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Holy fucking shit. I just went to my first Java class at uni (3 1/2 hour long one at that) and I havent felt so damn irritated in a while.
Some background:
So first, I only had about an hour of sleep last night and a full day of work before this class so I was more cranky than normal.
Theres only 7 students in the class, 6 others plus me. I am the only one with any resemblence of programming experience. The teacher also claims to be a linux developer.
This is a three part course series. Java 1, 2, and 3. All taught by the same teacher.
The fuckery:
-teacher spends 48 minutes talking about text editors. Not even IDEs. Just talking in depth as fuck about notepad (notepad. Not notepad++ )and atom and textpad. Those three only though, nothing on vim or emacs or ACTUAL IDEs. 48 minutes.
- I briefly mentioned learning node.js on the side and am now the "javascript girl" to my teacher. I'm probably less experienced with js than any other thing i ever practised or studied.
-professor saw linux on laptop and asked what distro. When I said arch he said "oh no you shouldnt be using that Its not really for beginners" ... Uhh what makes you think I'm a beginner to linux? Or does he not think I should be using arch while learning java? Either way its really ridiculous and irritates me that he would discourage anyone from using any software/OS/anything, regardless of what it is or skill level.
-teacher moved a bunch of content out of the course because theyre either "concepts that are never implemented anymore" or "arent critical to know to master the language". These particular topics that were removed? Multi-dimensional arrays, scopes, and exception handling. EXCEPTION HANDLING.
-he writes a hello world program and displays it on the board, proof of it working and everything. He tells the class to write the same program, compile and run it. Never did I guess we would spend the remaining hour and ten minutes of class struggling with fucking hello world programs. Especially when the correct code is on the fucking projector.
And I get it guys, everyone starts somewhere. People have to learn from square one. But these kids have no fucking interest in this. One of them literally admitted to pursuing this degree for the "lavish life" that comes with the salary. Others just picked programming because they didnt know what else to choose to get into the school. It fucking saddens me. I hope that one or some of them end up caring and finding a passion in this field, otherwise I feel fucking sorry for them having to spaghetti code their way through life to get a paycheck cause they couldnt be bothered to put in the effort. I feel even more sorry for any devs they work with in the future too.
The other annoying bit is that I can't test out of this class!! so it looks like for either 7 hours a week ill be bored out of my fucking mind with these beginner concepts or ill be helping others fix really stupid shit in their code (like putting quotes around hello world so it would actually print the string).
Fucking hell. Waste of a semester class.44 -
I'm a self-taught 19-year-old programmer. Coding since 10, dropped out of high-school and got fist job at 15.
In the the early days I was extremely passionate, learning SICP, Algorithms, doing Haskell, C/C++, Rust, Assembly, writing toy compilers/interpreters, tweaking Gentoo/Arch. Even got a lambda tattoo on my arm after learning lambda-calculus and church numerals.
My first job - a company which raised $100,000 on kickstarter. The CEO was a dumb millionaire hippie, who was bored with his money, so he wanted to run a company even though he had no idea what he was doing. He used to talk about how he build our product, even tho he had 0 technical knowledge whatsoever. He was on news a few times which was pretty cringeworthy. The company had only 1 programmer (other than me) who was pretty decent.
We shipped the project, but soon we burned through kickstart money and the sales dried off. Instead of trying to aquire customers (or abandoning the project), boss kept looking for investors, which kept us afloat for an extra year.
Eventually the money dried up, and instead of closing gates, boss decreased our paychecks without our knowledge. He also converted us from full-time employees to "contractors" (also without our knowledge) so he wouldn't have to pay taxes for us. My paycheck decreased by 40% by I still stayed.
One day, I was trying to burn a USB drive, and I did "dd of=/dev/sda" instead of sdb, therefore wiping out our development server. They asked me to stay at company, but I turned in my resignation letter the next day (my highest ever post on reddit was in /r/TIFU).
Next, I found a job at a "finance" company. $50k/year as a 18-year-old. CEO was a good-looking smooth-talker who made few million bucks talking old people into giving him their retirement money.
He claimed he changed his ways, and was now trying to help average folks save money. So far I've been here 8 month and I do not see that happening. He forces me to do sketchy shit, that clearly doesn't have clients best interests in mind.
I am the only developer, and I quickly became a back-end and front-end ninja.
I switched the company infrastructure from shitty drag+drop website builder, WordPress and shitty Excel macros into a beautiful custom-written python back-end.
Little did I know, this company doesn't need a real programmer. I don't have clear requirements, I get unrealistic deadlines, and boss is too busy to even communicate what he wants from me.
Eventually I sold my soul. I switched parts of it to WordPress, because I was not given enough time to write custom code properly.
For latest project, I switched from using custom React/Material/Sass to using drag+drop TypeForms for surveys.
I used to be an extremist FLOSS Richard Stallman fanboy, but eventually I traded my morals, dreams and ideals for a paycheck. Hey, $50k is not bad, so maybe I shouldn't be complaining? :(
I got addicted to pot for 2 years. Recently I've gotten arrested, and it is honestly one of the best things that ever happened to me. Before I got arrested, I did some freelancing for a mugshot website. In un-related news, my mugshot dissapeared.
I have been sober for 2 month now, and my brain is finally coming back.
I know average developer hits a wall at around $80k, and then you have to either move into management or have your own business.
After getting sober, I realized that money isn't going to make me happy, and I don't want to manage people. I'm an old-school neck-beard hacker. My true passion is mathematics and physics. I don't want to glue bullshit libraries together.
I want to write real code, trace kernel bugs, optimize compilers. Albeit, I was boring in the wrong generation.
I've started studying real analysis, brushing up differential equations, and now trying to tackle machine learning and Neural Networks, and understanding the juicy math behind gradient descent.
I don't know what my plan is for the future, but I'll figure it out as long as I have my brain. Maybe I will continue making shitty forms and collect paycheck, while studying mathematics. Maybe I will figure out something else.
But I can't just let my brain rot while chasing money and impressing dumb bosses. If I wait until I get rich to do things I love, my brain will be too far gone at that point. I can't just sell myself out. I'm coming back to my roots.
I still feel like after experiencing industry and pot, I'm a shittier developer than I was at age 15. But my passion is slowly coming back.
Any suggestions from wise ol' neckbeards on how to proceed?
32 -
My most awkward recruiter interaction?
Just graduated college and got 'suckered' by an programming position ad that turned out to be a recruiting company. It was fine since they charge the company for their services and not me.
After a couple of weeks of waiting (they initially promised I would/could have at least 3 interviews a week, which hadn't happened.) I decided to start looking again on my own, found a position, and I was hired.
About two months later I get a phone call:
<skipping the pleasantries>
R: "I see you are working for D, congratulations. I've started the paperwork for our reimbursement."
Me: "Reimburse for what? I found that job on my own."
R: "D is one of the companies we work with and when we submitted your resume, they told us you were already hired."
Me: "And?"
R: "And you signed a contract and now its time to pay. The fees only start at $500"
Me: "Not me. I have the contract, it states, in the second paragraph, I am not responsible for any hiring fees."
<couple of seconds of silence>
R: "Yes, but that is only if we negotiated the contact. Since you went behind our back, we couldn't start the process"
Me: "And?"
R: "And its a breach of contract."
Me: "I'm not a lawyer, I don't understand what you're saying. It says right here on the contract I signed, I don't pay any fees. No where does it say I'm not allowed to look for a job on my own. Right?"
R: "Um..yea..right..right...but you were hired by one of our contracted companies."
Me: "No way I would have known that. Maybe you should have set up an interview long before now."
<R is getting pretty angry at this point>
R: "I'm sure we gave you list of companies we work with. Contacting those companies is a breach of contract. Unless you want our lawyers to get involved, the fee is only $500. Failing to honor your side of the agreement and we'll be forced to contact your employer and begin garnishing your wage until the fee is paid. You don't want that, do you?"
Me: "There was no list and I am allowed to find a job on my own. Again, I'm not responsible for you not setting up an interview so do whatever you think you can do. Have a good night"
<I hang up>
About a week later..
Boss: "Got a phone call from XYZ Recruiting requesting a wage garnishment. Do you know anything about that?"
<I explain the situation>
Boss: "Oh good grief. We've worked with them a couple of times and we contact them on an individual basis for new hires. You're fine"
Me: "You're not going to garnish my paycheck?"
Boss: "No no no, that's not how this works. He was probably trying to scare you into paying their crazy fees."
Me: "What if they get their lawyers involved? I don't want to cause any trouble"
Boss: "Ha ha...XYZ Recruiting is a couple of guys in an office and we have lawyers on the 3rd floor who eat and breath this shit. They know that and you won't hearing from them again."5 -
This is my first post on devRant!
Story time:
It was on my first job as a developer, learning a lot but getting paid less than 50% of the minimum monthly wage of my country.
It was settled in the interview that as I gained more experience, I could handle more projects and earn more money.
At the time, I was living with my parents and didn't have to pay rent and some stuff, so I was like "Well, I'm gonna learn a lot and, if I put a lot of effort into it, soon I'll be making more money".
We agreed that I'll only develop, but 4 months into the job, I was already going to clients
and started coding there (having the client on my back every minute, not being able to work properly) and fixing some computer/network issues they had,
because my boss said I should do it.
Things at home started to go south, and suddenly I needed more money, so I kept doing the work and getting paid a little bit more
A year goes by, devs came and go beacuse of the work/payment situation, and I was still there.
From my first "paycheck" to the last day I never got paid on time, and that was the same for everybody else
The last month I was there, I had a job offer with a better salary and weekends free, so I wanted to take it (I worked saturdays there).
We were working at our biggest clients place at the time (a hospital, working in the server room, desk and chair were a total crap),
so I wanted to have a good conversation with my boss and tell him whats up, after all, I was really grateful for the job despite all things.
We headed outside and started talking. He basically begged me to stay, said that he will pay me on time and offered me more money (less than the other company was offering me),
and that he needed me to finish the implementation and "minor issues" with the app.
I thought about it for a couple of days, and decided to stay. I politely rejected the job offer, and even recommended someone else.
As the days passed, regret was building fast inside of me, until the day that I was supposed to get paid.
He never showed up to the client, told me in a call that he will be there sometime in the morning, that he had the money for me.
So I stayed until my day ended, and still no sign of him. I had no money on me, needed some for gas so I could go, and I called him 5 times.
He picked up the last time, talks to me like nothing is happening and I started to shout at him like I never shouted to anybody before,
got all the things of my chest, and when I was done, he said that he will send the money to my account right away.
This happened on a Saturday, so I quit the following Monday, and lost the other job offer.7 -
Apartment owner tells me to get out for a few hours while he repairs some stuff around the house . Get laptop , get wallet , go to kfc , go to order , only have money to get a large coke and a coffee , set up laptop , start working on my 2D game project , one hour later hobo comes in and begs around for 2 mins , before the guard catches him , he goes to order instead and gets a large duo bucket with coffee ...fml being a poor dev before paycheck...2
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I had a huge epiphany on Friday... not all developers enjoy coding.
Discovered when they brought down 2 of our environments, well told them what was wrong with the changes in their code that caused the environments to break, gave them links directly to the file in the gitlab repo that needed to be updated, and...
They fucking went home. The change would’ve taken all of about 30-45 seconds to update and they fucking left.
This person’s team lead come storming in pissed off because her manager is furious about 2 environments going down and preventing everyone else from being able to deploy their changes.
We provide the exact same details to the team lead about what needs to be changed, and advise that her team member took off....
30 mins later, her manager is storming up to us (devops/sre) livid as hell.
Explain the situation for a third time... manager is like, why can’t you guys fix it?
Look here you dense motherfuckers, we can fix the code. We can be the plumbers that clean up your shit. But what value do you gain as a developer if you don’t understand how the systems work and you keep pushing shit in?
Made the changes, fixed the environments, done right? Wrong.
The original developer made more changes not knowing what would happen and thoroughly fucked the environments again.
This dumb-fucking dumpster fire of a dude then sends us a slack message. “It’s down again, can you fix it?”
Our manager steps in and tells us to send him a link to the logs and have him fix it himself!
Thank goodness we have a badass manager.
Send logs, send repo file links (again), and send line numbers in the logs to try and help just a bit more. Dude goes almost the whole day without fixing it, environments are down, other devs are pissed, we throw this dude to the wolves. His manager starts to head over and was about to talk with my team lead when our manager steps out of his office and tells him the in’s and out’s of the situation and that our job isn’t to play log parser/error fixer for the developers. This dude that’s breaking the environments needs to be the one to fix the issue and his team lead should be aware of the problems and should have been able to correct his errors before it ever came to us.
The amount of hand-holding we do is ridiculous.
(Disclaimer, this one guy making some mistakes doesn’t sound too bad, but this is actually a common occurrence for like 40% of all of our developers)
We literally have interns still in college running circles around some of our full time devs. I know I’m not a developer, but for anyone that’s new-ish to developing, when you see shit like that please don’t lose hope. Those ass-hats got into programming purely for a paycheck, not because of passion.
Stick with it and your greatness will know no bounds 👍
As for you craptastic dipstick lickers, FUCK YOU!!! Go back to school and learn how to give a damn.4 -
So here's my problem. I've been employed at my current company for the last 12 months (next week is my 1 year anniversary) and I've never been as miserable in a development job as this.
I feel so upset and depressed about working in this company that getting out of bed and into the car to come here is soul draining. I used to spend hours in the evenings studying ways to improve my code, and was insanely passionate about the product, but all of this has been exterminated due to the following reasons.
Here's my problems with this place:
1 - Come May 2019 I'm relocating to Edinburgh, Scotland and my current workplace would not allow remote working despite working here for the past year in an office on my own with little interaction with anyone else in the company.
2 - There is zero professionalism in terms of work here, with there being no testing, no planning, no market research of ideas for revenue generation – nothing. This makes life incredibly stressful. This has led to countless situations where product A was expected, but product B was delivered (which then failed to generate revenue) as well as a huge amount of development time being wasted.
3 - I can’t work in a business that lives paycheck to paycheck. I’ve never been somewhere where the salary payment had to be delayed due to someone not paying us on time. My last paycheck was 4 days late.
4 - The management style is far too aggressive and emotion driven for me to be able to express my opinions without some sort of backlash.
5 - My opinions are usually completely smashed down and ignored, and no apology is offered when it turns out that they’re 100% correct in the coming months.
6 - I am due a substantial pay rise due to the increase of my skills, increase of experience, and the time of being in the company, and I think if the business cannot afford to pay £8 per month for email signatures, then I know it cannot afford to give me a pay rise.
7 - Despite having continuously delivered successful web development projects/tasks which have increased revenue, I never receive any form of thanks or recognition. It makes me feel like I am not cared about in this business in the slightest.
8 - The business fails to see potential and growth of its employees, and instead criticises based on past behaviour. 'Josh' (fake name) is a fine example of this. He was always slated by 'Tom' and 'Jerry' as being worthless, and lazy. I trained him in 2 weeks to perform some basic web development tasks using HTML, CSS, Git and SCSS, and he immediately saw his value outside of this company and left achieving a 5k pay rise during. He now works in an environment where he is constantly challenged and has reviews with his line manager monthly to praise him on his excellent work and diverse set of skills. This is not rocket science. This is how you keep employees motivated and happy.
9 - People in the business with the least or zero technical understanding or experience seem to be endlessly defining technical deadlines. This will always result in things going wrong. Before our mobile app development agency agreed on the user stories, they spent DAYS going through the specification with their developers to ensure they’re not going to over promise and under deliver.
10 - The fact that the concept of ‘stealing data’ from someone else’s website by scraping it daily for the information is not something this company is afraid to do, only further bolsters the fact that I do not want to work in such an unethical, pathetic organisation.
11 - I've been told that the MD of the company heard me on the phone to an agency (as a developer, I get calls almost every week), and that if I do it again, that the MD apparently said he would dock my pay for the time that I’m on the phone. Are you serious?! In what world is it okay for the MD of a company to threaten to punish their employees for thinking about leaving?! Why not make an attempt at nurturing them and trying to find out why they’re upset, and try to retain the talent.
Now... I REALLY want to leave immediately. Hand my notice in and fly off. I'll have 4 weeks notice to find a new role, and I'll be on garden leave effective immediately, but it's scary knowing that I may not find a role.
My situation is difficult as I can't start a new role unless it's remote or a local short term contract because my moving situation in May, and as a Junior to Mid Level developer, this isn't the easiest thing to do on the planet.
I've got a few interviews lined up (one of which was a final interview which I completed on Friday) but its still scary knowing that I may not find a new role within 4 weeks.
Advice? Thoughts? Criticisms?
Love you DevRant <33 -
I recently quit a job which I excelled at technically, but professionally I struggled. The best way to put it is that I was incompatible with my newly appointed manager. My frustration with that manager led to many inappropriate comments that I made in front of him and a couple of other senior leaders. To be clear, I never cursed at them or called them names or raised my voice, but I did make (multiple) comments about their ignorance of projects or lack of experience in this speciality. I’m sure you can tell that didn’t go over well.
Ultimately, my behavior got me put on a PIP by my manager. He explained that I was excellent at the job, but not mature enough to do well. This obviously greatly upset me, and I quit on the spot. I know what a PIP means and I wasn’t about to get fired. I had been at the company for about three years and have dozens of excellent professional references (at this company and others) from as high up as the C-suite to as low as individual contributing peers who I worked closely with. They can all honestly and passionately speak to my technical and soft skills very highly. However, this doesn’t seem to matter in my situation.
Overall, I excel at interviews. Within days after quitting I had over eight different interviews lined up. I made it to final rounds of five and got two offers already (still waiting to hear back from the other three). The offers were both contingent on passing employment and background checks. Well, I gave my references, have no criminal history and never lied on any part of my background or history (though I did not admit to my emotional issues with my previous management team). Needless to say, I was shocked when both offers got rescinded.
One company claimed it was due to a change in the role, and the other told me frankly that the “manager did some digging on my history and unfortunately doesn’t feel like I would be a culture fit.” I looked up the manager on LinkedIn and lo and behold, they are connected with my former manager. This has me worried as back-channel references are super common in my industry, and my industry is not very big overall. My manager appears to be very well connected with many of the companies I am interviewing with or hope to in the future.
I will admit that my behavior previously was very disrespectful and probably deserved the reprimand, but now I feel that I am not able to move past it and learn from this experience as my reputation in the industry seems to be damaged. I’m still fairly early in my career overall and am learning how to handle office politics. It’s been a big struggle for me, but I do get better with each passing year.
Anyway, I’ve decided to wait for the other three final stage companies that I’m in talks with before I officially decide that this manager is my blocker, but assuming he is, what do you recommend I do to get past this? Should I talk to him? As this is all fresh, I’m not sure I can do that now, but maybe in a few months? Either way, I need a job now and can’t afford to go more than two months without a paycheck (and I don’t qualify for unemployment as I quit). What do you recommend I do?7 -
TLDR;
When governments started printing money to cure new pandemic and crash current market with great inflation I took all my savings, got a loan and bought biggest property I could afford. Every major news station was talking about end of world, but this was not I was scared of. I was scared of the helicopter money that would wipe my 5 years old savings.
When I was about to sign loan papers to buy my first apartment I got an email that my contract will end in 3 months. I said ok, the contractor company will find me something else.
I asked and they assured me they will do it. After my contract end just before summer holidays there was silence from contracting company and then after 5 years of me earning them piles of money, after finished project and congratulations from customer they offered me most shitty job they had where people resign after a week. I said I don’t want to land in another shit hole bring it back to life for another 2-5 years and kill myself when they offer me same shit afterwards so I resigned.
It was so fucked up that even the boss from the client I was contracting asked me if I lost my job cause I finished all that they wanted. I said it’s not your fault man. I will be ok, but I wasn’t.
I had apartment I couldn’t move in cause I needed to renovate. Loan I needed to pay. Rented apartment, accountant and business that was loosing money cause I was without contract, the world was locked down and everyone was depressed.
I said ok, I still have some savings left so I I started looking for something new but market was dead. Everyone was gone for holidays after winter lockdown. I was burning money and trying to figure out what to do.
After 2 months of nothing, when I started thinking about finding some temporary job to not loose everything I worked for, things moved. I started attending hiring meetings and solving tests everyday, also from big four gang but I didn’t passed trough hr due to how they say I’m to independent and I need to look for consulting business or do something on my own.
People asked why I don’t do something on my own and I politely answered that I want to work there.
I was about to run out of money when I got a call that company is looking for me cause I was doing similar things they want to do. During interviews it was pleasant small talk about what id did over those years and what they want to do, 2 days later I joined small team. I barely managed to survive a month for a first paycheck.
Since then we created new product for a company. Now the person who hired me is leaving and I think I should also leave the ship and find other things to do.2 -
The moment I knew I wanted to be a dev was very early in life, but I didn't realize it until I had gotten out of high school. My parents gave me my first computer when I was like 8 and it was my grandfather's old Windows 95 PC. I loved to play the Army Men game with the plastic figures like from Toy Story. I also tinkered around and found out how Word and some of the other programs worked. About two years later, I got his old Windows 98 PC. I continued to play around in Windows and discover some nuances of the operating system. My parents had a Windows XP machine at the time and they called me in every time they needed help. I got on their computer from time to time to use the Internet, where I discovered so many cool things. In junior high, we were forced to take a typing course where I honed my typing skills through playing games. I soon was able to easily complete all of the challenges. To understand my persona, you must know that I was bullied throughout elementary and high school. I was "the nerd" of our class and I wore that badge even with all of the negative energy that it came with. I received constant criticism, ridiculed for being intelligent (my paycheck isn't too funny now, is it losers?). I didn't care, though, my mission has and always will be to show them their wrong doing. I actually can't wait to have a reunion just to see how UNSUCCESSFUL they are. My parents didn't like my interest in gaming and technology either, but that's a rant for another day. After junior high, I wasn't exposed to much else until I got to college four years ago, where I took Fundamentals Of Computing. My professor was a true nerd (major Zelda fanatic), and he taught us how to program in Python. I began to love being able to create something literally out of nothing. He opened my eyes to a world where there was order and I could have control in a world where I've never had any control in before. Since then, I've only began to love my profession more and more. This is truly what I was born to do.
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the more i think about the effort i've poured into various projects and products over the years, for clients or my own, and how little its payed overall... its quite depressing (people probably understimate, but i'm talking years upon years, not all at at time, but month spurts where i'd be done for the day at 7 PM or later) 12 hour days are easy to hit quickly when you are cranking out software
if you need an application requirement i've probably built it before, probably most of them twice
everyone tells me "it will pay off in the long run!" or "its great you have so much experience and built those different things!"
great to say, but i'm not getting payed for it / see no benefit from it
not fun to think about
and every place i go i know its gonna be filled with the workaday dev bros who are just there for the paycheck, have no passion, and who don't even know what TypeScript is (true story about that TypeScript one, i shit you not, occured only last year, and the guy is a frontend dev)
😩😩😩
where do i belong devrant?15 -
Long story short I joined this company as a junior after 1.5 years of a break from development. Before that I worked for almost 3 years in the required stack. We agreed that if I do well after 3 months probation period I can ask for a raise.
It turned out that Im doing better than half of my team so 1 week before probation was about to end, I put in my raise request. Got nothing but strong feedback, even managed to burn myself out a couple times.
Now since the request 11 weeks passed. Our HQ which has the final say about the raise is overseas. Im getting excuses about summer: allegedly because of summer some people in the appproval chain have vacations so this process is taking a long time. This is the excuse they are giving to me.
Right now Im getting really pissed off and resentful because this drag is becoming unnacceptable. Also being in a new scrum team filled with total juniors complicates everything a lot. Im not having the best time here. But at the same time I dont have any savings actually am in debts and currenty barely am able to survive paycheck to paycheck to I cant just quit on the spot.
Had I known that they will drag this out that much, I would have applied to other places and presented them a counter offer. Or at least bluffed from the start in order to speed the raise proccess up.
Should I give ultimatum to my manager?
Im hesitant to do that because up until now we had a decent relationship and he seems like a nice guy so I dont want to rock the boat.
Or should I bluff about having a counter offer, so he would speed things up? But what happens if he asks me to forward him evidence of my received offer?3 -
Just got made regular at my current employer, but the last month or so I've been threading the needle on whether or not to take it (unfortunately, financial woes made the decision for me, but I digress). Thing is the company culture rewards dishonesty and is slightly toxic with middling managers, even if the work is good.
That said, given the circumstances above, how long would you consider it reasonable to stay at such a company before resigning or interviewing for a new job? Give it a year, or six months, or wait for a dealbreaker like a delayed paycheck?
I don't want to be a jerk just because I work for jerks, but the lack of positive change in our workplace is just demoralizing. Being offshore as well doesn't make it easier.3 -
I’d been working event based and freelance jobs in the security and entertainment fields for years, with odd stints as a bartender sprinkled in. My pay was mostly decent, but I had no job security, and I was more on the road than at home. A few years before this job search experience I had already realised I can’t continue on this path for ever, especially if I ever want a serious relationship (e.g. 16 weeks straight touring Europe with on avg. 16h work days pretty much every day isn’t ideal in that regard, and also really though on both body and mind). So I decided to study. As I applied in autumn, not every line of study accepted students. The closest to my interest I found was BBA in Business IT.
Fast forward 1,5 years. After moving away from my previous base due to then-gfs studies, I had also been able to accept less work. Well, there were really two reasons: I didn’t want to go on weeks long big tours anymore, and I’d had to price up on my freelance job due to reasons. I still managed to keep our household going, but not knowing when the next paycheck would be available was becoming a little too stressful. I wanted job security. So a few weeks after my wedding I scoured the internetz for positions I could apply to, and applied to a dozen or so places. They were a variety of positions I had a vague understanding of from what I’d learned at UAS: from sales to data analytics to dev… I was aware pretty much all of the applications were a long shot by best, so I expected to be ghosted…
Two of the organizations I applied to wanted to go forward with me. Both dev jobs. I can’t even remember the specifics of the other one anymore, but I do remember the interview: I got in to their office (which was ridiculously open), and got marched into a tiny conference room. The interviewer was passive-aggressive and really bombarded me with questions, not really leaving a socially awkward introvert with any time to answer. I started to get really anxious and twitchy, sweating like a pig. Just wanted out. But nooo, they wanted me to do a coding test live. So they sat me on a computer with Eclipse open, gave me an assignment and told me not to use the internet. What’s even worse is that I could literally feel the interviewer breathing down my neck when I tried to do the test. Well, didn’t happen cause I was under so much pressure that I couldn’t think at all… yeah, that was horrible.
Anyhow, the other position I really applied to because it was in my hometown and I recognised the company name from legendary commercials from the 90s - everyone in this country who watched TV in mid-to-late 90s remembers those. Anyway, to my surprise, my present day manager contacted me and wanted me to do a coding test. At the time he asked I was having a bout of fevers after fevers, not really able to get healthy. I told him that I’d do it as soon as I’m healthy. A month went by, maybe more. He asked again. Again I replied that as soon as I get healthy, but promised to do it next week the latest. I didn’t deliver on that, but the next week after that, even if I was the most feverish I had been, I did the tests. I could only finish half of them, cause I couldn’t look at a screen for long at a time and had to visit the loo every 10min or so, but apparently that was enough. Next week I was already going to the interview… oh I also googled what is PHP on the way there, since it was mentioned as a requirement and I had no idea what it was. Imagine that…
The interview itself couldn’t have been more different from the other one. We were sitting in a nice conference room with my manager and the product’s lead dev, drinking coffee, our feet on the table and talking smack. Oh, and we did play a game of NHL<insertNumber> on PS4 during the interview… it was relaxed. Of course the more serious chat was there, too, but I can only really remember how relaxed it was. When I left the interview, I had been promised the position and that I would be sent the contract to be signed as soon as the CEO had reviewed and approved it. Next day, I had signed it and some time later I started at my current job (I gave a date when I was available to start, since there was a tour still agreed upon between the interview and the start).
Oh, and the job’s pretty much like the interview. Relaxed. It’s a good place to be in, even though the pay could be better (I regularly get offers for junior positions with more pay, and mid level positions with double the pay). I do value a pleasant working environment and the absence of stress more than big munny, what can I say?1 -
This shit is long story of my computer experience over my lifetime.
When I was young I got my first PC with windows it was not so bad. It required safe shut down of it’s fat32 partition. From time to time I needed to reinstall it cause of slow down but I got used to it I was only a gamer.
Time passes and I got more curious about computers and about this linux. Everything worked there but installation of anything was complete madness and none of windows programs worked well, and I wanted to play games and be productive so I sticked with windows.
I bought hp laptop once with nvidia card, it was overheating and got broken. So I bought toshiba and all I told to the seller was I want ATI card. Took me 5 minutes to do it and I was faster then my friend buying pack of cigarettes because I was earning money using computer.
Then I grown up running my small one person programming businesses and I wanted to run and compile every fucking program on this world. I wanted linux shell commands. I wanted package manager, and I wanted my os to be simple because I wasn’t earning money by using my os but by programming. So after getting my paycheck I bought mac. I can run windows and linux on vm if I need it. I try not to steal someones work so I didn’t want to run hackintosh. I am using this mac for some time.
Also I use playstation for gaming. Because I only want to run and play game I am not excited about graphics but gameplay. I think I am pragmatic person.
I can tell you something about my mac.
When I close lid it go sleep when I open it wakes up instantly. I never need to wonder if I want to hibernate or shut down or sleep and drain battery. It is fucking simple.
When I want to run or open something it doesn’t want me to wait but it gives me my intellij or terminal or another browser or whatever I search for. Yeah search is something that works.
Despite it got 8 gigs of ram I can run whatever number of programs I want at the same speed. The speed is not very fast sometimes but it’s constant fast.
I have a keychain so my passwords are in one place I can slow down shared internet speed, I can put my wifi in monitor mode and I don’t need to install some 3rd party software.
And now I updated my mac to high sierra, cause it’s free and I want to play with ios compilation. Before I did it I didn’t even backup whole work. I just used time machine and regular backups. And guess what, it still works at the same speed and all I did was click to run update and cook something to eat.
When I got bored I close the lid, when got idea open lid and code shit, not waiting for fucking wakeup or fucking updates.
I wanted to rant apple products I use but they work, they got fucking updates all along at the same time. And all of updates are optional.
I cannot tell that about all apple products but about products I use.
I think I just got old and started to praise my limited time on this world. Not being excited about new crap. When I buy something I choose wisely. I bought iPhone. I can buy latest iPhone x but I bought iPhone 7 cause it’s from fucking metal. And I know that metal is harder then glass, why the fucking apple forgot about it? I don’t know.
I know that I am clumsy and drop stuff. Dropped my phone at least 100 times and nothing.
I am not a apple fan boy I won’t buy mac with this glowing shit above keyboard that would got me blind at night.
I buy something when I know that it can save my time on this world. I try to buy things that make me productive and don’t break after a year.
So now piece of advise, stop wasting your time, buy and update wisely, wait a week or a month or a year when more people buy shit and buy what’s not broken. And if something’s broken rant this shit so next customer can be smarter.
Cheers1 -
I haven't had anything dev related to rant about in a few weeks due to the fact that I haven't done any developing in a few weeks. I have a lot of personal shit going on that I'm slowly getting past. Basically some shit went down, the girl I posted about a few times, we're just friends at this point. My best friend won't talk to me and hasn't in about 2 weeks now. Fun.
Then there's the fact that I have school Monday through Friday, and work Thursday through Sunday, so I get zero days off. So I just..don't have the time to do developing right now. But, here's a kinda funny story (not that funny)
So this Sunday, I was leaving work. I decided to roll my car's window down to say bye to a few people as I was pulling out of the parking lot. It was cold so I went to roll my window back up....and it's fucking stuck. I'm sitting in about 15°F (-9.5°C) with no driver's side window. Turned out the fucking motor that moves the window had died. And I had no money to get it replaced. So I did the logical thing, I called my mom to try and figure out what I should do. She was asleep but my dad picked up. He called me a dumbass and said he'd pay to get it fixed, since it was his car before and he never told me that the window was faulty.
Actually got it fixed just yesterday by my cousin. Then I went to get my paycheck (a whole $200!) since my work has my name spelled wrong in their system so I currently can't do direct deposit (gonna talk to the general manager about that tomorrow). And now I'm just sitting in bed, waiting for my check to go through. (As I was typing that last sentence, someone from my bank called actually). I would really appreciate that $200 right now, cause I have about $2 after paying for car insurance and gas and stuff. I actually need to fill up my gas soon too..2 -
Reply to my 2018 version: https://devrant.com/rants/1346392/...
Dear holodreamer ( version 2018 ),
I'm just glad that I'm still alive now. You won't believe how terrible 2020 is at the moment! Anyways, a lot has happened since you wrote me and I'm gonna reply it all to you.
Thanks for noticing. I really like my hairstyle now and my insecurity of going bald have gone. I couldn't be more happy.
Unfortunately, I'm not financially independent yet. Thanks to the crypto crash, the crypto ban in the country and some bad calls on my end. :/. But the good news is that we are back on the crypto market as the ban has been lifted recently. I don't have enough crypto to buy a lambo or go to the moon, but I have something that I could give to my grand kids. At this point, I don't really care anymore how much the value it is going to be, I have come to learn to think them of as a souvenir.
Your prediction of me preparing to move out of country seems to have come true. Honestly, I had given up that dream, but thanks to one of my best friend for reigniting those dreams - I may be moving somewhere really better by next year. I hope that I get this financial independence thing figured out before I move there. I don't wanna live there paycheck to paycheck.
Fortunately, I'm not getting any pressure to get married yet. I think I'm heading the way to a better life filled with some travel and adventures. I had a great opportunity to attend Google I/O 2020, but it got cancelled. Hopefully, covid19 will be over in few months.
Yea, I remember her. I got really carried away to the point that things she said started to hurt my heart. But eventually we had some argument and we stopped talking last September and I cut all contacts with her on the new years. If it makes you feel any better, last time i checked, she looks quite plumpy and totally different.
Thankfully, I'm not that lonely to need a chat bot. But I found some good online friends. They are fun to talk to.
No, AI didn't replace developers yet. Calm down! Javascript seems to be the most popular programming language now. But I hear there is a new contender to JavaScript that could change everything. It's called WebAssembly. Maybe in few years, we will see the decline of JavaScript.
Thinking about you, I feel some guilt for wasting your potential. I could have done much better if I was little more careful and responsible with you. I don't wanna make 2022 version of me feel bad for me.
Regards,
holodreamer ( version 2020 ) -
!rant !dev
So, following up my last rant.
https://devrant.com/rants/2433162
I quit on Friday, this is what I said to my bosses.
"In the last week I had, 2 panic attacks, and I have 2 theories for this, one is that I have underlying psychological problems, the other theory is that we are under an impossible task, I choose to say now that I have to quit because I have psychological issues, but if you are willing to hear my other theory, that involves saying that meeting the deadline is not viable, then I can tell you that, so do want to listen that part?.
Bosses: No, we heard enough, we are going to have your contract terminated in order, and we will let you know when you can come and pick your paycheck."
So, that's them. Now about me and how I re-discovered GTD, or more precisely how I organized my whole weekend using taskwarrior with GTD, and why I think is going to be useful as a freelancer.
Before I feel good about telling you about my weekend I have to tell you a few things about myself.
I am a very impulsive person, I have a lot of energy in short surges, so I have to be able to maximize my activity when I'm in a surge, and I have to maximize my rest when I am not.
That's hard to do, it requires a balanced lifestyle, I am also very prone to being neurotic, and overwhelmed by the amount of stuff that I want to do.
And on top of that, when I am resting, I have surges of things that I want to have, do, or implement, it could be software related, as "Doing an app that will be the Uber of home services", to house improvements like, "I have to fix that leaking roof", and all the sort of stuff that happens in between hardware and software. That surge of consciousness doesn't allow me to have the proper rest that I need before I engage with activities again.
Because of this I have a very cyclic rhythm, with whole weeks burning my energy into doing stuff, and weeks resting doing very little and thinking too much.
Now about my weekend. Friday night I was browsing the web, and a thought came to my head. "The way you use your terminal, says a lot about your personality", and I got curious, so I searched for, "Show me your terminal", and found a post in dev.to to see all kind of nice terminal setups, from the very minimalist to very feature rich oh-my-zsh themes with plugins for git, aws and what not. One of these pictures really got my attention, a guy had set up his terminal to show him, how many task has he done in the day, and how many cups of coffee has he had.
So by investigating how he set up his terminal to show in the prompt the number of successfully completed tasks in the day, I found out that he was using taskwarrior, he was also kind enough to share the source code of his prompt setup, which I bookmarked to later incorporate that into my oh-my-zsh config.
After reading about taskwarrior, I also got a reference to GTD, I don't remember if this was one of those thoughts that I have and follow immediately, or if I read something that led me to a YouTube video summarizing GTD.
In the end, after watching that GTD video, I decided to give it a try to organize my life, and help me find a remote job, keep my house in order, plan my social activities as "hang out with friends", "visit mom and dad", and give the proper amount of attention to my GF, with whom I am deeply in love, and willing to spend the remaining of my years with her.
So my fist task was.
task add Ask for GF's parents blessing.
Which of course I have no intention of doing right now, but is one of the things that I will eventually have to do.
Then it started, I started adding tasks, and things to do, and go through the whole Capture phase of GTD.
Now it is a good time to write a small summary of what I think GTD is.
GTD is a life habit of organizing your life in todo-lists. And it was a very specific core method, that in the video summary that I watched was called CPR.
Capture, Process and Review.
Capture:
When you capture you just add your tasks to a bucket list.
So I took a notebook and started writing down everything that I wanted to have done. I also started to capture ideas as they came up to me, I did this by writing a telegram saved message in my phone, or directly adding it as a task in TW.
Process:
I read my telegram messages and put them into my task warrior list, then I started to organize my tasks into projects, breaking down every task that was not an atomic unit.
* And different projects started to emerge from this. One of them was project:Housekeeping.
And here's my screenshot of what I did this weekend, also the number of projects that I have, and all the things that I have to do in order to have what I think would be a very balanced, fun, and productive life.
You'll be able to see in the screenshot, that there's a blocked task, yes, tw allows you to organize dependencies too, so one task is delegated, and blocked by the delegation task.
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