"Smart" home gym equipment: expensive hardware for some grand, proprietary software, and ongoing subscription fees in the $50/mo ballpark.

The SW is usually designed so that even shit that could have been local is instead stored remote as to make the subscription look more worthwhile. The large front-up cost serves not only as revenue, but also to anchor the vendor lock-in.

Open source hackers could potentially unchain the HW so that users would actually own what they purchased, but there is a catch: the HW is sold at a loss, and the subscription is the business model.

Freeing up the HW would render the subscription rather useless, and ramping up the HW sales prices to profitability would destroy any demand.

Basically, it's products that are technically feasible, but not economically viable. Which is why they are not the future of home gyms.

Got call from extremely angry customer, our product is shit and doesn't work. At all. Important customer so I went to visit.

He had the perfect setup, our product to the left, our competitor's to the right.

He connected the Ethernet cable to their product, it worked. He plugged it out and connected to ours... Nothing. Shit.

I started to debug on the premises, took logs, everything. It seemed like our product didn't receive any data at all. What the fuck? Tried everything, debugged low level, still nothing. Sweating as hell.

After two hours I got a strange feeling. So I swapped place, our product to the right, competitor's to the left. Now OUR product worked, competitor's zilch.

THE FUCKING ETHERNET CABLE HAD A GLITCH. IF YOU BENT IT TO THE RIGHT IT WORKED, IF YOU BENT IT TO THE LEFT IT WAS BROKEN.

I had never seen a customer be this embarrassed in my life. He apologized to me, my boss, his boss, the Queen, everyone.

We got the contract.

So I need to create a nice new web app. Let's look at some cool JS frameworks that I can work with.

*5 mins later* Hm, Angular sounds good, is there any good competitor?

*5 mins later* Wow, React sounds awesome as well. Let me learn it.

Google search result:

"Planning to use react? Check out Vue JS first"

*5 mins later* Ok so vue seems faster than React and much easier to learn. Let me see if Vue is the final choice.

Google search result:

"Angular VS Knockout VS Ember VS React VS Mithril VS Mercury VS Ractive VS Vue VS Riot"

Nope, fuck it

What it's like to be a network engineer...translated into normal people speak

User: I think we are having a major road issue.

Me: What? No, I just checked, the roads are fine. I was actually just on the roads.

User: No, I’m pretty sure the roads are down because I’m not getting pizzas.

Me: Everything else on the roads is fine. What do you mean you aren’t getting pizzas?

User: I used to get pizzas when I ordered them, now I’m not getting them. It has to be a road issue.

Me: As I said, the roads are fine. Where are you getting pizzas from?

User: I’m not really sure. Can you check all places that deliver pizzas?

Me: No I don’t even know all the places that deliver pizza. You need to narrow it down.

User: I think it is Subway.

Me: Okay, I’ll check…No, I just looked and Subway doesn't deliver pizzas.

User: I’m pretty sure it is Subway. Can you just allow all food from Subway and we can see if pizza shows up?

Me: Sigh, fine I’ve allowed all food from Subway, but I don’t think that is the issue.

User: Yeah I’m still not getting pizza. Can you check the roads?

Me: It’s not the roads, the roads are fine. I’m pretty sure Subway isn’t the place.

User: Okay, I found it. It’s Papa Johns.

Me: Okay, I looked and Papa Johns does deliver pizza. Is it the local Papa Johns or one in a different town?

User: I don’t know. Can you allow pizza from all Papa Johns to me?

Me: No I can’t do that. Can you get me an address for Papa Johns?

User: No, I only know it as Papa Johns. Can you get me all the addresses of all Papa Johns and I’ll tell you if one of them is correct?

Me: No, I don’t have time for that. Okay, I looked at the local one and it looks like they have sent you pizza in the past and they are currently allowed to send you pizzas. Try ordering a pizza while I watch.

User: Yeah still no pizza. I’m guessing they are getting blocked at the freeway. Can you check the freeway to make sure they can get through?

Me: No, this is a local delivery. They aren't even using the freeway.

User: Okay, well then it has to be a road issue.

Me: No, the roads are fine. Okay, I just drove from the Papa Johns to the address they have on file for you and there is nothing there.

User: Hmm, wait we did move recently.

Me: Did you give your new address to Papa Johns?

User: No, I just thought they would be able to look me up by name.

Me: No they need your new address. What’s your new address?

User: I’m not really sure. Can you look it up?

Me: Sigh, give me a second…Okay, I found your address and gave it to Papa Johns. Try ordering a pizza now.

User: HEY! PIZZA JUST SHOWED UP!

Me: Okay, good.

User: (To everyone else they know) I apologize for the delay in the pizza but there was a major road issue that was preventing the pizza from getting to me. The network engineer has fixed the roads and we are able to get pizza again.

Me: But it wasn’t the roads…whatever.

User: Oh, can you also check on an issue where Chinese food isn’t getting to me? I think it may be a road issue

"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.

A young guy I work with burst into tears today, I had no idea what happened so I tried to comfort him and ask what was up.

It appears his main client had gone nuts with him because they wanted him to make an internet toolbar (think Ask.com) and he politely informed them toolbars doesn't really exist anymore and it wouldn't work on things like modern browsers or mobile devices.

Being given a polite but honest opinion was obviously something the client wasn't used to and knowing the guy was a young and fairly inexperienced, they started throwing very personal insults and asking him exactly what he knows about things (a lot more than them).

So being the big, bold, handsome senior developer I am, I immediately phoned the client back and told them to either come speak to me face-to-face and apologise to him in person or we'd terminate there contract with immediate effect. They're coming down tomorrow...

So part my rant, part a rant on behalf of a young developer who did nothing wrong and was treated like shit, I think we've all been there.

We'll see how this goes! Who the hell wants a toolbar anyway?!

The guy who became my manager just pushes to the prod branch.

On a repo where another team clearly set up development and production branches.

This guy has been pushing code like crazy and I always wanted to take my time setting things up properly in our team: TDD, CI/CD, etc.

Because he pushed so much he became my manager and I was seen as unproductive.

Data Science and software development best practices just dont coexist it seems.

Yeah yeah, it's up to me to start introducing good practices, but atm "getting it done" takes priority over the real based shit.

you know, i've got 5K+ in cash savings before i would even need to dip into "long term" retirement funds

and other than the food and the drink, i don't spend anything (can scrape by on 1-2K per month)

so fuck it, i'm going to enjoy the amazing weather that is everywhere in europe right now

if companies are going to be assholes, i am too

because in the long run i know my skills and vast competances are valuable

companies can hire the cheap clueless scrub in the shortrun

but i know i'll win in the long run when they realize who they are trying to hire does not exist

what's even one year of being unemployed against a lifetime of opportunity and projects? nothing.

Update on my old rant: I started writing type definitions for our project (it's basically a chunk of separate files where you document the objects you use; typed languages have this out of the box, js doesn't and it may become useful depending on the size of the project). Our codebase is reasonably big -not complicated, but big- and I felt like I was losing track of all the properties\objects\usage\comments\whatever. So I iiterally wrote some ts interfaces: properties with name and types, that's it, so you know what you're passing around.
Proposal was denied, I'll have to delete the documentation; "keeping the doc updated is going to require more work".

Me: Ok, but what am I supposed to do when I need to interface with your code? Run the debugger and figure out what the fuck you guys are passing around?
Team leader: Yes 😊

if people are curious of the PTSD baggage i'm carrying and why i rage so much at everything, see attached picture

granted, this was partly my fault, as i said, i was far too nice, and stayed for far too long

also note this job was AFTER a 2+ previous e-commerce job with ultimately failed project and little pay

UG i mean LOOK at this... i could go on and on for hours "push notifications must run" - yeah a casual bullet point that needs to be finished by end of day? hahahaha

I am tired writing the assignments!

we switched from GitHub to BitBucket and I saw my colleague try to run `bit status` because they thought GitHub = git so BitBucket = bit.

Had a good chuckle seeing that.

Something to look out for. Apparently this is used on reddit and other platforms. Kinda wild that it is so refined.

My home feels like $work owns a corner of it, and I can’t walk near there without feeling this this intense psychological dread.

Lack of time boundaries is pretty awful, too.

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Was in a meeting(been quite a lot actually) with a lot of people that hold "director" in their title. As per our institution's salaries and ranking description, they do not "outrank" me. Our titles are just different, but they are there with me.

It surprises them quite a bit when they try to have some hold in the direction of my department just for me to tell them that they do not really get to tell me what to do or how to do things after I show them said chart. It surprises them a bit more when they find out what I am saying is completely true.

I don't appreciate people trying to manhandle my employees.

The conversations that follow are quite interesting as I am quite vocal in our interactions.