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Worst dev I've interviewed?
"Archie" ran his own consulting business for almost 20 years. Prior to his interview, Archie sent HR (to send to us) his company's website, where he had samples of code for us to review (which was not bad, this guy did know his stuff).
What I found odd was Archie was the lone wolf at his company, but everything I found about him (the about page, his bio, etc), Archie was referred to as 'Mr. Archie Brown'.
Ex. 'Mr. Archie Brown began his humble career and 'Mr. Archie Brown is active in his church and volunteers his time in many charities ...'
Odd to refer to yourself in the third person on your own site, but OK, I like putting hot sauce on my mac & cheese (no judgement here).
Then the interview..standard stuff, then..
Me: "Given your experience, this is an entry level developer position. Do you feel the work would be challenging enough for you?"
Archie: "Yes, Mr. Archie Brown would have no problem starting at bottom. You see ..."
Almost any time he would reference himself, instead of 'me' or 'I', he would say 'Mr. Archie Brown'. As the interview continued, the ego and self-importance grew and grew.
My interview partner wanted to be done by using the escape clause, "PaperTrail, I'm good, do you have any questions?"
Yes, yes I do. I was having too much fun listening to this guy ramble on about himself. I made the interview go the full hour with the majority of time 'Archie' telling us how great he is.
The icing on the cake was my partner caught his gold cuff-links and tie-pin where his initials and how he kept raising his hands and playing with his tie to show us (which I totally missed, then was like "oh yea, that was weird")
After the interview, talking with HR:
HR-Jake: "How did it go?"
John: "Terrible. One of the worst. We would have been done in 10 minutes if PaperTrail didn't keep asking questions."
Me: "Are you kidding!? I had the best time ever. I wish I could have stayed longer."
HR-Jake: "Really? This guy was so full of himself I wasn't sure to even schedule with you guys. With his experience, I thought it deserved at least a round with you two. You think we should give him a chance?"
Me: "Hell no. Never in a million years, no. I never in my whole life met anyone with such a big ego. I mean, he kept referring to himself in the third person. Who does that?"
HR-Jake: "Whew!...yea, he did that in the phone interview too. It was a red flag for us as well."
Couple of weeks later I ran into HR-Jake in the break room.
HR-Jake: "Remember Mr. Archie Brown?"
Me: "To my dying day, I will never forget Mr. Archie Brown."
HR-Jake: "I called him later that day to tell him the good news and he accused me of being a racist. If we didn't give him the job, he was getting a lawyer and sue us for discrimination."
Me: "What the frack!"
HR-Jake: "Yep, and guess what? Got a letter from his lawyer today. I don't think a case will come in front of a judge, but if you have any notes from the interview, I'll need them."
Me: "What are we going to do?"
HR-Jake: "Play the waiting game between lawyers. We're pretty sure he'll run out of money before we do."
After about 6 months, and a theft conviction (that story made the local paper), Mr. Archie Brooks dropped his case (or his lawyers did).23 -
Only slightly tech related. So proud of my mom.
Many years ago I helped her create a Facebook account. As it happens with most older people, she started sharing false news that she saw on her network.
So I taught her how to verify. Reverse image search. To google it and if no real news site talked about it, it was fake.
Anyway, she listened and started learning.
Now she is telling people when they are posting something untrue and I even taught her how to report false news posts.1 -
Before an interview prepare a list of questions for them, they expect it!
My list to give inspiration:
Describe your company culture? - if the response is buzzword heavy, avoid.
What’s the oldest technology still in use? - all companies have legacy systems but some are worse than others
Describe your agile process? - a few companies I’ve interviewed with said they are agile but it’s actually kanban
Are developers involved with customers?- if they trust you to talk to customers you can infer trust to do your job ( I’m sure others will disagree)
Describe your development environment?- do they have such a thing as dev, test and prod?
These are the only ones I can remember but should give others a bit of inspiration I hope 😄9 -
My wife is a (semi-)pro gamer, so the only way it affects our dating is that I have to help her write LUA addons, performance analytics and Twitch bots.18
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My dev goal is to actually finish something this year, last year I started a load of projects but left them unfinished2
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As usual finished the task just an hour before demo meeting. That hour is for transportation. Obviously I didn't test nor rehearse.
As usual, in to 2 mins of demo and greeted by error page.
As usual
1) stay the fuck calm
2) this features was already demo-ed and fixed and went fine few weeks ago
3) what the fuck happen now
4) stay the fuck calm, smile.
5) "ah please give me one minute, I forgot to clean up some stuff while working on new features"
6) shit shit. read the error message and log
7) oh I did refactor some files last week. Reorganized the files and folders for better structure and easier understanding. Thought I corrected every occurrences. Obviously I missed few.
8) ssh to the server while screen is still showing on projector
9) dig into the file quick
10) stay the fuck calm
11) fix
12) refresh
13) sorry all good, so I was saying ....
Well finally it's done for today and going back to office. After all it went ok. 👌2 -
The project where I realized I wanted to go from chemist to pro dev.
I built a flow-chemistry spectrometer with monitoring backend in Haskell.
Spectroscopy is where you add a reagent to a glass tube, it changes color, and by measuring the exact color it tells you how much of something (for example, a toxin) is present in the sample.
I had to do that a lot on factory samples, writing down measurements using pen & paper.
I'm lazy so I decided to do the logical thing: Automate it. I bought a second hand spectrometer, stripped the casing, did a shitload of glassblowing and hooked up tubes to the production pipelines, so I could get samples, mixing them in the correct ratio with reagents in continuous flows using valves.
I ended up using 2 home-crafted arduino-like boards (etching PCBs is fun!).
One to calibrate the mixture against known samples and control solenoid valves to continuously cycle through various reagents and deionized flushing water, the other to record the measurements and send them to a server running a Haskell/Yesod API.
The server collected the information into InfluxDB (A time series database), displaying all data on a graphite dashboard.
Eventually I wrote Haskell plugins for most of the chemistry processes, from pH & temperature measurements to polymer property and pigment tests (they made a lot of printer ink).
Then I was fired because they didn't need chemists anymore, and the code "could be maintained by the intern" (poor guy)...
But I did find out that I loved functional programming, chemistry automation projects, and crafting my own electronics during that time.16 -
My first post................... from firefox.
Chrome has made me to switch to firefox completely.13 -
ON MONDAY
TL: Why the hell you require a month to integrate this engine?
Me: It will take that much time, can't help it.
TL: it can be done within a week.
Me: Then you do it.
TL: Ok I will show how it's done in a week.
ON FRIDAY
Me: What's the status on that integration?
TL: Oh yeah about that, you have to carry it ahead, I have some monitoring to do.
Me: Ok, give me the repository access, I will carry it ahead.
ME OPENS REPOSITORY.
There's only a new controller file with nothing it.5 -
Big event. Massive traffic in production, so we were monitoring all night.
I was in a room with 2 devs of my team, a marketting girl, my boss and a designer... chilling.
Suddenly the production is down.
Boss: production is down, anyone can check?
Me: already on it
Dev1: it looks ok for me
Dev2: me too
Me: wait what? Impossible everything is down
Dev1: oh I refreshed the page it's not working
Me: don't stay on the page refreshing it like you are fucking monkeys. Give me useful intel or be quiet.
Market girl: is it working?
...
Guys is it working?
...
Hello?
Me: Not yet we are looking. Don't distract me.
Boss: client called us. They want it online now.
Dev1&2: he's looking
... 1 min later...
Boss: is it working?
Boss: is it working?
Boss: is it working?
Me: SHUT THE FUCK FOR FUCKING ONE SECOND. ALL OF YOU, OUT NOW. YOU ARE FUCKING MONKEYS WHO CAN'T DO SHIT. IF YOU CAN'T HELP JUST SHUT YOUR DAMN SHITHOLE. DEVS, LOOK WITH ME. MARKET GIRL PREPARE A FUCKING POST-MORTEM MAIL. BOSS GET THE CLIENT ON THE PHONE AND STALE. DO. YOUR. FUCKING. JOBS.
That's how I ended up screaming at everyone... the rest of the night went in complete silence and I fixed the issue 2min after the got quiet or busy.24 -
I FINALLY DID IT!! I landed a job!! I'm going to be a firmware engineer!! Woohoo!! 😁
It only took half a year, but I finally got one, and purely off my own merit. It feels damn good when you get the job with no references or connections, just your own skills.
After a highly successful on-site technical/whiteboard interview, I was 90% confident I'd get it. The fact that my job search is finally over, is such a fucking relief. Good riddance to endless interview prep, applications & rejections.
I start on Monday. Goodbye freedom >.<19 -
Heyyyy, I just found out about https://myactivity.google.com !
Yeah, that thing is scary. And yes, I was able to see what I searched when I met my girlfriend or when I still was in high school. This thing remembers more about me than I do...
So yeah, I'll try to drop everything GAFAM-related within the next months.
15 -
This rant has been written from the Signal messaging app and uses a custom Signal 'gateway' (a registered user which is a server in this case) with a PHP api behind it. If this rant appears on devRant, it fucking works!46
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My dad found a phone a few weeks ago and asked me what he should do with it. Knowing how much it hurts to lose personal data, I said I could try to find the owner and send it back.
My first attempt was to search through the files on the SD card in order to find an identifying document (CV, bill, address...) but there were only family pictures.
My second attempt was to unlock the phone and check the information about the owner and the accounts linked to it. But for this to be possible adb has to be enabled. Good thing is that that particular brand shows an option for activating adb on the recovery menu.
But then, it's Android Oreo and I haven't found a way to lift the lock pattern. I thought I could bruteforce it over the shell (as I found there could be about 1300 possibilities for 2 to 5 point patterns), but there is the same attempt throttling as on the screen so that would take ages.
Finally, I found the owner in the most "social" way : The phone was displaying the weather for a particular place. It turns out that there are only 3K inhabitants in that city, si I thought that a big enough Facebook group might help me find the owner. So I posted a message on a 500 people FB group dedicated to this city with a selfie of the owner : someone identified her within 20 minutes.
Mission accomplished 😎42 -
About 10 years ago my wife and I were buying a house. We found out late that we needed a lot more cash than we had previously thought we needed, and the deadline to deliver it was just a few days away. After returning home from my full-time gig at about 6pm, I took a break for a bit and then worked all night on a job for a client to make up the extra money. When 7am rolled around I had just finished up. Then I went back to work at my full-time job, and later met with the client to present my work. It was roughly 27 hours at a keyboard for me. That effort made it possible for us to successfully buy our first home. If you want something badly enough, make it happen!7
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Ok, so I have a SAAS website where users pay a daily fee to use my platform as there fundraiser landing page.
A new client comes, asks for a discount, and got a 50% off because his brother was a previous client.
Him: Can you please add a list of the days of the year so a donor can donate a day?
Me: Sure, sounds like a good idea, and will probably take me about a week to implement with testing etc. And so I want $$ (hourly rate * one week) for the work.
Him: Don't bluff me I understand a bit in programming, it shouldn't take you more than an hour, and I am paying you, so you should do it for free.
Me: Ok, here is a fair deal, since you understand in programming, build it for me, I give you two weeks and I will pay you double what I am asking for.
Him: I don't understand enough to do it myself, I just estimated how much work it is.
Me: Forget about it, if you want me to build you this feature, you pay. If not you can go to my competition happily.
Who needs bad clients at all?
Why do they think they know everything?
And why don't they understand that time is money?5 -
Quit job: ✔️
Created brand 🎧: ✔️
Registered on popular platforms: ✔️
Publish new content: ▶️
Sometimes it's a great feeling when you changing your self vector and start to spent time on something new that you have wanted to try out or didn't spent enough time before.
Yesterday I were full stack developer, today - independent musician which tries to spread his feelings and vision.15 -
Decided yesterday night that it was time to leave this joke of a company. Updated my CV, changed my pic on my CV and posted the CV on Monster.
15 phone calls, 4 emails, 3 adds on LinkedIn, 3 planned interviews and this is just the morning.7 -
Me: Oh I see were using a non-standard architecture on this app. I like this bit but what is this doing? never seen it before.
Him: Ah we use that to abstract the navigation layer.
Me: oh ok, interesting idea, but that means we need an extra file per screen + 1 per module. We also can't use this inbuilt control, which I really like, and we've to write a tonne of code to avoid that.
Him: Yeah we wanted to take a new approach to fix X, this is what we came up with. Were not 100% happy with it. Do you have any ideas?
**
Queue really long, multi-day architecture discussion. Lots of interesting points, neither side being precious or childish in anyway. Was honestly fantastic.
**
Me: So after researching your last email a bit, I think I found a happy middle ground. If we turn X into a singleton, we can store the state its generating inside itself. We can go back to using the in-built navigation control and have the data being fetched like Y. If you want to keep your dependency injection stuff, we can copy the Angular services approach and inject the singletons instead of all of these things. That means we can delete the entire layer Z.
Even with the app only having 25% of the screens, we could delete like 30+ files, and still have the architecture, at a high level, identical and textbook MVVM.
Him: singleton? no I don't like those, best off keeping it the way it is.
... are you fucking kidding me? You've reinvented probably 3 wheels, doubled the code in the app and forced us to take ownership of something the system handles ... but a singleton is a bad idea? ... based off no concrete evidence or facts, but a personal opinion.
... your face is a bad idea15 -
So Last year December my cousin see's me making a basic 3D game in Unity and says he wants to do programming.
Me: No, you don't want that. Become a doctor like your parents want you two.
Him: I'll do it.
Me: Ok. If you want to suffer, i'll teach you some basic C#
Me: *Shows him basic C# code in visual studio*
Him: *Not paying attention* Cool. When can i make games?
Me: That's not how this works. Where do you intend to study?
Him: M.I.T!
Me: You better get your ass infront of that fucken computer, google and youtube the shit out of you, matter of fact i'll get you a shit bucket so you don't have to get up.
Him: I don't have to go so hard now, i'm only 16.
Me: *Facepalm* That's why you have to do this now.
...7 months later...
(Yesterday)
Me: Show me how you make a basic calculator application.
Him: I don't know how to do that, you didn't show me.
Me: *laughing*
Him: Whats so funny?
Me: You're screwed *still laughing*
Don't get me wrong. He's a smart kid. Just needs to fucken do something if he wants his goal.13 -
I work at a small retail store and we have quite a few regular customers who know I'm studying computer science because I'm always coding at work on my laptop.
One lady who comes in quite often and is very sweet asked me if I would take a look at her phone. She said she bought it and paid the owner of a phone repair store to set it up for her, but was felt like he did something weird to it. I told her I wasn't an expert but would look at it.
Oh my god. This guy set up her phone connected to his own personal icloud account. All of his music was on there. All of his contacts were on there. All of his pictures were on there. Even nude pictures of multiple people that this lady said she definitely does not know. I tell her this is very very wrong and no one in their right mind should've set her phone up this way.
I automatically think to factory reset. I'm unfamiliar with iPhone, as the last time I used one was an iPhone4 many years ago. I was unaware that apple applies an authentication lock when the phone is reset.
The authentication is set up underneath yet ANOTHER email address that belongs to this guy, as this lady promised me she has no knowledge of any email address similar to the one listed, nor does she have access to it.
I tell her to call the guy and ask for her money back and to unlock her phone so that she can reset it herself.
He claims that he cannot accept refunds if a factory reset has been performed.
Uhm, I am calling SOOOOO much bullshit. There should be absolutely no reason why the owner of the phone cannot factory reset it. The owner should be able to do ANYTHING she wants with it, without being locked out of it because some creep at a repair store did NOT DO HIS JOB CORRECTLY AND HE KNOWS IT. Why else would he claim he can't refund if it's been reset, because he KNOWS she got locked out.
So long story short I talked on the phone with him and cussed him out telling him he was wrong for taking advantage of someone who doesn't know much about technology and that he was invading privacy and violating her security and that i would report him if he didn't fully refund her and unlock her phone.
He gave her all of her money back, unlocked the phone (which she is deciding to sell because she got so scared by this), and I'm still filing a complaint against this man and his store. Who knows how many more clueless people he did this too. Fucking scumbag.10 -
#thread
Any Home Assistant fans out there? Got myself a RPi3 a few months ago and got hooked on HA, because of the huge product support and great community. Didn't find any dashboards that I liked so created my own, written in JS, fully customisable and support for most if not all kinds of gadgets. The purpose was to have something easy to use for the whole family, on a wall-mounted tablet. What do you guys think?
Anyways, has anyone done some cool home automations/scripting? Would love to hear about it!
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