Starting a new job tomorrow after 4 months of unemployment. I'm not excited at all about this job. Gotta find where I stashed the clown face makeup so I'm all ready in the morning.

Question from a CTO/co-founder in an interview:
"So you've changed jobs every year or so and you were laid off a bunch of times. Do you think maybe it was because of your performance or the company choices you made?". You fucking privileged city dwelling gen-Xer. You got lucky with your startup until now. You sell recruiting software and that worked for a while when the market was booming but now that companies aren't hiring anymore you want to pivot and also make employee management and HR solutions. Guess what? Everybody else is also doing that.

I'm still looking for a job after more than two months. Never thought I'd say this but after all these interviews I'm starting to prefer live coding tests over take home assignments. You spend a few hours preparing by reading interview guides (the interviewers usually get their questions from these same guides) and then you either do well or fuck up but it's all over in a few hours and you move on with your life.

Wise people of devrant (yeah, I know, oxymoron) I need your advice. I had a well paying job as a senior FE engineer at a startup but our product became obsolete after the latest AI advances so I was laid off. I've been trying to find something at the same salary I was earning for the past 2 months but I see that it's difficult. Latest attempt was for a team lead position but I failed that. When I failed I saw that the same company opened up a FE Engineer position and I asked if I can apply for that one. Recruiter said that I could but for a salary that's 25% less than my previous one. From this I understood that they like me, but maybe my technical level was too low for team lead. It's kind of a lowball offer and I'm not strapped for cash, but the salary they're offering is still very high for my country. On one hand, I'm dealing with some mental health issues these days so I'd like the reduced stress and responsibilities of a lower level position. On the other hand, I worry that I'll feel resentment and look to move in a year or two. If they gave me 10% more I would be happy and accept. Should I try to negotiate? Should I keep looking?

FE assignment: "Make app that fetches data, shows it in table, lets you update and delete, persists data locally, has nice responsive css and tests, follows best practices. Spend no more than 2-3 hours". I scaffolded everything with chatgpt and still couldn't finish it. I'll just send them an email that I withdraw from the process.

I've spent the last 10 days on an assignment for an interview. Instead of starting with the requirements right away I decided to fiddle around and tried to add typescript but got stuck for 3 days. Now I just need to write the docs and final PR description but I'm feeling really burn out. I'll be rejected if the code is shitty, and that thought made me try harder. But when I tried harder, in the back of my head I thought "What if I'm still rejected after trying so hard?" and that kills my motivation. I'll just get it done tomorrow. Next week I have another assignment, I'm using chatgpt for that one.

Doing another FE assignment these days. In this one they have some clear requirements and some not so clear ones ex. "make the existing code better". And it's for a team lead position so I have to pretend I know what I'm doing instead of just implementing the feature they want.

"Wow, chatgpt is so amazing! I could make a pong game game in 10 minutes!". Yeah, and I could find one on github and clone it in 5, what's your point?

I'm going to interview for an associate team lead role but I've never had a leadership role before. How can I demonstrate I am team leadership material? Are these team lead positions worth it or is being an IC better?

Just got rejected for BS reasons after handing in an assignment. Just tell me you found someone better, it's not a crime.

Working on a test assignment for an interview with a company. There's a time limit of 3 days and I absolutely hate how quickly I have to do everything (I don't have much free time because of some family obligations). I'm just copying stuff from a tutorial because I find it very difficult to start projects from scratch. Analysis paralysis gets in the way. I'll be hired as a senior so people will expect me to make technical decisions all the time and this scares me but I'm greedy and I like the extra money. Part of me wishes I could find a junior job and just work on very basic stuff.

I have mixed feelings about job hunting. I love the thrill of the chase and securing interviews but I'm so tired of proving myself over and over in interviews.

I know you're not supposed to "spray and pray" when applying for jobs but I find it therapeutic to spam those apply buttons. Also job ads have become so long that I apply and only read them if I'm accepted for an interview.

Another year, another layoff 🙃

Feeling sad and disappointed during a really intense sprint. Have been working for the past year on a web app made with fucking jQuery. I fixed a lot of bugs, and caused quite a few of my own.
And all this happened because I was desperate when looking for a job. I was too afraid to take my time and find something better. I just took the first offer I got.
I'm thinking of quitting, but why should I do them a favor? I'll stay and keep getting paid until they kick me out.

Clickety-clack, I'm making a hack...
Tickety-tetti, I'm cooking that spaghetti...

I need some advice. A year ago, one of my former colleagues got a job at one of my dream companies. We weren't besties but we had a good relationship. When I learned about her new job I congratulated her and told her that I'd like to work there too. A position at that company has been open for quite a while but I'm hesitating to apply because:
a) If I apply without telling her and the recruiters see that we used to be colleagues, it will seem strange that I didn't ask her for a referral
b) If I ask her for a referral she might sabotage me because she's probably grooming one of her friends for that position or she thinks that I was a horrible colleague and doesn't want to work with me again. If she liked me, wouldn't she tell me about the position?
On the other hand, the ad for that well paid position has been on their site for months so I'm starting to think it's either fake or they're looking for a special unicorn(which I am not)
Should I apply or is it a complete wasted of my time? (I already have a job)

Some advice please: In our last sprint meeting my manager told the whole team that I broke something. What he didn't say was that he was also responsible for that. He generally has the habit of accusing others to cover up for his own faults. I don't care, I own up to my mistakes. Any witty but nice responses if he tries that again? I'd like to answer "Man, I don't even feel bad" but that would be too sarcastic.

My manager when I forget something: "I can't micromanage you, you should remember to do the thing"
Also my manager: "Please remind me to do that thing"
I'm the company reminder it seems.

PROGRAMMING MUSIC for DARK MINDS 2019: For working on CRUD apps but feeling like you're hacking the matrix

I lost my remote job of two years due to our startup failing. After applying to various companies, two weeks later I get my first job offer😀(And I'm not even that skilled).
In comparison, a very experienced friend of mine who works in sales and business administration has been looking unsuccessfully for a job for over a year.
It makes me realise how lucky we are😀

How can I ask my coworkers for feedback without coming off as insecure?
A year and a half ago I got my first job as a remote developer when I was 30. I've done web and IT related jobs before but not full time development. Everything was fine for the first 10 months and then I started getting negative reviews, that my productivity rate is much lower than the rest of the team. I felt really sad and stressed, which led to a minor breakdown, which led to my contract being changed from a full time employee to a contractor that gets paid by the (estimated) hour. After a bit of research, I found out that my productivity rate was low because I was the only developer following our "One test per pull request" policy, which was obviously cancelled at some point, but nobody informed me. I didn't bring this up to my boss because I didn't want to make my manager and coworkers look bad. Working as a contractor isn't so good because a lot of times my features are delayed because of external factors I can't control(code reviews, testers, tests randomly breaking). I want to find out if I'm a bad developer or if the company is trying to cut costs by taking advantage of my insecurity and inexperience.

I live in a small town and work remotely. When I tell people, (even young ones) I'm a programmer/web developer they think I install programs or make simple sites. I try to explain to them that I make the things but it perplexes them. Maybe because they think all apps are made by hi tech wizards and not average joes like myself working for average companies. Any of you other countryfolk have similar experiences?

Me on devRant: Advice, support and encouragement
Also me on devRant: Crude jokes and whiny rants

I read the pragmatic programmer a few months ago. The book advised learning a different programming language every month or so. I was doing Advent of Code so I decided to try out Elm because functional programming is all the rage these days.
It took me one hour to convert a string of numbers to an array of numbers! And when I finally finished with that I couldn't understand how to compare each element with the next one in an array using map or filter.
I realised that I've become too comfortable using javascript. Worst case scenario: In a few years when javascript is obsolete I'll be like those old dudes that know only Cobol. Best case scenario: I'll always be too dumb to earn a nice salary.
On a positive note: The first time I tried Elm I didn't understand jack shit, now I understood a few things.

I read a story about a guy from Greece who wants to delete his gender from his id and my first thought was how many 20 year-old government database schemas that is going to mess up.

If you refactor code and make it worse, did you refucktor it?

Question for you desktop guys. I was thinking of making a desktop app with a GUI as a side project. It's mostly going to be business-like CRUD, no fancy stuff. I was thinking of using electron (since I'm a web developer) but I read that it's slow and bloated. On the other hand I would like learning something new. I don't want to spend too much time on the GUI so I would prefer a framework/language that already has some nice open source gui packs available. I have only ever used JavaFX before for a tutorial, is that a good choice? Also, I would like it to work on both linux and windows.

MOCHA YOU FUCKING BITCH, THERE IS A DONE() CALLBACK BEING CALLED IN THIS TEST, WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM??? I WILL RAPE YOUR FUCKING SOURCE CODE. But really mocha test, why u no work so we can both move on with our lives 😣😦😞

Why do so many people install Arch if it's so difficult to install?