Did a very tiny migration for a client which would normally be done against our hourly rate but decided to do it for free as it would take me like 5 minutes and it was a very important thing for him and he actually offered to pay.

Fuck it, he'll be very happy, it doesn't take me much time and I know my boss would approve.

Did the migration, messaged the client and he thanked me.

Next day a cake arrives at work with my name on it and "thanks for helping us with the migration!"

Now that's how you make my fucking day!

Too many people expect me to work for free lately...

EDIT: since this announcement, collabs have been made free to post for all devRant members!

Introducing two big new devRant features!

First, the one @trogus and I are most excited about - Collabs!

Collabs are an easy way to start projects or work on existing projects with the awesome members of the devRant community. You can post a collab listing for the awesome open source project you started that could use some more contributors, that fun idea you have for a brand new project, or really anything you want to gather some fellow devs for. We think it will be a lot of fun.

Collabs also is a devRant first - it's our first paid feature. For each 2 week collab posting, we're charging $14.99. But we wanted to make sure to thank devRant users who have been with us for a while and anyone who contributes often, so anyone with 2,000 points or higher (now or in the future) gets one free collab listing!

The main reason we see collabs as a great first paid feature is because requiring payment or 2,000 points serves to be a slight barrier in posting a collab. We think for collaborations to be successful it's important to have some way to keep out listings where the poster has no intent of following through and we hope this is a good start to doing that.

NOTE: if the collab you are looking to create is devRant-centric (ex. a devRant Chrome extension), we will give you a free credit especially for that so you don't have to pay or use your earned free one. Just contact us (info@devrant.io) if your project falls into that category.

In addition, after tons of demand from the community, you can now change your username and email address! One important note is that you only get to change your username one time every 6 months, so use it cautiously :) You can access this feature in the "more" tab, then settings, then "Edit username or email."

If you have any questions or feedback about any of this, just let us know! We hope everyone enjoys :)

"We're letting you go"

"Oh, why?"

"Well we gave you a laptop to work on for a reason, we expected you to take it home and have passion for your work"

"..."

Could've saved me a lot of time if they had told me from the start that they just wanted free labor

The moment an other team couldn't deliver for a deadline. CEO came to me, gave me 50 bucks told me to get a pizza and some hash and just work the night and deliver the damn app. So I did. Got a week holiday for free in return. One of the best guys I worked for.

I AM FREE!!!!

I no longer work for that unappreciative, condescending, dolt driven company!

Time for bigger and better things!

My set up at work.
For this post I want to thank Microsoft for providing me some free time

I came to Spain escaping my home country and started looking for a job in ANYTHING. Had done some coding as a hobby but nothing serious, still I sent a CV to some starting positions online (also sent the same CV to pet shops, Starbucks, cloth stores...) And I got chosen to participate in a one week training course / trial at a big company.

At the same time I managed to get a spot on a free and amazing course for music production, my dream profession​. Yet I had to go for the one that actually had some work opportunities!

Got the job after the trial was done and immediately got sent to work with a 3 person team that was in charge of setting up a giant SharePoint site for the local mail office. It was kind of insane! For months I had no idea what I was doing and thought I was going to get fired any day.

5 years later, I still have no idea.

# realstory
One of my colleague's monitor got damaged. While the service guys took the monitor for repair, she sat free. When the manager asked her to connect to a spare monitor and resume work, she asked how could she? As all her work was saved in previous monitor.

Neighbor: Hey! You know how to make websites right?
I: ya! Look at some of my work.
Neighbor: Nice! Will you make one for this concert i am hosting?
I: ya sure! It'll cost 2500 INR.
Neighbor: ok. Will inform you.
------he never informs------
------2 week later--------
Neighbor: look at these posters I got made for the concert... Since you have an eye for good design, tell me how you like them?
I: they are pretty good. Wont you require the site?
Neighbor: No. It'll work without the site.

---------1 year later-------
Neighbor: hey. Will you make a site for me? Where i can showcase the photographs i take and people can comment and like them?
I: Ya sure. Will cost you 4000 INR.
Neighbor: ok. Will inform you.
--------He never informs---------
--------2 weeks later----------
Neighbor: hey i found out this site called wix where they make a site for free.
I: cool.
Neighbor: will you teach me how to use it?
I: 🤔😑😫😤

Wife: the neighbors brought their pc, it doesn't work.

Me: WTF did I say to you. I DON'T REPAIR ANYTHING NO PCS, PRINTERS, WASHMACHINES NOTHING TELL THEM TO GET THE FUCKING PC GODDAMIT ITS MY FREE DAY FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.

NO. NEVER HAPPENING. For the sake of all the fuckery in the world, I WON'T FUCKING WORK FOR FREE. Not as a learning experience, not for contacts, not for future contracts, not for a fucking blowjob from your wife and not even for a place in heaven. I will be bunkmates with the Devil before I build you your website for free. I feel like strangling a cat with my shoelaces and bashing your brains out with the carcass every damn time your balls swell big enough to ask me to build you a 5 minute website for your well-earning business, you cheap bastard. Take a shovel and dig yourself a hole to sleep in, you piece of biological waste.

I actually just wanted to say - what a great time it is to be a developer.

C# has stolen so many good features now that it's pretty awesome.
JavaScript and typescript are really fun to work with.
I really love angular.
Docker is great!

I can setup pipelines and deploy an angular app for free and really easily with github-pages.

I can use linux inside windows.

I can use cloud providers to do all sorts for really cheap.

I can plug my cable-free oculus quest VR headset into my laptop and build a game pretty easily with unity (thanks to all the great oculus helper prefabs).

I can use tesseract and data science technology inside my browser!!

And I can go to medium and udemy and learn all sorts of things.

Honestly...

Just saying.
I'm actually really loving being a developer right now.

And if I do have off day, I can rant on here!

I don't care if you're a friend, acquaintance, or we fucking knew each other in high school!

If I fucking agree to do some free work for you, feel fucking happy about it! Don't fucking ask for more work or demand work or give me fucking deadlines just because you know me!

I'm doing you a fucking favor! Do you want me to send you the fucking invoice? I don't care if you're on a budget, I agreed to help you out, but don't you dare fucking cross the line!

Dev: I’m taking a vacation next week

Manager: Good you need a break! I’ve put together a list of tickets for you to action during vacation since you’ll mostly be free during that time

Dev: Do you know what vacation means?

Manager: Well I work during *my* vacation

Dev: You write non-answers to emails and interrupt devs with status questions that are easily answered by a single glance at the kanban board. Also, you’ve just assigned a month’s worth of storyboard points to me on my week long vacation. We’d get more work done if you didn’t “work” during your vacation.

Manager: Well it all needs to get done! It’s the only way we can catch up and get ahead of schedule.

Dev: Why do you exist again?

*company introduces no overtime pay during coronavirus*

"I've hit my monthly hours so what we doing for the rest of the month?"

Boss: "basically, we thought you could work for free" 😂 😂

Client: why hasnt anything been done for the new site?
Me: because you never paid for the last one thats been put into production
Client: yeah but that was a smaller simple site. I need this one up and done already
Me: it'll be worked on when I get paid for my previously worked time for you.
Client: but that was a month ago. I don't understand why you are asking for payment now
Me: because you never paid me for last months work!!
Client: but its may now
Me: holy shit, -clients name-, I know very well what month it is and dont need a lesson. I also know better than to work for free. I have bills to pay just like you and everyone else so until you have paid the last invoice, I'm not lifting a finger for you. That includes answering your calls
Client: oh well why didnt you just say that to begin with

Motherfucking fuck people are horrid and dumb and make me violent

Coworker: "Hey I have the final logo for your software"

Me: "Awesome, only a few bugfixes after my holiday and we are good to go on production. 2 more hours to go until I am free for a week."

Coworker: "After your holiday? Boss said it goes on production tomorrow!"

Me: "You are kidding me, aren't you? There is no way I can do all the work today and push to production!"

Coworker: "Boss promised the client..."

How about boss can go an f himself? He knows I have some other project to finish today and that I am leaving. This is in our team cal for over a month now! Ahhh. My coworker now has to deal with it-.-

Agency: "Why don't you do more free work for us? When you do that we can give you better jobs for money?"

Me: "so if I do free work for you, I get to do paid work as a reward? ..you know that I am a freelancer, not your employee, don't you?"

*agencysulking*

I have what seems to be an unpopular opinion about buying software as a software developer.

First off, I support open source all the way. There should always be free and open tools for people to use if the need or want to.

Second, if you underpaid, broke, unemployed, or a student then this doesn’t apply to you. You keep pushing forward!

With that said, let’s get to the meat of it all...

I pay for good software. Even when it is expensive. Even when there are “workable” free or open source solutions.

I do this for a number of reasons...

1. They are better, hands down.
(Tower > GitKraken, SourceTree, GitHub Desktop) (Kalidascope > every other diff tool) (JetBrains IDEs > Atom, Brackets ...)

2. I’m no longer a broke student. I make enough money to buy them.

3. Most important: I’m a fucking professional software developer, not a fucking joker.
- If I was a carpenter then I could always hammer nails with the back of my work boot. It’s free and paid for and will do the job. Instead I would buy a good hammer because I’d be a professional and not a fucking joker complaining about the price of the tools to do my job.

4. I use a Mac, sometimes Linux and NEVER Windows. Which means I have a platform that actually has useful apps built for developers who are willing to pay for it.

5. I don’t get caught up in developer circle jerks about how all development software should be open source and free.

————

So there you go.

Does this offend you?

Good!

Come at me bro

Germany

It's:
"oh cool. you must have good job perspectives."

Or:
"you just use a computer. that's not real work. do a job where you use your muscles. lazy student."

And the best:
"Can you gift me with computer parts for free" or "can you copy program XY for me? It cost to much."

Getting paid for my work.

Just because I'm a student, people assume I'll do everything for free and "exposure", while they make money off of my code

3 years, part time, $0.

I used to volunteer my time to an old text based rpg, handling code changes, sysadmin maintenance and the likes - back when those were a thing in the mid 2000's and money wasn't my issue in life - free for them, experience for me - win win!

Was something to get my hands dirty back in the day and contribute to an active community, but since then that place has shut down and been disbanded.

Client (not for the first time): Your work sucks. I had to have this email formatting re-done before I sent it out.

Me: *sees that the email sent matches the work I did exactly with no changes*

Client (months later): I need you to do maintenance on my website.

Me: *does quick maintenance for free but sends update on status of work done and amount left in retainer agreement*

Client: You're too expensive! You started working with me for $X/hr, then you went up to $Y/hr and now you're all the way up to $Z/hr! You're not worth that!

Me: *fires client by refunding the remainder of retainer and sends client a list of local, cheaper providers*

Client: But now I don't have anyone to maintain my website until I find a new provider! Why have you done this to me? Waaaahhhhh!

Me (in the most professional language I can muster): Because you're a biotch and I'm tired of your verbal abuse. Maybe try not to be such a dbag to that next provider, mmm'kay?

8 rules of freelancing which newbie should know:

Rule 1: never pick up a half done website.

Rule 2: never take a job where they want to "do things themselves". And don't work with fixed prices if you calculate your price on a best case scenario.

Rule 3: don't do content management

Rule 4: don't promise a sales target on their website.

Rule 5: start sending invoices every money and not just at the end of the project.

Rule 6: Put every website on your own webserver and don't release it untill it's paid.

Rule 7: Don't work for free.

Rule 8: Don't work for free.

Credit: Jhon Dear

These fuckface wantrapeneurs, posting jobs (paying to do so) and then offering bullshit like:
- We have no funding, so you'll work for free for some time.
- Paying in fucking crypto.
- Wanting a full stack rainbow puking and shitting unicorn for peanuts
- Fucking scammers, posing as legit companies and asking you to install Anydesk.
- Asking absurd interview tasks and times (a couple of days worth of work for a task).
- Whiteboard and live coding interviews with bullshit questions thinking they're Google, while having 20 devs.
- Negotiating salaries and when presented with contract get the salary reduced by double the amount.
- Having idiotic shit on their company websites like a fucking dog as a team member associated as happiness asshole. (One idiot even had a labrador during the video interview while cuddling him)
- Companies asking you to install tracking software with cam recording to keep you in check. (Yeah, you can go fuck yourselves)
- Having absurd compensation schemes, like pay calculation based on the "impact" your work has

Either I'm unlucky or job hunting has become something else since I last started searching.

After almost 3 years of hard work here’s my Bedroom setup. I produce music as a hobby in addition to dev’ing and 3d graphics(blender/VR/opengl) stuff. Sorry for the unmade bed 😅. Build my first custom pc last October

- I7 7700K
- Asus OC 1080ti
- 32 GB DDR4
- 2 512GB Samsung 960 pro (one for each os)

Feel free to ask about anything else

In an alternate universe, devs live in their own country.

They make their own rules and dictate how much they are paid. They maintain the entire world’s infrastructure.

They don’t go to work, since their entire country is the workplace and guess what? Cold beers are free(a thank you from the beer company guys for coming up with all their inventory management systems)

Pizza is free too.

There is no government (laws are passed depending on upvotes on devRant )

No racism, sexism or any other ism ending words . Devs just code.

Oh, and the state police, preferably known as keyboard warriors patrol the streets and offenders are punished by limited internet speeds. 😂. It is said some actually commit suicide because of this unbearable punishment.

Fuck yeah they have coffee farms. That’s the only thing they don’t accept as *gratitude from other nations because those sons of bitches might fuck that up too.

And everyone drives teslas 😂

Okay I have to get back to work now. That multi universe travel machine won’t buy itself.

Me: Can I have PhpStorm please.
Company: Is it free?
Me: No, but it's the best php IDE out there. It's a huge productivity boost and also helps avoiding bugs while refactoring.
Company: Nope. Use Zend Studio 9.
Me: Why?
Company: We paid money for it like two years ago.
Me: <contemplating life and my decision to ever work there>

To whomever it may concern: Zend Studio is the commercial brother of Eclipse PDT, which also is one of the most shittiest idea out there. Almost as bad as Netbeans for php.

You have all the problems you had with eclipse, and none of the features of phpstorm. Zend Studio does not help you to get work done. It is a constant hindrance, everything you achieve you achieve despite its usage.

"Don't be too cooped up with work. Your work will always be there, unending. But your free time with family, friends or just for yourself - that's limited."

The people I work with are so fucking antisocial. Everyone waits until the kitchen is empty before going to get a coffee. Also, the dev next to me seems to think breathing heavily is a great idea. Fuck these people.

Oh...the kitchen is free! Time for coffee!

Life of a junior self-taught dev with a sysadmin job:

1)At work, desperately try to script and automate every task, even when it isn't nessecary.

2)Learn dev skills from tutorials and web courses at every minute of your free time.

3)When returning home get self-guilt because you're procrastinating instead of doing an all-night development like your dev friends

4)The only productive thing you do is more tutorials and courses because you feel your dev skills aren't high enough for a self project

Frustrated.

#TheCoronaEffect

Before Corona: (Work From Office)

Boss: Let's have a call.
Me: Sure, allow me some time I am assisting the team on a new feature in the app.
Boss: Ok, ping me as you get free.

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

Now: (Work From Home)

Boss: ***Calls for the 15th time in a day...***
Me: (With Bleeding Ears) Yes sir, am here...!
(Having to pick up every single time as he knows you've got nowhere to go 'coz the whole city is in LockDown)
Boss: ***Talks for another 1 hour with screen share***

My Boss is a bigger threat to my health than Corona now!!!

#GoCoronaGo

Fuck everyone who expects interns to work for free and Fuck you if you think that an unpaid intern is lazy.

Don't work for free

Some motherfucker at the gym called me. “Hey @growling, I am here with that gym you signed up with 5 months ago and your card for membership renewal isn’t working.”

“It’s 8:00am”

“Yes sir. It’s 8am.”

“Don’t you think it’s a bit too early?”

“Did you get a new card?”

“Hey call me at lunch or something, I’m going back to sleep.”

“Okay, or you can call me. Goodbye”
Acting like you got better shit to do with your time.

Like he wanted to lecture me and say waking me up at 8am is fine. Like he wanted to say he came from a hardworking family and so he can say waking me up at 8am is fine. Shiiit dude my mom used to work with two broken hips for 7 days a week until I made six figures. Bless her heart, that’s why I got her a new car and money each month to pay all her bills. She’s been out of work for 2-3 years now. So lecture me. Only my mom can lecture me, boy. Cause she raised me to be an engineer.

Also, why do I see this everywhere as well? I get lectured for drinking beer on a Sunday or Monday during lunch at my frequent visits to liquor store.

“Don’t you have work?”
Yes, 9-5. But I’m an engineer. So it can be 10-6 or 11-7. Doesn’t matter. All of the stuff I do follows sprints and not direct interaction with customers!

I get tasks done and I teach interns to help me get tasks done. In time. And sometimes even more.

I know my schedule is so lax you want to criticize me. Maybe you think I don’t work? Or work as hard as you?

Tl;dr I intentionally act like a spoiled baby when it comes to work so that service/retail/manual labor people lecture me so I can tell them that we work differently than what they’re used to.

I have free snacks. Don’t get me started about gloating about free beef jerky. People hate me on online forums for doing that! Drink beer on tap in work kitchen. A glass of wine anytime I want. Sleep in until sometimes 11am. But that’s why I’m an engineer, buddy.

Salesperson makes commission on sales, CTO gets bonus for going to out of office meetings, designer gets bonus for every design finished. What does the web developer get?

Answer: "we can't afford to give out bonuses just for doing your job."

There are 10 websites to build in the next 6 months, 3 brand new offices in different states that need it equipment ordered and installed by me, and the other 160 clients who all think their edits are most important.

And to top it all off, every time I give an estimate for the work, boss says "just give it to them." Gee, maybe you could afford to pay me a living wage or incentivize me to keep working 6+ hours a night at home if you stopped giving away everything I build for free.

You lower the value of my work and every other web developer out there when you tell clients that the website I built them isn't worth paying for. If every one of the free sites on my list was just charged the minimum $10k, I'm looking at $200k on this board that could have been used to hire me some help or increase my pay to make me feel appreciated.

I love my job and the people I work with, but when you aren't making enough to pay the bills and you work 70+ hours a week something has to change.

Call me old-fashioned, but... I kinda liked it back in the day, when Microsoft made proprietary software, the Community made free software and everyone's "cui bono" was quite easy to answer - even those corporations involved in FLOSS did have a clear way to finance themselves.

Now, we have Microsoft coming into open source, seemingly making projects better and offering more and more "free" stuff.

You know.

"Free" Windows 10.
"Free" SaaS Office.
"Free" "Private" Repos on Github.

In general - what happened to clear and concise "I give you money, you give me stuff" capitalism like we had it in the 2000s?

I'd rather pay 20 bucks for a game on Steam than get it "free" and with ads or microtransactions - yet, many games, especially mobile, don't even offer me that option. It wouldn't be that hard now, would it?

The same goes for software. That Canonical would need to fuck their users over after Ubuntu One went to shit was obvious - they didn't offer the kind of commercial/enterprise OS'es that Redhat or SuSE sell.

What people seem to forget is that everyone needs to make a profit somehow. You don't get "free" stuff. Even the volunteers in the Open Source Community get something out of it - an opportunity to pad their CV at least, if nothing else.

Nowadays, software manufacturers have the same legitimacy as the "free" financial "advisors" you find at banks - and who could be dumb enough to trust them? Oh yeah: Almost the entire fucking society is who.

But then again, sell something and noone will want it - because they all want it for free, with annoying, privacy-invading ads or with equally annoying microtransactions, or financing based on commission - so you don't only pay ONCE, you pay until you realize you got fucked over and quit.

Capitalism used to work until all those idiots stepped in. How the fuck don't people realize that there's no free lunch in life? When have we stopped being functional people and turned into idiots.

Even worse: Those idiots think that they're entitled to something! They, who volunteered to become merchandise instead of customers, think that they have rights! Do cattle have rights? Nope. They get their "free" hay everyday and I get to buy beef, that's how it works. Moo!

Hell, they are surprised when they get fucked over by bank salespeople or their data stolen by corporations, intelligence agencies or something... What did they expect, goodwill?

Can we please make Adam Smith mandatory reading in school?! I mean, give people a chance to understand capitalism? The nonexistent "goodwill" of traders in general?

*Got a request for installing and configuring an online shop for a client*

Me: Do you have a web space already?
Client: No, I don't want to pay for it. (FYI: They only cost about 20€ a year)
Me: Okay, but free hosters are often slow and unprofessional. I really do not recommend using free hosting services.
Client: Doesn't matter, do it.
Me: *Working on the shop for several weeks, finally goes online*
One week later, client contacts me saying shop is offline. I realize the free hoster he used shut down their services (bankruptcy), resulting in the loss of about 90% of the work that I had done (no proper backups due to complexity)
Client: How can that even happen? You'll redo the shop, right?

♪~ ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ

Interviewer: we need you to work overtime.
Dev: ok.
I: but we dont pay overtime work.
D:(so you want me to work for free?)
D:OK.

Free breakfast before work starts
Overtime if working on weekend
Decent coffee
Quick meetings
New and fun challenges for every new project

Work: there is little work for our freelancer we're getting rid of him at the end of the year
Me: are you sure, that will put a lot of work on my schedule.
Work: I'm sure you can handle it
*two weeks later*
Work: have you finished feature xyz yet
Me: nope had a server crash today so pushed it back
Work: why didn't you get "free lancers name here" to do it for you
Me: I could of if you didn't fire him, he could of also done the other features you want too
Work: ah ok

!dev

Why are people such idiots?
This guy is so oblivious he reminds me of a client or PM.

Here’s the email conversation (since he refuses to answer his cell):

Me: Hey; I haven’t been able to reach you for several days. You must be busy! Let me know what time works best for you, and I’ll call you then. Alternatively, you can reach me at <number> any day this week (except Wednesday) from 11am PST (2pm EST) onward.

Him: I will call you at 2:30pm your time on Wednesday.

Me: As I stated in my email, Wednesday is the only day that doesn’t work for me.

Him: Are you free on Thursday?

Me (to audience): YOU FOOLISH, ILLITERATE TOAD!

Me: I am free Thursday (and Friday) from 11am PST and onward.

Story of me trying to connect to a colleague from neighbouring team with 12 hour difference timezone:

Me: Hey! Shall we catch up to discuss a feature that will help us dominate the world?

She: Sure.. what time works for you?

Me: Since we have timezone challenge, I'd say boundary times would be good so none of us have to stretch.

She: umm.. good..

Me: How about 07:30 PM your time?

She: oh sweetie.. evenings don't work for me.. I want my evenings free..

Me: fine.. how about 07:00 AM your time?

She: no darling.. I am not a morning person..

Me: GO FUCK YOURSELF BITCH. I CAN'T COMPLY WITH EVERY TANTRUM OF YOURS.

And with that.. I didn't respond to her invites which were either super early for me or super late. Let her keep waiting..

Juniors with ego are shittiest folks to work with.

Client: "The app moves slowly and has moments when it freezes! Why?"
Me: "Let me check the server...it has 5 GB of memory allocated for it and you are making it load 4.76 GB and never cleaned the log files..."
Client: "Then it should work fine! Almost 500 mb free, it`s a lot! Let the log files be there, we might need them in 5 years!"
Me: "What?..."

Really unfortunate that we all just accept people being assholes because they're good at their job. I guess it's just the way the world is but personally I don't think you get a free pass to be rude just because you're a key player.

Life is short and whatever bullshit project for whatever dumbass company you work for is ultimately not that important in the grand scheme of things. Don't let your hyperinflated ego misguide you. Be nice to people.

I like being self taught because I can work at my own pace and try different languages to see what interests me most. But so many of these tutorials are just shit. Or the content is good and the instructor is shit. I may need to just suck it up and go to Uni, but I am 19 and enjoy my time working and my free time. I think it's time for me to grow up soon though.

I rewrote my resume. It is getting shorter and shorter. Scary.

But I was thinking, that during interviews, I never get to ask the important questions. Like, I do need to ask a few things that are important for me. Those that are not written in their websites, and they will do their best to hide.

So I came up with a list of questions:

1. Do you pay for overtime work? what is the basis of pay? hours or work-module? how realistic are the work-modules?
2. Have you ever had issues with employees from minority groups?
3. How do you address employee's professional concerns? for example, about technological debt.
4. what's the policy for meeting and daily interruptions during brain-work? Are people ever forced to participate in meetings that could be summed up in emails? what's the company policy for initiating a meeting?
5. Who designs the software? Are the requirements always non-negotiable? do the direct developers have a say in design matters?
6. How close are job requirements (as advertised) to actual tasks I need to perform?
7. What's the company policy for motivating the employees?
8. How does the company deal with mental health issues? is it acceptable for people to take leaves due to mental health issues? Has anyone ever done it?
9. How does the company deal with individual needs for working methods and space? Specifically, how does that apply to meetings? Do you have company-wide meetings? How often are they? What's the impact on productivity? Can employees not participate? Do they have to have an excuse to not participate?
10. Do developers get to develop their skills during worktime often? Or is it a "do it in your own free time" kind of thing? Are there any resources available to those who want to develop their skills further? Is it included in the career planning and employee performance review?
11. Assume I work for your company for a year. What are the benefits I can potentially gain in a year from working here, aside from adding a line of work experience to my resume?
12. Does the company provide any form of free feminine hygiene products in the bathroom?

Any questions I should add?

I recently received a 1 star review in the App Store. I have answered him twice to ask about which issues he had and what features were missing to him.
He responded really aggressively by posting this:
I purchased this app for my Sonos and found it very simple for an app I had to pay for. I gave it a 1 star and wrote why. Since then the designer has contacted me twice complaining about my review. Sorry, but I am entitled to my opinion and I want you to stop harrassing me because I think your app is basic and doesn't always work right.

DO NOT WRITE ME AGAIN. Suck it up and let me have my own opinion for what I paid for. If you don't like it, make the app free in exchange for 5 ego stars.

Linkedin in my home country is a clown fiesta. I swear to god if I see just one more post about "unpaid internships" I'mma shoot the whole block I don't care anymore.

IF I WANTED TO WORK FOR FREE I'D BE DOING CHARITY FOR THOSE WHO NEED, NOT UNPAID WORK FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NO NEED

CTO 3 months ago:
- You will get a raise after 9 months of work according to your KPI (98%) and bonus (size of one month pay check)
HR today:
- NO

FUCKITY FUCK, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I WORKED HARD AT NIGHTS AND SACRIFICED MY FREE UNPAID TIME FOR NOTHING, THANKS

Inappropriate experience at work: One of our project managers got arrested one day for fraud. Apparently an employee had been in the middle of an online purchase and walked away from their desk. He happened to see the unmasked entry of the CC info (this was before websites cared about masking sensitive form inputs). I guess the temptation was too great…and he was too stupid to realize he’d get caught…and he jotted it all down. He made thousands of dollars in purchases which, naturally, eventually led back to him.

The same guy, before he got arrested, had made a joke when someone in an office team email said “Feel free to have some cake in the break room.” He replied “No need to do anything to me for the cake.” His first name was “Free”.

"No We Will Not Code for Free"
(Parody of the "Cheers" theme)

We're underpaid, clients' scope today takes everything we got.
You turn to us with all your troubles cause "companies charge a lot."
You want our work but you won't pay.

No we will not code for free.
You are not exempt from our fee.
If you want a free site, build it yourself. We're not your coding slaves.
We won't build your crap no matter how much you plea.

"Paying us back" don't mean a thing, money talks, bullshit walks.
If you want a cheap site then go to Geocities.

So new PM is forcing everyone to use Google sheets as our main project management tool as it's free and does what she likes... Was so close to just quitting.

More rage: how the fudge does she think it's acceptable for every 'to-do' no matter how big or small needs to be recorded in a sheet with roughly 30 columns @#&#&£ work is going to grind to a halt whilst we fill it in. So many better tools to use! Oh it gets worse it's 1 sheet per a person so the longer you work there the bigger the sheet gets the more time you need to spend to find, record and even open the freaking document up.

I get a call where someone wants to start a startup, says since it's his idea he gets 50% and he will wait for me to finish the whole thing on my own expecting me to work for free 🙂

Nothing like waking up to a text from a good friend, "do you know how to make phone apps?"

He wanted to hire me as CTO but insisted of defining architecture himself even though he admitted he has no tech background. He insisted that his CRM doesn’t even need backend because “we have database”. He was dysgraphc but completely ignored accessibility, including measures for dyslexic people. He called his product “startup” but denied that startups need to constantly validate ideas and denied the conception of a/b testing, offering no alternative.

He also wanted me to work for free.

Bruh you’re not a clown, you’re an entire circus.

I hate doing estimates, but I had to adapt. Since I work remotely and under contract, I'm used to track my time and estimate by hours.

I did a lot of mistakes before, which means I worked for free to wrap up fixed price projects.

Today, the method that is working best for me is:
1) positive estimate
2) most likely estimate
3) worst case estimate
Sum up and divide by 3.
I do this for every task.
Also, for Web projects, I like to divide tasks in categories like: HTML / CSS, UX, programming, testing.

Just arrived at the vacation home, turns out the "free" wifi is dead as hell, because quote; "a tree fell on a wire"

Which first of all that is fucking bs because they have internet at the reception still so that shouldn't work either right? But okay we now live without internet for the coming 3 days we are relying on our data plan....

Mmm, yess. I'd like to work for free...

Ok fellow ranters. I've scoured the internet for hilarious and enraging stories of programmers being asked to either work for free, or for stock options, or to hack (crack) stuff, etc.

Here's my latest one. A friend who's obsessed with crypto came up with a "great" idea which was for me (of course) to build a landing page for a fake company to trick people into submitting their crypto wallet keys and all that. What started as a joke quickly turned into my friend getting mad at me for not wanting to actually make it lol. Like seriously wtf is with people. All the reasons not to do that scheme are plainly obvious!

Next. Some person who worked for a company I consult with pulled the generic. "I have this great app idea" line & proceeded to of course ask me to "not steal it" lol. It was just an app that would list gluten free restaurants... That's hardly even an idea!!

But what's fucked up about all this is my friend from the first story is so obsessed with becoming a "crypto millionaire" he actually resents me now for not
1. being obsessed with crypto
2. not committing cybercrime on his behalf

Anybody else have enraging stories about stuff people have asked you to do?

Zoom’s CEO says he won’t encrypt free calls so Zoom can work more with law enforcement:

“Free users for sure we don’t want to give that because we also want to work together with FBI, with local law enforcement in case some people use Zoom for a bad purpose,” Yuan said.

In my country, almost every college student is expected to finish their degree and apply for an internship, with some universities forcing them to do it and making it a requirement to finish their studies.

Now, this wouldn't be so bad if almost every internship employer in the country didn't expect you to work for free. Seriously, I can estimate 80% of the internships pay you NOTHING. WTF.

Fortunately this is not the case for CS, but every time I tell somebody I recently started an internship, they will ask me: "Oh, but they don't pay you anything, do they?". Of course they pay me! I wouldn't be going to an office every day for 4 hours to do someone else's work if they didn't!!

Why the fuck is it even legal to employ somebody and not pay them a cent, just because "it will look good on your resume"?? And why do people still accept this shit??

Is is like that on other countries as well?

(Disclaimer: This rant is satire and only here to feed an algorithm by @PrivateGER)

This FUCKING fuck company where I had my fucking shit internship - just fucking asked me to freaking work for another project and fucking baiting me with a shitty damn payment for my little shit project I had (and still fucking work on today) while I had this damn internship. This idiot wants me to fucking waste my free time besides FUCKING SCHOOL (doing my absolute nonsense uselessfuck Abitur) and my lovely PASSIONATE GAME PROJECT with shit damn HTML-ing and CSS-ing and good damn JS-ing - for a SHITHEAD-200€ JOB. This bastard wants me to register my ass as a "Kleingewerbe" (dunno english therm but it's a small similar for to being freelancer) probably to enslave me or USE me as a cheapass worker. I'll call this dude today and politely tell him to FUCK OFF!!

(Nothing against the company, they're freaking cool! The dude too)

I started doing this internship(my first internship; unpaid). I worked my ass off for the guy. He didn't have shit for a developer and I worked the best to my knowledge. Did all the work given to me during the internship.
After the internship was done, the guy expected me to work even after that because he felt that I owed him something for giving me the internship and I should feel obliged to work more for free. I asked for money. Nope.
Final Talk with him: He says I am a disrespectful fellow who will never succeed in industry.

This is fucking crazy right. He is the son of a bitch not me? Correct? Was I supposed to work after internship if the work wasn't done even if I didn't want to.

When I was 11 or 12 and I found a magazine for kids that for some reason had an HTML tutorial to build a personal site with Microsoft Frontpage. I think it was 2006 back then and for a few weeks I learnt a lot about HTML, managed to create my site and upload it to a free host. I was fascinated. That was my first close up, at least, to something related to programming. From that day, I knew I was going to work with computers. Now I'm a Java dev but I'm still seeking the language for me. Maybe Javascript.

I can't tell what bothers me the most about this ad... The font size in the IDE, the random mix of unrelated computer equipment, the amazing opportunity to "work for free", or the mirrored displays

True story
Was free at work so applied for a stretch project.
PM: you know mobile dev?
Me: yes, built a few apps
PM: good, we have an old app we want you to take the JAR change everything but the look of it and make it a new hybrid app with the required features.
Me: *kill me please*
PM: and use WordPress as the server.
Me: ...........

Accepted the challenge. Did the entire app in ionic and build a server for it with SpringBoot. Client loves it PM is still doesn't know😂

I'm on my first free lance project, and devRant asks me for my horror story. -_-
Well, I undersold myself and gave such a stupid time estimation. Fortunately, the client was smarter, and he wants just half the work in same time period and will still gave me the same amount xD

Haha really clients make me laugh!

Yes you can have your website with all the bells and whistles, but sorry it costs money.

Do these people think we live on fresh air, while the reep the rewards for all the hard work we have done for them.

The problem today is everyone wants everything for nothing. 🤔

It's clear that you will get unlimited NoDoz supply for free if you work for them as developer

And now they are threatening us... Brilliant!

- they refuse to sign a legal agreement with us [for our services]
- they only gave us a verbal promise they will pay for our services
- they revoke lots of our accesses
- another company is taking over their product we were hired to look after before. Now they demand us do things for them for free
- a few integrations are malfunctioning with premature EOF [while reading a response]. I had escalated this with the most throughout case analysis I have done in my entire life. Three times over the last 2 years. Explaining every single detail that needs to be done, how, by whom and how to interpret the results. Escalations went to their high level mgmt. And directly had been rerouted to /dev/null...
- now they asked us to fix this whole shit. For free ofc, they have no money to pay us..
- they begged
- when that didn't work - they started threatening to route all their customers' complaints to us and flood us with them

at first I was proud to work on their project. I didn't want to leave it when my manager asked me to. A national level project, making a difference for my own country. But now.....

that's gov, my friends. That's politics and power games.

If you are working on multiple projects a great tool to make you very productive and keep organized is a simple checklist.

For many years I have jotted one down each and every morning listing what I want to accomplish that day. I even include simple items. Crossing each task out as I complete it gives me a sense of accomplishment.

Checklists have enabled me to complete projects at work and many free and commercial side projects including software and technical books.

Do you use checklists? If there is a particular type you like?

Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb couldn't get their shit together for 3 months, but their bit is in order now. Will you work the weekend for free to make up the the schedule?

I need ideas.
What's the best use for several old, moderately crap laptops (<= 4GB RAM) I have lying around? I'm using one as a minecraft server because 3GB ram is enough and the Pi isn't, but past that, I'm pretty stuck. They all work, mostly, have CD drives and mostly free hard drives.

I have a really huge admiration for people who works for the free software, those who made very good tools for almost everything. The Debian community, the FSF.

I'm also admirative in front of those who used computering as a science and made big discoveries in AI, compressing methods, pentesting...

I'm wondering how it is to work in these two worlds?

Another day, another job description

# Benefits
- Flexible work hours
: You'll be coding to midnight
- Ability to work from home some days
: But watch out for those other days..
- Our office space provides free coffee, beer and soft drinks as well as an amazing modern workspace
: Our tax expense will get you gee'd up and tipsy til you loose track of time. (Future diabetes health insurance not included).
- Growth and future progression opportunity
: Pinky promise!
- Receive valuable company equity
: Plus a set of steak knives for four easy payments
- Latest MacBook Pro
: We own this. We own the thoughts you have while looking at this. Plese think many thoughts.

Dear Microsoft,

you're fucking awesome , can't believe I'm saying this but I couldn't work without Visual Studio anymore.

The last year I had projects on all platforms out there and I've used dotnet for all of them.

Mr Nadella is the best thing that happened to you ever.

Visual Studio is free and like the rest of the tools it's only a matter of Time till you open source Vs.

Thank you !
Proud to be a corporate fanboy.

Had meeting with higher ups.

Higher ups sad work hasn't progressed as much as they want.

I look at my calendar.

Barely 15 mins free for the day for a small washroom break

OK, I love Linux. But I hate the whole "sacrifice-functionality-so-it-can-be-completely-free-and-open-source" thing.

I tried to install Linux a while back on my old laptop, and getting Wi-Fi to work was a nightmare. Apparently they didn't have the right driver for my Wi-Fi card, because it wasn't "free" enough for them. ugh. Most people prefer for their computer to WORK than for every single piece of code to be open source. Who modifies their Wi-Fi driver and redistributes it?

Ugh. Linux is cool, but not this part.

For the most part, I'm generally free to work at my pace. No one breathing down my neck. It could be a double-edged sword, but it's an overall benefit.

What the fuck is up with interviewing these days. Now I have to invent a video game and work for free for ten hours just to find out I have no idea what the fuck video programming has to do with frontend. You kids need to figure this shit out. It’s really fucking annnoying.

Why do I program everything myself in C, even a rest service? By writing everything yourself in C you make simple things complex to make complex things simple.

Writing a rest service for example learns you a part of http protocol, how sockets work, how to create a parser (in this case json). Three thing's you would miss if I used python.

On top, your rest service uses WAY lesser resource than written in python for example. Especially for CPU usage.

Allocating and free-ing still often have issues there, but I consider it a skill problem / discipline issue. Not blaming C for that. The rules are clear.

You know, I agree with the opinion that everyone uses the tools they know can get the job done.
However, sometimes I just wish people wouldn't just pick the first tool for the job that comes up in Google's search results. People should look at more tools and then decide which tool is going to suit their use case best.
I can't for the life of me figure out why some people prefer using ad-ridden tools over ad-free, even open-source ones that work better in every way. The best example for this is people using μTorrent or BitTorrent® for the BitTorrent protocol instead of Deluge, Transmission, qBittorrent, and some others. They just typed in "how2download torrent for free uwu" and downloaded the objectively worst tool.

Pick your tools wisely, not by letting some search algorithm recommend you the worst one.

Feels good to brought dead laptop to life.

Got dead laptop(person who gave it to me for free, said it doesn't turn on, and he got new one and this one is just for recycling), which got some liquid. Changed palmrest, keyboard, changed cable which is connecting to io board with power button, changed thermal paste and it working like a charm. Maybe in the future I will change screen. Screen has some pink spots, but it's only visible on dar theme. Added 16 GB ram, 512 gb ssd. Now I am using it as work computer. Dell Latitude E7450

PM: are you free next week for an hour to catch up?
Me: sure no problem
PM: Does tomorrow 15:00 work?

Me: hmm 🤔 is today thursday or is it sunday already?

It wasn't me in the interview and it wasn't really an interview at all but here we go. I worked for a pretty shit company this past summer as a paid internship and while I was there they fired a Dev because he complained about how he didn't get a BMW i8 and they had to hire new help. So instead of doing a regular interview what they did was call people in and just have them work. Like no joke from 7-4pm they just did the job the didn't get yet. They also expected them to know how to work in there system. It was a WordPress development company and they had custom plugins and themes that they just expected people to know.

Also they said they would pay them for their work but I don't think they did, there were maybe 8 different people over a week who probably just worked for free.

Once upon a time, an IT major named adamyeti thought it was a good idea to work on projects directly off of a flash drive with no backup. Halfway through a large ASP.NET project, the drive failed. I fumbled through a free drive recovery tool, but all of the data was scrambled and corrupted.

I ended up having to start from scratch on the project, but I learned my lesson for sure.

Start-up I'm working for as a front-end dev is pretty nice. I have good hardware, free coffee and my coworkers are all decent people. My boss is chill, and I have flexible work hours.

There is this one policy for writing code, however. And I simply cannot understand it, nor can I ignore it because of code reviews: no comments in production code.

I mean, what? Why? Comments are nice, and they make life easier for the future maintainers. At least let me put a small two-liner explaining why I did stuff this or that way. But no, I only get to explain it verbally (once) to the person reviewing my PR. Why, man?

This happened yesterday during 1-2-1 meeting

My dear teamleader telling me.

"You're just a stupid consultant"

Well, this 'stupid consultant' has had enough of your bullshit and will look for future endeavors elsewhere.

You are free to consider your options and make the bad decisions, dear team 'leader'.

Cry at the sheer amount of work 'your' project really entails and I will revel in your failure

I'm done with this guy.

Team leaders should be ousted if they fail their team members and the projects they are responsible for.

You really start to question your choices in life when you can't get hired or get paid freelance work, so you apply to help (for free) on Catchafire... and get rejected.

!rant

Super awesome day today.

1. Got up early to do a risky production deploy and it worked!
2. Three PRs approved before lunch.
3. Got some time to continue learning scala.
4. Coffee and cupcakes with some refugees and discussed work as a software engineer.
5. Tried virtual reality for the first time. Really fun.
6. Helped prepare our goals for this quarter and present them to the department.
7. Department meeting had free local craft beer and pretzels.
8. Went bouldering after work and flashed a 6c.
9. Curled up with my wife watching Netflix.

I really love my life sometimes.

Me: You provided the wrong credentials for AWS. That’s why it won’t work. Please provide updated ones using document I emailed you last month.

Client: I forgot how to do that. Will you be free tonight after 9pm?

Me:.....

Yes. This really just happened. No. I am not doing it unless they pay hourly.

Just quit being in a team for an app i was working on on the side. I liked the app but i decided working 10 to 6 is enough work for a day, i deserve guilt free chilling in my free time.

Beware of scope creep. If it's a bug, fix it for free. If it's a new feature or changed from the original signed off scope, charge for it.

Just a little poll for you guys :)

Do you comment your code during the development or when it's done?

Do you keep track of the documentation during the development or after?

Do you use Git only for source control or also to work from multiple places and keep the code up to date?

Do you sh*tcode on purpose (or don't make any effort to clean it) when it's not for yourself, or not for something you value much?

If you have any other strange habit, feel free to mention it :)

Yesterday hr called me for a meeting 1 on 1 that lasted for over 1 hour.

Me: i work on my side project when i get home every day

Hr: ohhh.. so you do have time to work on another project aside from ours?

Me: what? I said i work at my project after work when i come hom-

Hr: so you have that much free tim ok how about this. Would you like to work on another project for our clients? So you'd be working on 2 projects-

Me: ...

Hr: one day you work on this primary project the next day you work on the secondary project

---

Corporate people really think giving me MORE work with NO increase of payment is a REWARD???? Go FUCKV yourselves

TL:DR; DON'T GET INTEL+NVIDIA LAPTOP FOR LINUX.

In the same vain as Linus Torvalds: "Fuck Nvidia, and Intel".

Trying to get intel+nvidia laptop prime w/e working is a living hell.

I'm running Manjaro(arch for lazy people) with I3-gaps(larbs).

So Manjaro provides this handy script/program mhwd that supposedly would enable the non free blob Nvidia driver except it doesn't work cause it uses bumblebee and it's saying it can't find the clearly installed fucking Nvidia driver.

Bashing my head against a wall is more fucking productive then getting my cum stain of laptop to work properly.

"Just disable the intel graphics in bios"
I would except my old shitty Acer bios piece of fucking crap can't even after booting Windows for usb hdd and flashing BIOS.

GUESS WHAT LINUX COMMUNITY THAT'S WHY NOBODY WANTS TO FREAKING USE LINUX FOR GAMING.

I fucking love Linux but I gave up gaming for it.

I'll start joining red team from now on instead of trying to use your broken shit.

Recently I receive a ton of mails from cool/hip/rockstar startups. They all run like this:

"We are a innovative Startup based on a [insert some random stuff or buzzword] blockchain! If you're a student with skills and experience in blockchain, machine learning and AI willing to change the world with our sick technology and make it a better place..."

The best thing about this: since they are a innovative Startup they expect you to work for free.

But who am I to judge something so brand-new and innovative. I contacted them to find out what these dank innovations are about.

They can't even explain what a blockchain is or the basics of ML and AI, they basically just want someone do it for free...

It's still ok since no one is gonna fall for this bait... this morning a friend of mine told me he got a new job... and he even can work from home...

I'm not even mad, I just feel sadness and sorrow specially for him, because he is a good dev and accepts big times underpay and now free work, because he thinks a day off in his CV will lead him to be unemployed 😭

Fucking hate it how people successfuly manipulate kids and youth to them to work 24/7 for minimum wage or even for free and some other douchebags trying to take advantage of this 😡

Work from home

Expectation:
- Free time from commute, more time for gaming

Reality:
- Free time from commute, more time for dev works

p.s. I'm more tired these days

All this talk about "mansplaining" is actually quite useful when you get boring, non-developer related please-work-for-free questions,
- Can you tell me how to get this printer working?
- Sorry, but no. That would be mansplaining.

Companies that expect interns to work for free since they are learning at the job. sincerely fuck off!

When applying for your first ever job, which of the following is/are/can be acceptable?
- Bad company culture
- Slavery pay
- Bad location
- No benefits (health care, etc.)
- No coffee/free snacks
- Long working hours/Lot of overtime work
- (Other)

🙄😐

Working 18 hours per day was tough, at the beginning coffee helped a lot. However I started loosing friends and the little free time I had, I spent it drinking, lonely in anonymous pubs, trying to socialise.
Workload increased and stress started to affect me, so I began smoking weed to relax.
To recover and work with renewed energy coffee was not enough anymore, I started with pills, amphetamines, coke, crack. After the biggest deployments I would disappear for days in an opium den.

Work, it's a gateway drug.

a former client and their client keep contacting me about the project i did for them, we couldn't agree on a new contract but they keep asking me things about the site but, if they had signed would be billable.

Sorry i dont work for free.

I'm a coder student that make some small projects for customer in the free time.
The actual one hired me for a small program in c++ but he needed it finished in max a week.
I wrote all the logic in 4 day and then I asked for the final design UI to finish it but after 10 days i'm still waiting for an answer to my mails...
Yesterday i wrote him on WhatsApp...
He blue-checked my mex...
In the next days I will hunt him at work to get some explaination...

Wow... I haven't done complex/algorithmic level coding for maybe 6 months (yes that's how mindless my day job usually is)...

Now I just finished part of the code for a scheduling app I'm doing just for fun... Though there is also a use case at work but I don't have the free time to think about problems at this level...

I work 3 PM to 1 AM as a daily office job. Then go home and try to learn programming. Wake up next day at 8:30 AM for kind of another work until 1PM. Doesn't pay as much but I have to try. Then if I get free time do some freelance on UPWORK with whatever little graphic designing I know to help pay the bills.

And the fact that even my laptop is dying is a huge blow. Don't know when it might give up. Has 1st gen core i5 dual core, takes ages to load Adobe softwares. I have wanted to hulksmash this shit, but can't.

If I'm lucky, I get a stress free 6 hours of sleep a few days a month. And my depression doesn't help. More sleep should ease me a little, but I can't afford to waste any time. But this is life, isn't it.

Tech head fires a mail few days company is planning a hackathon. Overnight at office, with food, music and home drop offs in morning. We devs feel excited we will get time to work on our personal projects and complete them.

Yesterday, tech head fires a mail about the topics. Guess what? The topics are projects which company needs to scale up... Image recognition and text extraction. Selenium. Esign.

Now I am searching for an excuse to skip the hackathon...

Ah, another day, another regression found in a major library

guess i work for all these companies as a volunteer

🤦‍♂️

good thing i'm no where near their 6 figure salaries either.

maybe i should get that 6 figure salary and then eat more salads and steaks at the free food court, type more shitty code on couches, and play more foosball during my approximate 4 hour work day to acheive their software levels

if only i was so good

I was chatting with someone the other day, and during the conversation, it sounded like they would benefit from pair programming with someone and talking about the benefits of pseudocode. I offered to work on it with them (for free/for fun).

Then they said that they are looking specifically for queer and non-traditional gender identities to collaborate with.

Well. I've always been a supporter of all of the things, but it seems ridiculous to choose your friends and mentors - based on what they've got in their pants - and which places they like to stick it - and how they identify.

Immaturity comes in all flavors.

I am working as a freelance for some company, and yesterday my boss just put my pay and work on hold til next week when he is available.

So now I have a free week, with no money.

Fuck.

I worked a few times for free until the client decided he doesn't need anymore that product so he doesn't need to pay me.
From that moment i started to ask for advance payments, but a lot of times I calculated incorrectly the real price of my work miscalculating the number of hours it will take, ending working for less than 3€ per hour...

I love freelancing, but I'm really bad at evaluating my work.

After years of only breaking even or low profitability BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE CHEAPSKATES WHO THINK WHAT I DO IS EASY AND SHOULD BE FREE OR $5 OR WHATEVER AND FRIENDS I DID WORK FOR FOR FREE TOTALLY ABANDONED OUR FRIENDSHIP AFTERWARDS FOR STUPID MISUNDERSTANDINGS ON THEIR PART I closed down my web dev business and now focus only on full time employment. I don’t even do sites for friends anymore.

But did that stop people who before wanted to haggle prices from now BEGGING me to go back into business or to help their referral or to please-pretty-please just help them with one more problem?

Nnnnnnope!

And even now I hate disappointing people and telling them no even though I know they’ll have tiny budgets and will stall and delay and not deliver content or make decisions so I can finish and GET PAID.

WTF IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE? WTF IS WRONG WITH ME?! AND WHERE WERE ALL THESE OPPORTUNITIES WHEN FEWER PEOPLE WERE INTERESTED IN MY SERVICES?!

Does anyone here have anything interesting to do? I am free now so looking for something creative to work on.

I don't care about getting any money out of it. AS long as it's interesting I'm in!

I'm a fullstack engineer, this period there is literally nothing to do, we are a 1000+ employees company.
I got so bored I toke over the database of our production server two times in a week, exploiting dumb vulnerabilities I discovered out of boredom, of course I reported everything.

The funny thing is that they just don't care, no one took action or is willing to fix it and they actually insulted me because I set a query in sleep for 8 minutes exploiting one of the vulnerabilities.

I work for a great company that hosts (in this very server) most italian citizens informations C: free to take for everyone c:

Heh promotion? I only get fake promotion..

For two years, I was doing so many *free* overtime, manager is a big liar, he said that it will he considered on the yearly evaluation.. cool, the thing is there is no evaluation at all, just lying and lying.

Few months ago I took a vacation of 1 month (I am expatriate so I get one vacation per year, my home town is too far..) I talked to tye manager about salary taise and he said absolutely we will talk after I get back..
He called me during my vacation to do some urgent (as always) work, I worked about 5 days, and for free.

After I get back to work, he was angry about my *attitude* that I wasn't available more time.. oh and there was no fucking raise. always lying..

In this country, if you're an expatriate so you can travel outside the country without the validation of the employer (yeah like that) and the notes period is about 3 months, what makes very hard to find another job, no one will wait for 3 months, unless you vanish during a vacation.

So, why didn't I gave my resignation? well, life is hard when you have unemployed wife and a little baby, and the pay is, let's say OK comparing to costs here.

I am charged to learn and work with another language and framework, and when I asked for a raise they said no, so I will stop working in this language and let's see..

The problem is that other employees in thus company are literally bitches, they don't say no to anything, so I am the special guy here who does not a blowjob..

So, what do I do? I am hunting for a new job since a while but no luck.

Built an iPhone app for free for a local nonprofit. This directly lands me a part time well paid internship offer.

And they say you should never work for free

"I have this idea which brings me and you a lot of money. But i can't pay you yet, you have to work for free. And no, the idea isn't already coded there is nothing like it. If you can code it, i will give you 1000$ if it's released."

Yeah, well, no. If i've anything learned in may short career of coding professionally: Do nothing for free. If it's a good idea and you can stand behind it, do it with a contract which guarantees you at least a basic salary.

Sorry for my bad english. Not native

What do you say to your coworkers who want to get free copies of your paid (kinda expensive and lots of effort + time to download) work related video tutorials?

Also, sometimes they ask for it indirectly then laugh.
If they insist, should I ask them to pay for the share?

Some people don't like investing in themselves. They pay expensive tuition costs but don't want to invest while they are working.

What's the proper way to say no in a big corporate environment without looking like a bad guy? I will say yes if the justification and initiative are really good.

*everyone bitching about a piece of software that everyone hates because it's awful, doesn't work, AND costs millions of dollars*
Me: Hey here's a solution that's basically free and gives us everything we need, and all of the enhancement requests
"Cool! We'll look into it for 2020. Keep working on it for a third of what you should be making though"
.. but we need it now??

Has anyone else built any websites or apps for friends or family for free? Is it just me, or is free work always the least appreciated? The demands are also unrealistic. Meanwhile my full-time employers charges over $6000 for a week of work for the client which on some weeks is things like adjusting some styles and changing some config, and they are appreciative every time.

OK...so not to long ago some guy I know from my old school contacted me regarding a start-up he was planing on doing...first he wanted me to work for free (which, in retrospect should've been the first warning sign) and then offered me shares of his non-existing company as payment. I didn't want that so I told him that I'll only work for real money. After some discussions he agreed (tho for less money than I demanded) and I started investing more time into the project (talking to him and his partner about what they expect, looking into some libraries and evaluating whether they can be used in the project or not...stuff like that). Some weeks later (some days before I would sign the contract) he calls me and tells me that he had found someone else to do it who would accept shares as payment...fuck that fucking self-righteous prick and his fucking start-up...the idea was stupid anyways...

Yet another rant on cooperate world

The other day my colleague was telling me that he was with very senior architect (so called architect, who keeps on changing things on the fly) and when my colleague was telling that he doesn't have resources to work with, this senior architect opened up stash (Atlassian Git) and opened up profiles with names and was looking at commits in the git...and said "this guy doesn't have commits for long time...he is free"

WTF.... 0 0

I've been assigned lots of database work the last couple of weeks. Managing old databases are what make or break people surely.

The customers have this proprietary mess of a Visual FoxPro database manager.

I spent the entire day navigating what I should and shouldn't export for them (as they're fortunately trying to rid themselves of the service)

When I was supposed to do the export, the proprietary hardware only allowed exports of 25 rows at a time with the free version this big company is using... I ehr... I just regret not converting it into SQL to begin with.

We don't have a designer yet in the team so we had to learn Adobe XD on the side to prototype our ideas. After months of getting the hang of it thinking this semi-free tool will work for us to save some money, Adobe decides to change their pricing plans starting in April 2020 and it will no longer be free. It feels like Adobe trapped us to get used to their platform and then secretly slap us with a price tag halfway. We can't blame them since we're all trying to put food on the table here. We started exploring Figma today and oh boy was it a gift from the gods! The features are so much better. They make our workflow faster!

Today was nice. All the owners were out on vacation except for one. He took me out to lunch and went home after. Even though the office was silent and free of distraction, I did not work... I watched a webinar and played Hearthstone and ingress. Nationallazyday enjoyed.

Im a software developer, and make games as hobby and sometimes as actual job. Recently I started looking into game design, through my work I can can do a study for free.

The main thing I would like to learn is Character development and using GDD's

Would you recommend doing such a course or is the quality of these things way to low to actually be of use?

Is there reading material I should read?

I do own a digital copy of "A theory of fun" already which Im gonna read the coming days.

Is It correct to stop any development job because the client stopped paying? What are pros and cons about it? I think it is good, you won't work for free but I've heard some people say "It's better someone owes you money rather to have no job". I really don't like that point of view. Any other industry stop it's activities when you stop paying them... However I'm asking this because what happens if that client is a big client? Say... Walmart. Would you keep working on it's project even when it's not paying?

A brilliant oldtimer auto-mechanic asked me to get Audi MMI and maps update for him from the internet. For the Christmas, you know..

So I found the source (mega.nz). It's 22.3GB.

Spent a whole day downloading it (5GB download allowed in 6 hours for free tier), downloaded 21.15GB and some fucked up error appeared "Your In-Browser Storage for Mega is Full".

Couldn't work out the reason nor the fix to recover and complete the already downloaded data. Had to redo it all.

Whole day wasted
damn it

The school I went to, and this was really the only benefit of the school, gave all it students lifetime memberships to digital tutors, which was bought out by pluralsight, which then bought code School. So I basically got free membership to three different sites, all of which have a good amount of technical training with videos, guides, and work along lessons on them.

For what school cost to me, it will have paid for itself as long as I live for another Thousand Years.

Was working on a system we planned on to deliver to a hospital
basically it was meant for controlling and monitoring pactions coming in and attendance time from the staff

Got it off the ground well and got to where the system was supposed to update room status
occupied/free then horror started
the db was not setting the room free after clearing a client off the list... room remained occupied and this kept on happening for 6 months and I was so focused on fixing the db models thinking thats where the problem was....

1 day after leaving the project for several months i just revisited the project randomly and started going through the whole code base trying to make sense of what was happening as there where no errors generated..
I had to verify the whole system logic... and that day i figured out what was happening...
upon adding a client to a room the system was also creating a duplicate room so when the function for setting the room free executes it would set the duplicate room free and not the actual room and the system would pick the room with occupied state causing the user not being able to assign new pactions to the room

Solving this brought so much relief coz it required so much work just to solve what seemed to be a minor issue

So finally I just got my first credit card!

Now on, I don't need to worry about carrying cash when traveling abroad, enjoy free lounge access, buy things in installments and what not.

It's almost impossible to get credit card here without a typical 9to5 job. The best thing is I didn't have to work for it at all. It just happened. So that's something.

Boss expects everybody should be bullied by her and that we work extra hours for free. What?

Worst was with ionic and ios. Havent really worked with either and got mac that wasnt updated in ages and also they didnt give charger. Dealing with sudos and not using sudos then trying to work with xcode and free licenses took me a good time until i got first successful build for iPad. Biggest time consuming mistake was that i had to logout of itunes before i could make another account. It only gave me error and said try again later. Made me furious but after i got setup working everything worked quite nicely. Loved the safari developer view.

How to deal with a boss who wants you to work overtime for free?

Me rightnow: Working overtime for free on a sunday morning 😂

Being on time for that 10 am stand-up meeting.

Yes, all the cool kids are doing it. Yes, sometimes there is a benefit in being in the office at the same time as your colleagues. Yes, communication and backbriefing is important.

Yet why has it to happen at that early early possible time? Yes I know other places are worse demanding to be in office starting from 6 to 9. (I wonder why I don't work there. Oh wait, I don't.) Some companies even try to trick you with free breakfast in the morning. Thanks, but no thanks, I just want coffee.

Here's a crazy thought: You let me do my work on my terms when and where and I guarantee I invest the hours we agreed upon in the contract and try my very best to achieve the current goal, and maybe I'll be a happy and productive employee.

How about that? No. Ok. By the way, is this a good time asking for the possibility to work from remote? Also no? Ah okay. Didn't think so ...

I have a saying that always gets me confused looks at work: “More is more”. What I mean by that is every time management asks for a new system, that system needs to be built, maintained, upgraded (code and infrastructure), etc. My point is that new systems are not free of cost after delivery. Am I alone in thinking that way?

I see many people are FOSS enthusiasts here. Some only use free software on principle. I like open source alternatives too, but not every time.

As devs, our job is to make software. How can one justify preferring free software for all our needs, yet working on proprietary software?

Does advocating free software devalue your professional skills, while you're working on paid software?

If you do good work and sell your software, then someone releases a free thing solving the same problems, that's obviously bad for you.

Why should software be treated differently than other things? Have you seen a construction company building stuff for free? If you don't want to pay for your house to be built, can you find someone who builds it for you for free? I doubt that.

Yes, you can make your software free and accept donations. But you can't plan with that financially, you still need to be treated and payed as someone who creates value.

I have no problem with free software, I love the fact that many people can find the time and are willing to contribute to the public without compensation. What I'm saying is, software is a product of hard engineering work and builds upon knowledge and experience of individuals, and should be compensated like any other work.

What do you think?

Anyone else here hardly code in their free time? I'm a professional developer yes but I tend to leave work at work. Maybe if I found something fun to work on with others... Or a personal project I really wanted to do for me.

No. I’m not going to take a 20 minute user-testing job disguised as a “survey” for you - for free, LinkedIn - and all your other super rich companies. You gotta pay people to work for you.

The time at university I was kind of burned out all the time.
I was far away from being a hard-working student, I needed more than double time to finish, but I constantly had a feeling of being stressed.
My free time never felt like free time because I thought I should learn/do something for the university.
Now at work, I can spend my free time without feeling guilty. Sure, I also have to think about problems at work sometime and I still should learn something to get better, but now I can focus on stuff I'm really interested in.

CK's nike deal

Eminem's diss shit and MGK killing it with Rap Devil

Rain

Witcher 3

Beer

Pizza

Wife free from work this weekend

Made a rather large project with Pharo and Seaside to see if I dig it(i did, but it ain't replacing my other tools anytime soon, shit requires reading far too much code and digging around dark corners of the net for it)

Finished 2 projects for work and got ahead of 2 others for this week.

Shit b, this is one interesting weekend indeed.
Yaaaaaay

Devs with young kids: how the hell do you do it?

I am a foster parent for my cousin who is 4 months old and I don’t know how in the fuck to make this work. How do you do it? How do you balance code and kid?

For reference I work full time at a tech support place, I go to school full time, and I’m trying to pivot into software development, which means any free time is spent coding/studying code/building a portfolio. Problem is I don’t have free time because of the baby. How in the hell do people do this.

I just saw that ARM released their design start IP for Cortex M0 for free to the masses , it’s obfuscated verilog code.
I worked on SoC design based on this in college but it took a lot of paper work to get these file but now they are free to download

This is exciting as this makes a open-source community based microcontroller design possible.

Only missing piece here is the verilog compiler they use is not open source .
Has anyone messed around with Cortex M0 DS + ghdl or iverilog. I am about to start a little side project will update more on this

Not leaving my last job earlier.

History: Supervisor / Lead Developer was a complete moron who watched videos on facebook and youtube, engaged in heated discussions on facebook, wasted my time by showing the work of other companies and vines, smoked in the office and towards the end gave me shit for not meeting deadlines of the work that he was supposed to deliver. Project that I was working on had very lazy clients so I was free for even 2 days sometimes and that’s why I decided to help my supervisor on the project assigned to him but in reality I was handling two projects all alone.

Aftermath: My indie games started gaining traction on google play and I found a client and I made 5x my salary at my last job.

I work full time in the data protection field for healthcare whilst investing all my free time into coding as a career change.

I've discovered that despite people telling you how much you need to spend every hour you get free to learn to code, you also need to consider the people closest to you. I was ignoring my partner who I live with because I thought this was more important and that she should be able to see that. But what's the point in being in a relationship if you aren't making an effort with each other?

It's OK to slow down and invest time into the people you have in your life. Give yourself a break.

Don't ask for free work! This is what's going to happen ;)

I don't know what language i want to be my main.

I know many languages but most of them just the basics, to write some simple programs.

I'm currently just coding in my free time, i'm still at school and there is no company that forces me to use a specific language.

But when i'm out of school and want to work as a developer, i can't tell them well i know these languages but only the basics.

What is/would be your choice for non web programming?

Shady business practices. You see a lot of stories of people getting fucked over on here. Companies giving applicants a "coding test" to get work done for free, or guys promising to pay when the work is done(and then bailing), deserve to be thrown screaming from helicopters.

Some quick advice for people starting out:

1. If it's important, get it in writing. Promises are worth precisely dick, unless it's legally binding.

2. Exercise caution in interviews. The shadier companies know a lot of applicants are desperate, and they take advantage of that fact if they're allowed to.

Not sure if I'm rambling at this point, but fuck it. 🤣

I feel like shit for arguing against my boss who tried to force me into overtime without pay…

I get that I did it for my own good, but I still feel annoyed af for having to do it in the first point. I hate arguing about stuff but this needed to be done, asking to work for free after your employee already gave you an extra hour for free is just… being greedy assholes.

And yet I feel discomfort. I hate so much this situation.

On wednesday we always work from 10:00 untill 20-21:00 because of weekly meetings with product owners who have a full time job besides being a product owner..

Its okay, we get free food and often have a couple beers, but the last weeks its been killing me...

Other people bail out because they want to do something with their friends that evening but I always feel like its a commitment we made as a team so as lead dev I should be there..

Think next week im going to bail out for a time

Worst: forced to work for 9 months on a shitty wp theme:
- colleague with no clue trying to make me do their work… check
- incompetent manager doing shit about it… check
- idiotic pipeline requiring to redeploy for every asset update… check
- micromanaging cto which for some fucking reason didn’t want to allow access to the writers, forcing the role of content editor on the devs… ducking check! Quack!!

Best: automated lots of processes in my free time, all stuff which I can reuse!

"The Perils of Overzealous Code Commenting"

In the land of code, where bugs roam free,
There lived a developer, a comment enthusiast, you see.
Their code was a masterpiece, a work of art,
But the comments? Oh, they took it too far!

For every line of code, a comment did appear,
Explaining the obvious with a touch of fear.
Their obsession with comments, though well-intentioned,
Left fellow developers scratching their heads, bewildered and pensioned.

For all you chuckleheads that think the government will save us with a UBI and other free shit, consider that when I went to apply for unemployment, I got this message: "This website is designed to work with Internet Explorer version 8 and 9, Apple Safari version 4 and 5 or Mozilla Firefox version 16 and 17." Also, the website is mysteriously unable to allow you to apply for unemployment on any day other than Monday through Friday and at any time other than 8 am-5 pm. Those computers the government has have better time off constraints than I do!

Well, atom won't open. SO, what's the next free editor I will learn to use, configure exactly right, and then need to abandon because it won't fucking open for no apparent reason?

Sure, I could become a certified Atom expert and learn exactly what is going on, but I HAVE FUCKING WORK THAT IS DUE WHAT THE FUCKING HELL

Wishing I could afford PyCharm, maybe I will just try the trial since EVERY editor I have ever used eventually becomes unusable at some point.

upcoming life choices :

- leave home( and a lifestyle where i live/eat rent free, save 90% of pay check, start work at 12pm and end at 4pm but still renowned for being the most productive engineer, workout and party) to live near office and wfo 3 days/week

- quit a relaxed job + look for a similar role in highly competitive/unstable economy + stay at home with parents who are very much controlling, and repeatedly quarrelling amongst themselves and/or with me/my choices

yepp, both points are true about my home life: its a physical paradise as well as an emotional hell

Me: Hey, can we schedule a weekly meeting at <day, hh:mm>? I can give you an update on my work and we discuss upcoming problems?
Superviser (assigned especially to me): Yeah sure, come over, I'm free at that time.

Said day he comes 1h late, missing the appointment. Talking later that day to schedule another meeting for the upcoming week, he confirms.

Appointed day he's not there again, working from home. This has happend a few times now. They expect me to update our shared calendar or at least write a mail if I'm not available. He doesn't.

Could you fucking not?

Hi guys some advice would be appreciated.

I’m new here but have followed for a long time. I enjoy coding in my spare time, particularly web development but I am looking to make it my career.

Currently I work in mental health as a social worker, but ultimately the stress of the job and life in general has led to me being detained in a psychiatric hospital. So I’ve decided I need change.

I want to start a career I want to be in and that is as a developer. In terms of education, I started a degree in maths/cs a long time ago but stopped due to life events at the time. All the rest of my qualifications are around social work.

I’ve been doing my best to learn with Udemy and free code camp. Mainly looking at JavaScript. I also used to work in a charity where I did some (bad) php development and front end work.

Are there any self made developers out there who have any advice for me? I’m looking at doing a bootcamp but dunno if that will help at all.

Any help or advice would be really welcome. Cheers guys :)

I'm so sorry for the code I wrote at work today, that I'm going to rewrite it in my free time

!rant

Today is the day, i'll finish up all the contract work that sits on my desk, cash in the money and finish up the free website i made for a befriended gamedev.

I've been sooo angry about other humans over the week but escaping into development and helping the few friendly humans out there is making me calm again.

If anyone of you feels down, grab a tee, clean your desk, take a bath and just start coding silly things, or try to help a mate in need. :-)

pLeAsE dOnAtE tO hElP mE aFfOrD hOsTing

lolwut? you have a free-for-all project with no premium features. Users can’t create accounts. All of your code is JS, you don’t even need a server. Just host your stuff on Cloudflare. I have just about a gigabyte of data uploaded there on my free account, so if I can do it, so do you. Just use a CDN for your client-only, JS-only project.

domains though… yours is long and costs around 40 bucks a YEAR.

if you made a good product and want to make some money with it, that’s completely okay, so just say so: “I want money for my work, but I don’t want to take away features that were free and can be provided at no additional cost, so please donate”. Why lie? It’s not like people who won’t donate to you based on this justification will magically donate for “hosting”.

So I got reprimanded for some error on a site. I proved that this was a back end problem and that this has nothing to do with me (I'm just a front end dev). Didn't get a single apology, the dev who broke the thing got off scot free and now i have to work overtime while they publish the changes to test them

I need advice.

So let's say, hypothetically, I found a site with a user data leak.

Would it be illegal if I only told them where the leak was for a bounty?

I am NOT going to distribute the user data. I just don't want to work for free, you know?

Again: NOT DISTRIBUTING USERDATA. No blackmail. Just information that their QA should have caught.

Does nobody want a dev intern in Lod Angeles? Been calling companies all day telling them I'll work for free lol. at lady they're taking my resume

Searching how to (insert dev related skill) then after that getting only adds shown for places that do professional dev work. No, obviously I am trying to learn the shit myself not willing to pay someone else, in fact add a sync my bank account to search just so google can comeback with results filed under you are too poor to pay for shit here are the diy results you poor dumb fuck using free wifi. :)

well, i just screwed what might have been a great opportunity at a great company with a recent capital injection by Uber.

I don't know what the hell my brain was thinking when answering at the technical interview, like wtf? they asked for an use of design patterns, and i started thinking for uses in my daily life (???), like, outside of work?? to which of course i answered "no, I can't think of a time I have used them" 🤡🤦🏻‍♂️

They asked what motivated me to work at that company, and I basically answered "money and free education perks" 🤡

The worst part is that they contacted me! So for some reason I was pretty sure that I would ace that interview with flying colors. Yeah well no, fuck those expectations.

i am i such a shitty situation. i have recently started to love my job as i find the work to be lesser and lesser stressful. i finish my tickets in 2-3 hours exch day, and i am almost free after 3 pm and officially free after 6.30 pm every day (kinda officially, as i have set an unavailable notice on my calendar for 6.30 to 8.30 and after that no one really is online).

i get time to go out, jog, play with my pets do home taks, and even study sometime.

everything is going great except 2 things: they are ending the remote work policy in 2022 and giving esops instead of appraisal/promotion :'( will have to either switch or go live in the city where my office is, which is the most expensive city in my country ( and maybe in top 10 most expensive in the world) + very unsafe. and its obvious that my boss won't be letting me code lying flat on a mattress with a bag of cheetos and in just boxers and flip-flops

Need advice

Got placed at LnT Infotech through my college placements
Free-lanced at a company for four months and got a job offer from them with the same salary. But the work load is too much. There is no such thing as personal time. It's work 24*7. However, the exposure is good. For one of the projects I was the PM. Had dinner good exposure. But as I said, to much work. I lost quite some weight in the one month that I was the PM.

So now the problem is, should I join an MNC where my exposure will be terrible or a start-up where my personal life will be terrible

Favourite thing you worked on recently?
——
I’m working on server monitoring system. I found that I need to pay for most server monitor services, and ones that are free/open source didn’t sound like they fit my use case (b/c the server i need to monitor is shared,) so I basically said “f*<k it I’ll do it myself.” I find it fun to work on something that I feel the need to make.