Wow... this is the perfect week for this topic.

Thursday, is the most fucked off I’ve ever been at work.

I’ll preface this story by saying that I won’t name names in the public domain to avoid anyone having something to use against me in court. But, I’m all for the freedom of information so please DM if you want to know who I’m talking about.

Yesterday I handed in my resignation, to the company that looked after me for my first 5 years out of university.

Thursday was my breaking point but to understand why I resigned you need a little back story.

I’m a developer for a corporate in a team of 10 or so.

The company that I work for is systemically incompetent and have shown me this without fail over the last 6 months.

For the last year we’ve had a brilliant contracted, AWS Certified developer who writes clean as hell hybrid mobile apps in Ion3, node, couch and a tonne of other up to the minute technologies. Shout out to Morpheus you legend, I know you’re here.

At its core my job as a developer is to develop and get a product into the end users hands.

Morpheus was taking some shit, and coming back to his desk angry as fuck over the last few months... as one of the more experienced devs and someone who gives a fuck I asked him what was up.

He told me, company want their mobile app that he’s developed on internal infrastructure... and that that wasn’t going to work.

Que a week of me validating his opinion, looking through his work and bringing myself up to speed.

I came to the conclusion that he’d done exactly what he was asked to, brilliant Work, clean code, great consideration to performance and UX in his design. He did really well. Crucially, the infrastructure proposed was self-contradicting, it wouldn’t work and if they tried to fudge it in it would barely fucking run.

So I told everyone I had the same opinion as him.

4 months of fucking arguing with internal PMs, managers and the project team go by... me and morpheus are told we’re not on the project.

The breaking point for me came last Wednesday, given no knowledge of the tech, some project fannies said Morpheus should be removed and his contract terminated.

I was up in fucking arms. He’d done everything really well, to see a fellow developer take shit for doing his job better than anyone else in [company] could was soul destroying.

That was the straw on the camels back. We don’t come to work to take shit for doing a good job. We don’t allow our superiors to give people shit in our team when they’re doing nothing but a good job. And you know what: the opinion of the person that knows what they’re talking about is worth 10 times that of the fools who don’t.

My manager told me to hold off, the person supposed to be supporting us told me to stand down. I told him I was going to get the app to the business lead because he fucking loves it and can tell us if there’s anything to change whilst architecture sorts out their outdated fucking ideas.

Stand down James. Do nothing. Don’t do your job. Don’t back Morpheus with his skills and abilities well beyond any of ours. Do nothing.

That was the deciding point for me, I said if Morpheus goes... I go... but then they continued their nonsense, so I’m going anyway.

I made the decision Thursday, and Friday had recruiters chomping at the bit to put the proper “senior” back in my title, and pay me what I’m worth.

The other issues that caused me to see this company in it’s true form:
- I raised a key security issue, documented it, and passed it over to the security team.
- they understood, and told the business users “we cannot use ArcGIS’ mobile apps, they don’t even pretend to be secure”
- the business users are still using the apps going into the GDPR because they don’t understand the ramifications of the decisions they’re making.

I noticed recently that [company] is completely unable to finish a project to time or budget... and that it’s always the developers put to blame.

I also noticed that middle management is in a constant state of flux with reorganisations because in truth the upper managers know they need to sack them.

For me though, it was that developers in [company], the people that know what they’re talking about; are never listened to.

Fuck being resigned to doing a shit job.

Fuck this company. On to one that can do it right.

Morpheus you beautiful bastard I know you’ll be off soon too but I also feel I’ve made a friend for life. “Private cloud” my arse.

Since making the decision Thursday I feel a lot more free, I have open job offers at places that do this well. I have a position of power in the company to demand what I need and get it. And I have the CEO and CTO’s ears perking up because their department is absolutely shocking.

Freedom is a wonderful feeling.

I can't help but be disappointed in the direction that technology has directed us into, especially social media.

While I love my girlfriend, she more often than not spends her time scrolling away at the dumbest shit on Instagram, Facebook, .. reels. Reels everywhere. And she's not dumb, mind you. She's an engineer just as much as you (presumably) and I are. Just in a different field.

When looking into it online and stumbling upon more than one study, I learned about the term it had been coined.. technoference. That's the constant interruption of social media into our day-to-day lives, and the dopamine kick it gives -- more so than IRL peers do. Why that is, being the digital equivalent to McDonald's, that's beyond me. But somehow it seems to be better, all while the content isn't even useful. It doesn't allow you to learn anything, to gain insights, or to explore things that could serve you in the real world. Cat videos and random shit that's somehow.. funny? Having pretty much completely disconnected from social media years ago, I seriously fail to see how.

Maybe us nerds in the 90's and early 2000's telling everyone else how we'd change the world and prove everyone who called us freaks wrong, disenchanted as we were (and probably still are), were the catalyst for this social disaster. We had the cognitive skills to do it, but not the social equivalent. I feel guilty... Even though I've always been part of a big tech resistance in some capacity, I still feel guilty. Because I'm one of those people with the skills of those who created this trash fire of a societal status quo. Everyone glued to their screens, 95% of the time not for work. Not even to aid one's ability to function in the real world. Just to combat boredom. All day, for many hours on end.

Where is it going to end? When will people realize the dystopia we got ourselves into? Will anyone but a few fight it? Would those who don't fight it even care?

!!office drama

I haven't been around much in recent weeks. Due to family illness, christmas shopping, dealing with estranged parents, and brooding over the foregoing, I haven't had a lot of time or energy left to myself.

tl;dr: The CTO ("API Guy") is ostensibly getting fired, and I might be taking over his job. I don't know if I should accept, try to stave this off, or simply flee.

------

Anyone who has been following my recent rants knows that API Guy is my boss, and he often writes terrible code. It's solid and unbreakable, but reading it is a *nightmare.* One of our applications is half the length of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, and it's difficult to tell what code is live and what amounts to ancient, still-active landmines. This is one application; we have several, most of which I've never even looked at.

Ostensibly the code is so terrible because the company grew extremely quickly, and API Guy needed to cram in lots of unexpected / planned-against features. From what I can see, that seems about right, but I haven't checked timeframes [because that's a lot of work!].

Here's a brief rundown of the situation.
- API Guy co-founded the company with the CEO.
- CEO and API Guy have been friends for a long time.
- CEO belives the company will fail with API Guy as head of tech.
- They could just be testing me; I have zero way of knowing. API Guy seems totally oblivious, and CEO seems sincere, so this feels pretty doubtful.
- CEO likes pushing people around. CEO believes he can push me around. API Guy doesn't budge. (I probably won't, either, except to change task priorities.)
- API Guy's code is huge and awful, but functional.
- API Guy is trying to clean up the mess; CEO doesn't understand (maybe doesn't care).
- Literally nobody else knows how the code works.
- Apart from API Guy and myself, the entire company is extroverted sales people.
- None of these sales people particularly like me.
- Sales people sell and sell and sell without asking development if they can pull enough magic features out of their hat to meet the arbitrary saleslines. (because the answer is usually no)
- If I accept, I would be the sole developer (at first) and responsible for someone else's mountain of nightmarish code, and still responsible for layering on new features at the same pace as he. Pay raise likely, but not guaranteed.
- My getting the position is contingent upon the CEO and the investors, meaning it's by no means guaranteed.
- If I don't accept, likely API Guy will be replaced with someone else of unknown ability, who doesn't know the code, and whom I must answer to regardless. Potentially OK, potentially a monumental disaster.

Honestly, it feels like I'm going to be screwed no matter what course I choose.

Perhaps accepting is slightly better?

The best would be to assume the position of CTO and keep API Guy around -- but that would feel like an insult to him. I doubt he'd be okay with it. But maybe. Who knows? I doubt the CEO would seriously consider that anyway.

I feel like a lamb between a dim, angry rhino, and an oblivious one.

The worst tech day if my life... In terms of broken things.

I went to London... For a meeting with a new client.

I missed the train being me I made sure I got the early one so I could get another if I missed it...

1st tech fail, the machine didn't print off my tickets just the receipt which is why I was late

Got to London thought I'd try uber I didn't want to be late...

25 minutes till destination ... Ok

2nd tech fail... Was 45 minutes 😔

Now I'm 10 minutes late!

So I rush out of the uber to try and get to the meeting ....

3rd tech fail 😔 I drop my laptop ... Screen was ok I got lucky .

Went to meeting it was in a coffee shop ! I was alone meeting 5 people in this charity.

This company didn't occur to them I'd need internet to show them websites 😐

4th tech fail no internet

Needless to say I didn't get the job. Sad because I would of done a good job . At least I got to chill in London. For a few hours.

They put me on a hot seat as such all asking me questions

I was 19 terrified stressed. And it's only been a year... I'm doing the same tomorrow!

Fingers crossed

Here's a genuine rant for you. Probably the only one I've ever made and ever will..

It's a bit depressing and covers a few topics so just read it, it's important.

*deep inhale*
So, with the help of my friend and my Nana, I was getting VR set up. (Oh, what joy.)

Now, I love everything about VR. But the thing is, I've had this damned headset since may (Dell MMR) and I haven't been able to use it. The reason for that is, something always came up that I needed to buy and this became a huge deal.

But let's start from the beginning.. I'm curentally fighting depression. I have been for months. My only income is what my Nana gives me ($150/mo) and what my friend ocasinally gives me.

Anyways, the first issue was that I couldn't afford the headset. This was find, as my friend would get it for me, and I would pay them back the following month. But, then, once I got the headset that's when the real problems started. First it was that I needed bluetooth, so I bought an adapter. Then I realized my entire CPU was incompatable, so I had to get a new tower and I went ahead and got a new GPU as well. I also got a charging kit for my headset (This ended up making me owe my Nana money). Then after all of that was settled, I learned that the evauation software lied, and my computer doesn't have USB 3, so I need that too but low and behold; both of my graphics cards cover my second pcie slot. So my options are to either try and rig up something, or to buy a cpu and psu for my third AMD PC which I had forgotten about during this whole ordeal..

This was soposed to help me with my depression and stress. Now I don't even want to get out of bed.

With all that said, I might be getting on SSI soon (I'm sure some of you are familar with that, and no I don't want to talk about it) and when that happens I might just leave behind tech (well, my PC and games) and all the stress and pain it's caused me over my life so this was all for nothing.

Honestly.. I'm just done with everything. To all the new faces around here; Hello! How are ya? To everyone else; You know me. I've been around for a while, though I'm not popular because I lurked and commented with Alice. You all probably noticed that I left a while back, and it was because I was trying to get out of tech. My reason for tech was that I was searching for something. I was always looking for the next game to sate me, or fill this gap in my life. I became a programmer because it gave me control were I lacked it otherwise. I made friends online because my anxiety prevented me from doing so in the real world.

But to what end? What have I acomplished? My twenty second birthday is next month. I've no job, I move from family member to famly member because I'm so fixated on becoming someone else to make something of myself.

I have my own ideals, but it seems that I push them aside to try (and fail to) impress others.

It's time for change. Of course, I can't do anything without money, so I'll have to wait for my SSI which I will get news on in August.

I hope this message came through how I meant it to. There is so much I want to say, but I've no words to say them. And btw, the VR thing is just one of manny issue that i've delt with (but certanly the most expensive)

Alice, Zennoe (Alexis, whom is not on devrant); I'm not giving up tech entirely. don't expect to suddenly not hear from me. I'm mostly just giving up my computer and games. More casually so for now, and them more seriously once I get on SSI. I'll still message you every/other day like I have been. <3

!rant

Today I bring happy news. First company I interviewed at clicked so well, both personally and technically, and they expressed an eagerness to hire me on the spot. I figured we might as well talk salary to compare them against other interviews. The offer they made me was so good I decided to sign there and then. They said they participate in a fair wage program but for me this is absolutely the dream. I get lots of nice perks to boot. And they've already mailed me some tech documentation to go over so I can prepare, as I'll be working with the latest front end stuff and of course my trusty .NET (and yes I asked it'll be C#, haha).

I can't even begin to express how great this is. The last decade I've been unemployed for several years in total, and vastly underpayed when I was employed. I've worked in some toxic environments, been falling behind on tech and wrote a lot of rubbish code as a result of that. But it seems that somehow all the hard work I did put in paid off by taking a chance when it presented itself and go in accepting I might fail horribly. And I did bomb the tech questions actually. But they let me explain myself and come to answers together and saw beyond the black and white.

In short I feel like I've won the work lottery and will start 2018 in style. Part of me is still scared though, that there will be a mistake or a catch or even somehow I'll ruin everything. But that is the risk in life and I'm just going to have to deal. What I can control and will do is my very best, because I want to keep succeeding and have a great future career. And I hope I can inspire others in the same boat with my actions too.

Back in the day, I joined a little agency in Cape Town, small team small office with big projects, projects they weren’t really supposed to take on but hey when the owner of a tech business is not a tech person they do weird things.
A month had passed and it was all good, then came a project from Europe, Poland to be specific. The manager introduced me to the project, it was a big brand - a segment of Lego, built on Umbraco (they should change the name to slowbraco or uhmmm..braco somewhere there) the manager was like so this one is gonna be quite a challenge and I remember you said you are keen on that, I was like hell yeah bring it on (genuinely I got excited) now the challenge was not even about complexity of the problem or code or algorithms etc you get my point… the challenge was that the fucking site was in polish - face palm 1 - so I am like okay code is code, its just content, and I already speak/familiar with 13 human languages so I can’t fail here ill get around it somehow. So I spin up IIS, do the things and boom dev environment is ready for some kick ass McCoding. I start to run through the project to dig into the previous dev’s soul. I could not relate, I could not understand. I could not read, I could not, I could not. - face palm 2 - This dude straight up coded this project in polish variable names in polish, class names in polish, comments in freaking polish. Look, I have no beef with the initial guy, its his language so why not right? sure. But not hey this is my life and now I should learn polish, so screw it, new tab - google translate, new notes, I create a dictionary of variables and class etc 
3 days go by and I am fucking polish bro. Come at me. I get to read the previous devs soul through his comments, what a cool dude, his code wasn’t shit either - huge relief. So I rock on and make the required changes and further functionality. 

The project manager is like really, you did it? I am like yeah dude, there it is. Then I realise I wasn’t the first on this, this dude done tried others and it didn’t go down well, they refused. - face palm 3 -

Anyway, now I am a rock star in the office, and to project managers this win means okay throw him in the deep - they move me to huge project that is already late of course and apparently since I am able to use google translate, I can now defeat time, let the travelling begin. - face palm 4 - I start on the project and they love me on it as they can see major progress however poland was knocking on the door again, they need a whole chunk of work done. I can’t leave the bigger project, so it was decided that the new guy on Monday will start his polish lessons - he has no idea, probably excited to start a new job, meanwhile a shit storm is being prepared for him.

Monday comes, hello x - meet the team, team meets x

Manager - please join our meeting.

I join the meeting, the manager tells me to assist the new dev to get set up.

Me: Sure, did you tell him about he site?

Manager: Yes, I told him you knocked it out the park and now we just need to keep going

Me: in my head (hmm… that’s not what I was asking but cool I guess he will see soon enough -internal face palm 5 - )

New dev is setup, he looks at the project, I am ask him if he is good after like an hour he is like yeah all good. But his face is pink so I figured, no brother man is not okay. But I let him be and give him space.

Lunch time comes, he heads out for lunch. 

1hr 15mins later, project manager is like, is the new dude still at lunch.

We are all like yeah probably. 

2hrs pass 

3hrs pass

Now we are like okay maybe something happened to him, hit by a car? Emergency? Something… 

So I am legit worried now, I ask the manager to maybe give him a ring. 

Manager tries to call. NOTHING, no response. nada.

Next day, 8am, 9am, 10am no sign of the dude. 

I go to the manager, ask him what’s up. 

Manager: he is okay. However he said he is not coming back. 


Inspired by the comment I posted on another rant.

My uni decided to be one of those progressive tech schools that start people with Python. Mind you, I had prepared myself with studying as much as I could with math and programming by automating things and similar stuff in our computer when I was at my previous job, so I had a better idea as to what i could expect.

Introduction to computer science and programming with Python or some shit like that was the name of the class, and the instructor was a fat short ugly woman with a horrible attitude AND a phd in math, not comp sci and barely any industrial knowledge of the field.

She gave us the "a lot of you will fail" speech, which to me is code for "I suck and have no clue what I am doing"

One assignment involved, as per the requirements the use of switch cases. Now, unless someo knew came about, Python does not have swio cases. Me and a couple of less newbie like students tried to point out that switch cases were non existent and that her switch case example was in Javascript, not python, curly braces and everything. She told us to make it work.

We thought that she meant using a function with a dictionary and we pass the key and shit, a simple way of emulating the switch case.

NOPE she took points and insisted that she meant the example. We continuously pointed out that her example was in JS and that at the time Python did not have switch cases. The nasty woman laughed out and said that she didn't expect anyone to finish the assignment with full points.

Out of 100 points everyone got a 70. No problem. Wrote a detailed letter to the dean. Dean replied and talked to her (copied her in the email because fuck you bitch) and my grade was pulled up to full mark.

Every other class I had with her she did not question me. Which was only another class on some other shit I can't remember.

Teachers are what make or break a degree program. What make or break the experience, going to college is putting too much faith on people. If you ask me, trade certification, rigorous training is the future of computer science, or any field really. Rather than spending 4+ years studying a whoooole lotta shit for someone to focus on one field and never leave it.

TL; DR: please save me from IT hell

Note 1: this is a rant that comes after a couple other rants I'm going to call "family business saga" from now on because I feel like this is gonna go on for a while

Note 2: the following may look exaggerated but it's because of how pissed off I am at said person

So I have to help this one family member with his computer but he's worned me out so much last summer that I can't stand him (it's all tech based). At all. Both in person and via text calls. I dread and become pissy each time he's nearby, just his presence makes me want to jump in a hole and stay there for eternity.
And he's not the smartest cookie in the jar when it comes to tech, so he comes to me for help (instead of going to my brother. Aaagh why doesn't he go for my brother as well, it's mentally tiring having to "help" him - as he doesn't learn what I'm trying to teach him even after several attempts). I don't really mind being sought for help when it comes to tech, but this guy takes it one step further.
He entered my room with his computer in his hands saying this friend of his has installed W7 on his PC (why didn't he handle all the things he wants to do, it would save me a lot of anger containment) and that I *had* (it's always "YOU HAVE" because I'm a tech-ish person and I'm in uni for CS) to help him do a bunch of things.
So he boots up the thing and there are 32 updates to do, so I'm guessing that he didn't boot it up after the OS update until now. He leaves my room and I sigh out of relief. He comes back with the AC remote complaining it's too hot in my room and that he's gonna put it down a degree or 2. Jesus christ do not tamper with my AC settings, it's fine to me. The updates are still going on. He leaves again.
The computer takes its time to update and so does he. I'm happily playing minecraft when he comes back, the computer off after updating. He looks at it and says "why is it off?". I reply back "it finished updating.", trying to keep my cool. Even the most simple questions are irritation inducing.
He reboots it and lets it run. After it boots and it's ready to go he just stays there for like 2' without doing anything because the hard drive light was going off. I think he thinks the computer is going to explode if he touches it while the light is blinking 😬
He goes to connect the computer to the internet and gets all surprised that the computer doesn't recognize our home's internet (he has been here before with his computer, I guess, so he had connected, so I think he was expecting it to auto connect like that). I tell him that the computer doesn't recognize our home's connection because it has had a fresh OS installation and so it didn't have any connection registered. He types in the password and the connection is established.
He them starts going on about that he wants to get these pics on the business' website and how does he put them in his computer and all that. I do that for him and he's all like "how did you do that?? 😮" like it's a magic trick
And he's always going on at everything as if it's all a big undoable thing. "How do I do this? You know what, do it yourself and show me because I don't wanna fail". Dude. Bro. Everything - EVERYTHING - you are afraid of doing is undoable. EVERYTHING. Good christ.
I swear I've never felt so glad I'm going back for uni next week

How are these EU-Upload Filters even practical for anyone except google? This seems like the most unrealistic specification by non-tech bosses in history to me 😭 What do these people expect the upload filters should compare the uploads to? How the fuck should, say a blog website, ensure that none of the uploads are copyright inflicting? Are quotes copyright inflicting? Or only when I copy paste an entire book and write my name under that? How will that get detected? Do we have a database with all the copyrighted works somewhere, that every company has access to? This shit can basically only work for companies like google which have enough data to implement such filters and thats why they already had an upload filter on youtube anyways. This entire amendment is so fucking ridiculous that it basically has to fail, no doubt. In a few months still nobody is going to have upload filters, watch...

When your Tesla’s battery fails, because they cut costs, you are hit with a high-pressure, thick stream of chemical hellfire spanning your entire car’s interior space. It will burn you to a crisp in 30 seconds. Because of all those “aUtOmAtIoNs”, door-opening mechanism will also fail. There is no way you’ll get out.

After 30 seconds, there will be no one left to rescue. After two minutes, there will be nothing left to bury.

There is no way a fire squad could extinguish this. That’s a battery fire. If you remember your chem class, you know lithium burns violently underwater.

You’re gonna die. Elon won’t be responsible, as usual. No one will face any consequences.

But damn, what’s an epic bacon hyperloop tech way to go out, isn't it.

So I need some advice from some fellow devs here...

I recently accepted a job offer at a new company and I'll be leaving my place of work for the last 11 years. I'm a senior level dev who comes from a place where software is more of a secondary function and the skills of my peers are very... Atypical of most software developers.

My interview was ok, but I passed the mark barely - in that they recognize I'm rusty and have some gaps to shore up, but have decided to give me an offer anyway. I'm taking a "step down" to enter in as a level below senior to get my foot in the door of a real tech company.

I've got myself convinced I'm setting myself up to fail, despite being told by people that work there that they encourage mistakes and that they wouldn't be offering me a position if they didn't think I'd be successful.

Is it typical to feel inadequate and worried you'll be fired prematurely for underperformance? I've had little to no experience in a fast paced tech job so I have little to refer to. I was a very high performer where I'm coming from, but that's hard to equate to where I'm going. It seems like classic "impostor syndrome".

I've not even started there yet but I'm terrified my anxiety will get the better of me before I even have my first day there. Anyone out there have any advice?

I'm excited for this new opportunity but I can't seem to shake the fear of the unknown.

I provide hosting for my clients. About 3 months ago I discovered that the hosting company that I'd been using had been swallowed up by EIG, which explained why the tech support had gone downhill.

So, I jumped to another hosting company. Same shit different company!

Apparently the fact that my browsers sit at "connecting" for up to 30 seconds, and I get a "could not connect to" message half the time while I'm trying to fucking work on a deadline is the fault of some plug-in in a WordPress installation!

Oh yeah? Why then does this shit happen when I'm working on a pure html/css site?
Why then did it start happening after they "updated" my shared server?!

Oh, but the bastards suggest that I buy Cloudflare or pay for more space!

You fuckers made my work take 3 times as long, and you made an important migration fail!

Network places make mistakes. We all do. That's cool. Fucking own up to it, talk to me like a techie, and DON'T TRY TO BLAME IT ON ME OR MY TOOLS!

Fuck you! I think I'm gonna give Google Cloud a try, and do this shit myself!

There is a company providing a very speciffic service. And it has a core application for that svc, supported by a core app team.
That company also has other services, which are derivations of the core one. So every svc depends on core.

Now that we're clear on that... I was working in a team of one of the subservices. We very strongly depended on core. In fact, our svc was useless if integration w/ core broke down.

The core team had an annoying habbit. They refused to version their webservices and they LOVED to push api updates w/o any warnings. Our prod, test, other envs used to fail bcz of core api changes quite often. Mgmt, IT head was aware of the problem and customers' complaints as well.

So as a result, once core api changes we're all in a panic mode: all prior priorities are lowered and revival of prod is to be our main focus. Core api is not docummented, the changes are not clear, so we have to reverse engineer the shit out of it. We manage to patch our prod up w/ hotfixes, but now we have tech debt. While working on the debt, core api changed again, in test env. Mgmt pushes debt back and reallocates us to hotfix test. Hotfix is 80% done when another core api breaks. Now mgmt asks us to drop wtv we're working on and fix that new break. By the time we're to deploy the hotfix, another api breaks in another env. The mgmt..... You get the picture :)

2 years go by, nothing has changed so far.

i HATE snake oil idiot types

red flags:

- "interested" in tech but have no programming experience or knowledge, no real work experience

- they claim they can provide assistance and guidance to people in machine learning!!!! 😂😂😂😂😂😂

- private instagram, weird

- spent all their money on their instagram profile picture, looks like those dumb finance gurus with a lambo

- is, in reality, unemployed

what value do you provide to society?

really its just people who are good at talking and can convince other people of equal or lower (not higher) intelligence but not really can't DO anything

and they wonder why so many companies fail

what a fucking joke i hate you

its really not just annoying its immoral - and thats the part i despise so much

grow up, put in some work, and be valuable to society

Tldr: I just FAILED AN EXAM because of my uni's SHITTIEST SERVERS EVER. YEAR AFTER YEAR THE EXACT SAME SHIT HAPPENS, THEIR SERVERS OR NETWORK FAIL HARD AND STUDENTS FAIL EXAMS BECAUSE OF IT, AND THEY NEVER FIX IT.
FUCK

In the middle of a 3h exam at uni, using Matlab through virtualdesktop, when suddenly it stops working entirely. Trying to restart it, no go. A few other people are having the same issue as well.
After 20 minutes of waiting, one IT tech shows up saying people in other labs are having the same issue, big problems.
Ended up wasting nearly an hour waiting for shit to work again - which it did, but only when the extra time they had given us ran out.
Desperately tried to salvage what I could of my exam, but I don't think I did enough to pass.

This is not the first time it happens. Exam after exam, shit like this keeps happening over and over again, and every time some students get fucked in the ass and have to take the exam again - the next semester.

This is supposed to be one of the top universities in the country, and top 20 engineering schools in the world.
FUCK THIS SHIT

Okay. So my dumbass boss took this project that had a steep timeline. I told him straight up, it won't work because we won't make the timeline. If we do this, I will be the one bending over backwards to deliver. I don't like to promise and fail. I got the oh don't worry let's just try. If we don't make it that's fine. Unfortunately that's not how I work. I refuse to deliberately fail. So I say okay and we begin. I suggested open source is the fastest way to deliver bit the fucked up part is, I am the only senior dev in the team. I will be expected to reverse engineer the open source app to connect our own deployment parameters. Use tech I have never used before. Connect frontend and backend. Handle dns bullshit. I have literally been working on Vibes and coffee for the past two weeks because ofcourse I ran into so many issues. Now I have an extension for Monday and I hate to fail. So I am not sleeping or resting just working on a fucking java app I didnt build and I am expected to make it work seemlessly on our production environment. I made some progress. Deployed frontend, deployed backend. Forgot to connect production dB so I decided to go with azure database for mysql driver since we have credits on azure. Now my java app is pissing itself over ssl handshake. I generate my keystore and add it and now java socket just times out. I want to pummel somebody or a punching bag that looks like my boss.

I hate silicon valley.

They enable so much of the state's and federal government's bullshit, the corporations and the banks subversion and destruction of society.

It's time to pop their fucking tech bubble.

From here on out, any time you hear or read the words 'startup', be sure to comment with "you mean speculative marketing investments?"

Because most tech runs on shit-tier semi-polished iterations of glorified CRUD anyway, thats all most of it is. And it 100% relies on grabbing network share through massive advertising and presence campaigns. A lot of vc money is being flushed straight down the toilet and this is a point to emphasize. Crash the fucking tech sector. Do it.

It'll have a knock on effect to the advertising space, which will put the hurt on google's bottom line when they and their ilk are already under pressure for all the poisonous, monopolist shit they pull like helping china build their surveillance tech.

Extra points for emphasizing "pot-fueled ideas sketched out on napkins while sitting in fucking chipotle, in unwashed sweater vests, originated by guys who are fresh out of college and never ran a business in their life. 90% of them fail in the first year. VCs and investor are losing their shirts." etc.

The entire dishonest fucking trade relies on other people's money, being bought out in either techno land-grabs or turf-protection e.x. atlassian acquiring trello, a **glorified todo app**.

Thats the business model. Hell go build your own and make a buck.

Build your own. Build something better and most of all... *fuck silicon valley*.

Let it burn, let burn, let it burn.

When you fail in the Hello World of a new tech

If you give the client a choice of:
- Quick and dirty solution which results in tech debt
- Better solution that would be cheaper in long run

They will always choose the first without fail..

Here’s my step-by-step guide for the idiot:

1) take <cutting-egde tech> (Tech)
2) read documentation for Tech
3) figure out what you want to do with Tech
4) if you are being ambitious, simplify the idea appropriately
5) Go do the thing with the Tech
6 When you fail at something, RTFM
7) Rinse and repeat

Hey! This is a followup to my last story.

TL;DR: I thinking of quitting my old job, got an offer at a startup, about the same pay, but much better working conditions.

First of all, the meeting with my lead. It was a performance report on her side to me, and I got 100 to 110% in performance in all points. My lead said "this team without you wouldn't be this team anymore" - which makes me feel a little bit bad for her if I decide to quit. She is a great team lead, but I don't belive the old company is worth my time anymore.

Now to the new company. Shortly after that performance report meeting, I had a call with the ceo, and what do I have to say besides: What a cool dude. He listened to me, asked me questions about my previous jobs (not just as programmer) and so on. But because first looks are deceiving, I went to their office last thursday. And wow. Their are exactly what I imagined them to be. Cool, young folks, 100% tech enthusiasts, and open minded.

One of the new hires in the new company wanted a 6 months internship between his studies. Instead they offered him a full time job - for the 6 months. They even offered me to pay back my scholarship that I will own my old company for leaving early. This is awesome.

The only things that will be worse than my old job are, that I have to negotiate payment instead of yearly increases, 4 days less paid vacation, so only 26 days, and 40h weeks. And they have no workers council, which isn't good, but it's not the worst either.

I got them fixed on 57.000€, not including an up to 10.000€ annual bonus. The way you achieve your bonus seems good to. It's split in two parts, internal and external bonus. Internal bonus is when you engage with internal events like tech calls, sharing your knowledge on your main IT topics, etc. External Bonus is a bit more complicated, but also straight forward. You work on projects for customers, and if you have less than 3 weeks a year that you dont participate in an project, you get the full bonus.

Last friday, I filed a request for a certificate of employment from my current team lead, this is odd for her because I have never done it before, and she asked why I requested it. I said to her that we can talk about it, and she agreed but didn't call me, yet.

Lastly, another good friend of mine will be employed by my team soon, but for a fraction of the payment that I currently receive! He is doing the exact same work, and even worse, he is doing project managment for his main developer project too! And is getting less paid... I just cant...

Yesterday we needed to update a few cloud instances, the only other person who knows about setting up CICD and our OpenShift Containers than me is only in part time and works two days a week, his trainee didn't know anything, so it's up to me. This isn't hard or anything, but it shows that this system our mangement maintains will fail soon, maybe even with me going? I sure hope so tbh.

One of you guys said, I should go to my team lead and negotiate a higher pay, but the truth is, that because we are a big ISP we have an collective agreement for payment and are grouped by tasks (which is bull shit btw, because I'm doing tasks much higher paid than currently). This also means that I cannot simply jump in another group, and can only increase my current pay to about 115%, which is done automatically every year by 5% up to 115%. Anything above is considered extra, but I don't think they will go with it.

I will decide this week about my future at the old company, but I really don't know what to do...

**random rant**

So next week I have a technical interview with TripleByte and I'm supposed to spent the next 2 days sorta preparing. Just woke up and had this thought tho:

What's the point? Yes I think I could try to get a better job but been trying for years (banking tech area) but now it feels like I'm at a "local optimum" sort of a sweet spot. Team/company could be smarter/more efficient but...

I've got my own place in a city that's also near NYC. It takes me 20 minutes to get to my current office, fairly flexible with the 9-5 work day, I can work remotely. I get enough money.

And then finding a new job === technical interviews about stuff you will rarely use and usually with no feedback like a pass-fail test where they only tell you if you pass or fail (and for me it always feels skewed towards fail the moment i walk since I'm deaf).

But at this point, I feel more like "you need to convince me to work for you". In my head, the plan is mostly to just have a nice chat and wing the technical questions just to see how good i am without any prep (i.e. poring thru Cracking the Coding Interview or Big O concepts, sorting...).

Its a confession...
So yesterday we had a practical in our uni... It was on Assembly Language (NASM and TASM)... Its a horrible language to work on... Trust me... I hate it, infact... We all hate it at the uni... But the thing is... We need to pass the practical in order to sit for the theory, and it is really hard language.... So most of my friends brought pen drives... And some brought chits... And sadly... All of them got caught... And were marked as fail right away... But the thing is I also cheated... And I copied successfully... I didnt use any pendrive or removable media... But I used ssh to my cloud server... And since I code on vi, it was pretty easy for me to cheat in the practical... I feel bad that I cheated.... But then I feel proud as well because I used the tech of this generation to copy, and not some grandpa shit like pendrives...
Yeah... That was it... The codes did rain in the exam..
I know I am a horrible person.. But common guys.. Who am I kidding... I am proud that I didnt use any clichè methods... And was talented enough to do so without getting caught...

So I had a discussion now with my mom about my work and it turned into a rant. But I came to this conclusion:

My most effective way to screen candidates for a backend/fullstack tech job would be to ask them what are the most influential programming books they have read and why.

If they don't mention any books (or points covered in these books) in this list, they immediately fail:
-the effective engineer
-clean coder
-code complete
-team geek
-the Phoenix project

Why is tech management so f-ing distant? Very often NOT in meetings which they created and very not interested in anything the team/teams do. It is really a large offset between the work actually being done, the day-to-day operations that we do and the competence of management to acknowledge the fact that we actually do those things.

A lot of times they just stay silent in meetings and in the end they say something to try and make some conclusion and perhaps something ”funny” to try and lighten up the atmosphere. They fail on both of their tasks. They have no clue and are not interested in learning.

I feel like many of them don’t actually do anything. They are often ”away” but it is really unclear what that means.

I think it is symptom of a truly dysfunctional tech process. Bad leaders tend to hire more bad leaders and it is a toxic circle ending in good competent people leaving wanting more in the leadership.

Developer vs. user experience: it's 2024, tech is used by the masses, and still, every day, I see messages that something "failed", an "error occurred" or that I did something wrong trying to use something supposedly simple like entering a phone number or a bank account IBAN into a web form.

Worse, I remember being part of teams coding and releasing antipatterns like that, spending time in hour-long best practice discussions and still failing to deal with user "errors" in the end.

AI, the deus ex machina supposed to obsolete developers, does the exact opposite of development: fail and err, but always find some positive and polite words to gaslight its users and make them feel happy.

AI will replace developers just because it's better in being nice.

Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm the Charlie Brown of development and Lucy with the football is the XAMPP/MAMP/WAMP software in this world. EVERY. TIME. I. TRY. TO. SPIN. THIS. UP. IT. FAILS. It doesn't matter which tutorial I follow for which technology stack or CMS, the result is always the same. Something about the database or htaccess or some other stupid setting makes it impossible for me to create a simple dev environment on my system.

I have been doing this dance for 24 YEARS NOW!!!! The original programmer of Apache is a 2nd-degree acquaintance who used to be available to help me with this, but no more. I feel like a complete and utter failure as a web developer every time I try to set up XAMPP, and, the rare times I've succeeded and gotten a basic CMS up and running, I fail again and again with all these build/run/task tools I'm now supposed to be using. After a week of fiddling with my local dev environment, I give up and delete it all. I go right back to on-server development "the old fashioned way". WHY!? WHY IS THIS SO HARD?

I'm stepping on rakes here and about to quit. I'm probably just too OLD and STUPID for all these stacks and frameworks and tools and maybe even for this career now. I should probably quit and become a "facilities manager" at a tech firm somewhere, cleaning up the bathrooms and sweeping floors and watching all these young geniuses tut-tut about "Poor StackODev. I hear he had 24 years as a web developer, but then he snapped and he's never been the same."

Not really a dev rant, more of a "home tech support" kind of rant but I guess a lot of devs will relate...

So I was looking at building myself a little storage server, mostly for backups and stuff. This led to the fail of this rant: I thought it would be a good idea to convince my father to switch from using a ton of USB HDDs to get himself a NAS.

This is where I didn't think things through...

The only place he was able to set up the NAS is in the living room. Now I have to use my noise cancelling headphones all day just to not have to hear those HDDs rumbling around in there🤦

(also, I specifically got some super quiet fans for my gaming PC in the living room, but now I realize I could have saved some money and gotten some louder ones, since that NAS is so much louder...)

I might ruffle some feathers with this one...

But..

If you've been working in the tech industry for 4+ years and still SOLELY rely on your tech stack to land you a job, and then fail at it, then it's your own fault and no one else's.

So I wasted about 20 minutes yesterday because I forgot to look where I was plugging in my SD card...

I use a mid-2011 model iMac (with the CD and SD ports on the side), so, thinking I knew where the correct slot was, I attempted to put my SD card into the computer. Oh the adrenaline rush when I realized that the SD card didn't normally go all the way in...

So then I spent the next 20 minutes finding and poking various tools into the CD drive in order to fish out my 32 gig SD. Eventually I just ended up using two bent paperclips, but man, was that an adventure.

I’ve been looking for a job recently since I am a student and starting my career.

I have a bunch of experience and I like to think I have pretty broad knowledge of programming concepts (web dev, ML, AI, software development).

I see these job postings for jobs that I know I am qualified for.

- I got my research published (which is related to the jobs I’ve been applying for)
- I have great grades
- I have a clear track record of doing well in teams (life long athlete)
- I am a complete geek for new tech and libraries so I always learn them super fast
- I have side projects that aren’t just shit I’ve done in school
- my past jobs show that I am an efficient worker who has real experience

However, I always fucking fail the coding challenges.

I’m never asked questions like “how to reverse a linked list”, just obscure questions that I don’t know how to study for.

What the fuck am I supposed to do? It’s not even like I get close to the answers. I usually get a couple test cases and then fail the rest of them, or I can’t figure out a solution to solve them.

This is all really disheartening and I fucking hate it I absolutely fucking hate it and when I am trying to hire people in the future, I’m never going to make them do coding challenges bc they’re fucking stupid

What is everyone's opinion on companies/organisations 'too big to fail'...?

I was just pondering on how 'just Google it' has become so 'natural' as a way of saying search the Internet. The more I think about it, the less I like it.

I know the chances of them failing/crumbling are neary zero (hence the name) but if an org, Ie Alphabet, made some shit decisions and bankrupted their company, what would happen then? Any ideas? I don't mean in terms of social fallout, economic etc.

I mean in terms of network infrastructure, them being such a central part of 'the web', all their Dns services, their backbone links, Google drive, Google fiber etc. What would happen to all user data? Just be destroyed?

I've never 'seen' a large tech company collapse, but just wander as to how that process would work for such a huge organisation, and the literal mountains of data they have which will need destroying or relocating.

Inb4 watch Mr robot hurrr

Me: Why do we do this this time consuming, low value thing?
My tech lead: Because if we don't, a box becomes red on some executive report.
Me: Why is this deadline so important? It's not customer facing or any kind of critical bug/vulnerability?
My tech lead: Because it was a company wide mandate, and we'll show up on some executive report if we're late.
Me: *angry dev noises*

They must dole out lashings to the tech leads and the directors any time we fail to meet some completely arbitrary demand. The act like the world is going to end any time we get too close to a deadline 🤦‍♂️

Makes no sense that they then turn around and worship the ground senior leadership walks on. I wonder if it's some weird form of stockholm syndrome.

I'm always trying to make apps or websites and finance it my self cuz here in Morocco no one wants to finance virtual things they still don't believe in earning from tech.
And of course i fail every time now I'm trying to make huge amount of money to finish my engineering studies.

I'll have to make some tough choices over the next 6 months. With my tech career beginning and my college education ramping up, time is of the essence, and the skills I develop now will be at the forefront of my future. So what does this have to do with Microsoft?

Well, the story begins in the Spring of 2016. Social Forums was about to turn a year old, Trump's campaign was ramping up, and I had just found my love for technology. With all my friends having phones, I had to get a phone and get working on development. The year before, Windows 10 was launched, and I was psyched. I found Microsoft's products to be underrated with potential. That day, I purchased a Lumia 640, upgraded it to Windows 10, and immediately began working. After another year-and-a-half gone by, I went from loving Microsoft, to defending Microsoft, to tolerating Microsoft. I could go on and on about the lousy structure, the privacy issues, the forced upgrades, the redundant developer platform, and other such issues that is leading me away from them. But if there is one thing they have proven over the years, is that the they are completely out of touch with its developers and its customers. They spent years ramping up their phones. They failed. They spend years ramping up their phones. They failed. They spend years ramping up their semi-annual OS updates. They failed. So why did they fail? It's not that they made the wrong prediction out of chance. They legitimately don't care about feedback. It's their way or the highway. This sounds vaguely familiar. They have been spending a decade ignoring feedback from the community because they want to become just like Apple. Right now, Apple LIVES off of brand loyalty and its stable, useful ecosystem. This cannot work for Microsoft as they don't have a lot of brand loyalty. But most of all, they don't have a working ecosystem. They have Windows Insiders, which provides them with hundreds of feedback messages per day. These include suggestions, bug reports, and constructive criticism. The feedback is public. You can have several pages of the same complaint, and they still won't do anything about it. They say they have a good relationship with their community, and that this Beta program helps Windows become better for all. But in the end, we are nothing more than a glorified unpaid labor force. They fired hundreds of professional debuggers just before the Insider Program took off. We are only here to provide bug reports for free. Now that their phones, AR headsets, browser, online services, and VR headsets are failing for all these reasons, I see little reason to develop for Windows anymore. I don't just mean their UWP and App Store platforms, I mean Windows as a whole. I'm definitely not a Mac guy either. I never see myself going to Mac either, as they are really no different in terms of how they treat their Developers and PC users. If things continue down this route, I will leave the platform all together. I've always wanted to be a Systems Programmer, so I don't really need an established paid platform to be successful. Even now, I'm not certain about leaving Windows altogether but as a developer, I need to find my place. Time is of the essence in my life, and I need to find out my place in the software world. Now I think it isn't on the Windows platform like I had dreamed it would be. But where do I go?

My dell's battery is dying and refuses to charge unless I fuck with the damn wire (charger works perfectly on my brother's dell). I know how to and have replaced dell batteries for similar models before on multiple occasions when I was a tech assistant in high school only 3 years ago but my dell warrenty won't mail me a battery for me to replace myself. Instead requiring I send them my laptop (can't since it my laptop I use for college work and can't go without it for a week or two unless I want to fail out). So guess I have to fucking find a battery on Amazon and spend money doing what my warrenty should cover

I understand why they don't allow users to do their own repairs. I'm just annoyed at having to find the battery online and spend money