When we finally were allowed to get Chrome, they removed FF from all workstations. Thanks, that should help usability tests.

@JoshBent For the most part I don't care a lot. However, it seems that I have about 20 notifications from every app ever - even LinkedIn - when someone's birthday comes up. So, it's not like people have to actually remember. At least acknowledging your immediate family's is generally expected politeness for most, and if HR starts acknowledging birthdays, they should probably just make a monthly list of everyone's, as it becomes more obvious that you're forgotten while everyone else is not.

In my case, a parade of messes resulted in me being in various emergency health tests and out of work for a week, as well as ruining my free long weekend (labor day off work is the best 'bday present' that is there even if nobody remembers) but that's clearly not the usual. It was more a response to the original post - I DON'T expect people to remember anymore... but it's nice if the people around you will at least go along if you want to do anything (or not) for the day & nothing implodes.

The government, people in offices with absurdly locked down systems that update slowly and won't allow installing another browser as it already has one, and confused people that think the e literally is the internet button.

I mean, it sucks, but it's far from a non-issue...

Oh, you're making me feel old... my birthday last week and it gets so much worse from there.

I saw this in two more people's code today....

@bols59 I accepted the first offer. It is possible I'm insane. I guess I'll find out. They're doing the on boarding paperwork and starting in about 2 weeks.

I accepted the job, turned down the other... and then the next day ended up with a health issue that's put me out for a week.

In theory, the health problem shouldn't be able to be stress related, but it's... in the least been an unusual week.

@bols59 Thanks, seriously... really ANY input is at least not the same mental circles.

I keep changing my mind based on being tired or annoyed at one thing or another at the moment, which is no good... Most of my brain is saying to take the 2nd, but there's just a stubborn gut thing that won't let the 1st go no matter how much it seems illogical. I kind of wish one would implode so I could just focus on being happy with the other. I've screwed up these sort of choices before.

@codebanana The first offer requires commuting toward the city and would add about 20 min. to my commute. I don't think the first will have NO balance intentionally... but the role is less flexible even if they tried to champion that. There's just more pressure & expectations, commuting, and necessary face time w/ external people in suits sort of meetings, plus a steeper learning curve to pick up new tech toys. They've gone out of their way during the interview process, so I do not see it as not valueing my time/effort.

The second is both fully remote (so save 2 hours a day right there from the commute), flexible hours (meet your goal for the week, done), and low meetings with a small team. It would also have a lower learning curve, etc.... which isn't a goal, but undeniably would make any outside skill up time my own.

It feels like simpler remote work would allow time to improve whatever I want, etc. It seems like the obvious choice. My gut is just not letting go of the other option though, and I can't decide if it's just proud and insane and taking on too much or if I'm not giving proper consideration to the value I'd see in the work.. or if I'm rationalizing any gut impulses and indecision.

I THINK I'd like remote, but I would be more isolated, & there's a bit of doubt in that as much of a pain as going into the other office would be, maybe I'd be happier if I was proud of my work...

It's harder than I thought to tell if more of the anxiety is from the office being a PITA, or more of it being from the work being garbage (and that being demotivating).

The simpler job isn't garbage work, but it's not anything exciting. It's stuff I normally don't mind doing, and I *thought* having a good environment and team was the more important aspect until it was laid on the line and I need to choose.

@mt30 I do have one, but probably can't get an appointment right in the time to choose between the two jobs. They both seem like significantly better places than my current job, but the higher expectation job does also have a slightly longer commute than I do now... better public transport, but our metro is a bit blegh.

It would step up my impact dramatically, and get to do a lot of cool stuff. It is more stable and has great long term prospects and promotion potential.

Option 2 is simpler, and remote work. I don't think it kills prospects down the road, but it won't improve them significantly without me doing outside work... which might kind of go against the work-life balance advantage a bit. It seems stable enough, but moving on would likely mean elsewhere down the road.

I really loved the people I talked to in both interviews. For the 2nd, I think that's everyone I'd work with day to day. For the first... they are still building the teams but I loved what was there.

@bols59 Honestly, I thought that was an easier question (mental health > ego) than it seems to be. I've never really thought of myself as particularly proud, but I'm also realizing that a lot about how happy I am at work is tied up in being proud of the work I do... So I'm not 100% sure that the job requiring less time/pressure will actually fix as much as it feels like... Seeing a point to work can go a long ways.

@irene Contractor pay... not W-2. Different tax category.

Seems bad... but I have a minor twinge of doubt that perhaps it's due to a horrible static code scanner - earlier, if not now. It is so difficult to get people to NOT do what the scanner suggests when it gets out of date or is just wrong. I would totally believe Fortify having a fit for 'no return' from a branch.

1099 pay is significantly more base than W2 but it also has more costs. If it's short term, that's even worse. Halve it as a very, very rough estimate (which would put that 400/day at ~50K/year). I've been offered about 185% of my W2 salary as 1099 and the math still came out unfavorably (although the W2 had fairly decent benefits).

@thevariableman Oh Ick. I'm pretty sure I'm already underpaid. I think the safe floor can be at least where I am now.

I feel like I should be / can ask for about $30k more... at least 25k more, but then someone will shake my confidence in that.

Don't tend to use Users\Public as it's a network drive. The file is in the (supposed) usual location and the name looks pretty simple, and have tried passing in the location multiple ways, and using a property file in the jar itself as a default, I was trying to build and test locally before troubleshooting Jenkins. Their devs say they could run it locally and on their servers, but am supposed to be getting it running on our servers. I thought going from file not found to file empty was progress but... dunno. My current plan is screw it, give it to ops and see if it likes the server better (yes, I'll tell ops that's what I'm doing - I don't hate that ops person). Not my code anyways...

As far as coding on Windows... I could get a Mac, but half of our internal stuff doesn't work on it (no chat/IM, half the dev tools missing without approved alternatives), so not really wanting to deal with that.

Yes, it was Java, and it was new code not refactored legacy... just a horrible clueless getter for a member variable from someone who doesn't seem to understand how 'null' works. It was just supposed to not have an initial value and they didn't seem to think you could return null by returning the object....

Itunes did not stop downloads.

*sigh* That code annoyed me, I came over here to post... and forgot I was looking for an infinite loop somewhere in it and let the tests run for a couple minutes... :( maybe I should sleep... debug... sleep... :-/

@bols59 I wouldn't... except I want to work for the current one less.. and thinking it had an end date was helping me get by without going insane. It's just extra extra draining to start looking again after that, and I lost a lot of momentum in the search. I'm just so very tired of this place. So tired.

The 'rent' idea might not be so bad if the books didn't cost as much as the paperbacks... and occasionally more.

>"You should get an idea of what an average pay is for your level "

That right there is the tricky part, and where I get the horrendously largely spread quotes.

Wow. He emailed you that voluntarily? And to the start of June - like a whole month of work pay cut? Absolutely crazy. Sounds like a guy who is clueless inherited the company.

If it's anything like our office, it means your coding abilities will slowly melt the surrounding brain matter until all technical knowledge has drained out your ears. Then, one day, you will tell us to send data in plain text URL parameters and that SSL is too hard, and that the contractors say their sql db TABLE STRUCTURE did not pass security review (how?) and then we will mourn your passing. That's when you are a real manager.

You might want to talk to someone specializing in that and your state's laws and your State Dept of Labor. Retroactive pay cuts are not legal. Document it. If he told you verbally, send him an email to 'confirm' your conversation ("As per our conversation <date>, I just wanted to confirm that my rate will be lowered from y to x and it is effective including this paycheck...") https://thebalancecareers.com/can-t...

@terraria99 https://adssettings.google.com/

It shows either they have incompetent HR and/or just don't value you and will lie to justify cutting costs. If you didn't lie and claim a degree when you were hired, then nothing changed to justify lowering your pay. Were they not happy with you before? It's completely disrespectful to lower your pay based on something that isn't your performance (and isn't some general company wide whatever or Union thing or based on the Contract worked sort of stuff). Not only that, but someone (probably your manager) told HR, and HR approved and processed a decrease, and if that was the reason given and not some cover story, that's just... not a good sign. They did only apply it going forward right? If it covers work you've already done, that's more a legal issue than a horrible company issue.

This made me go look at the Google ad profile for me. It has a glasses company (I don't wear glasses), UCLA (nope), IBM (not sure why), Basketball (ick), Football (more ick). It does have a few okay things, but about half of this is garbage.

Oh... on the opposite side though, Google has got some accurate hooks on my brother. Whenever we're watching a show, and want to look up some actor or whatever, he will get 1-2 letters typed in and it gets the right one. I can't see how - that's so little to go by, and none of the streaming services are in his name or tied to his Google account... and it isn't going by location as Google appears to have not a clue what I'm searching for.

Amazon suggests stuff from other colleges after I've looked at something from mine. :-/ It often even suggests the main rival's gear.

It's impressive that the algorithm can make the leap to 'this is college branded gear' and doesn't also have it programmed in that it is a USELESS inference, as nobody searches for just ANY college's branded gear.