A month ago, I moved to Germany for work from Taiwan. People here are mostly nice and firendly. But if you don't speak German, there will still be lots of problems especially for official paper works.

But most importantly I got really cool and talented colleagues and a challenging job. Which makes me happy at least in work days.

Friday afternoon completed resign process. Friday night fly to Germany for new job.

Just in curiosity. How many devs here are use *only* laptop but no full set computer at home? Is it sufficient for daily programming and probably a little gaming?

I used to be a full set computer lover. But now laptops provide sufficeint compuing power with affordable price. Plus I am expecting quite frequent relocation in next few years. So I am considering buy a laptop and hoping it can be useful for 5+ years.

Any commrnts?

Resign in process for a company I worked for 6 years. Lost a lot of equipments borrowed from the company.

My oversea job journey continues on.

I am relocating from Taiwan to Germany. I got my work contract draft from the company. I don't think there are any big issues. But I still would like to consult dev friends here about the contract.

Especially for German companies, are there any tricky things that should be noted in the contract but sometimes ignored (intentionally or unintentionally)?

Any other advices about work/life in Germany are sure welcomed.

I am also happy to share my job seeking experiences, just put your questions on the comment.

Cheers.

So I just told my manager that I want to resign my job.

I have decided to accept the offer from a German software company. First time working overseas, full of uncertainty.

I don't know I am excited or nervous now.

I know this is the problem that I need to work it out. But still I would like to share with you guys here.

I start to feel bored after working in current company for 5+ years. I love my colleagues, I love my job actually. But after 5 years, I start to feel that there is nothing much I can learn from working in this company. And that really makes me feel uncomfortable.

So I get on LinkedIn to search and apply new jobs, I think it's good to talk with experts from other companies, to know more about what's happening in world. And perhaps to find a new opportunity.

Then I happens to find a startup which is doing something fits my background, and more advance. I feel like I will learn a lot working there.

The startup is also very interested in me. So the CEO and me have a quick chat on Skype 3 days after my application. We talked a lot and feel right to each other. Which I think I am highly possible to be hired. I am really exciting.

But later, I just hesitated. Because it is an Europe company and I am born and live in Asia. Going there may sacrifice time with my family and my friends. I am afraid I can not fit in at new company. I don't even 100% sure that I will like most of the things at new company.

I know I need to make decision on my own career. I just want to share the story, it makes feel less anxious. I am talking to my manager (which is my good friend) today. I hope everything go well.

New year. Trying to find a overseas job.

A bit long story about language barrier.

So I worked at an Asia company. The company decided to close a Northern Europe site which was considered to have low productivity. I was sent to that site to learn and take their job back to HQ.

One day when I was there, we got an email from a developer in HQ, requesting feature changes in the software maintained by the Northern Europe site. I heard the local developers were discussing about the email in their language. I don't speak their language but I could feel that they were confusing. So I walked to them and ask if I could help. They show me the email written in English by the Asian developer in HQ. And I was surprised that even I (who speaks the same native language with HQ dev) couldn't fully understand what the mail wanted to express. So I called back to HQ and talked to the developer directly, in our native language.

Turns out, he actually tried to say a completely different thing with that was written in the email.

Until that moment, I finally know why the site was considered to have low productivity. The men in HQ just couldn't describe the requirements correctly. And sure you got false result when you give wrong requirements statements.

I was so angry and felt sorry about the developers in that closing site. They were far more talented and experienced than most my colleagues in HQ. But they were laid off only because communication errors in HQ developers.

"There are only two industries that call their customers ‘users’: illegal drugs and software"
- Edward Tufte

Source: https://twitter.com/scottjenson/...

One of my coworker insists to take of shoes and socks while coding. He say that cold feet helps him concentrate.

This reminds me one of the Japanese anime about Mahjong, if you know what I am talking about.

Any Emacs users here? I've seen several editor discussion in devRant but rarely mentioned Emacs. I wonder if it is really not loved…

Sword Art Online

I just put my side project working with friends to Gitlab.com. Start to wondering why I was choosing between github and bitbucket while gitlab provides free private repo, free CI runners, and all other useful collaboration tools.

!rant

One thing I love in devRant is the avatar design. Everytime I open up a rant, the replies below with avatars look exactly a group of developers talking in a bar.

It just visually makes me comfortable.

Shared devRant to some of my Chinese speaking dev partners.
Partner: It is interesting to know that dev rants are language independent.
Me: Developers talk in programming languages, which are the same throughout the world.

Learned Python by working 6 year with it. The first tool I made in my spare time was a porn playback helper.