Forget work today

Devs around the world, raise your salary, if you know your shit. Don't lowball, if they hesitate find someone else who will.

A young guy I work with burst into tears today, I had no idea what happened so I tried to comfort him and ask what was up.

It appears his main client had gone nuts with him because they wanted him to make an internet toolbar (think Ask.com) and he politely informed them toolbars doesn't really exist anymore and it wouldn't work on things like modern browsers or mobile devices.

Being given a polite but honest opinion was obviously something the client wasn't used to and knowing the guy was a young and fairly inexperienced, they started throwing very personal insults and asking him exactly what he knows about things (a lot more than them).

So being the big, bold, handsome senior developer I am, I immediately phoned the client back and told them to either come speak to me face-to-face and apologise to him in person or we'd terminate there contract with immediate effect. They're coming down tomorrow...

So part my rant, part a rant on behalf of a young developer who did nothing wrong and was treated like shit, I think we've all been there.

We'll see how this goes! Who the hell wants a toolbar anyway?!

Fixing a bug first thing in the morning >
#proudmoment 😂

Looking through some code from a new project at my old job.

It seems they are sending off some audio files from interviews into an online transcriptions-service, and putting the result unsanitized into a string-concatenated INSERT-statement into the db.

I look forward to the demo, I’m going to yell “single quote Drop table users semicolon dash dash”

Modem issues kept going on.
Started complaining to them again and requesting they send one of their proper modems.
Service: "Unfortunately it is not possible to request a different modem"
Me (tho *slightly* more polite): "I don't care, you guys caused this issue by sending us a shitty modem, so you guys are now to send me a proper modem, period. I'm done with having unstable internet because <ISP> doesn't want to admit their modems are flawed by design and deliver proper ones."
Service: "I have good news! We can swap out your modem for the one you requested"

Sometimes, you just have to bitch hard enough.

Why would a company (A) create another company (B) within itself?

Both companies are literally in the same building.

Company A is manufacturing plastic products and company B is all about company B's IT (sys admin, dev, etc.).

How to be a good programmer? 😔

This week we started trying to do agile the right way.... And well so far for Sprint planning had 6 meetings over the last 2 days.... For work that I have little involvement in and well if they'd just let me do and demo it... Would've taken me a day...

And now I'm behind me on all the other projects I was working on.... That I could've worked on during those meetings where I basically just sat like: I need all to get u guys too ur shit done first, so I can start my part."

I'm the api guy, they're loading/creating the tables the api needs to use.

So far on my holiday:
150+ new emails....

Fuuuuuuck daaaat shiiiiiiiittt

"read the code" he said
"all the requirements and business process is in there"

Knok knok...who is there...................
VB6

Just been interviewed by 3 people that have nothing to do with the role I'd be doing. So, that was fun.

Why does this entire company have such a hardon for excel?

A while back I took over responsibility for getting one of our developers up to speed, after the other guy basically gave up on him.

Management insisted that this new recruit was our guy. I was kind of going along, since I had been there during the recruits first meeting with us, and he seemed to know his stuff.

I was very wrong. He was suppose to have been working with kubernetes, but suddenly did not know what a container was. After explaining it to him, he said along the lines of “yeah, sure, I was only testing you, I know all about this”.

He did the same thing for a number of other technologies. Always said that he knew very well what it was, and that I did not need to teach him those things.

Yet, he always seemed to get stuck with basic stuff, like installing node, setting up env-vars, starting docker-containers locally and that sort of things.

I mean, it is perfectly fine to say that you don’t know. I even consider it a great answer; it shows honesty and makes me trust you more. But with this guy, it was just impossible to get him up and running, since he always “knew”, but yet always needed help.

We had to let him go. Since I had been the one who had spent most time with him, it was natural that I was to be the one to tell him. I was not looking forward to it, I’m not reallly a persons-guy. Still, I was calm and honest with him and basically told him that I had found it impossible to work with him, kind of harshly.

He then asked me if he could put me on as a reference for his future job-applications. I told him politely that I did not think that was a great idea. He asked why, I told him I would be unable to say anything that would benefit him. He then asked me to lie.

I didn’t know what to say, except for “no!”. Never saw him again after that.

(New account because my main account is not anonymous)
Let's rant!

I'm 3 exams away from my CS degree, I've chosen to do some internship instead of another exam, thinking was a great idea.

Now I'm in this company, where I've never met anyone because of pandemic. A little overview:
- No git, we exchange files on whatsapp (spicy versioning)
- Ideas are foggy, so they ask for change even if I met their requirements, because from a day to another they change
- My thesis supervisor is not in the IT field, he understands nothing

The first (and only) task they gave me, was a web page to make request to their server, fetch data etc.
Two months passed trying to met their requests, there were a lot of dynamic content changin on the page, so I asked if I could use some rendering framework to make the code less shitty, no answers.
I continued doing shitty code in plain JS.

Another intern guy graduated, I've to mantain his code. This guy once asked me "Why have you created 8 js modules to accomplish the web page job?", I just answered saying that was my way of work, since we're on the same level in the company I didn't felt to explain things like usability, maintainability etc. it's like I've a bit of imposter syndrome, so I've never 100% sure that my knowledge is correct.
Now we came at the point where I've got his code to mantain, and guess what:
900 lines of JS module that does everything from rendering to fetching data..

I do my tasks on his code, then a bug arises so the "managers" ask him what's happened (why don't you ask to me that I'm mantaing is code!?!?), he fixes the bug nonetheless he finished his intership. So we had two copies of the same work, one with my job done and still with his bug, and another one without my work and without the bug.
I ask how to merge, and they send me the lines changed (the numeration was changed on my file ofc, remember: no git...)

Now we arrive today, after a month that they haven't assigned any task to me and they say:
"Ok, now let's re-do everything with this spicy fancy stunning frontend framework".
A very "indie" Framework that now I've to study to "translate" my work. A thing that could be avoided when I've asked for a framework, 2/3 MONTHS AGO.

I did an interview with an international company for an "Expert Fullstack Dev." position...

After being praised by the technical team, it turned out that the position was offering a junior salary...

I swear to god...
HR is the cancer of this industry

I lose faith in humanity day by day.

Dunning-Kruger effect is strong with me.

Thankfully, one of the most important skills that I learned is active listening. I am less vocal about my silly thoughts and shitty opinions these days.

I don't feel dumb. Instead, I realise that I AM dumb.

The people in my new org are exceptionally smart and talented. Each everyone is a hand picked gem. This isn't a coincidence. Rather it's evident that they hire folks very carefully.

In my previous org, I used to be the one driving everything. Like the smartest guy in the room.

But here, I am just quiet in every meeting and I enjoy working 12 hours a day. I am the dumbest guy in the room surrounded by people who are brilliant and humble.

I truly feel fortunate and grateful to be part of such an amazing org and wonderful team. One of the best decisions I made in my career and life.

Fuck you and your shitty updates Microsoft.

I never asked for a fucking weather app on my taskbar.

Why the actual fuck would I EVER need that shit? I have that on my phone already, same for my news, and literally everything else you try to molest me with.

Want to know why Linux is growing market share? It's because it's an OS first and not some husk that shoves content at you and screams "CONSUME ME!"

FUCK YOUR SHITTY UPDATES, AND FUCK YOUR PLATFORM OF PETTY METRIC BULLSHIT.