This is evil. Tools like this are meant to help us, not to become our masters.

I've seen some rules that IMO should be stricter.

But the bottom line is that the team should decide what they want to enforce or not and the tool should help them to do that.

We create software. We don't work for software.

@cmarshall10450 They didn't reroute it. The call just wasn't connecting. It was a 404 every time. I wonder if it's possible that they knew it didn't work and made the typo on purpose. But it's typical for this project. It's not just the lack of sufficient unit testing. Sometimes people didn't even check to see if it worked at all - not by any means.

There were unit tests for some stuff, but nobody ran them. You can tell because sometimes the code changed but the test didn't so the test fails. Sometimes the tests wouldn't even build.

I'm sorry it's so bad right now. It will get better. You've got your first job and some experience. Once your foot is in the door and you have something to put on your resume, getting more jobs gets easier.

It's nice that your employer has been honest about what they can and can't offer, and that they understand your position. It sounds human.

My advice: Appreciate it, but realize that you don't owe it to them to stay. It sounds like they realize that too. You have to take care of yourself and you have to get paid. Loyalty is between people and people, not people and companies. Tell the people how grateful you are, but leave the company when you have to. They'll understand. (Leave even if they don't.)

Try a consulting company. They are growing. You become a product and they bill for your time. That sounds bad, but I’ve been with two and they treat you very well. There are plenty of people 50+, 60+. I was 48 when they hired me. They were eager. I didn’t have to fight for it. Imagine a company whose goal is simply to grow by hiring and placing more developers.

They also pay more. My current job blew my mind with their offer. I never thought anyone would pay me that much, and everything about the job is better.

Are they still doing the 10x rockstar thing? I thought that passed.

My email wasn't displaying notifications. I had turned them off so I could do a presentation. About an hour before I posted this I finally got an email about some work. At last!

@torpkev I know. I forgot to mention, I also feel guilty.

Don't say "junior" and don't let anyone call you that. You're not a "junior" anything.

SOLID isn't a buzzword. If you're doing OO you should know what it is. It's not infallible, but if we disagree with any of it we should be able to explain why.

Yes, this happens. I think it's cultural. It's intended to be polite vs. forward or direct. So I get it. But it's annoying because once it starts I can't answer the person's question, because I don't have it yet, but I also can't go back to what I'm doing, because I know that the next pieces of the message are coming in.

9:07 Hi
9:09 Can I ask you a question
9:11 I was trying to get XYZ to work
9:13 .....the actual question.

I can set this as a status message in Teams, but not in Skype.

If you have a question it's not necessary to say Hi, wait for me to respond, ask if you can ask me a question, wait for me to respond, and then ask me the question. If you need to insert lines in your message, you can use SHIFT-ENTER so the message isn't sent before it's done.

Side rant - I hate when messages within one organization come at me from three or more different apps.

Blue. If I take the red pill I can do some stuff differently, but overall I'm grateful for how my life has been and if I started over I probably wouldn't get to marry my wife. I can't be grateful for it and want to undo it at the same time.

Besides, what if that change results in me dying unexpectedly? What's my plan - invest in stuff and get rich? I'll take the life I appreciate and the money.

Updates are important to keep us safe from malware - you know, stuff that could render our computer unavailable.

This is the worst sort of anti-pattern. I've dealt with it over and over. It leads to developers having to learn the lame infrastructure/framework thing instead of the underlying technology or a stable framework that everyone else uses.

So someone says, "Whoohoo! I created this awesome framework, I feel special!" while other people struggle to get it to work, and when they do, they're adding perceived value to the framework.

At the same time they know that what they're doing is useless because it's proprietary.

And at the same time because the framework sucks so bad everyone has to go under the hood and deal with what's beneath anyway, defeating the framework's reason for existing in the first place.

Thank you so much for the positive feedback. I really wasn't expecting that and I appreciate it very much! Related, here's an article about why it's beneficial to try answering questions on SO. https://dev.to/scotthannen/...

Been there. We need this in one week. Finished in three days.
EA took two days to even look at the code.
EA isn't happy because I refactored the code he makes everybody copy and paste. I deleted classes and methods that don't do anything, renamed some stuff to describe what it does, and cut out an entire layer of bloated, useless inheritance.
EA isn't happy because one of the libraries I used has a GNU license and he thinks that means we need to release internal, proprietary software on the internet as open source.
EA invented some new "standards" on the spot that have nothing to do with anything and force me to write code no one needs for requirements no one has.
EA is known for having an exact mental picture of how he wants it done, but won't share it. Prefers you to build it and lay it at his feet so he can say it's not what he wants. He can't actually write it so he throws a fit and yells when you try to pin him down up front. Literally, not exaggerating.
Six weeks later...

https://www.peoplesgas.com/

Oh, wait, that's actually the name of the company.

Dude, this isn't a joke and I'm okay with saying this because we're all anonymous here.

Consider seeing a psychiatrist and going on some medication. No one likes to hear that. But sometimes the part of us that experiences normal happiness just doesn't work because our chemicals aren't firing the right way.

Think of it like a pianist who can't play because of arthritis. Then he takes some pills and he can play again. The pills didn't change him or give him his abilities. They just removed an obstacle.

Seriously, try it. Maybe nothing happens. Or maybe it blows some fog away and you enter into a new phase in your life that you wouldn't have imagined was possible. I speak from experience and I'm not exaggerating.

I've been developing software for 15 years. That problem just makes my eyes glaze over. I can't put my finger on it. It just makes me die inside. I suppose I've been fortunate that I've never been asked anything like that in an interview.

I suppose there are types of work where that sort of problem-solving could be relevant. I just haven't encountered it.

A few weeks ago before I discovered this site I bought toxicdevrant.com. The idea was a site similar to this one. Ironically the "toxic" part was a joke. I was thinking something with a few less f-bombs.

I worked for a Fortune 100 company. For approximately 15 years their US careers page misspelled "positions."

CLICK HERE to search or apply to open positons.

I sent a comment later and they finally fixed it. Now the page is just really ugly. Yes, it really uses caps, red text, and yellow highlighting like it's 1994. You can apply there right now for a developer job. They're not hiring for UX or design because they have lots of experts.

I don't think the overlapping circles communicate anything. You can read meaning into it but then you're thinking more than the person who made the slide.

@MrCSharp dude, not cool. For him to vent is the whole point of the site.

I googled "what is a class .NET." (don't know why I added the .NET part. Habit.)

Examples used in all of the first results returned:
Employee
Employee
Geeks(?!)
Dog
Car
Car
MyClass
BoxTester (?!?!)
Person
Student

Examples are difficult, especially if you're trying to introduce someone to a completely new concept. Even a "real" class would likely be confusing.

But something about these just makes it worse. Barking dogs, student ages, Toyotas that inherit from cars - it just creates a weird, confused concept of what someone would do with a class.

I wonder if there's even a good answer. You have to learn the concept, the mechanics of how they work, what they're for, and how to put the right stuff in one, and any subset of that will be frustrating and difficult without all the rest.

I suppose that's a tiny snapshot of why getting started is difficult.

It made sense to me when someone showed me classes in production code. The lights came on.

Before that it was stuff like Car classes with Color properties and StartEngine methods. I could follow it all, but it wasn't apparent how it related to anything I would do.

Looking back the production classes I saw probably weren't that great. But I needed something to get me out of the fog created by the Car/Animal/Employee examples.

I've heard that unpaid internships give the interns an advantage later because they have experience. But you can't have one if you're working your way through school, so it becomes a way to maintain economic advantage for students from wealthier families.

I don't have firsthand experience with it but it sounds like a potentially valid concern.

A door can be shut with no one inside, but with the vast, overwhelming majority of stalls you would have to lock it from the inside and then crawl out under the door.

At that point we're getting into vandalism territory. There's always something someone can do to create problems if that's their intent.

If you design a door to swing shut you're basically simulating the behavior of a malicious person. That's where the 'evil or stupid' part comes in.

And no, a locked door is not the universal symbol of a stall in use. If the door is closed it's in use. We don't jiggle the handle, knock, or ask if someone is in there.

If for some incomprehensible reason one restroom is the exception and they can't make the door swing open then an occupied/vacant sign would be the next best choice.

@jirubizu I don't see it as authority to talk back. It's the authority to decide how people may speak to you and treat you. It's not that I recommend being extremely oversensitive our touchy. But if someone is persistently rude or disrespectful you have to stand your ground. The same goes if they try to play games like making bad decisions and holding you accountable.

Don't get me wrong - if you stand up for yourself you can lose your job. But in that situation it's vital to realize that there are other jobs. You can give a place the opportunity to improve, but if it doesn't then you don't want to waste too much time waiting for it to get better.

There's room to be subordinate and respectful while requiring others to show us a reasonable degree of respect.

@smb26 - Since I'm trying to get other peoples' thoughts I should have refrained from commenting myself. The question itself is probably too long already.

@smb26 I only ever see two versions of blame. One is where people solve problems and don't point fingers. Nobody blames anyone. The other is where blame is assigned to a scapegoat. You'd think there would be some sort of middle ground.

At one place I worked a new developer had to make changes to an app where all of the source branches had meaningless names and none of them was "master." No one knew which one was in production. It was a mess.

I helped the developer sort out which code to work in even though I was not assigned anywhere near that task. It was a lot of work. Then he used the wrong code anyway. I had emails showing it.

They blamed him because he was new. Then they blamed me because... they couldn't say. I explained that I spent hours helping him sort it out, and then he made a mistake. The reply, verbatim: "You could have done more." That's it.

If you're going to blame, what about the folks who made the mess or the manager who put the new guy in that position?

@electrineer??? The cleaning person doesn't knock on the stall door. She knocks on the outer bathroom door.

I have to say I'm really puzzled by the reactions to this. I thought it would at least be a little more divided.