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!rant.
I've worked for about two months at my (first) job. Its amazing.
We create audio/video software for the products we make.
There are 9 programmers besides me, I'm the only junior. And I'm still learning my way around the code, but they still value my input.
We only do stand ups for 5-10 min, like it should.
One if my colleagues helps me often when I have questions, so I've nicknamed him ducky.
My pm is awesome, he's great at coding and a great manager.
When we work overtime, the department pays for delivery food and drinks.
And we've already gone on 2 trips with the department, mountain biking and a BBQ.
I love my job and I hope that I'll soon be good enough to ask less questions.3 -
Client: "I need you to implement a feature which does x"
Me: "We can it do like this, I can do it in Y hours."
Client: "Perfect do it"
Me: "Here you go have a look and if you give your ok I'll implement it on production."
Client:"That is not what I need. I need Z"
Me: "Well then you should have said Z and not x. But I can do Z if you want me to."
Client:"Do it it is urgent!!!!111"
Me: "All done here you go."
Client: "That works like what I said what I need, but I meant more like xZ."
Me: "Ok, you know I have to charge you for all this, do you?"
Client: "What why? It isn't the feature I wanted!!11 Do it right and I'll pay you for the right one!"
Me: "It might not be what you wanted but it is exactly what you specified to me. I'll send you the bill and will not continue working for you. Good luck finding someone who is willing to do unpaid work for you."
I am so done with that kind of client.8 -
It saved me from suicide.
You have to understand first that things in India work differently. Academics are not personal, but a social business. Academic competition in India is very high and not in a good way, or for the good reasons.
As a teenager was sent off from my home to the other side of the country. I didn't like it. My studies suffered, and I failed my exams. Came back home and faced months of emotional abuse (guilt trips, scornful comments, plain insults) from my parents, neighbours and relatives. Indian society is just built that way. They didn't know they were damaging my psyche, or they were too angry to care. Lots of other shit (lost friends, lost love) happened at roughly the same time period and everything started to fall like dominos.
I fell into severe depression. Lost appetite, lost sleep. Nothing mattered anymore. There were mornings when I would wake up and not get up from my bed for hours, and not even move a finger. Self-hate became the motto of the day. I became violent and anti-social. I would either be angry or trying not to break down and give up all the time. Many a night, I considered suicide. I would end up googling for easy ways out to take.
But what gave me a way out of the pains of my reality was programming. It helped my keep my head, figuratively and literally. It kept my mind distracted and gave me a sense of purpose. I would shut myself in, plug in my headphones, shut the world out and just experiment.
I am not saying that I am the best at what I do, but those sleepless and troubled nights, and many other similar nights over the years have given me a definite edge over my colleagues.
Even today, when everything is falling to pieces, I know I have something to fall back on. I still get episodes of depression every now and then, but I know I can always pick up a new project and distract myself. It probably isn't healthy, but eh...
I am alive. I code. I kick ass. My colleagues respect and value my opinion. I love my job.
Computer does what I tell it to do (mostly :p) and I feel good. Because for that small moment, I am in control of everything. For that infinitesimally small moment of my average, boring, and somewhat painful life, I am God.51 -
When people tell me their problems I immediately start coming up with solutions when really they just want sympathy.15
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This is somewhat oddly satisfying because the dip corresponds to the day I had my birthday, and that gives this graph a pretty smooth and symmetric curve :p
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Me: *tries to deactivate windows 10 feedback*
Windows: nope *turns it back on*
Me: *please*
Windows: NO
Me: *Feels sorry for shitty quality*2 -
The stupidest technical question I have ever been asked is actually more of a design question, but I think it'll appeal to DevRant people.
I had thrown together a logo for a new system that my team was making. The logo was basically a flat, solid circle of our corporate shade of blue, with the name of the product overlaid in Helvetica Light. It looked okay. Ish. Good enough, anyway.
Our junior-most senior manager came to have a look. She was the sort of person who always had to give feedback, on EVERYTHING. Everyone had given this little logo the nod, but she had to stare at it for ages, and then eventually asked:
"I like the text, but can you rotate the circle a few degrees?"
.
.
.
After an awkward pause I'm pleased to report that she realised her own mistake and we laughed it off, so I was not forced to stand up, point at her, and yell "DURRRRRRRRRR". -
"You gave us bad code! We ran it and now production is DOWN! Join this bridgeline now and help us fix this!"
So, as the author of the code in question, I join the bridge... And what happens next, I will simply never forget.
First, a little backstory... Another team within our company needed some vendor client software installed and maintained across the enterprise. Multiple OSes (Linux, AIX, Solaris, HPUX, etc.), so packaging and consistent update methods were a a challenge. I wrote an entire set of utilities to install, update and generally maintain the software; intending all the time that this other team would eventually own the process and code. With this in mind, I wrote extensive documentation, and conducted a formal turnover / training season with the other team.
So, fast forward to when the other team now owns my code, has been trained on how to use it, including (perhaps most importantly) how to send out updates when the vendor released upgrades to the agent software.
Now, this other team had the responsibility of releasing their first update since I gave them the process. Very simple upgrade process, already fully automated. What could have gone so horribly wrong? Did something the vendor supplied break their client?
I asked for the log files from the upgrade process. They sent them, and they looked... wrong. Very, very wrong.
Did you run the code I gave you to do this update?
"Yes, your code is broken - fix it! Production is down! Rabble, rabble, rabble!"
So, I go into our code management tool and review the _actual_ script they ran. Sure enough, it is my code... But something is very wrong.
More than 2/3rds of my code... has been commented out. The code is "there"... but has been commented out so it is not being executed. WT-actual-F?!
I question this on the bridge line. Silence. I insist someone explain what is going on. Is this a joke? Is this some kind of work version of candid camera?
Finally someone breaks the silence and explains.
And this, my friends, is the part I will never forget.
"We wanted to look through your code before we ran the update. When we looked at it, there was some stuff we didn't understand, so we commented that stuff out."
You... you didn't... understand... my some of the code... so you... you didn't ask me about it... you didn't try to actually figure out what it did... you... commented it OUT?!
"Right, we figured it was better to only run the parts we understood... But now we ran it and everything is broken and you need to fix your code."
I cannot repeat the things I said next, even here on devRant. Let's just say that call did not go well.
So, lesson learned? If you don't know what some code does? Just comment that shit out. Then blame the original author when it doesn't work.
You just cannot make this kind of stuff up.105 -
Me: can you send me the link to the pdf?
Coworker: sure: "file:///c:/users/dipshit/fuckme.pdf"
Me: FML...6