I believe that devRant needs to have a scheduling feature that you can set your work time in it, so when your hand unconsciously opens devRant in that time, this activity pops up:

Where do I even start?

Personal projects?
So many. Shouldn't count.

Unpaid game dev intern?
Unpaid game dev volunteer?
Both worthwhile, if stressful. Shouldn't count either.

Freelancing where clients refused to pay?
That's happened a few times. One of them paid me in product instead of cash (WonderSoil, a company that [apparently still] makes and sells some expanding super potting soil thing). The product turned out to be defective and killed all of the plants I used it on. I'd have preferred getting stiffed instead. Their "factory" (small, almost tiny) was quite cool. The owner was a bitch. Probably still is.

Companies that have screwed me out of pay?
So many. I still curse their names at least once a month. I've been screwed out of about $13k now, maybe more. I've lost track.

I have two stories in particular that really piss me off.

The first: I was working at a large robotics company, and mostly enjoyed my job, though the drive was awful. The pay wasn't high either, but I still enjoyed the work. Schedule was nice, too: 28 hours (four 7-hour days) per week. Regardless, I got a job offer for double my salary, same schedule, and the drive was 11 minutes instead of 40. I took it. My new boss ended up tricking me into being a contractor -- refused to give me a W2, no contracts, etc. Later, he also increased my hours to 40 with no pay increase. He also took forever to pay (weeks to months), and eventually refused to pay me to my face, in front of my cowokers. Asshole still owes me about $5k. Should owe me the the difference in taxes, too (w2 vs 1099) since he lied about it and forced me into it when it was too late to back out.

I talked to the BBB, the labor board, legal council, the IRS (because he was actively evading taxes), the fire inspector (because he installed doors taht locked if the power went out, installed the exit buttons on the fucking ceiling, and later disconnected all of said exit buttons). Nobody gave a single shit. Asshole completely got away with everything. Including several shady as hell things I can't list here because they're too easy to find.

The second one:
The economy was shit, and I was out of a job. I had been looking for quite awhile, and an ex-coworker (who had worked at google, interestingly) suggested I work for this new startup. It was a "reverse search engine," meaning it aggregated news and articles and whatnot, and used machine learning to figure out what its users are interested in, and provided them with exactly that. It would also help with scheduling, reminders of birthdays, mesh peoples' friends' travel plans and life events, etc. (You and a friend are going on vacation to the same place, and your mutual friend there is having a birthday! You should go to ___ special event that's going on while you're all there! Here's a coupon.) It was pretty cool. The owner was not. He delayed my payments a few times, and screwed me over on pay a few more times, despite promising me many times that he was "not one of those people." He ended up paying me less than fucking minimum wage. Fake, smiling, backstabbing asshole.

The first one still pisses me off more, though, because of all the shit I went through trying to get my missing back pay, and how he conned me every chance he got. And how he yelled at me and told me, to my face, that he wasn't ever going to pay me. Fucking goddamn hell I hate that guy.

A client asked me to work on a new website for them. They setup a WordPress site with a basic theme and asked for the following additions:

- Job application system
- Employee management
- Employee scheduling/holidays
- Online clock-in/out and pay calculation
- Training videos/modules for employees with progress tracking

And their budget... $75

😄🔫

recruiter of a company i was dying.to work in calls while im at work in a job i hated.

recruiter: hello, i saw the several applications you sent using our careers portal.

me: (rushes to bathroom ready to talk about scheduling the first interview) yes that is correct thank you fornbcontacting me !

recruiter: please stop applying several times, you have been rejected and need to wait a minimum of 3.5 years for us to re evaluate your resume in the future.

God damn fucking Windows bullshit.

Why is the fuck does Microsoft HATE its users?

Latest updates, and no fuck Windows 11, completely BREAKS all of my WSL environments.

Home directories are gone, or the environments are corrupt and won't even run.

99% of the issues these dense shit-fucks cause are because they RaNdOmLy reboot for their dumbass updates instead of scheduling them with the end user. During these rebots, do you thing they wait for everything to shut down?

HELL NO!

They just shut that shit down like they fucking own it. Editors? Gone. Browsers? Gone. WSL Consoles? Gone. Docker containers? Gone. IEdge? Hey, we have great news, we made IE your default browser again! BTW, your upgrade to Windows 11 is free until we force you to upgrade!

I'm so fed up with it.....so fucking tired of it...

The only reason why I even use WSL these days is to ssh into my Linux devices or run some quick dev tests in containers. Why not use PuTTY for SSH? Because it fucking SUCKS that's why.

I'm feeling so many emotions right now over bullshit that shouldn't even be happening. I'm literally at the point that I'm just going to install Linux on this device and just create a Windows VM on one of my hosts so I can still do "work" things that involve leadership.

My bosses have estimated 5 (five!) days to start & finish a corporate website (no wordpress) for one of our clients.
However, we don't even have images and texts :)

This will be funny

To all the data engineers in here: WTF is going on in your field?

I've worked closely with a dozen data engineers in the last 5 years (and talked to friends and internet strangers about this and get similiar responses), mine if them seem to know how to use a computer!

They don't understand git, ORMs, best practices, how to use a terminal, DAGs (important for using modern ETL scheduling tools like airflow and prefext), etc

Guys with 10 years of experience on their resume and they can't wrap a model into a flask app with 1 endpoint. They'll reference local files on their machine in w jupyter notebook and are shocked it won't work on other computers!

I have a situation that is so out there I almost wouldn’t believe it if it wasn’t happening to me. The company I work at has three branches and around 100 employees. The owner of the company has a brother who needs a liver transplant. Two weeks ago, a company-wide memo went out that all employees would be required to undergo testing to see if they were a suitable liver donor for the owners brother. No exceptions.

Last week at the branch the owner works out of most of the time, his assistant went around to schedule days off for everyone so they could go get tested. People who declined were let go. One of these people was born with liver disease and therefore ineligible to donate. She had a doctor’s note. Other people also had medical reasons as well and some were just uncomfortable with the request and didn’t want to do it. One was pregnant. They were still terminated. My employer’s assistant has said that because our employment is at will, he can legally fire us.

I’m in remission from cancer. I’m ineligible to donate and any kind of surgery would put a major strain on my system. Even if I was healthy, I would still object to possibly being forced into donating an organ just to keep my job. Soon they will be scheduling people’s days off for testing at my branch.

I know this situation is nuts, but I don’t know what to do. I know I could just go for the testing and then be declined, but I don’t think I should have to do that. I’ve had enough with hospitals. Other coworkers who don’t have medical conditions are afraid they won’t be declined because they will be a match. I’m looking for another job but in the meantime I don’t know what to do and I and many of my coworkers are really stressed out.

Just started my first "management" role after 12 years as a developer, first thing I learnt is its just like my last role only I don't have to do any of the hard work.
Worried they'll figure out I'm doing almost nothing soon, any tips? Should I just start scheduling meetings to discuss meetings?

On one side I fucking hate waiting for the internet technician. I would've liked to go to work (especially as there is an event right now) and not sit here during "That-5-hour-window-because-scheduling-isn't-a-thing-the-german-Telekom-will-tell-you-about" and nurse my impatience.
On the other side, I have idle time and I like programming when everything's quiet in the house and only the heating and my PC cooling system are whirring quietly, so I've got that going for me which is nice.
Only too bad there's no internet right now.

Windows 10 updates. I see many posts about singular events that people have experienced, so I thought I'd try to sum up all the problems I have had.

Home computer, always on:
Is scheduled to update during 'inactive hours' but the options for that window are too narrow. So almost daily the 'required updates' overlay pops up WHILE I'M DOING STUFF and I have to say 'Ok' then close the update settings window that opens automatically so I can get on with what I'm doing.
Now, if I'm just browsing, writing or something like that, it's just really annoying.
But when I'm gaming and it causes the game to freeze up (because, you know, ubisoft and ea and such) and I lose my progress, that pisses me off.
When I'm hosting movie night with my friends and the movie gets interrupted, that pisses me off.
Even when I'm just trying to relax with a good show after a hard day and THAT gets interrupted, it really bugs me.
And then when there's a major update and I don't want to schedule it right away, they decide that I probably meant 'do it in an hour'. And then a message pops up every hour with only the option to postpone one more hour. What happened to all the options for scheduling it for several days in the future? Nope! Can't decide? We'll do it RIGHT NOW, NO TAKEBACKS, THAT'S FINAL!
I cannot fathom that they can't find a way to ACTUALLY do the 'inactive hours' thing.

And then there's the work computer. For the last two years, that has been a laptop that I shut down and take home every day. The common problem with that is that it always tells me it has to update when I want to shut down for the day because I have to go home. I can't leave the pc turned on in my bag, it would overheat. So since there is no option to shut down without updating anymore, I have had to rely on the fact that using the power button to shut down circumvents the update.
And if I don't remember to update at home, it's then going to waste my time the next morning at work.
Just give me the option to delay for a bit, then remind me NON-INTRUSIVELY so I can do it when I have the time.
And then there was the update that prevented the machine from booting and I had to waste TWO working days reinstalling EVERYTHING! And we were about 6-7 people hit by that update in our organization.

So yeah. Windows updates are a real fucking problem. Yes, I wan't critical fixes for security problems and other serious software flaws.
But the current policy of 'fuck you, we're doing this' is just not fucking acceptable in any way.

I’m in a high-stress work situation where the organization is way too reliant on me to maintain day-to-day operations. We’re working on hiring a second person for my role, but it’s likely to take six months to find someone and get them on board.

And I’m afraid that I’m burning out now. I’m tired all the time and grumpy. Worse, in the last couple weeks I seem to be losing the ability to think. I’ll read an email and be unable to make sense of the words, or unable to figure out what to do with it – it’s just a blank white fog in my brain where I should have words and ideas and next steps. My productivity is less than half what it should be, and I’m horribly embarrassed and ashamed of myself.

I’m taking sick days and leaving work early when I can, which helps a bit, but not enough. I’m also doing all the recommended self-care stuff – diet, sleep, exercise. I’m scheduling a doctor’s appointment for next week.

I have a very good boss, which is the only reason I haven’t said screw it all and bought a one-way plane ticket to Tahiti. (I hear it’s a magical place.) Any thoughts on how to approach this with him? Under normal circumstances I’d try to arrange for some vacation time, but I’m afraid a week or two of rest isn’t going to fix the problem, just delay it a while. Any substantial amount of time off is going to really hurt my department. They may need to bring in someone to cover for me, which would be very expensive. I’m afraid it’d destroy my reputation as someone who can be relied on. What options do I have? What should I be doing next?

This post is about Americans.

Or to be more precise and put it this way, this post is about Indian Americans.

They made their way through everything and somehow landed in the US to shit on streets.

They feel themselves to be entitled to another level.

I work with multiple colleagues who are based out of the US. ALL of the American people are very friendly and accommodating since we have a timezone challenge.

BUT these Indian Americans think they run the world. Slight inconvenience and they create an issue out of it.

My entire non-tech team and I am struggling to align to these fucks and none of them are supportive. While scheduling a meeting

fuck it.. I am so done that it's not even worth ranting about it.

On the other news, I am in the job market, actively hunting jobs while they keep rescheduling meetings. I have a couple of connects with recruiters lined up.

I am expecting few interviews and maybe in some time, I might be able to close a decent offer. Fingers crossed 🤞🏻

So I was just informed I have 40 tickets with my name on them. No big deal normally except that I had no idea and was scheduling based on the fact that I knew I had 25 on my plate and most of them were OBE. How did I find this out you ask? Well rather than updating the tickets in our ticket tracking system, my PM updated a spreadsheet that is out in no man's land. So it looks like I have been doing no work for the last 3 months when in reality I have been busting my ass to get shut done and fixed. Why even have a ticket tracking system?

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 recently have been delegated the responsibility of managing a 4 people team by planning the sprints, scheduling tasks, and in general "take charge" (as said by the boss).

What bothers me is there is this "developer" with a heavily toxic attitude, who feels he is above all laws and knows everything just because he joined some months ago all of us.

He is basically a human linter. When he code reviews, you can get away with any major mistake if your linting and indentation (and all that shit) is according to "his standards".

A new guy recently joined the team and was given an overwhelming task by the boss just to test whether he belongs here. (Again, wrong, in my opinion). He didn't know any of the technologies he needs to work on to complete that task but he still learnt them and got a working product. Albeit not according to our God's "standards".

Cut to the chase, the asshole dev is now mocking him in PR comments and demeaning him in every discussion. As a "team lead", what should I do? If I let it go, it'll make the environment toxic and I don't want him to get away with it. If I do take any action, I don't want to be seen as as pussy who can't take such minor insults. Please advise.

PS. The asshole developer once wrote a "friend request accept" API endpoint in such a way that when any single person accepts a request, that'll cause all pending requests (from any person to any person) get accepted. Fucked up the DB queries basically. This is just to give a perspective on what I'm dealing with here.

Going on vacation for a couple of days next week. So, apparently, the people scheduling the on-call rotation think it's a great idea to assign me on-call duty next week.

ME: ...you know I'm going on vacation, right?

THEM: Oh don't worry, nothing ever happens, and 95% of the time it's just this easy stuff that can be dealt with quickly.

ME (internally): ...I was taking this vacation time to get *away* from having to think about work. Now I'm going to have to keep this in the back of my mind the entire time I'm away, checking for alerts, and potentially interrupt my flow to deal with work, defeating the point of why I'm taking the down time.

Fuck this. If I'd known earlier I'd have tried to get the time rescheduled, but of course this happens on the weekend, the day before.

I think I've reached some kind of job nirvana. My coworkers and I all complain about our work. We're overworked, underappreciated, underpaid, and and have to deal with all sorts of bullshit all the time. Pretty much everyone who has been on the team longer than a year is talking about quitting.

But I started at this company as a level 1 tech support phone technician before I transferred into the DevOps side of things, and that tech support job was SO much worse. Way more stressful, way less pay, mandatory overtime, horrible scheduling, being forced to remain calm while people hurl insults at you over the phone, and it was a dead-end job with a high turnover rate and almost no opportunities for advancement of any kind.

And every time I think back on that job, I realize that what I have now is actually pretty great. I'm paid well (still underpaid for the job I do, but catching up really fast due to my current boss giving me several big raises to keep me from quitting lol). I deal only with other tech people like developers and data scientists so no more listening to salesmen insult me on the phone. I'm not in any sort of customer service role so I can call people on their bullshit as long as I'm professional about it. I'm salaried so they can't make me work horrible shifts. 99% of my days are a normal 9-5 workday. I actually have a reliable schedule to plan around.

People treat me like the adult that I am.

I'd get a similar experience at other, better-paying companies, for sure, but what I have now is still pretty great.

I'm sure I'll be back in a few days to rant about more nonsensical bullshit and stress, but for now I'm feeling the zen.

So I just got asked for a quote for developing an app for a client's friend. He wanted an app that requires me to build let's just say a combination of what you see on uber with the live tracking of your uber driver, seeing all cars around your location and determining the closest one (It wasn't necessarily cars) plus profiles and another app for another set of users (I can easily make this one and determine the logged in user and in turn tailor the features for that user but they wanted two). An admin portal also was included and I had to do various integrations with Google maps. In app purchases was also necessary. Logs as the app has to keep track of all activities basically. A wallet feature was also to be implemented, scheduling, rating and complains section was also something requested and finally a mini accounting system was also to be developed. I was going to do this singlehandly as a freelancer. Obviously this is a lot of work. I also gave them a timeline of about 3 months for development. Which meant I was going to be putting all my time into developing this. Front end and backend for the app and front-end and backend for the server and database architecture. I charged them $10,000 not only for the work but also because they were going to be making money off of the app. They go "wow and why does it cost so much"...Judging from their reactions I don't think they will move further with this with me because of costs...😂 I can't even begin to wonder why they think that isn't a fair price. I have learnt from previous work before that you always state a cost for which you are absolutely sure you would want to work for else you would start doing the work and once you see how little you are being paid for so much work you end up hating the work and completing it ends up being a difficult task.

Work has been inefficiently using multiple cron jobs to run php scripts to generate pre-baked data.

The last two days I took the steps needed to internalize all those scripts and run them from an individual php controller which is ran from Jenkins. My script keeps track of scheduling and error tracking.

I'd say I'm pretty proud of what I came up with.

DAYLIGHT SAVING!!
Up to this point, I was indifferent to the issue if it should be kept or not. My sleep schedule is fucked and non-routine anyway so one hour plus or minus doesn't play any role.
I got to a meeting scheduling problem, when I have 2 timestamps in variable timezones and want to calculate time difference. Both can have DST active. There is no algortihmic way to figure out. I checked SO and pytz and it's just a list of hardcoded dates when DST starts and ends. WHATHTEHELL.jpg
Not only we should abolish the DST, we should force the whole world into UTC/Zulu. And those, who refuse to adapt to UTC, will be forced to work with plain integer epoch dates.

Question: is it common for lead software engineers to mostly do paperwork or is that just a quick of my current program?

Where I work it is very common for those titled "software leads" to be almost completely hands off the software. They deal in hiring, fielding user comments and commitments, and scheduling. I would like to be a lead but I was always under the assumption that dev leads had more of a design and/or architect role. Sort of a big picture thing rather than middle management which is what this feels like.

PM comes into my office: "Hey, if <client> asks about his edits, just tell him they're scheduled for this week."
me: "I thought they were scheduled for this week, I thought that you were currently in a meeting to get final specs so you could tell me what needed changed."
PM: "Yeah, he wants to take the plugin from 5 steps down to 3, we told him it wouldn't be a problem and we would have it done this week."
me: "Ok, there are limitations as far as what I can cut out of the process, his tag line when he started as a client was '5 easy steps' and I built something that did what he wanted in 5 steps. Changing things this late in the game is not simple, I'm talking a minimum 6 hours of work."
PM: "Well I tried to make sure that what he wanted was possible but I didn't have a developer in the meeting. It shouldn't change anything that much."

He ended up scheduling a meeting with me and the designer to go over the edits Thursday afternoon. So I will have the new specifications which I said would be a minimum 6 hours of work and I will be given ~10 hours in which to do it. I sure hope nothing unexpected pops up while I'm working on this.

I'm also the only developer this week (and technically speaking I'm junior) since our senior dev wrecked his car over the weekend and isn't planning on being in all week. I'm the only computer literate person in the office of 50 or so, which means that if there is any kind of tech issue I'm ripped away from my desk for 'emergency help'. I have two other sites to get ready for client approval meetings by Friday afternoon and if the clients approve I will be launching their sites that afternoon as well.

The sign on my door currently says "Error 500: unable to handle your request" I need something to throw at these people.

I am working on a task given to me by a huge company to test my skill.
I am applying for a junior position.
I am doing it by myself of course but I googled a bit and the problem is called job shop scheduling or multiprocessor scheduling (not sure which one it actually is).
The topic is a bit altered (logistics) but it stil is the same problem.
I am really close to the solution.
The testcases they provided all work but I came up with some that don't.

Do you think this problem is appropiate for a junior (either of those)?

At a FIFTH interview call and waiting.
Scheduled at 4pm, just got to know the HR himself is in a fucking meeting. So procedure would resume at 5pm. Like seriously?
Why do these big corps not give a fuck about applicants' time. Why schedule at 4pm in the first place.
Also scheduling at 4pm so I miss another work day at my current company...
No value for our time :(

I'm responsible of the smooth operations of the platform, i.e. I'm responsible if something doesn't work. As I'm the technical leader, cofounder and original developer.

However I have no control on installations scheduling, on feedback from customers, on new features planning, on installations tasks performed by the team. No resources whatsoever.

And everybody NEEDS me to perform even small tasks. I would delegate and automate if only I had the time to explain and develop scripts.

But I have zero time. So basically everybody is counting on me working 15 hours per day to get things done.
And one person is also claiming to be "in charge of operations".
He is actually only in charge of me.

I cannot exit from this vicious circle.
I'm like the house doormat.

Called in for an interview for graphic design, didn't get it. Same company contacts me a few months later for a web design opening. I get the job. They were behind on graphic design work, so my first few months were helping them to catch up. One day they asked how the web site was going. I was like, uh, you've been scheduling me graphic design since I started. It took a few more months to get my plate cleared completely but I was able to finally build out their site and a photo appointment scheduler that we could all love.

How can I tell if someone is scheduling too many meetings to avoid doing work or they are just misguided?

!Rant
Any recommendations for a daily planner that runs on Win7?
Prefer to have something desktop based (with Sync if possible) as I always have too many browser tabs open so a web based one will get lost or closed and therefore not do its job.