are you by any chance from South Africa?”.

Jack Howell would also do very stupid things. Like forget to come to work. When asked, he’d come up with random excuses - “It was my wife Gwyneth’s fault”, or “I was confused, I took wrong turnings”. Generally, he was a bit of a twat, and had a weird kind of smile he’d give you.

After he left the company, we came up with the idea of having an award for whoever acted the most like Jack Howell on a given day, or week. It was known as The Jack Howell Award. The award itself was whatever shitty thing we could find at the time - a construction made of folded paper and paper clips, or a weird 3 inch statue from a charity shop, or whatever really naff-beyond-belief item we could find at the time.

Where I work now, we have a shitty 12 inch statue of a woman with a dog that turned up in our office, courtesy of our Maintenance Manager. This is the new Jack Howell award. Currently awarded to a senior dev colleague who spent a day chasing a missing variable.

Just when I had given up hope and thought South Africa was just a little to far for the devRant stickers to go - it arrived! It's looks like it's been through blood, months and tears to get here, but it's here! Thanks guys!

South Africa Electricity:

This is after I lost my 7th 3000VA online UPS...

In South Africa we have 240V power most of the time which is great, but then there is scheduled power outages (because our electricity companies cannot "handle the load").

When we have a power outage we have automatic generators which brings everything back up although there is still the 1 minute drop which has weird spikes and odd voltages before switching to the generator (as the generators wait until they are stable)

This has being destroying our equipment, we had a $2000 repair bill 3 TIMES for 3 SEPERATE Xerox Machines that have surge protectors although their circuit board somehow fried.

We have lost 7 3000VA UPSes (3 different brands) and 5 voltage regulators we put to protect the UPSes.

The one UPS that fried just had 2 dead fuses, I decided to replace them (unplugged the batteries to avoid 240V) and when plugging the batteries back in there was a huge spark and flame and the metal and plastic melted onto the board and turned black (the metal pins to connect the battery are non existant now)

I am done with electricity...

P.S. 2 of our generators also got hit by lightning as we are high on a hill and ALL the plastic cable coverings inside the generator were melted

Sadly I will not be getting a stress ball for Christmas thanks (most likely) to my piece of shit useless national postal service in South Africa. - Look at the date on the image.

Argh,

Today - you son of a bitch.

It all started with a 2 hour flight out of town for business, and I mean started as in I needed to be at the airport at 4:30am!

Despite 2 coffee's to get me out of bed I proceeded to indulge myself in the magic juice, 3 cups later and it felt like my heart belonged in a Grand Prix.

Now here is the sticky part, we where briefed that we would only be doing 2 site meetings and that was it.

Low and be hold it got worse, turns out that we would be pitching our product to 3 highly regarded CEO's, now bare in mind that my position on this trip is as the lead developer, and don't get me wrong I am well up to date on every aspect of the business, hence why they sent me.

So more coffee down the gullet, and eventually the conversation leads back to a project that I had developed to allow authorization of debit orders online, now usually I'm quite a well presented person in these types of situations, but you don't realize how quick this can change.

A quick jump to the geography of the location I was doing business. Johannesburg, South Africa - its as dry as hell, smoggy and at a very higher altitude "as in above sea level".

Now unfortunately none of the above factors where helping me much at all.

Now back to where I am being asked about my project, and never in my life have I tripped over my own words, I went completely blank, I'm surprised I didn't pass out to be honest.

Now despite the death stare and my colleague kicking me under the table, I am feeling pretty terrible, fortunately I had a kick ass team that was able to cover my ass!

Luckily I was able to recover ( 2 muffins and about 3 bottles of water later). We where able to salvage the meeting and it turned out pretty well, I regained my energy and we made it happen!

Must say the flight back was amazing! Almost empty and we all had a row of seats to ourselves, which resulted in some major comfort stretching!

Thanks for tolerating my essay, I'd love to hear if anyone has had anything of the sorts happen to them.

Its 1:30am (South Africa) just had my 8 drive raid 50 fail on one of our main servers after 3 sudden drive failures at the same time after lightning struck our network and blew 2 Cisco 48 port switches...

Its gonna be a longgg fucking night.

How do you guys/girls explain to potential new customers that you can perfectly work in a structured business environment and follow the rules, but also that you're assertive enough to oppose desicions being made based on bias, misunderstanding, fanboyism, or grave stupidity.

I just got informed from a freelance position that they would have hired me if it were not for my 'rebellious nature towards customers'

I don't oppose customers, i oppose stupidity unfounded.
Example from experience
> me working in a helodesk support position, all windows computer.
> new mgr comes into office, is a douche and complete mac fanboy
> wants all computers that are FINALLY working decent for some time in the entire department replaced with mac's... Back at 2010.
> whole team, even disliking microsoft themselves, are telling mgr that's a bad, dangerously dumb idea, expensive too, different OS, different software mgmt making, back then integration microsoft and apple was beyond diarhea... Several other issues the senior devs and admins pointed out

>mgr: 'but aple is soh much better, like a billion times better, hurrduurrrrr'
His decision passed somehow to the board..
> All stations from our customers get changed...we don't get a single machine to try out problems because overspending
> we are most of the time unable to help out customers because we still have pc's...
> mgr asks team why performance drops after 1 month
> we compared performance graph with his starting date of mgr, see clear drop after mgr's plan implemented...
> board stilll stands by mgr, gets praise for 'bold changes in the company', but appears to be some associate's son
> two main seniors leave after 15 years of employment, in three months, 80% of staff leaves.
> we canr fix the problems, we are not dev's , we get shit from all sides, i was still a junior in the industry so i worked as a slave inside that job.
> eventually get fired due to 'bad performance'
> mgr loses entire team... 'Hey why don't we outsource this dept to south africa, it's a lot cheaper! '

now that company is an it hellhouse where everyone get clinically depressed from sitting atbtheir station...
This is what i wish to oppose!

How to make that clear!

Its 1:20am in South Africa nd im on devRant coz i cnt sleep

I want to ask for my devrant stickers but I'm worried the South African postal service will just lose the package or steal it themselves

!Rant

Any skilled front enders in South Africa looking for a job in Johannesburg? My recruiters definition of qualified is "bookmarked w3schools - once".

It's a well paid job in a great work environment which approves the use of devRant. You will have complete control over design & ux. Lots of interesting things to work on we don't do 5 page sites and WordPress is a swear word.

Happy to offer a joining / relocation bonus.

I want to know how much a 10mb/s line costs in your countries because in South Africa it is R800 or $57,48 per month

In South Africa they even tell you what non-existent service you are getting

TLDR;
How much do you earn for your skill set in your country vs your cost of living?
BONUS;
See how much I & others earn.

Recently I became aware of just how massive the gap in developers earnings are between countries. I'd love to calculate a fixed score for income vs cost of living.

I know this stuff is sensitive to some so if you prefer just post your score (avg income p/m after tax / cost of living).

I'm not shy so I'll go first:

MY RATES
Normal Rate (Long term): $23
Consulting / Short term: $30-$74
Pen Test: $1500 once off.
Pen Test Fixes: consulting rate.
Simple work/websites: min $400+
Family & Friends: Dev friends are usually free (when mutually beneficial). Family and others can fuck off, even if they can pay (I pass their info to dev friends with fair warning).

GENERAL INFO
Experience: 9 years
Country: South Africa
Developer rareness in country: Very Rare (+-90 job openings per job seeker).
Middle class wage in country: $1550 p/m (can afford a new car, decent apartment & some luxuries like beer/eating out).
Employment type: Permanent though I can and do freelance occasionally.
Client Locality: Mostly local.
Developer Type: Web Developer (True web dev - I do anything web related from custom HTTP servers to sockets, services, advanced browser api's, apps & more).

STACKS / SKILLSETS

I'M PROFICIENT IN:
python, JavaScript, ASP classic, bash, php, html, css, sql, msql, elastic search, REST, SOAP, DOM, IIS, apache

I DABBLE WITH:
ASP.net, C++, ruby, GO, nginx, tesseract

MY SPECIALTIES:
application architecture, automation, integrations, db's, real time data, advanced browser apps/extensions (webRTC, canvas etc).

SUMMARY
Avg income p/m after tax: $2250
Cost of living (car+rent+food): $1200
Score: 1.85

*Note: For integrity when calculating my cost of living I excluded debt repayments and only kept my necessities which are transport, food & shelter.

I really hope you guy's post your results, it would be great to get an idea of which is really the worst / best country to be a developer in.

Ranter from South Africa! Stickers gone global.
sudo apt-get install rant-stickers

Hey you guys rock @dfox & @trogus : got the stickers in South Africa !! Keep up the epic work!

first was with people who wanted to host a hackathon. no one even coded a simple hello world application. not even tried to google it with the free internet access available. second time was only one other developer and myself with a bunch of people wanting to claim their fame. pitching alot of ideas but none wanted to do the hard graft.

Why do some countries do everything they can to stifle industry and economy?

I'm in South Africa and looking to build a high end rig. With local distributors a PC in the Excellent and above category of Logical Increments cost 3x as much as it should. Importing it myself would cost even more for shipping.
Guess I'll stick to a potato for now.

Hmmmm. Just looked at my security log for my outlook account. A bunch of unsuccessful sync attempts... from China, from South Africa, from Colombia, from Poland, from Vietnam, and from Brazil. All of them IMAP attempts. Good to know my password isn't compromised, but I think I'm going to reset it and double it's length, just to be sure.

Any other South Africans here?

What y'all think of the loadshedding?

I think the bastards should all be rounded up and charged with treason and manslaughter

Worst part of being a dev is living in South Africa

Probably only for the South African Market.

>Be me
>Pale af
>Burn easy af
>Start balding in 20s
>That's annoying in the first place
>"JUsT sHaVe yOuR hEaD tHeN"
>Don't like caps/hats
>Live in South Africa, see above about burning

Google really needs to allow people in South Africa to sell apps and iaps on play store

#realRant

Cant get my fucking dope af devrant swag because the goverment mail service in south africa is so bad that it can take over 6 months for a letter from england to arrive

My Cat-magnets make me smile every time I look at them!

OfferZen gives the best swag for developers in South Africa!

I want to start a rant thread, imagine yourself living in Syria, or south Africa, or a gang run neighbourhood in South America... What would your rant be..

FUCK

the well where we get our water just got shat on by the Town drunk

Now I have to walk 5 km instead of 2.. My kid sister needs water today or she might die...

.. And! Siri just gave me the wrong fucking directions

FUCK apple

(Not real apples, cuz.. I'm hungry)

South Africa Release notes version v3.0.2

In 1994 SA underwent one of the biggest system upgrades since 1948. In this new rolling release since the system update called apartheid the system has been annexing resources, locking it down, making it closed source, closing it off community updates and from global updates and minimizing services across the board. On 27 April 1994, the new democratic system update was released with a new system monitor, release resources and balancing efficiency in the system. Though there were remnants of the old code in the system, it was being rewritten by a new generation of users, open source resources were established, giving users the right to choose among themselves how to grow the system , and how to better the experience for all.

In 1999 a new system monitor was created by the users, it wasnt as popular as the ground breaking Madiba release but it was a choice by the community to move forward and grow. The system was stable for a few years, new users were able to develop more on the system, making it more lucrative monetary wise. There were still remnants of the apartheid code but the new generation of developers worked with it making it there own, though they had not yet had admin rights to help change the system, they created a developer culture of their own. A new system resources balancer was introduced called BBEE, that allowed previous disadvantage users more admin rights to other system resources, helping the user base to grow. Though the balancer was biased, and flawed it has helped the system overall to grow and move forward. It has major holes in security and may flood some aspects of the system with more outdated software patches, users have kept it in its system releases until the resource balancer moved the system into a more stable position.

The next interim system monitor release was unexpected, a quiet release that most users did not contribute towards. The system monitor after that nearly brought the system down to a halt, as it was stealing resources from users, using resources for its own gain, and hasn't released any of it back to the system.

The latest user release has been stable. It has brought more interest from users from other countries, it had more monetary advantages than all other releases before. Though it still has flaws, it has tried to balance the system thus far.

Bug report as of 16 Feb 2018
*User experience has been unbalanced since the 1994 release, still leaving some users at a disadvantage.
*The three tier user base that the 1948 release established, creating three main user groups, created a hierarchy of users that are still in effect today, thought the 1994 release tried to balance it out, the user based reversed in its hierarchy, leaving the middle group of users where they were.
*System instability has been at an all time low, allowing users to disable each others accounts, effectively
killing" them off
*Though the infrastructure of the system has been upgraded to global standards ( in some aspects ) expansions are still at an all time low
*Rogue groups of users have been taking most of the infrastructure from established users
*Security services have been heightened among user groups though admins were still able to do as they pleased without being reprimanded
*Female users have been kicked off the system at an alarming rate, the security services have only kicked in recently, but the system admins and system monitor has not done anything about it yet

Bug fixes for a future release:
*Recreating the overall sysadmin team. Removing some admins and bringing others in
*Opening the system more globally to stabilize it more
*Removing and revamping the BBEE system, replacing it with more user documentation, equalizing the user base
*Giving more resources to users that were at a disadvantage during the first release
*Giving the middle group of users more support, documentation and advantages in the system, after removing the security protocols from the user base
*Giving new users who grew up with the post 1994 release more opportunities to help grow the system on a level playing field.
*Establishing the Madiba release principles more efficiently in the current system

I am really having a hard time keeping an "open" mindset with my team...

So when I email you, the junior at your first job and an almost 6 months work experience, with a set of instructions, I do not want inline comments and feedback to the tune of "Yes, I agree. I think we should go ahead" or debates on why, in your opinion.. xyz, because you tested it yourself..

WHERE THE FUCK DID YOU SETUP AND TEST BILLIONS OF ROWS OF DATA ON YOUR MANY MANY MULTI BOX CLUSTER? You live in a data center? Oh, and say "Serverless" one more fucking time....

And so begins the painful process of performance managing you out the door. (You cant fire anybody in South Africa for being a prick. Or useless.)

I am sure there once was a time where you could beat guys like this to within an inch of his life with his own keyboard. If it wasn't wireless I could have strangled him with the cord. Ah, I miss model M's....

Ok please guys I need a little help here.
So I'm in my second year of my Computer science course and all subjects except one went well.So I failed my first year maths module so I decided to redo it and study much harder.Low and behold I worked really hard towards passing the exam but it was still extremely difficult.So I haven't gotten my mark and all but if I do fail it again I will not be able to continue in this University.I do not have a plan B at all and I really don't know what to do.I live in South Africa(if that's relevant).So basically if I pass I'll continue with the course but the question is what do I do if I don't pass.should I start working or try another degree at another University which will be another 4 years.PS I'm heading for 20 years old in a few weeks time.I appreciate anyone who gives any feedback.

!Rant
Worth sharing - a guy here in South Africa I spotted a year & a half ago advertising a local bitcoin reseller

Don't hear much about cryptocurrency in the headlines anymore

In the 21st Century the problem is not to allow the use of Chemical & Biological Weapons & 'maybe' just 'maybe' achieve total nuclear disarmament (not in the next 120 years) It's not just the responsibility of the UK, USA, & France but that of every country that's a signatory of the conventions that banned the use of such weapons to intercept and retaliate against members that use such kind of weapons. From Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, Brazil, China, India , Afghanistan, Butan, Taiwan, Iceland should use heavy force to stop the use of such weapons.

Just heard South Africa is going into national shutdown and only essential businesses will be operational. (Hospitals, food, water, etc.) We currently only have 402 cases.

What's interesting is that our systems are internal (not connected to internet almost at all) so I need to setup our git repositories to be accessible from internet so I can work from home.

I am honestly done with COVID-19

Just came home to cook supper at 11am again before I go back to the office to pull an all nighter to implement last minute changes thanks to a hosting provider in south africa getting hacked last Friday.

I love being a dev but this is one of those moments I really think to myself "your the moron that chose to do this for your career you twit" 😑

All South African devRanters, if there are atleast a few on here... Have any of you heard about the WeThinkCode program in Johannesburg?

My countries {South Africa} new favourite thing, you get a mail from a reqcruiter stating they have an opportunity for you and want you to forward your CV in Word format.

Dunno about you countries, but in mine 'word' is code for 'make it easier for use to fuck it up with the template we stole from the dogs shit after it ate its owners homework'.

So I rpelied ot one of them simply asking if I should not first be interestd in the position before them requesting my CV.

They basically typed out a longer version of the original mail, I still do not know what this great opportunity is that they want my CV for and not replying again. lol

I got a SIM card activated for my dad yesterday. Here in SA you need to verify your identity to get the card activated. But the company's systems were offline yesterday while I got it from another distributor of theirs 2 shops over. Now a day later they tell me I have to go and get another one because the one I got won't be activated because of it being offline. Something about it being assigned to me while it is offline makes it not work.

WHAT BULLSHIT? WHO THE HELL CODES THAT TRIPE TO FAIL TWICE AS HARD AS IT SHOULD? IT MAKES NO SENSE IF THE THING IS OFFLINE FOR THIS TO HAPPEN.

And yet, with Telkom's legendary poor service I know the service people are not lying. They just don't know what the hell is going on.

!dev
to;dr: fuck American mainstream media and all the lies.

I'm am so fucking fed up with American mainstream media. they constantly spew fucking blatant lies or disingenuous, misleading bullshit, and basically cover up anything that "doesn't fit the narrative".

it's like they think we're all idiots.

In South Africa, privately owned farmland is being confiscated from whites, as far as I can tell, because they're white. it's basically not being talked about in mainstream media because they're white. if it were any other race, I'm sure it would be all over the media.

"Violence again women in videogames must stop". uhhh, most videogames I've played, the violence is against about 99.9% male/0.1% females.... so....

"Donald Trump is a fascist". now I'm not saying one way or another whether I support Donald Trump or not, no opinions here just facts: Donald Trump is, at the very least, right-leaning, and fascism is a FAR LEFT IDEOLOGY. saying Donald Trump is a fascist is completely baseless and just a completely retarded claim.

literally calling for socialism.... do I even need to comment? have you ever read a history book?

countless other examples can easily be found if you look at any independent moderate to slightly right-leaning news source, podcast, etc.

I've had enough of the fucking blatant dishonesty of the mainstream media, whether it's flat out lies, or being disingenuous, or misleading, or not covering huge stories because they don't meet the narrative.

It's actually great being a developer in South Africa, but it depends a lot on the company where you work.

I finished my Excel for Business specialization on Coursera from Macquarie University before the annual increase to get an incentive increase for my experience, I leaned I should have done it through the company to qualify for the incentive. I don't even think they have a course of that calibre in South Africa.

I want to relocate to U.S from South Africa.
I'm qualified as a systems developer and currently doing an internship as a QA tester (automation)... sigh.. where to start.. SA has no future for devs here.

I just got accepted for computer science .wow.this is going to be a good year. hopefully they let me do all my practical programming assignments in java.and hopefully a cs degree in South Africa holds up in other countries.

"No indicator, nothing!"

-South African proverb

The latest news report makes my stomach turn. South Africa moves this month from a level 4 to a level 3 lockdown. No more curfew.. still no traveling or renting accommodation for leisure though. Ban on public gatherings, gyms, dine-in restaurants, tobacco sales remains in effect. Sale of alcohol is limited in capacity and sale can only occur between certain hours of the day.. its such bullshit, of course there's going to be an upsurgence of Corona as they lower the lockdown level, which will make them panic and possibly raise the lockdown level again.. or just keep us at a level 3 until they think we've successfully "defeated the curve".... for those of you who don't know, our presidented declared a national state of disaster ar the onset of the covid-19 scare! 🙈 vok my lewe

I understand that climate change is a thing and all but it still screws with me every time it rains in Cape Town this time of year