mann.. 5 years after graduating , and i still feel that dsa rounds are one tough cookie.

i didn't do dsa for last 5 uears as i was busy in my daily dev life. then recently i planned for a switchz started preparing ds algo, got myself into a classroom course and now its been over 1 month and stuff just ... flies out of mind

like, our class has only covered arrays , searching sorting and string based questions till now. and since my interview is tomorrow i thought of going back to the classroom notes and revise all the questions.

and i can hardly remember 10/50!
I clearly remember understanding those questions well, putting comments and examples on the functions and doing them on my own without copying teachers code.

now all those notes are taking time to get back into memory. feels like i am dependent on checking tthe solution again n again to complete the problem.

this is truly scary. as of now i don't even had classes for advanced topics like recursion tres or graphs. the course will probably cover 400-500 problems.

if i go blank state after not doing these questions for a few months. how am i supposed to crack coding interviews which are usually scheduled within 2-3 days of notice?

Hey folks any tips on google interview prep for swe role (in india, although i guess this doesn not matter) in 24 hours? for last few weeks i have neen doing leetcode questions on strings arrays stacks and a few questions on recursion. But i haven't started on trees/graphs yet
should i do graph/ trees or should i focus on strengthening what i already know?

So this is kinda shocking but expected and deep and with layers:

layer 1 :
I just realised that : AI +Junior dev + 10% senior dev = 1 Senior Dev. This doesn't quite sit well technically, but for certain managers, this logic works and I got to see it working.

So I got cancer and took a sabbatical of 2 months. I am a dev with 6+ yrs of experience, and before I had gone , I was making PRs that consisted of adding features which required 3-4 screens , numerous logics, multiple APIs and which sould add significant impact. Basically a 3-4 days worth of task, all done solely by me to perfection, which comes with years of experience with nitty gritties of android.

And just a month ago, our team was joined by a fresh college passout, who did basic course of flutter, had 0 knowledge of Native Android and was making terrible screens using xml and viewbinding as a part of his initial training.

Now when I come back, I see a weird dynamics in group: he is always sitting around another SE1 , and is working on a task of similar intensity as I would do. He asked for an estimate of 5 days(!) and was able to create all the screens apis logics etc in those days.

1. during this time, he was near our seats every 10 mins, showing what he has made, asking next steps, and then going back to his seat.

2 on his seat, he would open chat gpt, put all his code there, get some response, put it back in AS gemini, then put it in AS, fix red lines again using gemini, run and come back to us to show if its correct.

3. and somehow his code did ended up working.

4. I reviewed his pr and apart from some basic fixes, all seemed fine. His code didn't considered various edge cases but I said fuck it, its responsibility of dev and qa to identify those cases (my PRs are essentially reviewed like this only, that's how i learnt to write quality code which won't burst on input of "abc" instead of "123")

5. but then his code got merged in temp branch from where we were to give the qa build and it crashed 3 seperate screens unrelated to his feature but related to the shitshow he had done on the data layer.

6. he and his SE1 senior then again fixed that shit and the that feature got merged, reviewed by QAs , got fixed for more bugs and finally got merged in our code.

7. however all this (stuff before qa review) happened in those 5 days and thus the managers thought that the task was done by this junior trainee in 5 days only .

thus trainee + AI + 10-30 mind per hour per day of SE1 (~3hrs) = 1 feature.
now my salary = 2x of trainee..
if i am layed off and 10% increment is given to that SE1, the total cost saved by company is around 40% of my salary.

And this blows my mind coz ever since I came, I am getting menial tasks while freshers are being given large scale tasks.

layer 2 : is it good for company?

I might sound biased but company would soon need to realise if they could afford cutting on reliability of experienced devs with this weird "hack the system with AI" style of development.

Even we seasoned devs use AI but review it on our own and think of cases before putting it in front of stakeholders as "yes sir, done!"

Additionally I don't think putting confidential code from codebase onto grmini and chat gpt would always be considered okay. Its like no one is caring for data now, but if those companies tried to come up with competition or something , we are digging our own grave.

layer 3 : is it impacting users(i e the devs?)

Well, I am scared that they might think of me as a burden and fire me for a junior trainee, so yeah its highly impacting me.

But that SE1 that is helping this trainee guy, is this part of his job role now?is it part of every Senior dev's role to train trainees via AI bots?

And what about that trainee himself? Is this really beneficial for him to learn Android Development like that?

---------
I personally have always valued folks who could write efficient code . I don't care about their ds algo knowledge, or if they deeply understand the working of apis and core code underneath. Just writing efficient, easy to understand and reliable quality code was enough for me to hire u and vice versa.

But AI is changing things for the bad and I think we will be seeing an even more increase in ds algo questions and other shitty ways by which faang like companies seperate cream devs from the rest. And this would be coming from every startup/mnc/small scale company , not just the FAANG

nee rule in office: if you are taking leave on a wfo day, you must come to work on wfh day in the same week. even if your whole team is working remotely.

wtf!?
I am being punished to take an emergency leave because i was in a er room taking breaths off an Oxygen cylinder?

what is the point of this rule? just day Directly that its 5 days a week. why even give a fake illusion of 3 days office

if i try to reject this rule, i need to take double leaves... leave on wfo as well on wfh day

i am tired of being in such an exploiting company. If only my country wasn't in the middle of war and I wasn't getting any worse in terms of health, i would have quit even without a job offer in hand

year 2 in company, $1200 increament, no senior dev promotion, still stuck at same tax bracket that i was for last 3 years. work environment getting more toxic everyday, and no wfh jobs for Android devs out there.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Do you folks have a constant "culture switching" in workplace? by switching i mean things like standup time , leaving time , lunch time etc getting changed every few days?

I feel like being part of team that is run by a dictator ever since our tech lead changed.

earlier we used to have 11 am standup, now out of blue she decided it will be on 9.30.
Its weird because most of the team can't reach office before 10am on WFO days and I personally ma having my breakfast with laptop open till 11 on WFH day.
I mean it could look bad if I was a construction worker getting paid by the hour, but am a fucking developer who can write code on his own time and only my work and timelines should matter.

same thing about leaving office. there is no official time to leave but i have to travel 2 hours so i usually leave at 5. i usually compensate this with working till 8 -8.30 on a wfh day but now sudden 1.5 hour meetings are becoming so much more common.

Another thing about leaves. earlier we could take leaves if we had some of our 22+ paid leaves remaining.
We would just need to inform to our manager and 99% of time he would instantly approve.
Now it feels like giving a request to government office. TL would not approve until the very last day. and if the leave falls in a month where other people are on leave as well, it might not get approved at all .
mind you, our team is quite decent at 5 android devs, 2 ios devs and 2 backend devs. i am an androdmid dev and i couldn't het a leave even if all 4 other devs are present on a day but an ios dev is not present, which I don't understand why?

weird cultural shift from "we have a relaxing environment and only focus on achieving targets" to "you do as we say, there are no team decision and votes"

!tech (just unhappy thoughts , read on your own risk)

Just wanted to share life update that it's still sucking and getting worse.

5 months ago i shared an update regarding my testicle swelling up which i thought was caused by something that I did wrong. Well I didn't got to know what was the reason, but I got to know something: that it was indeed a cancer of stage 3.

And Yes, It went as shitty as it could:

- They took away my testicle, left me one balled.

- The they asked for a sperm test, turns out my remaining ball is no longer producing any healthy sperms and I am childless for life

- then they took some blood test and analysed my ball. turns out that not only I had cancer but rather a spreading cancer which has spread to my lungs and stomach. I would need one of the strongest chemo out there.

- then the chemo started and it also gave its gifts : i , an already short built , fat ass ugly looking guy now had its head/beard bald as a rotten egg . (this could take months to years to recover)

- I also now have a scarred lungs that feel pain when doing anything more than a speed walk (which could be permanent)

- I also have a tingling sensation in ears (which if permanent would require me to wear a machine for life)

- All my nerves in hand are super dark and looks like burn marks ( would probably recover in weeks) and feel painful

---------

All this was bearable in the hopes that after chemo , atleast the cancer will die. well the cancer ain't dead and blood tests are still concerning. they have given another 1 month to get a retest in case the chemo meds are still working internally but after 1 month ,if things don't go right then further treatment will be needed.

And only those folks know what would be the treatment. are they going to give me more chemo gifts , or are they going to take away more of my parts, choose your own dark shit, yay!

My 2024 already started on am awesome shitty note : i fractured my left arm and got a plate inside of me. All i was hoping for 2025 was to get that plate removed and hit the gym again. But nope, god had even more awesome shit for me .

at the age where some of my friends are getting married, some are having kids and some are travelling the world, I am here sitting in my room, being worse than a paper weight, being a burden to the family and living a useless life.

Thanks life, awesome workthere with the luck on this one. now do the final steps and KILL ME

@dfox @trogus please update the native android apk on playstore to android 15/16 . it isn't showing in playstore anymore and downloading from unsafe sources feels like a security risk

I messed up . My testicle problem isn't going anywhere soon, and one ultrasound report already says could be a tumor. 2nd test will be done in 10 days, but if its a cancer, then my life just got officially reduced by 20 years and practically reduced to this year, coz fuck this life if I can't be normal.

I already
- haven't ever got love or chance to kiss a loved one,
-have a super beta personality and never got enough respect from anyone
- am not having any friends at current stage
- shifted from my native location and living in a new isolated place
- got ugly ass looks, height and weight to never feel happy

and now with a probable tumor coming which would lead to hair lossing chemo sesssions, ball removal surgery and followed by lifelong of infertility, I would prefer death over a meaningless loveless life

I am so devastated as to why i got into this state. nothing has been going good for lalst 2 years.
- i left my previous company which had a great culture, less work but asked for relocation . i joined this current company with horrible work culture, 3 days working and overload of stress
- I had fights with my friends and don't have any friends anymore
- i broke my arm this year.
- i caught terrible cough last year which took time but got better
- there have been constant bickering and fights among parents for 100s of reason . no more than 2 days goes by when any 2/3 people of our nucleolus family is not fighting
- and countless more shitty stuff

I was on a path to become a mediocre okayish guy. i was having a decent salary , learning new stuff everyday, fighting new task battles, becoming a beeter dev amd aiming to go for senior dev/TL role, buying car l, new home and planning for marriage, ...

but nope. God has some other plans.. some ugly and cruel plans, for the guys who don't even had the chance to live a villionous life.

I wonder how that guy from my scchool who used to date so many girls is doing now. God must be very angry with his Casanova behaviour. Oh wait, that asshole is earning 160k and married her gf from last 8 years!

i wonder how that gu from my homies is doing who used to hookup with random girls every weekend. Oh wait, he got promoted to TL and bought a new home!

I wonder how my friend who smokes 4 cigs a day and drinks beer every night is doing. Oh, he's going on international trips every month , earning 600k and have a clean medical record!

yepp such a great decision maker that guy on the top is . Let me connect with him soon and ask these questions , will let you know what he says. :/

I feel like I am not supposed to be alive anymore

funny how linkedin lunatics compare "not taking job due to multiple offers" to "not giving a job after giving a job offer"
this may seem similar, but on one side there's a company, with running operations and having multiple employees to take up on the work load of the leaving employee. even if some guy backed out on an offer, they still have employees and can continue their search.
but on other side their is an employee serving 60-90 days notice period. he/she have put a notice period due to a job guarantee and is out of livelihood if offer is rescinded

how do you deal with workplace bullies? or is it just me who feels certain types of talks and actions are a bit intimidating and contributes to a hostile workplace environment?

i usually feel this around people of power. like say you are a TL and you are casually flexing the power to impact X guy's KPI scores in response to a funny taunt about holidays, while some guy Y from same team is in proximity whose leaves are not yet approved, isn't it some kind of intentional bullying?

or like there is some discussion goin on with TL and dev, where dev is trying to justify some reason for something, and suddenly the SSE jumps in between, start agreeing with the TL, adds a few jokes deviating the situation and the dev is left with his reasons and justifications undermined?

or like when some messup occurs by the team and TL suddenly pulls out a threatening card citing "people spending extra time in tt/leaving early" or some other reason as cause/punishment of messup?

Why do people of power need to make us remember that there is someone above us? and why does this need to be done in public?

lets say even if there are some notorious elements in team, who does take leaves on important days, and who are giving poor performance due to slacking/TT/early signoff, why should i be also told about it? just to get a warning?

And let's assume that there ARE people whose work is not causing the mess. They ARE doing good timely work and there are no complaints (not even the ones that don't reach public ear) , how should they not get intermediated by such situations?

I will not say i am the most perfect person doing the best of coding, but if i am being constantly kept in an atmosphere of fear and power; and being constantly cut/over powered during my discussions, i might end up doing mistakes as well

ughh i don't know what the fuck is going on with my karmas right now. I just want to know if i was a satan all my life to deserve what i am getting for this year... well let me count what the sins that i might have done till 26 , which might be considered bad karma by me or anyone else

1. not being as punctual enough in praying (as expected by my parents and religion)
2. eating forbidden stuff occasionally ( we are forbidden onion and garlic, alcohol, etc, but i sometimes have these)
3. watching hours of porn 5-7 times a week and masturbating
4. not being always honest.

as far as i remember these things don't hurt anybody and I don't recall killing someone or being a fraud.

but then why i am being treated like a broken piece of crap that should no longer exist?

At the start of this year, i had a plate inserted in my arm via surgery because i broke it in an arm wrestling. i am currently recovering from it and am not in the most active shape.

But now i have one of my testicles swell to the size of a mango and from what the google says its going to be another surgery (hydrocelectomy).
i currently have only 9 leaves left and i was told just yesterday that i am being considered for senior role next year

I am devastated... why do i need to go through this shit? why me?

So... i discovered a "feature" in our portals and i probably fucked up.

basically it was a bug/feature where i was able to see a guy's offer+ctc , from our team

idk how, but it's a combined employee attendence/referrals/interview/payroll portal and i was just exploring while marking my attendance. funnily, it was just for a giy that i interviewed and the one who got selected and joined

recently we were having breakfast in office and i accidentally blurted out this feature. i thought that they might have known too, but turns out they don'T.

later I checked and this guy's letter was now not showing , indicating that it was some kind of bug that got fixed. now am not sure what to do, since this looks like some kind of fireable offence. should i let someone know this? the hierarchy above me is : SSE, TL , past TL( now tl of other team but he was the one who took the 2nd round ) and VP

mann... either i am dumb or my team is a bunch of excited monkeys.

for last 6 months my senior and this contract dev (both in Android) have been fussing about adding coroutine flows in our codebase: how our codebase "needs" it and how flows will help our codebase become "better"

when i asked them why, they gave me even more shit about hot flows cold flows, state flows, and how ots the latest "solution" from google.

So today, while going through another existential crises in my free time, i decided to understand what these "flows" are.

and from what i understand, it is mainly for cases in which there os actively changing data and we want to get latest updates without any event or trigger, like those streaming datas , chat messages, location etc.

but we are a freaking insurance app! user presses a button and we make an api call! what is the fucking problem here that isn't being solved by good old livedata and coroutines? There isn't any "live" api in app as far as i know and even if there is the code should be modified for 1 such api.

why fuck the whole codebase for a usecase that isn't applicable for 99% of APIs?

also, if a flow is going to auto trigger and call api, how are we supposed to control it? like say there is a offers api(there isn't) which gives us the latest offer products to show user for 5 seconds then refresh. for this i will simply returrn

flow{

while(true){
emit (offer api results)
delay(5000)
}

}

but this is an infinite polling api! how to stop it when say user pressed a cross button or did some other interaction?

it seems useless as fuck.. i can achieve a more controllable polling using the same while loop in different location or some other solution that won't require me adding this wierd api

5 mandatory leaves available, but haven't got even 1 person to spend it with. welp, i guess they will lapse and i will compromise on the 1 rule that i promised myself in work life : "never let your leaves lapse or get them encashed , always use them, you deserve it"

so... either its justified and i should be reporting for harassment or i am overreacting to a water cooler talk, please help me decide next action:

we are in morning standup zoom call. boss (AVP) comes, jokes about who's birthday is coming next month, no one says a thing, then i joked Gandhiji's. his reaction : "ugh bro why do you always have to ruin the friday mood?" and I also laugh "well..." topic changes.

^--- this part is all good. he is AVP, He rarely joins the call and is a cool fun (but strict) guy. the problem happens in a side teams chat room

so we have an "emotional support android" group. we just named it that to prevent scrutiny, its really just a group where everyone is usually ranting and bitching. however it just includes us android devs.

so while i am making this joke in teams, one guy messages there about what a stupid statement that was + 2 abuses (hindi abuses, there translation would loose the impact)

i am all in for bitching and everything , but i felt bad for this. this group does include the word "android" and android folks, some of which are not even here. if this was a personal chat, i had ignored it, but i am trying to make a name as a dev and this undermines my statements in general.

furthermore this guy is 6 months old in team and i have been here for more than 1.5 years. he is 2 years older than me, but we are always cool and we often help each other in tasks

I am angry for the public humiliation and feel like reporting to my TL, HR or even the AVP. he is not even realising that he hurt me. actually the office environment has gone so toxic that the tl is herself threatening and scolding for every basic things and we are all but bitching to each other about it. he is mostly my guy, always taking my side and i take his, but i feel like my dignity is being impacted

or am i stupid to get hurt at this?

I feel so much helpless, powerless and restraint. I am a goddamn 26 yr old fat ass full grown adult for fucks sake! how can i be restraint, powerless and helpless at the same time! but i am

Dear life,
When are you planning to get better?

Regards
Almost dead guy

tl : "hey dotenv, we have a presentation with VP tomorrow, do you want to present any of your achievements in product?"

me: "umm, what achievements ?"

tl : "you know, something that you added in app which made a good impact to various metrics like DAU, MAU, less bad reviews etc"

me: "umm... i coded the tasks and features created by you folks. they got shipped at some point of your liking, and are now being tracked by you for its success failure. So i am not sure what to take credit for"

TL: "no, no.. i mean like any bugs or issues that you fixed outside of your daily jira tasks which you tracked to be a sucess"

me: "well as far as tracking is concerned, then neither i know how to track them nor i did. but yea, i identified a bug where an outdated payload was generating bad request and giving a silent failure instead of success which recently got shipped. maybe its helping users get actual response instead of "we will get back to you in some time" , so this might get considered?

TL : "oh that? that we have already added as one of the team's achievements (=PM+TL's achievement) and have tracked it to be a succes"

me : "what th- okay. then how about that api failure which was identified by AVP as "something is not right" in which the api was intermittently taking a long time to respond. he tagged me and i set up logs to identify which type of users got that issue and the actual cause of that api failure. that was definitely a good fox for app as we ended up with good reviews on playstore for our new release?"

TL : "oh that? how can you take credit for that fix? it was identified by AVP, you just added similar logs that we were using for tracking errors and implemented a fix when it came to you as a sprint task? its a team achievement"

me : "but you guys didn't identified the cause through your logs!? my log was more granular. and even if that's the case, we aren't allowed to pick any task just as is, without getting it added to sprint , right?"

TL : "nah, that was a team win"

*6 months later, during appraisal time"
TL : "Hey dotenv, you haven't displayed any leadership skills and haven't gone put of the box to improve the product. Here's your peanut appraisal 🗑️"

me : 🥲🔫🤯🪦

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

fuck this stupid neaurocrst structure. i hate being a selfish prick than a team player, but either give credits as well as punishment to the team or gove credits as well as punishment to the single person. but wtf is thos culture of giving reward to team and punishment to individual? fckin communists

------

i am just sad

I want to play some games in my free time, what would be the best option for me ?

choice 1 : ps5 or xbox?
choice 2 : monitor or 4k tv
choice 3 : above choices or simply buy a windows laptop?

context :

1. i have never been a hardcore gamer. i don't dig multiplayer global kinda games like pubg, or other fps. I rather like offline story games like takken or NFS most wanted 2005

2. my current laptop is a macbook. i started development with windows laptop years ago, and at that time i was free enough to complete most wanted 2005 and max payne 1/2 (with cheats) i liked gta vice city / sanandreas as well, but i could not pass its missions and would rather end up roaming around

3. i recently played it takes 2 , some bmx bike racing and some archery game with my friend on his PS5 and damn i liked that crispy super fast and detailed graphical games. might be a good investment for relaxation and weekend time pass

4. i am shifting homes and in need of a personal tv/display as I don't want to share family tv anymore. i don't really watch any cable tv shows apart from news channels and mainly consume ott content (netflix ,prime Hotstar etc) i am wondering if a display could also be mounted on wall and could be able to run otts vis some firestick, jio stick or google cast etc.

5. as i mentioned that i never had a taste for gaming, i wonder if all above would be a bad choice and if i should simply buy a good windows laptop

( whatever that technology is , all i want is to control that screen content with a remote, like we do in tv)

So what's best for me?

random thought:
Life= tension. But you are only winning it if you don't let these tensions divert you from "what you gotta do"

Life will always find a way to give you some kind of problem. if you are not tensed about something, you ain't living a life.

But we often start ignoring our favourite habits/ aspirations/ goals in order to tackle these problems .

For eg I had made a habit of meditating for 15 mins followed by 45 mins of workout b/w 7-8pm last year. but since January 12th there hasn't been a day when i could achieve this habit simply because life kept throwing random tensions at me.

1. first my hand got fractured and i had to leave gym for a month. "no worries", i thought. "meditation doesn't require a working hand and i could do start walking as an excercise from next month"

2. then my office got wfo 3/5 days. i will get back to home after 7.30 and on wfh days my work won't finish till 8 on home days. "no worries" , i thought
"i will shift it to 9-10 every night next month"

3. then next month office got wfo 4/5 days annd family started steps for buying a new home. all time affter pfffice went into those steps/discussions "no worries ", i thought. "it wiill be over by the next month and i will be free"

this next month hasn't fome yet :/

can i work in any more horrible company than this?

> got a shitty macbook air as official work laptop. i am an Android dev btw, nd fuck knows how long it took to build apps on this, but it was still okay

> after 1 year some keys started getting slow to respond but still working fine

> recently a Senior dev raised request for better laptops and somhow we all got macbook pros woth good ram/processor

> returned my old laptop, got a mail after few seconds that my laptop has liquid damage! (in retrospect , i think i knew it as my bag once got drenched in rain)

> few days later, a mail chain starts where some guy is asking for $300 approval of fixes from my boss's boss!

now fuck knows how is it going to get paid, but i cant afford it on my monthly salary.

i am already on a tight crunch as my dad recently lost his job and i am paying emis for a car loan as well as a hand fracture loan, but i am surprised that am getting notified about this.

afaik,
1. the laptop's whole value is around $350 (some corporate quote that i once saw) .

2. the laptops should be fucking insured (we ourselves are a fuckin general insurance company) as its an obvious norm in corporate equipments. i shouldn't be penalised for this

3. i was working fine with this laptop and i can still work on it if given back.

4. this can be deducted at the time of fnf or from gratuity fund that these assholes hold onto until a guy completes 5 years and take it all for themselves if he doesn't.

5 i can buy this shitty laptop back and use it as my personal device, or get it repaired for less.

i don't even claim to have damaged it, why are they putting it on me 😭😭😭

so a good thing happened. after struggling with our current TL for whole last year, one SSE was promoted to TL and the team got split into 2. now our team has the new TL which is strict but a much more responsible lead and a good friend.
and in a striking change of culture, she has askedus to define our own KPIs rather than using the pre default KPIs. our predefined KPIs were weird :

- number of sprint spillovers >> to minimise
- number of POCs , learning sessions done >> min 2 in year
- number of prod bugs caused >> to minimise
-instancee of coding standards miss >> to minimise

i kind of excelled in all , yet got an 86/100 rating. previous TL was an asshole , so that also contributed to a lower rating without reasoning.

but since now i have the opportunity, what do you suggest should be ideal KPIs for a software engineer 1?

random writing on wall : "new mcDonalds burger for just Rs 99/-" (* 10% GST)
me : "oh that's easy. 99+ 10% of 99 = 9.9 , so total will be 108.9
---
random DSA question in interview : "given a number n, write a program to break it into n parts, such that product of all parts is the highest for given number n. like for 10, 4x3x3 is 36, 4x3x2x1 is24, 5x5 is 25, and thus the correct answer is 4x3x3"

me : 💀💀💀🏳️🏳️🏳️🏳️

-----
seriously though why the fuck is this programming so difficult. I also learnt java c++ python and various languages during my education days, and currently using it to create awesome buttons and ui screens which is being used by millions of people,

but why the interviewers have to ask questions that results in such a horrific use of these beautiful languages!?!

these non realistic stuff are not at all intuitive and will only result in people who likes to mug up these questions and their solutions to keep winning in life

startup idea : job offer email as a service

basically a company which will send you a fake offer letter email, so you can try negotiating better salary from your current org.
high risk high rewards game

I am having an introspective moment as a junior dev.

I am working in my 3rd company now and have spent the avg amount of time i would spent in a company ( 1- 1.5 years)

I find myself in similar problems and trajectories:

1. The companies i worked for were startups of various scales : an edtech platform, an insurance company (branch of an mnc) and a b2b analytics company

2. These people hire developers based on domain knowledge and not innovative thinking , and expect them to build anything that the PMs deem as growth/engagement worthy ( For eg, i am bad at those memory time optimising programming/ ds/algo, but i can make any kind of android screen/component, so me and people like me get hired here)

3. These people hire new PMs based on expertise in revenue generation and again , not on the basis of innovative thinking, coz most of the time these folks make tickets to experiment with buttons and text colors to increase engagement/growth

4. The system goes into chaos mode soon since their are so many cross operating teams and the PMs running around trying to boss every dev , qa and designer to add their changes in the app.

5. meanwhile due to multiple different teams working on different aspects, their is no common data center with up to date info of all flows, products and features. the product soon becomes a Frankenstein monster.

6. Thus these companies require more and more devs and QAs which are cogs in the system then innovative thinkers . the cogs in the system will simply come, dimwittingly add whatever feature is needed and goto home.

7. the cogs in system which also start taking the pain of tracking the changes and learning about the product itself becomes "load bearing cogs" : i.e the devs with so much knowledge of the product that they can be helpful in every aspect of feature lifecycle .

8. such devs find themselves in no need for proving themselves , in no need for doing innovative work and are simply promoted based on their domain knowledge and impact.

My question is simply this : are we as a dev just destined to be load bearing cogs?

we are doing the work which ideally a manager should be doing, ie maintaining confluence docs with end to end technical as well as business logic info of every feature/flow.

So is that the only definition of a Software Engineer in a technical product?

then how come innovations happen in companies like meta Microsoft google open ai etc?

if i have to guess as a far observer, i would say their diversity in different fields helps them mix and match stuff and lead to innovative stuff.

For eg, the android os team in google has helped add many innovative things in google cloud product and vice versa.

same is with azure and windows . windows is now optomissed to run in cloud machines when at one point it was just a horrible memory hogging and slow pc OS

for small companies, 1 ideology/product/domain is their hero ideology/product/domain .

an insurance company tries to experiment with stuff related to insurances,health,vehicles,and the best innovations they come up with is "lets give user a discount in premium if they do 5000 steps a day for an year".

edtech would say "lets do live streaming for children apart from static videos"

but Android team at google said , "since ai team is doing so well, lets include ai in various system apps and support device level models" ~ a much larger innovation as 2 domains combined to make a product

The small companies are not aiming to be an innovative product, they are just aiming to be a monopoly product. and this is kinda sad

so which company is the new faang among developers? you know, the one where there is a good WLB, nice pay , 5-7 hr work/day and other benefits , but with a high entry barrier?

I am thinking of starting to revise DS/Algo for some interview prep

I AM IN RAGE !!! MY MANAGER IS A FUCKIN SNAKE ASSHOLE!

FUCKER RATED ME 3/5 !
i feel like destroying my laptop and putting my papers right away. this is absolute shit hole of a company where corporste bullshit and multi level hierarchy runs the system, ass licking is the norm and still me, a lowly sde dev 1 was giving my 200% covering their bullshit to deliver outputs on time.

let me tell you some stats.

- our app has grown by 2x installs and 5x mau.

- only 3 devs worked on the app. the other 2 can vouch for my competence.

- we were handled an app with ugliest possible code full of duplication, random bugs and sudden ANRs. we improved the app to a good level of working

- my manager/tl is such a crappy person that if asked about a feature out of random, he will reply "huh?" and will need 2 mins to tell anything about it.

- there is so much dependency with other teams and they want us to talk to them personally. like hell i care why backend is giving wrong responses. but i cared, i gpt so good handling all these shit that people would directly contact me instead of himal and i would contact them. all work was getting done coz 1 stupid fellow was spending 90% of his time in coordinations

- i don't even know how to work with incompetence. my focus is : to do my task, fix anything that is broken that will relate to my task in any way and gather all the stuff needed to complete my task

i am done. i cannot change this company because its name is good and i am already feeling guilty about switching my previous jobs in 1 year but this is painful.

in my first company i happily took a 10% hike coz i was out of college and still learning.
in my 2nd company, i left due to change in policies ( they went from wfh to wfo and they were in a different state) , but even while leaving they gave a nice 30% hike
in my current company idk wjat the no. 3 equates to , but its extremely frustrating knowing a QA who was so incompetent, he nearly costed us a DDOS got the same rating as me

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PS : GIVE ME TIPS ON HOW TO BE INCOMPETENT WITHOUT GETTING CAUGHT