Monday morning: The last straw.

After talking about in a previous rant about how my client wants to fix bugs that keeps popping out after bug fix.

Today I discovered, that all C-levels, worked all Saturday to "fix my code" because it "didn't work" and we "needed bug fixes not pretty things".

The app version I was working on for the last week is gone. Without mentioning that their "CTO" wrote a fucking crappy code to disable features that I added, breaking the build step.

This shit is enough for me, I'm done!

In retrospect, being open about autism in the workplace was a very bad decision.

My manager and CTO got to know about it and since that moment, every single thing I do has a different meaning to them.
All my technical decisions have to be validated by someone else, and my critique about how certain things are done is dismissed as if I were some kind of alien.

I really wonder when they're gonna ask me about their future or something.

*CTO in panic, as always, invites everyone to the war room*

CTO: We have a MAJOR problem where 0.0001% of our customers are not receiving SMS confirmations.

Me: Cool. But, 0.0001% is very less compared to the other problems we are solving.

CTO: You don't understand, this is critical issue that needs to be addressed immediately.

Me: But even those.0.0001% customers are receiving e-mail confirmations, so this is not even blocker as we have other channels working.

CTO: I am emotional at this point. You need to prioritise this now.

Me: Okay, do we know the root cause of this problem?

Engineering head: we have blacklisted those numbers in past as our system detected them abusing our platform.

Me: Cool. Let's whitelist them, nothing much to worry here.

CTO: Floyd, you need to understand that 0.0001% of the customers are not receiving the SMS and the solution you are proposing is incorrect.

Me: Okay, what do you suggest?

CTO: We stop sending the SMS to all the customers.

Everyone on the call: 😨

Manager: Feature C doesn’t work

Dev: We never built feature C

Manager: Nonsense, I remember feature C clearly!

Dev: It’s still in the backlog

Manager: But we had many meetings about it

Dev: Never got put on the board

Manager: Feature C is very important!

Dev: It was never assigned to anyone

Manager: What could possibly be more important than Feature C?

Dev: All the other features you placed on the board and assigned up until now

Manager: Well I need Feature C done asap! It should be top priority!

Dev: Ok then next sprint add feature C to the board and assign it to someone

*Next planning session manager leaves feature C in backlog in favour of other tickets*

*2 days later*

Manager: What is the status of feature C?

Dev: You opted to leave it in the backlog

Manager: BUT IT SHOULD BE TOP PRIORITY!

Dev: …

I've resigned 3 weeks ago. I have also completed my handover process.

Yesterday I was told that I have to work in the weekend and at night because project delivery date is the following week.

Kindly I responded that I have resigned and working on weekends and late nights won't benefit me in anyway now actually I wasn't benefiting from working on weekends and late nights even before my resignation.

Project manager is pissed off at me.

Oh well, it is what it is 🤷

Any time I feel like looking for something new because my salary is low, I remember that I would have to go through recruiters, HR, and job interviews and decide to just chill until the next raise.

You know what?

Young cocky React devs can suck my old fuckin LAMP and Objective-C balls.

Got a new freelance job and got brought in to triage a React Native iOS/Android app. Lead dev's first comment to me is: "Bro, have you ever used React Native".

To which I had to reply to save my honor publicly, "No, but I have like 8 years with Objective-C and 3 years with Swift, and 3 years with Node, so I maybe I'll still be able help. Sometimes it just helps to have a fresh set of eyes."

"Well, nobody but me can work on this code."

And that, as it turned out was almost true.

After going back and forth with our PM and this dev I finally get his code base.

"Just run "npm install" he says".

Like no fuckin shit junior... lets see if that will actually work.

Node 14... nope whole project dies.

Node 12 LTS... nope whole project dies.

Install all of react native globally because fuck it, try again... still dies.

Node 10 LTS... project installs but still won't run or build complaining about some conflict with React Native libraries and Cocoa pods.

Go back to my PM... "Um, this project won't work on any version of Node newer than about 5 years old... and even if it did it still won't build, and even if it would build it still runs like shit. And even if we fix all of that Apple might still tell us to fuck off because it's React Native.

Spend like a week in npm and node hell just trying to fucking hand install enough dependencies to unfuck this turds project.

All the while the original dev is still trying TO FIX HIS OWN FUCKING CODE while also being a cocky ass the entire time. Now, I can appreciate a cocky dev... I was horrendously cocky in my younger days and have only gotten marginally better with age. But if you're gonna be cocky, you also have to be good at it. And this guy was not.

Lo, we're not done. OG Dev comes down with "Corona Virus"... I put this in quotes because the dude ends up drawing out his "virus" for over 4 months before finally putting us in touch with "another dev team he sometimes uses".

Next, me and my PM get on a MS Teams call with this Indian house. No problems there, I've worked with the Indians before... but... these are guys are not good. They're talking about how they've already built the iOS build... but then I ask them what they did to sort out the ReactNative/Cocoa Pods conflict and they have no idea what I'm talking about.

Why?

Well, one of these suckers sends a link to some repo and I find out why. When he sends the link it exposes his email...

This Indian dude's emails was our-devs-name@gmail.com...

We'd been played.

Company sued the shit out of the OG dev and the Indian company he was selling off his work to.

I rewrote the app in Swift.

So, lets review... the React dev fucked up his own project so bad even he couldn't fix it... had to get a team of Indians to help who also couldn't fix it... was still a dickhead to me when I couldn't fix it... and in the end it was all so broken we had to just do a rewrite.

None of you get npm. None of you get React. None of you get that doing the web the way Mark Zucherberg does it just makes you a choad locked into that ecosystem. None of you can fix your own damn projects when one of the 6,000 dependency developers pushes breaking changes. None of you ever even bother with "npm audit fix" because if security was a concern you'd be using a server side language for fucking server side programming like a grown up.

So, next time a senior dev with 20 years exp. gets brought in to help triage a project that you yourself fucked up... Remember that the new thing you know and think makes you cool? It's not new and it's not cool. It's just JavaScript on the server so you script kiddies never have to learn anything but JavaScript... which makes you inarguably worse programmers.

And, MF, I was literally writing javascript while you were sucking your mommas titties so just chill... this shit ain't new and I've got a dozen of my own Node daemons running right now... difference is?

Mine are still working.

Goddamn, why is Android SDK setup such a stupendous pain in the ass?

"Wah wah, can't find JDK!"

Wtf are you talking about you stupid fuck, JDK is right there, all IDEs find it, environment vars are set, it is the right version and is used on this machine for a billion development purposes! Stop being a useless cunt!

And this is everytime. Had to setup up Android SDK four or five times by now on different machines and it has NEVER gone smoothly. There is always a plethora of different issues and you end up wasting all day going through fucking dependency hell!

Read a book on ergonomics, you colossal android fucks. Just because you got JetBrains behind your IDE and they actually know what they are doing, doesn't make your setup process any less of a braindead nightmare.

Fucking hell.

Hello world again, long time no rant.

Renewed interest in devRant after some of recent goings on:.

“Let’s define a new language”

“Why? There are lots of great languages out there”

“It will be domain specific and more user friendly”

“Why, there are plenty of other options with support and pedigree”

“We will properly define a grammar in Backus-Naur form, it’ll be great, maybe we can sub it out”

“Why, literally everything we do is already doable with the current tools, this will certainly be more trouble than it’s worth”

“They already gave us the money”

All aboard! Fun times ahead for the next decade...

Probably the best rejection mail I ever got..

Agile is often code for institutionalized micromanagement.

Fastest way to make visitors leave your website forever:

I was expecting a 4th interview this afternoon for a position as a fullstack elixir developer.

Got a response from the CTO.
'Even if you pass all the tests with success, we could not go further because you're a junior and we're looking for a senior'

Well, dude, you've seen me 3 times and didn't understand that I was a junior ? My CV is not enough explicit ? It's written at the top of it...

So after a motivation interview, technical test, technical interview and Phoenix framework interview, they only realized yet the plot.

Good luck for your seniors to pass their knowledge to other seniors.

“Millennials are picking up their phones on average of 237 times per day. The machines have not adapted to the millennials. The millennials have adapted to the machines.”
Started listening to this book. So far so good.

Jesus fucking christ, entering w3schools.com (don't ask) and I immediately get a cookie consent thing shoved in my face.

WHY?! Please don't tell me it's so I can get the 'best experience' because that's straight out bullshit. I don't need cookies and you fucking name it to get 'the best fucking experience' while looking up again how that one PHP or HTML or CSS or WHAT-THE-FUCK-EVER thing worked.

E-v-e-r-y GODDAMN site has this nowadays, to 'improve my experience' - I block ads anyways so what's the motherfucking point?!

Mother of FUCKING god.

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My name is Jimkelly Nzioka, a Flutter Developer from Kenya. A few months ago, a person named Daniel Kibet, the CEO of a company 'Aberison Investments Limited' got in touch with me, telling me that he needed a Flutter Developer. He took me through a couple of tests, as he out them, to gauge my proficiency in Dart and Flutter, since that's what we would use to develop updates fora lthis app on the Google Play Store named 'BOBO' (https://play.google.com/store/apps/...) I passed the test, and he proceeded on to tell me that the app was on Play Store already and he invited me to the office in Miraj Towers, Westlands, Nairobi, Kenya to see it. He presented me with a contract to sign which would go on for a period of 3 years, during which I was to develop the aforementioned app, provide updates maintain the database, etcetera. I live somewhat far from the office and as such, I would work remotely from home, making commits to a Github repository we created for the project. I did a bunch of work for them, including working in the UI (which really needed a lot of work), writing loads of Cloud Functions, as well as Cloud Tasks for functionality they needed. They would also consult with me concerning how to achive some functionality in code and I would offer my honest advice and suggestions. Things seemed to be going on well, until the start of this month. As per the contract, I was to bill the company a sum of Ksh 50, 000 every month that's roughly equivalent to $500. That was enough for me, seeing as I am still a student in University, and I would be working on it as a part time job. However, as of today, September 8, 2020, he has refused to pay me for my work and is ignoring, sometimes canceling any phone calls I make to him. In addition, I noticed he has restricted my access to the Firebase project

I know you probably don't know this person, but you are developers and engineers, and know what it would feel like if you realized someone has been using you, when all along you have been doing your level best to just do your work

Employers have to stop taking advantage of their employees for their own selfish gains

Dear Product owners / Company Owners / Whoever requesting a feature:

Devs like to know they are adding value to whatever product they are working on. Every time you request a stupid no value added request, you kick the dev's soul.

After several hits the developer will stop caring about the software and eventually will get the job done, but oh boy, the amount of tech debt/trash code the dev is gonna leave behind will be horrendous.

Then the next developer, not only takes the hit from another stupid request, he/she will see the crappy code the past sad developer left and will take a double hit. Of course all of them start proactive and try to fix previous blood trails but sadness will catch them eventually.

If you want you're apps/products/reports to be good in a long run don't make stupid requests.

BAs, Stop being Expensive Email Forwarders and challenge a request, understand the process and then hand it to the developer.

Us developers are sensible cute ponies. Treat us well or expect poor quality projects

Talking to my son today about one of his CS classes, not sure which.

He says: "I missed the lecture yesterday, but I'm not going to bother re-watching it."

Me: "Why? You really should. You're paying for these classes AND you really need to actually learn this stuff."

Son: "Well, because I got 100% on my last assignment without going to class. I just Google'd everything and figured it out on my own from what I found."

My wife out of the blue: "DAMN IT, BUT THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS IN THE REAL WORK WORLD!"

Oh, you poor, uninformed summer child. I love her, but she just doesn't know that my son has already learned the key lesson he needed to learn from his schooling in order to get a job and make good money in this field! #ProudTechieDadMoments

fellow from the team was asked to do the estimate by manager - he said 2 weeks

then manager asked what if we add one more developer - he said, again 2 weeks and maybe add day or two

I was asked same question without knowing that they already asked fellow from the team same question - I said around two weeks, maybe day or two more! XD

as manager was confused and not satisfied with the estimates, goes to our team leader with the same questions - team leader said - 2 and half weeks and if you add one more dev to it, 3 weeks minimum

we didn't know that all of us were asked as manager did that behind our backs, in the end manager learned lesson in greed as we got to stick to team leaders estimate!

also that was very rude of underestimating someone's ability, same manager did had personal bias and frequently mocked us, for example when we said that that we will implement ML for cropping images at the right place (ie. crop part of the image where the face is) on the backend. Response was something like: 'You guys will do the ML? Are you shitting me? You're not /insert FANG company/!'

best team win ever!

second best team win ever is when whole team left the company in matter of weeks

Today my manager asked me about my research into using RabbitMQ as a backup in case Azure Service Bus ever goes down.

Me: "Good. The way we designed the framework, all we have to do is drop the DLLs into the directory, update the config, and the services will start using RabbitMQ."
Mgr: "Excellent. Probably should be looking into using RabbitMQ as a permanent replacement for Azure"
Me: "What? The whole reason we moved to Azure was to eliminate the problems with having an on prem service bus. Since we've switched, there has been zero downtime."
Mgr: "That's what VP-Joe is afraid of. If Azure ever goes down, he won't know how to explain Azure to the president as to why we're not taking orders or can't ship packages."
Me: "That makes no sense. What did VP-Joe tell the president when a database goes down or a server mis-configuration?"
Mgr: "President understands internal outages, its just the whole 'cloud' thing he doesn't understand."
Me: "Um..then VP-Joe needs to explain it to him?"
Mgr: "The decision has already been made. Are you on board? Lets look at this move as a cost savings."
Me: "You mean the $10 a month? How much hardware will we need to support RabbitMQ?"
Mgr: "Yea, nobody probably thought of that."
Me: "I'm on board with whatever decision, but I'd like a little more than VP-Joe being afraid of the president."
Mgr: "I'm sure its not being afraid."
Me: "..."
Mgr: "OK, lets wait and see if VP-Joe forgets about this and moves on to something new."

This is how I feel most of my client proposal start:

* It's simple, I'd like to re-invent <the wheel>.

* All I want to do is use <rocketship engine> on <old typewriter>.

* I'm too cheap to hire a full-time < DBA, DevOps engineer, development team>. Can I pay you pennies?

* I'm poor and broke, can you do this for free?

* I'd like to <commit illegal act> and be <legal compliant standard>.

* I heard it was possible to <fly 30 people to the moon> using <Ford Model-T>. Please do this for us.

* I <sold my house>, but now <I'm locked out by the new owners>. Please help.

me : *leaving 15 min earlier*
manager : IT'S UNACCEPTABLE, HOW CAN WE BUILD A TRUST RELATIONSHIP LIKE THAT

manager one week later: yeah we need you to work till midnight if needed today. You cannot say no.
me : ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Dumbest arrow key design ever.

I hate Skype for Business with a passion. It's the most garbage useless chat program imaginable. It can barely send basic text chats without throwing an error, and it can almost never send an image without the upload failing. The fact that it can't even save conversation history for each of your chats within Skype is ridiculous -- it fucking saves the conversation as an email draft in Outlook. Come on Microsoft, why do I have to open a completely separate program to view conversation history?! Skype conversation history should be saved IN SKYPE! Fucking AIM was able to save conversation history. I've tried multiple times to get the company to move to Slack or Teams, and for some reason they think that Skype is a good program and they ignore the fact that it's completely useless. It's 2019, why are we using a program that's built like it's 2009? I swear they haven't updated Skype at all in the last decade

Skype for business is a total fucking piece of shit.

The horror that is nowadays called "Skype for business"

I hate it when I reject their laughable offer and then they just go on and ask from me to recommend any friend for THAT position. Bitch, I rejected your offer for a reason, what makes you think I'll just throw my friends into those positions that I find offensive for myself. And also it's your job to find people, not mine.

And worst of all is when that come the other day with a different and even more laughable offer and I reject again and they again ask me for recommendations and the loop goes on until I HAVE to become an asshole and tell them some swearing words they could never think of.

Awkward recruiting process? Sit the fuck back!

So about a year ago I got laid off. I got some help setting up LinkedIn and realising I'm not trash and offers to talk started flowing in.

So this consultancy firm asks me to come in for a talk and having nothing better to do I oblige - they're working on big, exciting Greenfield stuff and I'm amazed they want me.
Fast forward the most nervous week in my life and the HR assistant brings me into the meeting room, I get some water and a nice first impression - also my last. I wait in the room for five minutes.

In walks madam HR, madam Team lead and miss assistant from before, all carrying big ass laptops. We shake hands and they sit down and all open up their laptops between me and them - I just sit there feeling naked with my block of paper and pencil I brought.

So we wait for their machines to start up and madam HR just starts throwing questions at me and seemingly noting my answers into a sheet. Meanwhile madam Teamlead is busy on her phone most of the time and my most human interaction remains smalltalk and questions between me and miss assistant.

I did manage to get madam Teamlead to look up from her phone when I asked how they felt about the fact that I have no formal training and would need to pick up a lot of skills as we go, to which she said something along 'well this ain't a candy shop, we expect you to work' and looked back down at her phone.

A bit shaken, I agreed to stay for the technical test (apparently I passed the interview...)
Now this test was designed by their CTO since he didn't feel like any of the available tests on the market could properly judge applicants' skilllevels. Yes, alarms went off already at that point.

What I'm presented with is a word document with questions, and another for answers and... It's just string gymnastics and reference/value difference knowledge - shit it takes you a split second to look up or test if you ever get into these insane cases where you need to know. And then there was a likewise one with sql statements that was also just convoluted query gymnastics and trying to hide changes in the seemingly same statement through various questions. No questions on design, no problem solving, just... Attention span testing with a dash of coding?

Anyway, it turned out they had evening and weekend shifts and round the clock support tournus which on top of the ridiculous recruitment process and way lower than average salary offer had me turn them down.

Don't enable bullshit people, run away!

Startup tip...

Does anyone else question their career in programming from time to time?

I've been around this line of work for almost 7 years now and I still get these doubts once or twice a year.
Be it unreasonable deadlines, horrible people that I'm forced to work with or just outright incompetence.

My latest occurence of doubt was when getting assigned a task that initially didn't seem like a big deal, but it turned out to be months and months of custom work instead of going along with the standard components and design guidelines.

This was somehow missed in the estimate phase and once I got assigned to it a hard deadline was already set, to top it off the features was non-negotiable.

These kind of things really makes me feel helpless and really depressed. My work is all I have, and I don't really know what I would do if I'd change career path today.