Being female.

So recently we re-orged to a product vs engineering (yes, I meant vs, it’s contentious) organizational structure. One of the former dev leads got picked for product and went on this lovely ass-kissing spiel about how great this was in front of our new bosses. The next day(!) he was telling his old team what to do directly to his buddy the scrum master, who works for me and casually mentioned it. How am I supposed to run engineering and deliver if every P.O. can end run around the structure? I hate all this.

Also, if the new PE tells me one more time all my problems can be solved with SQS, I’m gonna explode. Not all dev problems are a nail to fix with an sns hammer. Asynch comms has its uses, it is not the *only solution.

I feel like I’m over reacting, and yet, I still feel rage…and happy to find an anonymous place to rant about it.

You know what really, really sucks about my school? Rant#00

I'm in my last year now and they removed one CS/IT lesson. Now I have two fucking 45min lessons (instead of three) of learning what I'm actually interested in.

Even worse: They don't provide and LK ("Leistungskurs" == advanced course) for CS/IT. Not like for Maths, English, German - okay but LATIN AND SPORT? Wtf
And this school calls themselves a MINT-school (Maths, IT, Natural Sciences, Technology).

EVEN WORSE: The 12th graders now don't even have a basic course CS/IT.

Fuck you school.

I just lost my rant. Luckily it's easy to recount. Whilst using Microsoft Edge to dowload and send same files without clogging up Google Chrome, after sending a file on its way, I returned to Microsoft Edge to discover my font size had been shrunk by 50% without my knowledge or consent. I decided to do something futile and useless : I composed a memo to Google: "Google, who the fuck do you think you are that you can make a small change that will anger millions of people? And when those people wish to tell you exactly why you have once again dumped unnecessary shit on them, you are unable to provide any information to help them? Fuck you, fuck your disgusting corporate ass kissing cuntery and fuckery. You are disgusting and inhuman. You make me sick, you make me wnat to puke my guts out."

For me it has to be dealing with other developers who don’t want to keen with the times.
I don’t mind anyone deciding they don’t want to learn new things, for whatever reason.
But when you’re in a team if you feel that way it’s unreasonable to expect the whole team to stop developing their skills for you.

Remember to debloat your android.

Don't use PHP

!rant

After over 20 years as a Software Engineer, Architect, and Manager, I want to pass along some unsolicited advice to junior developers either because I grew through it, or I've had to deal with developers who behaved poorly:

1) Your ego will hurt you FAR more than your junior coding skills. Nobody expects you to be the best early in your career, so don't act like you are.

2) Working independently is a must. It's okay to ask questions, but ask sparingly. Remember, mid and senior level guys need to focus just as much as you do, so before interrupting them, exhaust your resources (Google, Stack Overflow, books, etc..)

3) Working code != good code. You are an author. Write your code so that it can be read. Accept criticism that may seem trivial such as renaming a variable or method. If someone is suggesting it, it's because they didn't know what it did without further investigation.

4) Ask for peer reviews and LISTEN to the critique. Even after 20+ years, I send my code to more junior developers and often get good corrections sent back. (remember the ego thing from tip #1?) Even if they have no critiques for me, sometimes they will see a technique I used and learn from that. Peer reviews are win-win-win.

5) When in doubt, do NOT BS your way out. Refer to someone who knows, or offer to get back to them. Often times, persons other than engineers will take what you said as gospel. If that later turns out to be wrong, a bunch of people will have to get involved to clean up the expectations.

6) Slow down in order to speed up. Always start a task by thinking about the very high level use cases, then slowly work through your logic to achieve that. Rushing to complete, even for senior engineers, usually means less-than-ideal code that somebody will have to maintain.

7) Write documentation, always! Even if your company doesn't take documentation seriously, other engineers will remember how well documented your code is, and they will appreciate you for it/think of you next time that sweet job opens up.

8) Good code is important, but good impressions are better. I have code that is the most embarrassing crap ever still in production to this day. People don't think of me as "that shitty developer who wrote that ugly ass code that one time a decade ago," They think of me as "that developer who was fun to work with and busted his ass." Because of that, I've never been unemployed for more than a day. It's critical to have a good network and good references.

9) Don't shy away from the unknown. It's easy to hope somebody else picks up that task that you don't understand, but you wont learn it if they do. The daunting, unknown tasks are the most rewarding to complete (and trust me, other devs will notice.)

10) Learning is up to you. I can't tell you the number of engineers I passed on hiring because their answer to what they know about PHP7 was: "Nothing. I haven't learned it yet because my current company is still using PHP5." This is YOUR craft. It's not up to your employer to keep you relevant in the job market, it's up to YOU. You don't always need to be a pro at the latest and greatest, but at least read the changelog. Stay abreast of current technology, security threats, etc...

These are just a few quick tips from my experience. Others may chime in with theirs, and some may dispute mine. I wish you all fruitful careers!