Been nearly 3 years since I last posted on DevRant, a lot has changed, but users are still usering….

I deployed my first Kubernetes cluster today, just wanted to share a win! 💪

My end of week fun…

Technobabble really bothers me… if I don’t try to overwhelm you with buzzwords and overly complex technical jargon within my industry, then afford me the same courtesy!

How can you avoid becoming a knowledge silo if everyone you train and upskill ends up leaving for another job? 😩 So frustrated that over the last 5 years I have tried my best to ensure the whole team is skilled in my specialist area so, that they can manage it on their own.... Yet... here I am... a silo again.

How do you cope with crippling imposter syndrome?

Cannot believe I am paying for a course with a lecturer that doesn't even teach the students what a foreign key is, or the concept of a join table to breakdown many-to-many relationships in a database. Literally telling me "If thats how you interpreted it, it's ok to add that in, but you dont have to." In relation to adding a new entity into the ER Diagram as a join table.

It isn't up for interpretation, you are literally joining tables based on foreign keys that will create duplication and make no sense. I mean, you are teaching people who have likely never worked with DB's before... you cannot teach them this. 🤦‍♀️

Part 2 of the .zip file saga. Staff member this morning emails me to say they can't get past the following step of my instructions.

*Screenshot showing them downloading the .zip file and not saving it anywhere, instead trying to open it*

... really starting to think that everyone in this place needs training in basic ICT tasks again. I was taught how to open and extract files from .zip when I was aged 11 in school.

I have always believed that clean code is readable code, and if your code is readable, then it shouldn't require masses of comments to explain it. However, in the course I am being taught, we are being told that in programming, comments are massively important to help another developer understand your code and what it does. So what is the consensus of the dev community?

Do you feel comments are key, or redundant if your code is written well?

A manager who felt that it was okay to come and speak to me about something that they were unhappy with in my conduct towards a member of our team, in a public place, loud enough for others to hear.

The conduct that made the manager feel the need to do this was my response to something another team member asking me to do. I had a lot on my plate with work, and had been given at least 3 additional tasks already in that meeting and my response to having to do yet another thing for this other team member because they "hadn't any idea what to do" was simply that I was quite busy and if it wasn't high priority it could wait one week as I have 3 other higher priority tasks that week to do. This resulted in me getting a warning and in a very public place.

Shouldn't have let it get to me the way it did, but the stress I was under and the way in which it was conducted just broke me and I cried. That nearly pushed me to leave my job and industry entirely.

IT Manager: What kind if attachment did you send me in that email?

Me: A .zip?

IT Manager: ...?

Me: A zip file? Zipped Folder?

IT Manger: ...?

Me: Umm... the data file you needed has to be sent in a zip folder because 6 different file types combine to make it? Just download the .zip and extract?

IT Manager: I don't know how to extract the files?

Me: ...

A manager who asked me to research and produce documentation on findings on a new system upgrade we could apply. Report on the risks, the amount of resource and time that would be needed etc. And the benefits of upgrading. Then after recieving the documentation and taking 1 month to read it, refused to make any form of decision without asking managers 2 levels above them who respond with "It is your decision". Then deciding it's best not to upgrade at this time. Okay, no probs.

6. Months. Later. That thing I said I didn't want you to do? I want you to do it now, could you get that done by the end of the week seeing as you have done the research already? Oh yeah and I will be off for the next two weeks as I am off on a ski holiday, so good luck with that.

My attempt at illustrating OOP 😂

Lecturer who is supposed to be teaching us to program somehow cannot debug his own code, instead I am telling him how to fix it... 🙈

ESRI's ArcMap...

Run a geoprocessing tool, now don't dare move the map, or click ANYWHERE on the interface! Don't even breath on the mouse pad! Oh... wait... too late... "ArcMap is not responding". At this point it's a 50/50 of whether it freezes for a long period then successfully completes the task, or it crashes.

Doesn't matter what you are doing - open the editor tool bar, create a database connection, make a table join. All will result in the same issue, such an unstable piece of software with no real market competitors to make the organisation build anything better (ArcGIS Pro wasn't much of an improvement, just another GPU Junkie).

Submitted my first ever assignment for Computing today 🎉🎉 I'll admit I am surprised how little written code assignments I have on the Programming module though...

I have just started learning C# having previously known only Python. It's a learning curve - why is there so much syntax!? 😬

I hate ADFS and SAML... that is all.

I work within an ICT team, but my role isn't ICT specific. However, I still had to explain to my Team lead how to create a .zip and what the purpose of it was. He's been working in the IT industry for 15+ years... how...?

Having a co-worker who I consistently must support with using the basic funionaity of our software, getting me dragged in to a senior management meeting to tell me and my boss that I am too incompetent to do my job. All because something out of my control was taking longer than they would have liked.

This same co-worker deleted a folder on a server full of live data because they "wanted to see what it would do" then wondered why I revoked their Admin rights to that folder.

I want to scream at them every day.

Part of my job requires me to use SQL in SQL Server and databases and Python and utilising Javascript APIs - so I was thrown in at the deep end. But my fiancé is also an amazing help as a software engineer he helps to spot my errors and encourages me to take on new challenges.

When the server doesn't recognise a folder it hosts locally... even though you have mapped it every way you can think of. Hello! This is your own drive!? Didn't anyone ever tell you you're name? 😣 #Server #ArcGISServer #HowDoYouNotKnowYourOwnName

"What you mean I have to get a log on for a sequel server? What's a sequel to a server?"

#IDontDoICT #CodeIsntMyThing #ServersAndSQL #GISConsultantInICTServices #ArcGIS

I'm not really a developer... but my Mum and Dad did both say "You are managing servers and coding? You are a geographer? Not a computer Scientist?" x

On the days when I just want to sob and put my head through the monitor....

I get out a piece of paper and draw my processes (whether that be code or mapping etc). Each step of each process, helps to represent the input and output of each method.

This makes it easier to find which step isn't giving the desired output....

Either this or the rubber duck method. :)

IT Requests:

"I need (insert vague IT related need), because otherwise we can't do our job."

- What have you been doing up until now?