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Search - "resilience"
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From my work -as an IT consultant in one of the big 4- I can now show you my masterpiece
INSIGHTS FROM THE DAILY LIFE OF A FUNCTIONAL ANALIST IN A BIG 4 -I'M NOT A FUNCTIONAL ANALYST BUT THAT'S WHAT THEY DO-
- 10:30, enter the office. By contract you should be there at 9:00 but nobody gives a shit
- First task of the day: prepare the power point for the client. DURATION: 15 minutes to actually make the powerpoint, 45 minutes to search all the possible synonyms of RESILIENCE BIG DATA AGILE INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION MACHINE LEARNING SHIT PISS CUM, 1 hour to actually present the document.
- 12:30: Sniff the powder left by the chalks on the blackboards. Duration: 30 minutes, that's a lot of chalk you need to snort.
13:00, LUNCH TIME. You get back to work not one minute sooner than 15.00
- 15:00, conference with the HR. You need to carefully analyze the quantity and quality of the farts emitted in the office for 2 hours at least
- 17:00 conference call, a project you were assigned to half a day ago has a server down.
The client sent two managers, three senior Java developers, the CEO, 5 employees -they know logs and mails from the last 5 months line by line-, 4 lawyers and a beheading teacher from ISIS.
On your side there are 3 external ucraininans for the maintenance, successors of the 3 (already dead) developers who put the process in place 4 years ago according to God knows which specifications. They don't understand a word of what is being said.
Then there's the assistant of the assistant of a manager from another project that has nothing to do with this one, a feces officer, a sys admin who is going to watch porn for the whole conference call and won't listen a word, two interns to make up a number and look like you're prepared. Current objective: survive. Duration: 2 hours and a half.
- 19:30, snort some more chalk for half an hour, preparing for the mail in which you explain the associate partner how because of the aforementioned conference call we're going to lose a maintenance contract worth 20 grands per month (and a law proceeding worth a number of dollars you can't even read) and you have no idea how could this happen
- 20:00, timesheet! Compile the weekly report, write what you did and how long did it take for each task. You are allowed to compile 8 hours per day, you worked at least 11 but nobody gives a shit. Duration: 30 minutes
- 20:30, update your consultant! Training course, "tasting cum and presenting its organoleptic properties to a client". Bearing with your job: none at all. Duration: 90 minutes, then there's half an hour of evaluating test where you'll copy the answers from a sheet given to you by a colleague who left 6 months ago.
- 22:30, CHANCE CARD! You have a new mail from the HR: you asked for a refund for a 3$ sandwich, but the receipt isn't there and they realized it with a 9 months delay. You need to find that wicked piece of paper. DURATION: 30 minutes. The receipt most likely doesn't even exist anymore and will be taken directly from your next salary.
- 23:00 you receive a message on Teams. It's the intern. It's very late but you're online and have to answer. There's an exception on a process which have been running for 6 years with no problems and nobody ever touches. The intern doesn't know what to do, but you wrote the specifications for the thing, 6 years ago, and everything MUST run tonight. You are not a technician and have no fucking clue about anyhing at all. 30 minutes to make sure it's something on our side and not on the client side, and in all that the intern is as useful as a confetto to wipe your ass. Once you're sure it's something on our side you need to search for the senior dev who received the maintenance of the project, call him and solve the problem.
It turns out a file in a shared folder nobody ever touches was unreachable 'cause one of your libraries left it open during the last run and Excel shown a warning modal while opening it; your project didn't like this last thing one bit. It takes 90 minutes to find the root of the problem, you solve it by rebooting one of your machines. It's 01:00.
You shower, watch yourself on the mirror and search for the line where your forehead ends and your hair starts. It got a little bit back from yesterday; the change can't be seen with the naked eye but you know it's there.
You cry yourself to sleep. Tomorrow is another day, but it's going to be exactly like today.8 -
Am i whiny or is resilience so glorified in this field?
I am a junior developer. I was assigned with two projects together with a friend and a senior. My friend and I finished our assigned tasks way before the deadline. Fast forward, my senior got reassigned to a different project since we are lacking with manpower. Naturally, his transactions were assigned to me and my friend. And my goodness, his existing codes are a piece of shit! It's all over the place. His variable naming is shit, his codes are all around the place, his codes doesn't even follow our company's coding standards, no try catch, a lot of unsafe practices. In short, cleaning his code is a pain in the ass and my friend and I got really busy with cleaning his mess. The testing of our system is really near but I just thought that maybe he's really busy with the other project that's why the quality of his codes deteriorated.
He's not. One day, I saw his in discord that he's playing during work hours lol. And the worse part is that he is playing with our boss! YES. DURING WORK HOURS. I got mad but I couldn't say anything because he is really tight with the boss.
Later on that day, we had our meeting. I was surprised when my boss told me that she's expecting that the excel part of our system is already finished. A little background here, my boss asked me to study Excel VB. However, I didnt get to study that much because I was so busy fixing bugs and after that came the cleaning of our senior's shit codes.
So I tried to say these things to my boss but I was cut out by the same senior shouting "You can do it!" over and over again. No one listened to what I was trying to say! And to make it even worse, the boss had a very proud look on her face and she even had the audacity to tell me that I'm lucky I have such a good support system. I dont.
Now, the company is planning to put me in a very demanding project. I havent finished cleaning up my senior's codes, I havent started anything with the excel and the deadline is next week!
The boss told me that even if I enter the other project, that I will still be responsible for the Excel part of our system. So fucking shoot me in the face.They were telling me that I should have a good time management system, that I should be flexible, that I should adapt easily, yada yada yada. She just makes you feel bad about yourself if you're not as 'flexible' as her.
The thing is, even if I have the best time management techniques in the world, if you bombard me with a shitload of tasks, then I won't be able to do it properly! I don't even take breaks anymore! I work literally 8 hours a day, even more than that. And I dont understand, why the hell is she overworking me when her friend (the senior dev) is just playing during work hours?
Another funniest thing is that she told us that when we encounter technical problems, we should ask our senior dev. Oh boy, if only she knows how shitty his codes are.6 -
That moment when you are about to pass out because you are so hungry, but you want to finish this module before you leave your PC.1
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The Odyssey of the Tenacious Tester:
Once upon a time in the digital kingdom of Binaryburg, there lived a diligent software tester named Alice. Alice was on a mission to ensure the flawless functionality of the kingdom's latest creation – the Grand Software Citadel.
The Grand Software Citadel was a marvel, built by the brilliant developers of Binaryburg to serve as the backbone of all digital endeavors. However, with great complexity came an even greater need for meticulous testing.
Alice, armed with her trusty testing toolkit, embarked on a journey through the intricate corridors of the Citadel. Her first challenge was the Maze of Edge Cases, where unexpected scenarios lurked at every turn. With a keen eye and a knack for uncovering hidden bugs, Alice navigated the maze, leaving no corner untested.
As she progressed, Alice encountered the Chamber of Compatibility, a place where the Citadel's code had to dance harmoniously with various browsers and devices. With each compatibility test, she waltzed through the intricacies of cross-browser compatibility, ensuring that the Citadel would shine on every screen.
But the true test awaited Alice in the Abyss of Load and Performance. Here, the Citadel's resilience was put to the test under the weight of simulated user hordes. Alice, undeterred by the mounting pressure, unleashed her army of virtual users upon the software, monitoring performance metrics like a hawk.
In the end, after days and nights of relentless testing, Alice emerged victorious. The Grand Software Citadel stood strong, its code fortified against the perils of bugs and glitches.
To honor her dedication, the software gods bestowed upon Alice the coveted title of Bug Slayer and a badge of distinction for her testing prowess. The testing community of Binaryburg celebrated her success, and her story became a legend shared around digital campfires.
And so, dear software testers, let the tale of Alice inspire you in your testing quests. May your test cases be thorough, your bug reports clear, and your software resilient against the challenges of the digital realm.
In the world of software testing, every diligent tester is a hero in their own right, ensuring that the digital kingdoms stand tall and bug-free. -
I subscribe to many copywriting newsletters. Here's an article that shows how it's like on "the other side", marketers struggle, too.
How Kevin's Massive Mistake
Completely Changed His Life
Kevin H. made a huge mistake.
The biggest, he would say, if he could tell you himself.
And he knew it immediately.
It was, he said, "instant regret."
Within milliseconds, he was asking himself "What have I done..."
Kevin, see, had just jumped the rail of the single most popular suicide spot in the world, the Golden Gate Bridge.
On average, the site gets another distraught jumper every two weeks. Kevin was one of them.
It wasn't like he hadn't tried to quiet the voices in his head. Therapy, drugs, hospitalization.
Time to die, those voices still said.
And yet, in the minutes his bus dropped him off at the bridge, he hesitated and paced with tears in his eyes.
"I told myself if just one person comes up to me and asks if I'm okay... if one person asks if they can help... I won't do it. I'll stop and tell them my whole story..."
But nobody did, so he jumped.
It was in those next milliseconds, he would later say, he knew it was the biggest mistake of his life.
He didn't want to die.
But now, he was sure, it was too late.
From its highest point, it's a 245-foot plummet into the icy bay waters below.
Out of the 1,700 people that have jumped from the bridge since it first opened in 1937, only 25 have survived.
Kevin, against all odds, would be one of them.
He slammed into the water like hitting concrete. Three of his vertebrae instantly shattered.
When he surfaced, he couldn't hold his own head above water. But, incredibly, a sea lion kept pushing him up.
The Coast Guard soon arrived and pulled him out.
From there, he began a long recovery that required intense surgery, physical therapy, and psychiatric care.
While still under treatment, a priest urged him to give a talk to a bunch of seventh and eighth graders.
Afterward, they sent him a pile of letters, both encouraging and full of their own pained thoughts.
He also met a woman.
Today, Kevin lives in Atlanta and he's been happily married for the last 12 years.
And he tours the country, sharing his story.
So why re-tell it here?
Obviously -- I hope -- you don't get lots of copywriters looking to snuff it after a flopped headline test.
Just the same...
We've talked a lot in this space about the things one needs to get by in this biz.
My friend and colleague Joe, over at the publishing powerhouse Agora Financial, likes to list requirements.
You need intense curiosity...
You need a killer work ethic...
And you must, MUST have... resilience.
Meaning, you must have or find the capacity to bounce back from failure and flops, even huge ones.
Now, again, Kevin's story is an extreme and in this context -- I hope -- a hyperbolic example of somebody giving up. In the worst way possible.
It is also, though, a metaphor.
See, I get a lot of notes from some of you guys... and at conferences, I get to talk to a lot of people...
And I often get the sense, from some folks, that they're feeling a little more overwhelmed than they let on.
Some are just starting out, and they've got a lot on the line. For some, it's everything. And some are desperate to make it work.
Because they have to, because their pride or livelihoods or a family business is at stake, because it's a dream.
And yet, they're overwhelmed by all the tips and secrets... or by piles of confusing research or ideas...
For others, even had some success, but they're burned out, feel antiquated, or feel like "imposters" that know less than they let on, in an industry that's evolving.
To all those folks... and to you... I can only say, I've been there. And frankly, go back there now and again.
Flops happen, failures happen. And you can and will -- even years and decades into doing this -- make the wrong choices, pick the wrong projects, or botch the right ones.
The legendary Gene Schwartz put it this way, according to a quote spotted recently in fellow writer Ben Settle's e-letter...
" A very good copywriter is going to fail. If the guy doesn't fail, he's no good. He's got to fail. It hurts. But it's the only way to get the home runs the next time."
Once more, nobody -- I hope -- is taking the trials of this profession hard enough to make Kevin's choice.
And believe me, I don't mean to make light of the latter. I just want to make sure we hit this anvil with a big hammer. To drive home the point that, whatever your struggle, be it with this biz or something bigger, that you don't want to give up. Press on.
As Churchill put it, "Success, is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm."
Or even more succinctly when he said, "If you're going through hell, keep going."
Because it's worth it.
.
John Forde -
Kudos to those of you who can still maintain calm even if 5 different people are whining for your attention to get something done, all 'urgently', all at the same time.
I completely lose my focus and I get cramps.2 -
Try leveraging retired laptops for disaster recovery. Companies can realize resilience and save a fortune doing this. Hey, if everyone evacuated your office right now could you continue to keep your critical processes going?2
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I have just started working fresh out of college and don't have much experience in job hunting. But I will share what worked for me when I was in college looking for jobs.
In my opinion these are the top three qualities which we must develop while hunting a dev job.
1. Insane focus : work hard. Learn stuff. Complete lessons, projects. Do not deviate from the end goal, and work towards it.
2. Resilience : Don't lose heart over few bad interviews. Keep on trying with the same zeal.
3. Incorporate feedbacks. Don't be stubborn and arrogant. Look out for learning opportunities from any circumstance.
Best of luck -
TL;DR I have to bump a Redis cluster from t3.medium to m6g.large just to get enough network bandwidth even though I have no need of the extra memory.
Debugged an interesting issue today.
I am adding Elasticache to a project to reduce strain on the single node postgres DB.
Deployed a Redis replication group with 2 shards, with multi-AZ replication for resilience.
Everything was going well. We arent caching that much atm so was barely using 100Mb of memory.
Suddenly, when our US region comes online, latency skyrockets and the logs are full of Jedis timeout errors.
Still no issue with memory or node CPU.
The cause? Arbitrary network bandwidth throttling by AWS. The app currently processes about 3,000 requests per second so we were exceeding Amazons random ass allowances which arent documented anywhere.1 -
Does anybody know, how resilience could be achieved if any of your microservices is down. Please suggest me if any. I had one approach in mind but that doesn't seem to be efficient.3
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Once upon a time in the exciting world of web development, there was a talented yet somewhat clumsy web developer named Emily. Emily had a natural flair for coding and a deep passion for creating innovative websites. But, alas, there was a small caveat—Emily also had a knack for occasional mishaps.
One sunny morning, Emily arrived at the office feeling refreshed and ready to tackle a brand new project. The task at hand involved making some updates to a live website's database. Now, databases were like the brains of websites, storing all the precious information that kept them running smoothly. It was a delicate dance of tables, rows, and columns that demanded utmost care.
Determined to work efficiently, Emily delved headfirst into the project, fueled by a potent blend of coffee and enthusiasm. Fingers danced across the keyboard as lines of code flowed onto the screen like a digital symphony. Everything seemed to be going splendidly until...
Click
With an absentminded flick of the wrist, Emily unintentionally triggered a command that sent shivers down the spines of seasoned developers everywhere: DROP DATABASE production;.
A heavy silence fell over the office as the gravity of the situation dawned upon Emily. In the blink of an eye, the production database, containing all the valuable data of the live website, had been deleted. Panic began to bubble up, but instead of succumbing to despair, Emily's face contorted into a peculiar mix of terror and determination.
"Code red! Database emergency!" Emily exclaimed, wildly waving their arms as colleagues rushed to the scene. The office quickly transformed into a bustling hive of activity, with developers scrambling to find a solution.
Sarah, the leader of the IT team and a cool-headed veteran, stepped forward. She observed the chaos and immediately grasped the severity of the situation. A wry smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.
"Alright, folks, let's turn this catastrophe into a triumph!" Sarah declared, rallying the team around Emily. They formed a circle, with Emily now sporting an eye-catching pink cowboy hat—an eccentric colleague's lucky charm.
With newfound confidence akin to that of a comedic hero, Emily embraced their role and began spouting jokes, puns, and amusing anecdotes. Tension in the room slowly dissipated as the team realized that panicking wouldn't fix the issue.
Meanwhile, Sarah sprang into action, devising a plan to recover the lost database. They set up backup systems, executed data retrieval scripts, and even delved into the realm of advanced programming techniques that could be described as a hint of magic. The team worked tirelessly, fueled by both caffeine and the contagious laughter that filled the air.
As the hours ticked by, the team managed to reconstruct the production database, salvaging nearly all of the lost data. It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless. And in the end, the mishap transformed into a wellspring of inside jokes and memes that permeated the office.
From that day forward, Emily became known as the "Database Destroyer," a moniker forever etched into the annals of office lore. Yet, what could have been a disastrous event instead became a moment of unity and resilience. The incident served as a reminder that mistakes are inevitable and that the best way to tackle them is with humor and teamwork.
And so, armed with a touch of silliness and an abundance of determination, Emily continued their journey in web development, spreading laughter and code throughout the digital realm.2