My first job: The Mystery of The Powered-Down Server

I paid my way through college by working every-other-semester in the Cooperative-Education Program my school provided. My first job was with a small company (now defunct) which made some of the very first optical-storage robotic storage systems. I honestly forgot what I was "officially" hired for at first, but I quickly moved up into the kernel device-driver team and was quite happy there.

It was primarily a Solaris shop, with a smattering of IBM AIX RS/6000. It was one of these ill-fated RS/6000 machines which (by no fault of its own) plays a major role in this story.

One day, I came to work to find my team-leader in quite a tizzy -- cursing and ranting about our VAR selling us bad equipment; about how IBM just doesn't make good hardware like they did in the good old days; about how back when _he_ was in charge of buying equipment this wouldn't happen, and on and on and on.

Our primary AIX dev server was powered off when he arrived. He booted it up, checked logs and was running self-diagnostics, but absolutely nothing so far indicated why the machine had shut down. We blew a couple of hours trying to figure out what happened, to no avail. Eventually, with other deadlines looming, we just chalked it up be something we'll look into more later.

Several days went by, with the usual day-to-day comings and goings; no surprises.

Then, next week, it happened again.

My team-leader was LIVID. The same server was hard-down again when he came in; no explanation. He opened a ticket with IBM and put in a call to our VAR rep, demanding answers -- how could they sell us bad equipment -- why isn't there any indication of what's failing -- someone must come out here and fix this NOW, and on and on and on.

(As a quick aside, in case it's not clearly coming through between-the-lines, our team leader was always a little bit "over to top" for me. He was the kind of person who "got things done," and as long as you stayed on his good side, you could just watch the fireworks most days - but it became pretty exhausting sometimes).

Back our story -
An IBM CE comes out and does a full on-site hardware diagnostic -- tears the whole server down, runs through everything one part a time. Absolutely. Nothing. Wrong.

I recall, at some point of all this, making the comment "It's almost like someone just pulls the plug on it -- like the power just, poof, goes away."

My team-leader demands the CE replace the power supply, even though it appeared to be operating normally. He does, at our cost, of course.

Another weeks goes by and all is forgotten in the swamp of work we have to do.

Until one day, the next week... Yes, you guessed it... It happens again. The server is down. Heads are exploding (will at least one head we all know by now). With all the screaming going on, the entire office staff should have comped some Advil.

My team-leader demands the facilities team do a full diagnostic on the UPS system and assure we aren't getting drop-outs on the power system. They do the diagnostic. They also review the logs for the power/load distribution to the entire lab and office spaces. Nothing is amiss.

This would also be a good time draw the picture of where this server is -- this particular server is not in the actual server room, it's out in the office area. That's on purpose, since it is connected to a demo robotics cabinet we use for testing and POC work. And customer demos. This will date me, but these were the days when robotic storage was new and VERY exciting to watch...

So, this is basically a couple of big boxes out on the office floor, with power cables running into a special power-drop near the middle of the room. That information might seem superfluous now, but will come into play shortly in our story.

So, we still have no answer to what's causing the server problems, but we all have work to do, so we keep plugging away, hoping for the best.

The team leader is insisting the VAR swap in a new server.

One night, we (the device-driver team) are working late, burning the midnight oil, right there in the office, and we bear witness to something I will never forget.

The cleaning staff came in.

Anxious for a brief distraction from our marathon of debugging, we stopped to watch them set up and start cleaning the office for a bit.

Then, friends, I Am Not Making This Up(tm)... I watched one of the cleaning staff walk right over to that beautiful RS/6000 dev server, dwarfed in shadow beside that huge robotic disc enclosure... and yank the server power cable right out of the dedicated power drop. And plug in their vacuum cleaner. And vacuum the floor.

We each looked at one-another, slowly, in bewilderment... and then went home, after a brief discussion on the way out the door.

You see, our team-leader wasn't with us that night; so before we left, we all agreed to come in late the next day. Very late indeed.

Physical version of spaghetti code

!!privacy
!!political

I had a discussion with a coworker earlier.

I owed him for lunch the other day, and he suggested I pay him back either with cash (which I didn't have), Venmo, or just by him lunch the next time (which I ended up doing).

I asked about Venmo, and he said it was like paypal, but always free. that sounded a bit off -- because how are they in business if it's always free? -- so I looked it up, and paid special attention to their privacy policy.

The short of it: they make money by selling your information. That's worth far more than charging users a small fee when sending $5 every few weeks. Sort of what I expected when I heard "always free," but what surprised me is just how much they collect. (In retrospect, I really shouldn't have been surprised at all...)

Here's an incomplete list:
* full name, physical address, email, DoB, SSN (or other government IDs, depending on country)
* Complete contact list (phone numbers, names, photos)
* Browser/device fingerprint
* (optional) Your entire Facebook feed and history
* (optional) all of your Facebook friends' contact info
* Your Twitter feed
* Your FourSquare activity
(The above four ostensibly for "fraud prevention")
* GPS data
* Usage info about the actual service
* Other users' usage info (e.g. mentioning you)
* Financial info (the only thing not shared with third parties)

Like, scary?

And, of course, they share all of this with their parent company, PayPal. (The privacy policy does not specify what PayPal does with it, nor does it provide any links that might describe it, e.g. PayPal's "info-shared-by-third-parties" privacy policy)

So I won't be using Venmo. ever.

I mentioned all of this to my coworker, and he just doesn't understand. at all. He even asks "So what are they going do with that, send me ads? like they already do?"

I told him why I think it's scary. Everything from them freely selling all of your info, to someone being able to look through your entire online life's history, to being able to masquerade around as you, to even reproducing your voice (e.g. voice clips collected by google assistant), to grouping people by political affiliations.

He didn't have much to say about any of them, and actually thought the voice thing was really cool. (All I could think of was would happen if the "news" had that ability....) All of his other responses were "that doesn't bother me at all" and/or "using all of these services is so convenient."

but what really got me was his reaction to the last one.

I said, "If you're part of the NRA, for example, you'd be grouped with Republicans. If they sell all of this information, which they do, and they don't really care who buys it or what they do with it... someone could look through the data and very very easily target those political groups."

His response? "I don't have to worry about that. I'm a Democrat, and have always voted Democrat. I'll tell anyone that."

Like.
That's basically saying every non-democrat is someone you should be wary of and keep an eye on. That's saying Democrats are the norm and everyone else is deviant and/or wrong.

and I couldn't say anything after this because... no matter what I said, it would start a political conflict, and would likely end with me being fired (since the owner is also a democrat, and they're very buddy-buddy). "What if they target democrats?" -> "They already do!" or "What if democrats use it against others?" -> "They deserve it for being violent and racist, but we never would" (except, you know, that IRS/tea-party incident for example...)

But like, this is coming from someone who firmly believes conservatives are responsible for all of the violence and looting and rioting and mass shootings in the country. ... even when every single instance has been by committed by democrats. every. single. one.

Just...
jfl;askjfasflkj.

He doesn't understand the need for privacy, and his world view is just... he actually thinks everyone with different beliefs is wrong and dangerous.

I don't even know how to deal with people like this. and with how prevalent this mindset is... coupled with the aforementioned privacy concerns... it's honestly *terrifying.*

Man, I think we've all gotten way too many of these.

Normally most interactions that I have are through email. Eventually some would try to contact me via phone. These are some:

"Hey! We are calling you from <whatever company name> solutions! (most of them always seem to end on solutions or some shit like that) concerning the Ruby on Rails senior dev opportunity we were talking about via email"
<niceties, how are you doing, similar shit goes here...eventually>

So tell us! how good/comfortable would you say you are with C++?"

Me: I have never done anything serious with c++ and did just use it at school, but because I am not a professional in it I did not list it in my CV, what does it have to do with Rails?

Them: "Oh the applications of this position must be ready to take in additional duties which sometimes happen to be C or C++"

Me: Well that was not anywhere in the offer you sent, it specifically requested a full stack Rails developer that could work with 3 different frontend stacks already and like 4 different databases plus bla bla bla, I did not see c++ anywhere in it. Matter of fact I find it funny, one of the things that I was curious about was the salary, for what you are asking and specifically in the city in which you are asking it for 75k is way too low, you are seriously expecting a senior level rails dev to do all that AND take additional duties with c++? cpp could mean a billion different things"

Them: "well this is a big opportunity that will increase your level to senior position"

Me: the add ALREADY asks for a senior position, why are you making it sound that I will get build towards that level if you are already off the bat asking for seniors only to begin with?

Them: You are not getting it, it is an opportunity to grow into a senior, applicants right now are junior to mid-level

ME: You are all not making any sense, please don't contact me again.

=======

Them: We are looking for someone with 15 years experience with Swift development for mobile and web

Me: What is up with your people not making these requirements in paper? if I knew from the beginning that you people think that Swift is 15 years old I would have never agreed to this "interview"

Them: If you are not interested in that then might we offer this one for someone with 10 years experience as a full stack TypeScript developer.

Me: No, again, check your dates, this is insulting.

===

* For another Rails position

Them: How good are you with Ruby on Rails in terms of Python?

Me: excuse me? Python has nothing to do with Ruby on Rails.

Her (recruiter was a woman) * with a tone of superiority: I have it here that Python is the primary technology that accompanies Rails development.

Me (thinking this was a joke) : What do you think the RUBY part of Ruby on Rails is for? and what does "accompanies Rails development" even means?

Her: Well if you are not interested in using Rails with Python then maybe you can tell us about your experience in using Javascript as the main scripting platform for Rails.

Me: This is a joke, goodbye.

====

To be fair this was years ago when I still didn't know better and test the recruiters during the email part of being contacted. Now a days I feel sorry for everyone since I just say no without even bothering. This is a meme all on itself which no one has ever bothered to review and correct in years for now. I don't know why recruiters don't google themselves to see what people think of their "profession" in order to become better.

I've even had the Java/Javascript stupidity thrown at me by a local company. For that one it was someone from their very same HR department doing the rectuiter, their shop foreman was a friend of the family, did him the service of calling him to let him know that his HR was never going to land the kind of developer they were looking for with the retarded questions they had and sent him a detailed email concerning the correct information they needed for their JAVAscript job which they kept confusing with Java (for some reason in the context of Spring, they literally wanted nothing with Spring, they wanted some junior to do animations and shit like that on their company's website, which was in php, Java was nowhere in this equation)

I think people in web development get the short end of the stick when it comes to retarded recruiters more than anywhere else.

PM: Can you give me an estimate for this clearly simple task?
Dev: Agreed, it is a simple task. 10 hours.
PM: ??
Dev: 2 hours to implement, 8 hours to discover the GOD FOR SAKEN ISSUE THAT ALWAYS COMES UP ON THESE SEEMINGLY SIMPLE TASKS!! WTF!!! WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN EVERY TIME????

Well fuck me sideways with a rusty lamppost.
Got assigned to a project at work, kind of a biggie, my first actual large project. Been working there since last year, done a lot of research in my spare time and felt like I deserved it or something.

But then...

A few weeks ago I posted a rant about a fuckwit that can't even type 'ssh' in a terminal and doesn't know how a basic database system works.

Guess what.

Yeah.

Exactly that happened.

Because of his overconfidence and big mouth he got assigned to the project as well.
He planned a pitch. Stole my words.

He hasn't proven himself in any way and always needs help. Always. And I don't have a problem with people asking for help, I actually tell people not to be afraid to ask if they don't know something.

But I do have a problem with people laying back at work and asking 7 different people how to open a terminal.

Why does this happen? Just why?

Saw some cheapie little radio in the dollar store, bought 2 of them for reverse engineering. Powered it from my lab bench power supply as usual, and tested whether it actually works before doing anything else.. then I noticed that the tunes were actually quite catchy, so I just ended up listening.

Then I started to notice that the audio wire I was using (the one I've spent a couple of days building earlier) had intermittent audio issues where the right driver would drop out when the wire was held in certain positions. Oscilloscope probing showed that there was some sort of disconnect, with only the 50Hz noise from the power lines showing up. Opened up the connector and noticed that the ground wire had detached. An 28AWG electrical wire that was inside a jack that was meant for stress relief! Yet the copper strands must've detached one by one regardless. What do I need then, huh?! 18AWG which wouldn't even fit on the connector, only to see the strands in that eventually detach as well?! You know what, let's go fancy.. 1AWG which is meant for extremely high current applications!!

At that point I was literally shouting "FUCK!!! Why does this shit always happen to me?!! ONE FUCKING PROJECT THAT FINISHED SUCCESSFULLY, YET STILL BROKE?!!!! WHY!!!!!!"

Clearly I need some fresh air to cool down. On my way to the fast food restaurant to get some Bicky burgers. More shit, humans. One stupid driver who slowed down on me, which of all things I hate the most. GO FASTER ALREADY YOU SLOWFUCK, AND GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY SIGHT!!! Next a pedestrian with a dog.. I swear motherfucker, if that dog comes anywhere near me I'll personally turn it into fucking fricassee.

Ah and then comes the killer.. in this stupid fucking summer, all that's needed to fix any issue is a fucking stupid DESPACITO, right?! More like DeSPASTICo!! FUCK!!!!

.. Back home, rather tired. So essentially a wire that was specifically built to have high endurance broke on me. Back to Bluetooth I guess.

We all work on the same room: Devs and testers.
In order to communicate with each other without taking off our earphones, we use the chat app.
Ok, sometimes the chat app has delay sending messages.

I really, really hate when one of the testers comes to my desk without telling me he's coming to my desk! >:v and this is the reason why I hate it so much: I'm concentrate in my code, listening to ASP or SPA and, suddenly, I feel a heavy presence behind my monitors. I look up and I see a very penetrating gaze from the corpulent tester looking at me (he's tall). Every time he does that I almost have a heart attack D:

"There's a bug I want you to check" he says.
And I check my chat app if there's a delayed message from him. Nothing, NOTHING >:v

Always, when I want to go to his desk, I send him a message

"Is it ok if I go to your desk?" and he says me "You don't have to ask for it, just come here" but the thing is that I do that because I expect him to do the same :/

Fortunately this doesn't happen every day, but it pisses me off, and I don't know how to tell him to stop doing that because I don't want to be like a... jerk? intolerant? I don't know

So Friday afternoon is always deployment time at my company. No sure why, but it always fucks us.

Anyways, last Friday, we had this lovely deployment that was missing a key piece. On Wednesday I had tested it, sent out an email(with screenshots) saying "yo, whoever wrote this, this feature is all fucked up." Management said they would handle it.

The response email. 1(out of 20) defects I sent in were not a defect but my error. No further response, so I assume the rest were being looked into.

In a call with bossman, my manager states that the feature is fixed, so I go to check it quickly before the deployment(on Friday).

THERE IS NO FUCKING CODE CHECK-IN. THE DEV BASTARD JUST SAID THAT MY USECASE WAS WRONG, SO MY ENTIRE EMAIL WAS INVALID.

I am currently working on Saturday, as the other guy refuses to see the problem! It is blatant, and I got 3 other people to reproduce to prove I am not crazy!

On top of that, the code makes me want to vomit! I write bad code. This is like a 3rd grader who doesn't know code copy-pasted from stack overflow! There is literally if(A) then B else if(!A) then B! And a for loop which does some shit, and the line after it closes has a second for loop that iterates over the same unaltered set! Why?! On top of that, the second for loop loops until "i" is equal to length-1, then does something! Why loop???

The smartest part of him ran down his Mama's leg when it saw the DNA dad was contributing!

Don't know who is the culprit, and if you happen to see this, I am pissed. I am working on Saturday because you can't check your code or you lied on your resume to get this job, as you are not qualified! Fuck you!

Update on my Facebook and Booking.com interviews. I had them back to back today.

Even before I start, I accept and admit that I am a hypocrite. I hate Amazon yet order stuff from there. I hate Microsoft yet use their products. I hate Facebook yet went ahead to interview with them.

I fucking hate myself for compromising my ethics, values, and integrity. I had promised myself that even if I work for any major shit company, I'd never go with Facebook. Here I am after many years. Not an excuse, but I am doing it because I see it as an entry point into the UK. That's all.

Community's hate towards me is justified and I'd accept the discrimination from this community because this place is my digital home and you all are my family. Infact first thing I told mom was, dR boys are gonna disown me when they get to know about this.

Anyway, coming to the update part.

I had applied leave at work from last Friday. 4 days of leave earned me 10 days off (including weekends and 2 days of Diwali company holiday).

Last Thursday I got to know that Facebook has scheduled their interview today (Friday). I spent insane amount of time preparing. Approximately 8 hours everyday including weekend. I added nearly 40+ hours preparing for it in last 7 days, because I had to get in. Failure isn't an option now.

I sacrifice my family time, preparing for the interview.

I sacrifice Diwali break, sitting in front of the screen and studying.

I sacrifice my only vacation of 2021, doing mock interviews as late as 11.30 PM.

I sacrifice my free time and enjoyment, stressing over what could happen.

I was prepared like perfect for screening stage.

Interview 1: this guy comes and ask 'what is the best compliment you have got as a PM?' and 'Why do you want to quit the current company?'

He wasn't supposed to ask those as per Facebook's policy and interview stage.

Then he gave me a shit problem to solve and rejected my approach and wanted it his was. I tried to follow him and made sure I was able to convince with the reasoning but he kept pushing me back. He kept putting me down. Did not listen to me or what I had to convey or what was expected as an answer. He had certain output in his mind and wanted me to come up with it as an answer.

For the uninitiated: Facebook gives ton of preparation material and tells upfront the kind of questions they'll ask they just focus on few things. Moreover, in Product interviews, there isn't right or wrong answer.

Anyway, this guy started making funny expressions which put my morale down and I stood my ground with losing my cool. I managed to get all my answers right and the key points the look into a candidate. It went decent. Yet the interviewers attitude was something I did not like.

Interview 2: the lady was really kind and warm. Very accommodating and easy person to deal with. It went amazingly well.

I have two observations I want to share with you all.

1. I hate what Facebook does. Lizardberg is awful human being. But I absolutely liked HOW they are doing things, at least from an interview stand point. They even had mock sessions by their PMs and upfront told how to prepare and how to answer.

2. While it seems to be a 5 star experience, I found them to function mechanically. No small talk, no human connection (ironic to their mission), no conversational flow of the interview (again something that they kept saying a zillion times in all their material). They came, formally introduced themselves, and had a checklist kind of attitude, and left.

I now await for the feedback.

In the next hour, I had Booking.com first round.

Amazing people. Warm friendly experience. Treated me as a human. Heard me. Made me feel part of the conversation rather than someone just being judged.

It went 1000x better than Facebook.

I await the feedback from them as well.

I don't know what's gonna happen but one thing for sure, the kind of expectations Facebook set for their interviews, was nowhere close to the reality. It was awful.

180° was for Booking.com

Guess the saying stands true, expectations always lead to disappointment.

Finally I feel de-stressed and my Diwali vacation starts AFTER Diwali ended. Or rather just a regular weekend.

2021 has been terribly awful year for me. Hope this shitty year ends soon.

I'm getting more and more triggered by my colleagues overusing words in seemingly random fashion.

The word 'perspective' comes up at least 6 times during a meeting, from an x perspective, from a y perspective. It would be fine in a design meeting but it's used _so fucking much_ I cringe every time I hear it.

Another one is 'standard', that gets put in front of every word nowadays, standard process, standard protocol, standard machine, standard pipeline. What does it mean? No clue, what does it add? Nothing.

'Please put this add the standard location.'

Where?

'The default one'

What?!

I remove it from documentation every chance I get.

Furthermore, some documentation changes make small pieces of information super long. A nice summary list of features? Make it at least 3 sentences for every bullet point. 1-sentence info with a reference link to more info? Scratch that let's include all information in that reference paragraph anyway. Sometimes they even expand English expressions for no reason, making them longer and harder to read.

WHYYYY

We always complain about shit documentation and yet we're oblivious to the fact that our own docs are so bloated. Stop repeating information, stop using useless adjectives, just put it all in 1 sentence and add dozens of code examples. One piece of code says more than a billion words.

I'm not innocent either. As a teen I was great at writing long pieces of text that seemed like a great read but were actually way too bloated for the information I needed to convey. It was great for reaching word limits.

Now I'm trying my absolute best to be as concise and to-the-point as possible because I know that nobody likes reading and people just want the information that they're looking for.

Even this rant is overly long, but thank god that it's just a rant and I can let off some steam.

Btw same thing goes for diagrams, too many icons, too much text, too many lines. When I try to submit a clean-as-fuck diagram I get asked to add more info/features to which I say No, we're already at the max.

I even got a PR for review that made some changes to add unnecessary information, I pointed it out and never heard anything from them again. I rejected the PR, and never saw a new one.

* Sigh *

It's just so strange to me, it's never clear to me why these things happen. I'm too much of a coward to point these things out unless they endanger the quality of the product. But maybe they just need somebody to tell it to them.

Great

Updated GPU drivers, turned my PC off while i was getting something to eat and watch YouTube videos in the living room, decided to go work on some project, turn my PC back on, and... Nothing works...

Neither of my monitors displays anything and not even my keyboard turns on... Didn't even get to see the splash screen of my mobo vendor

Why does this shit always happen to me?

WHY THE FUCK DOES THIS ALWAYS HAPPEN TO ME!
My system wont FUCKING POST! IT HAS POWER! IT HAS A CPU! IT HAS A GRAPHICS CARD! AND ALMOST ANY FAN IS FUCKING SPINNING! BUT NO FUCKING POST LED! FUCK THIS!

so... not really a rant because i'm happy to be in the long-term zenlike state where i don't really give a fuck about anything anymore, but...

so today's my birthday (thanks in advance for all the semi-mandatory "cheers" reactions and such)

the agency i do temp jobs through sends money weekly (for the one week back) (which is the main and only reason i use them). they arrive at friday 12:25, so that's when i know to go "check" by withdrawing it, and it's also awesome because it's the best time to provide funds to reward myself (by booze/weed) at the end of the week.

last week, nothing came in. i called them and learned it was due to the contact person in the company i did job in being too late on sending the agency list of people who showed up at the work, i was told it's gonna arrive one week later together with the proper payment for the week-1,so effectively i was one week without any money (literally), but on the next week double was going to arrive, which is nice.

that next week of double was now. i found out that no double arrived, only single-value payment. i called them to ask why.
i was told that what arrived was the late payment, and the dude in company was again late with sending the presence list, so the other payment, for the proper week's work, will be a week late again.

so... that kinda ruined my financial planning tor tge week that's going to happen.

i guess my point (if i have any) is... funny how when someone fucks up, there's nobody for me to be angry at and hold responsible in any way, but when i have delays in my work due to delays upstream, nobody gives a shit about my excuses and it's my fault and i should have compensated, it was my responsibility and duty, and me not doing it (to my own detriment, for someone else) is me failing.

funny how the subjective dynamics of the world always somehow works out in a way where everyone else fucks up and i either have to suck it up and be okay with it otherwise i'm a selfish unreliable entitled asshole, or suck it up and extinguish their fire for them, otherwise i'm a selfish unreliable entitled asshole XD

anyone else noticed this in their life?
how does it work? what is the factor that decides whether you're in the "suck it up" class or the "fuck it, someone else will suck it up" class?

doesn't seem to (just) be the money(flow), i've seen this thing happen even in situations where the money/client dynamics were flowing the opposite way to what would be natural for the shit fall direction.

Calling any Python programmer here (especially package maintainers)

I run Gentoo, so am responsible for maintaining the dependency tree (to a degree). When it comes to Python I have 2.7, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6 available. I'm always running into some package needing one version or another, and I can't just set a single version and forget it (which is fine. I'm running Gentoo).

I know that this is because python changes rapidly and so different libraries need different versions. Fine.

Why does this happen with Python and not C++, JavaScript, php, ruby, or any other languages on my system? I don't have 3 different versions installed to cover any other languages, and I don't spend time adding installation rules to cover them.

Why does Python need to be a pain in the ass about it?

I reported to our team leader (who is not a developer) that me and my colleague has been having problems with our senior developer whose codes are unmaintainable and messy. I told the team lead that I am losing my trust towards my senior developer and that his codes are messy and not following the coding standards. I was nervous at first because this certain team leader is tight with the senior dev. But still, I expected the team lead to be objective.

I was surprised because the team lead asked me if 'I was perfect' and then the team lead continued to shift the conversation towards me. Team lead then started to compare me with the senior dev which is unfair because I've only been working for 2 years whereas the senior developer has been doing this for 6+ years. Team lead said that I was arrogant. Team lead sent our convo to the other teammates and friends. Team lead told me that I am such a baby.

Fast forward, the senior dev talked to me. Told me that he was busy so he didn't get to improve his codes. Which I dont buy because I often see his discord status as playing during work hours. Told me that it wasnt him. Which I dont know if i should believe since he always lies. Told me that his knowledge is outdated. Told me that maybe because I came from a good university and he did not. He apologized and told me he will improve. Sounds good right?

It's a lie. Because then my friend gave me a recording of his voice ranting about me after our talk. In that recording, he said that I have nothing to prove so I dont get a say. He said that he doesnt care about me. He said that I am cocky. Which I dont understand. I only commented abt his work, why is he attacking me personally? Plus, if someone new like me already already noticed the flaws in his work, what does that say about his skill?

My teammates then asked me to just take the fall lol take note that these teammates were also complaining about this senior dev. they asked me to just give them what they wanted to hear. That I am the one who's wrong and the bosses are right. I said I wanted to defend myself but they hated me for that. They told me to think about what would happen to them. They told me I am selfish. Is it selfish for wanting to defend myself?

I defended myself. I told the senior dev that my intentions are for the right reason. He told me he understands. Later that day, a friend told me he talked behind my back again.

Senior dev told me that the team leader cried because of the words I said. Which i found confusing because it was my own feeling, my own opinion that i am losing trust with this certain senior dev so why would the team lead be so affected by that? Also, i showed our convo to the most objective people i know and they said that i didnt say anything that is offensive nor arrogant I have no control as to how people would react to the words I say. It's beyond me.

I feel so helpless. I told those things to the team lead because I think a team should be open to each other but I was blown out of proportion instead. My friend told me that the team lead and the senior dev are still talking behind my back.

If they do this every time someone tries to speak up, will they ever grow?

I know nothing about this.
Let's say your computer is on all night, and then you hit it in the morning, just re-activating all your windows... for me, it's always like a 10 minute wait until it "catches up".

I realized this morning, like, why doesn't it optimize itself while I'm away, so that when i do come back, that 10 min wait doesn't happen.

I'm sure they have thought of this, so why does it take so fucking long to wake up your computer.

I actually learnt this last year but here I go in case someone else steps into this shit.

Being a remote work team, every other colleague of mine had some kind of OS X device but I was working this Ubuntu machine.

Turns out we were testing some Ruby time objects up to a nanosecond precision (I think that's the language defaults since no further specification was given) and all tests were green in everyone's machine except mine. I always had some kind of inconsistency between times.

After not few hours of debugging and beating any hard enough surface with our heads, we discovered this: Ruby's time precision is up to nanoseconds on Linux (but just us on OS X) indeed but when we stored that into PostgreSQL (its time precision is up to microseconds) and retrieved it back it had already got its precision cut down; hence, when compared with a non processed value there was a difference. THIS JUST DOES NOT HAPPEN IN OS X.

We ended up relying on microseconds. You know, the production application runs on Ubuntu too. Fuck this shit.

Hope it helps :)

P.s.: I'm talking about default configs, if anyone knows another workaround to this or why is this the case please share.

I hate this feeling.

Changing stuff with a greamripers scythe around my neck called doubt because the available data isn't too convincing.

Then having to go big or nothing as it is an ecosystem change (e.g. changing the cipher suites of TLS, changing protocol - e.g. HTTP 1.1 to 2) so it needs to be consistent as otherwise fun stuff could happen (fun as in the grim reaper cuts off my neck except a few centimeters and plays "now your head is off, now your head is on" ).

To top it off - just few seconds after the change has happened people coming up in the support channel.

My hands are - mysteriously - not sweaty then. Rather cold.

Lil prayer to the heavens and getting the whiskey bottle...

Opening an ongoing discussion in support channel....

And they're discussing whether the page needs to have an additional arrow for going back to the last page or if the default page navigation is enough.

Constantly using @all so everyone gets pissed off due to being pinged every few seconds in a channel that was meant for emergency support.

Now my hands go from a dark red to a bright red, my nostrils flare out, my adrenaline goes through the roof and I literally wanna murder people....

Those days.

I hate those days.

And I hate the timing of some people...

Like they're deliberately fucking with me without knowing it, like the universe told them explicitly to do so just to fuck with me.

*gooozfraba*

And of course, everything else is fine and running smooth like butter, except that said discussion now goes on in a total flamewar so I get even more pings.

Sucks to be in management.

You have way to many rooms where people can annoy you.

To top it off - after being grumpy and pissed and angry for people just annoying the fuck out of me, I have to mediate.

Yeah. Cause the usual person is on vacancy.

*slowly strangling the whiskey bottle like homer does with bart*

Turns out after 15 mins listening to enraged UX designer vs Frontend Team Lead that UX designer meant a completely different thing - uploaded wrong screenshot, whole discussion was unnecessary.

*Nah. Fuck it. Drinking whiskey*

Reminding everyone what the fucking frigging support channel is meant for and that penis fights aka who got the longest schlong don't belong there....

"Yeah it was a mistake, but it wasn't so bad"
...

You pinged fucking 32 people like it was the end of the world, you ignorant fucktwads.

For over 5 mins.

For fucking frigging nothing except your tiny dicks and shitty egos.

*Second round of whiskey*

Back to work after a wasted half hour.

What says monitoring?

Ah. Everything's working.

At least luck hasn't failed me.

Good server. Brave server.

Then I hear this lil voice in my head: no.

The servers know your personality.

They're afraid. Terrified.

Somehow that thought makes me giggle always...

Childish? Maybe. But it helps on those days.... Funnily enough, remaining 3 hours noone said anything in any chat channel.

"I wonder why, I wonder how...."... *hum*

There was this tech guy in our project. I don't really know how techy nor what his role was, but I do know he was a techie.

Lately we'd noticed he was behaving more and more managerish. Orchestrating resources over slack, scheduling meetings, the managerial slang... Bulletpoints... It was obvious what's going to happen - he was striving for a manager's chair. Cool. He seemed like a guy who can indeed do this well. And the fact that he's a techie was promising - he should understand so many things.

Boy did that come around and bite us in our asses. Turns out this guy is a googler. If we are working on some case [as we always are] he jumps in and offers his opinion, although he is far from our technical area. We explain how/why it is not a good idea. Then he does some googling and comes back with a different idea! And insists on testing it out... FTR, a single test in our project could take from 1 to 6 hours. And he's a manager now!! We can't just ignore his requests...

Allright, we do that testing. Results are far from satisfying. We continue investigating. He does as well. We'd like to try something out, but there he comes with a new idea! And ofc we are asked to test it out as well.

Our own testing is postponed again.

A few days like this one pass by. In a daily meeting we are blamed for taking that long to do our investigation and we are questioned as engineers.

Superb...

Honestly? I'm having second thoughts about this new role. It's supposed to be fun and challenging and all, but this kind of shit is just too much...

Android 12, stop telling me every other day which app has permission to access my location in the background. I know, I gave permission, and I want to keep the setting "Allow all the time". Where's the "don't ask again" option?
And why does this happen for an app released by the German federal government (about once a week) but never, ever for your shitty Google Maps that always seems to know where I've been (at least if don't leave my phone at home, which is hard to do in times when you have to show your digital proof of vaccination everywhere yo go). Fucking Android, fuck the Android 12 clunkiness (inspired by Apple's iOS?) and fuck the fucking notifications. This is my phone, I paid for it, I own it, I want to turn off this bullshit. Wait, Google, once I find time to get back to LineageOS/Cyanogenmod you will never see a trace of my digital existence again. Oh, and fuck your "digital wellbeing" as well! At least you let me turn that off. Yes, I know, I am not grateful, but that's what devrant is for, isn't it? Fuck you, Google!

How often does this happen to you?

Just updated our continuous integration and for some reason the BuildAgents, who update independently, just kept failing to update.

Tried every trick in the book, debugged everything.
Kept complaining about being unable to delete files, frigging Windows file system being an idiot as always...
Was about to give up and migrate everything to a fresh system until I realized...

*reboot*
Ah, it works now!

... Why does it always take me so long to realize that's an option!?

There is a side project that they've been working on. The CEO laid out the details to the Product Owner and Tech Lead. Now what he wants to happen is beyond the scope of the business core itself and it would take months to do the changes just to make the side project work. Now both of them ask the timeline for this, CEO said 1 week. 1 fucking week (he's a dev in his glory days which is why the short timeline). He know proceeds to suggest to us how we should do it (like he normally does). But Tech Lead knows better. So with the help of one of the junior devs, they proceed with the Tech Lead's plan. Now come for updates, they presented that its working and such. The CEO became furious as to why they decided to design it that way (of course you dingus, you gave them 1 week and expect quality). Now what triggered me was 2 things, first is his comment on the way they designed it. Its "flawed design". WTF ARE YOU EXPECTING? YOU ARE A FORMER DEV. YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER. Second, is the junior dev is asking me about the project. WHY IS HE ASKING ME. I always tell him that ask Tech Lead. Some of his questions should have been answered by Tech Lead. He even questions the design itself(why they designed it the way they did). I DON'T EVEN KNOW WTF Y'ALL BEEN TALKING ABOUT THIS PROJECT AND YOU'RE ASKING ME. Flawed design, more like flawed communication.

Last week a client had a meeting regarding an app I built for them for this one time project. This meeting occurred Monday.

Thursday I get a call at 8 am where they ask if they can get some fixups regarding the UI by Friday.

This despite the client knowing I work more than full time at another company and only take his business on the side.

Why does this always happen? You deliver a product and don't hear from the clients for days or weeks and suddenly they pop up and ask for a fix by the next day?

Ugh...

TL;DR I just recently started my apprenticeship, it's horrible so far, I want to quit, but don't know what to do next...

Okay, first of all, hey there! My name is Cave and I haven't been on here for a while, so I hope the majority of you is doing rather okay. I'm programming for 6 years now, have some work experience already, since I used to volunteer for a company for half a year, in which I discovered my love for integrations and stuff. These background information will probably be necessary to understand my agony in full extend.

So, okay, this is about my apprenticeship. Generally speaking, I was expecting to work, and to learn something, gaining experience. So far, it only involved me, reading through horrible code, fixing and replacing stuff for them, I didn't learn a thing yet, and we are already a month in.

When I said the code is horrible, well, it is the worst I have ever seen since I started programming. Little documentation - if any -, everywhere you look there is deprecated code, which may or may not been commented out, often loops or simply methods seem to be foreign for them, as the code is cluttered with copy paste code everywhere and on top of that all, the code is slow as heck, like wtf.

I spent my past month with reading their code, trying to understand what most of this nonsense is for, and then just deleting and rewriting it entirely. My code suddenly is only 5% or their size and about 1000 times faster. Did I mention I am new to this programming language yet? That I have absolutely no experience in that programming language? Because well I am new and don't have any experience, yet, I have little to no struggle doing it better.

Okay, so, imagine, you started programming like 20 years ago, you were able to found your own business, you are getting paid a decent amount of money, sounds alright, right? Here comes the twist: you have been neglecting every advancement made in developing software for the past 20 years, yup, that's what it feels like to work here.

At this point I don't even know, like is this normal? Did git, VSCode and co. spoil me? Am I supposed to use ancient software with ancient programming languages to make my life hell? Is programming supposed to be like this? I have no clue, you tell me, I always thought I was doing stuff right.

Well, this company is not using git, infact, they have every of their project in a single folder and deleting it by accident is not that hard, I almost did once, that was scary. I started out working locally, just copying files, so shit like that won't happen, they told me to work directly in the source. They said it's fine, that's why you can see 20 copies of the folder, in the same folder... Yes, right, whatever.

I work using a remote desktop, the server I work on is Windows server 2008, you want to make icons using gimp? Too bad, Gimp doesn't support windows server 2008, I don't think anything does anymore, at least I haven't found anything, lol.

They asked me to integrate Google Maps into their projects, I thought it is gonna be fun, well, turns out their software uses internet explorer 9.. and Google maps api does not support internet explorer 9... I ended up somehow installing CEF3 on that shit and wrote an API for it in JS. Writing the API was actually kind of fun, but integrating it in their software sucked and they told me I will never integrate stuff ever again, since they usually don't do that. I mean, they don't have a Backend as far as I can tell, it looks like stuff directly connects with their database, so I believe them, but you know... I love integrating stuff..

So at this point you might be thinking, then why don't you just quit? Well I would, definitely. I'm lucky that till December I can quit without prior notice, just need a resignation as far as I can tell, but when I quit, what do I do next? Like, I volunteered for a company for half a year and I'd argue I did a good job, but with this apprenticeship it only adds up to about 7 months of actual work experience. Would anybody hire somebody with this much actual work experience? I also consider doing freelancing, making a living out of just integrating stuff, but would people pay for that? And then again, would they hire somebody with this much experience? I don't want to quit without a plan on what to do next, but I have no clue.

Am I just spoiled, is programming really just like that, using ancient tools and stuff? Let me know. Advice is welcomed as well, because I'm at a loss. Thanks for reading.

I had seen a meme the other day about the "Application has stopped working" window, which always shows the same answer for all. Why? And why does it say "We'll notify you when there's a solution" when this doesn't happen at all?