For the last months I've been consulting for this company. My initial thought was that they resembled the company in The Phoenix Project.

Ultimately, as the weeks have passed, the thought has strengthened more and more. The resemblance to characters such as Brent Geller is too high to hide. Every time there is an incident, I can recall it from the book as well.

The worst part is that some of the staff here is familiar with the book. It's as if they try to match their work to it, I think...

Living in a somewhat rural area, local dev jobs are hard to come by. So I decided to look for remote jobs.

I got in touch with a ceo of a company within our capitol, and the process was moving forward rather quickly. Until we got to discussing the salary. The seo had mention something about what he thought was the mininum and maximum salary. I said I needed to think about it for a bit, as the salary was a bit below the national average - but still was higher than I make in my current job.

I later responded with a suggestion a little higher than he suggested, thinking that we were in a negotiation situation. Oh, I was so wrong. This message was met with total radio silence. It's the first time I've been ghosted by a company.

Several weeks later, I got a message saying they hired someone else. That kind of treatment makes me glad I never got the job.

My first dev project was back in the 80's. I might have been around 10, I think.

My friend and I had been tinkering around Shoot'em up construction kit for a while, plus we'd been quite inspired by all the cracktros, intros and whatnot was popular back then (piracy was huge, at least on the C64 platform - I don't think I ever saw an original game until my parents bought an Amstrad CPC).

Anyway, we were inspired. We didn't know how to code except some basic BASIC (ba-dum-tsj). We borrowed a book from the library on how to code an assembler for the C64 in BASIC, and coded for days. I eventually lost interest, but my buddy did actually complete it.

There's a vacant position for an Associate Professor in Games and Entertainment Technology at the university in my home town, if anyone is interested.

I think it'd be good for both the university and the town to see the position filled by a potent person.

https://jobbnorge.no/en/...

I read a quote once, and I can't recall neither the exact words nor the author. Can anyone help?

The quote was something like this:
"A website is like a garden. You aren't done once you've planted. You need to maintain it continuously."

I could finally find the time to hang with my wife and watch a show. Two minutes in a customer calls to tell me his site is fucked. "I didn't change anything". Well, who renamed the style.css file in the WP theme then? Argh!

I fucked up my Chrome Dev-Tools. Why won't Chrome recognize my external CSS file properly on page reload anymore? Instead of filename.css:[linenumber] it is listed as <style></style>

All the cool kids in the neighborhood owning a Commodore 64. I was about 7-8 I think. Piracy was big back then, the kids swapped those large floppies and tapes containing hundreds of games through the mail. And all those cool hacktros, trainers, intros and whatnot got me interested in computer graphics and programming.

Spent a couple of hours trying to figure out why my flexbox css wasn't rendering as suspected. Finally discovered that the html tag I tried to apply it to didn't support display: flex;

Gah.

Ah, I finally found the time to unbrick my bricked Onion Omega2+!

Now what?

My worst sin in one word: Procrastination

Had to help a client set up a Zebra label printer the other day, because whoever was sent to deliver and set it up failed to complete the task.

After spending some time on their website looking for drivers and applications, I totally understand why he gave up.

The UX was horrible. Whatever I clicked sent me further and further away from what I tried to achieve.

How can UX not be essential in 2017? How can a company survive with such 💩 web pages?

So the product has been labeled "ready for launch" for months, but the client has apparently been procrastinating and weren't ready.

Finally, earlier this week, they claimed they were set for launch, and that I should prepare the final bits.

And now they demand additional functionality which requires refactoring code.

Sigh. Why, oh why?

This is how I scored my current job.

I worked at a local newspaper as a sole dev. Nobody knew what I did, neither did they care. The job was miserable, and so was I.

A small design bureau I partly knew, had moved into the building. I hang around in their office quite a bit. Not only because they were cool kids to be with, but also because I hated being in my own office.

One thing led to another, as they say. Eventually the design bureau offered me a job. I was too chicken to jump ship atm, so I declined at first. Then the newspaper had to fire people. It was the ultimate time to jump ship. And now I wasn't only offered a job, I was also offered a partner position.

I still feel kinda lonely, as none of the others are so "dev-y". But it sure as hell beats that crappy newspaper!

What's the optimal dev to non-dev ratio at a workplace?

I switched from a 1:65-ish ratio to 1.5:2.5 ratio this year, and it was an improvement by all means. But I still feel so very alone, struggling with my many dev-related questions and really no one to discuss them with.

Under what ratio do you prefer to work?

Totally not related to work. I just happened to be present at work at the time.

I've dreamt of building my own home automation system ever since we moved into this place. By the time I'll get around to it, I guess the home automation system I want is common shelfware.

Today I coded till my fingers bled. Dunno if I should be scared or proud.

Yes, Mr. Client. It is extremely wise of you to demand changes on release-day. Of course it won't go smoothly, untested and buggy as it will be.

Make us a webshop, they said. But we'll handle everything from the checkout and after ourselves, they said.

Help us, they said. We can't get the grips on checkout and thereafter, they said.

This is going to be a long-lasting project.

After working with web development for years, I decided to get a degree in CS.

The lecturer taught so many things wrongly, and I kept arresting him. Eventually he asked me politely to leave class.

My previous employer halted my interest in CSS preprocessors for years, so I was so excited to get started using Sass this year.

But the excitement was short-lived. The limitations and weird adaptations leaves me with grey hairs frowning faces.

Bah.

I keep improving by staying curious and never giving up.

Being the only dev in a media company, I believe my coworkers looked upon me as the evil Internet reincarnated into a living person.

Most of them avoided me like a leprous, and I experienced long periods being almost isolated.

I did almost quit so many times I've lost count.

I eventually found another job, where there's lots of love, caring and we all embrace each other's skills. It feels like I'm a butterfly who finally got to break out of my miserable cocoon.

"refractor everything by yesterday"

The worst, and only, hackaton I ever attended was at a conference a few years back.

My boss told me to attend. So I did.

The hackaton was clearly not something the conference had planned very well, as the info was late one day before the conference dinner party - and the summary was early the morning after the party.

Noise canceling headphones, brain.fm and some cold beverages nearby.

Had to enter the Apple world when joining the new job.

Used a good hour locating curly brackets, pipe and tilde on that cryptic keyboard.

User-friendly my ass.

Set up a personalized web front page for the news organization I worked for in the spring. Left it for the editorial staff to be tested and approved.

Didn't hear a word for almost a year when the PO asked for me to deploy it.

After a few days, the editorial staff started asking questions.

I really, really wonder what they did all those months before release...

I had my last day today, after signing an severance package deal some weeks ago. It has been eight long years in this news media company as a sole web developer.

Leaving it behind feels awesome.

There was cake. There was a greeting written with a marker on the cardboard box the cake was delivered in. There were no speeches.

But my by now X coworkers seemed happy to get cake.

I am so excited to start fresh next year as a developer in a small design firm where there is a lot of care and love and nerdiness.