Having one of those days where I'm struggling to focus on the day job, because all I want to do is switch over to any one of my numerous personal projects.
It's easier to ignore and just slog through with work when there are plenty of people around, but if I'm working from home, or it's a day like today with half the office and most of the management out, it's proving to be rather difficult.
How do you all keep on track when you'd rather be working on your own stuff?

Took some time off with the Mrs for our crotch goblin's first birthday and it was wonderful. I properly switched off for the first time since he was born, barely touched a keyboard, went outside, slept. I felt great.
But Jesus H Christ trying to get my mind back into work mode is a slow and difficult process. More coffee please.

Sooo I guess the Weekly Group Rant is now dead. Damn.

The useless, recently hired nightmare of an ops manager has been fired! Huzzah!

I won't keep up with the growing expectations. Yeah, you become more experienced over time as long as you're putting the right kind of work in, but things move on so fast.
I don't want to get to the point where what I know or can do is irrelevant and my skillset lacks what employers need.

Lack of trust from the bosses. You don't like the fact that you can't see what we're doing if we're not in the office. Joke's on you, we're still checking devRant and stuff as soon as you're away.

Aaand my focus has gone. I was in the zone, it was going well. Then of course I get called into a meeting. Thank you very much for that.

Code as often as you can. Don't burn yourself out, you don't have to strive for a daily masterpiece, but do something.

You're just starting and these new skills need constant work I you don't want to lose them immediately, so if your company tries to put you on something else that's not your job, don't be afraid to say no. If you start working IT for them "just to help out, just for now", you'll undo all your hard work and have to start again from scratch down the line.

Rather than using the project management software that the company has spent the past year getting set up and stuck into, the new ops manager seems to think that faffing around in Google Sheets and making pretty schedules is the way forward.
If you're doing some work that's in your actual job list, but not in the new pipeline, ohhhh boy.

Sort of a meeting, sort of an informal interview, I've dialled in from the home office and my audio setup includes a standalone mic and some noise cancelling headphones. It's going really really well when all of a sudden I see something in the preview window of my webcam feed.
Behind me, looking very concerned and confused is my 73 year old Nanna who'd decided to pop in and see me as she was passing by.
It's common for me to keep the front door locked, but my Nanna has an emergency key and knows I don't always hear a knock at the door, so let herself in.
So she's now in the house, calling out to me and she can hear me talking, so follows the sound of my voice thinking maybe I'm on the phone. Walks right into the office, where the door is behind me, eventually puts two and two together to work out that I can't hear her and finally sees herself on my monitor. She panics and goes to hide in the corner of my office, almost underneath my workbench because she's old and doesn't know where she would or wouldn't be visible from.
The rest of the meeting went really well, but overran by at least half an hour. Meanwhile I can see my poor Nanna hiding away in my peripheral vision.

I started out self-taught and had little support or guidance in early positions, so I'd say being able to correctly understand what was being asked of me, or getting across my answers in a way that was easily understood.
I wouldn't know the right terminology, or wouldn't know the industry best practices.

Short term: Become familiar and independent enough to choose my own machine and software to work with. Right now it's "Here's your MBP, we've already installed the stuff that the rest of us use". If I try and switch to something else and I run into a problem, I'm on my own.

Mid term: Like a lot of you it seems, I'd love to have my own setup. Either have my own company or partner with some friends/family. Whatever lets me do the work I want, build the things I want, and gives me a bit more freedom outside of work. Perhaps a little side-hustle to help with finances.

Long term: I'd love to return to my studies. I don't think I'll ever stop coding, it scratches an itch, a need to make something out of nothing, but I'd love to pursue a career in physics.

It's official. After almost three weeks off and hardly any sleep, I've forgotten how to do my job. This could be a problem.

Took a week off from my retail job, swatted up on some HTML, built the most basic About Me/Portfolio that I could.
Having no background or experience meant that I needed something to send to people when applying for jobs.
It worked.

Does anyone here use any nootropics, either at work or on personal projects? About to have an extra busy few months and I'm looking for some recommendations.

Every time I look up a tutorial, a guide, some sort of documentation on something that's new to me, and all I can find is written with the implication that you already have a level of understanding on this thing. It's new to me, I don't have that. Instantly questioning whether or not I'm cut out for this.

Time sheets. I'm not a fan of our task management system, you don't check out jobs or tasks like moving cards on a kanban board, it's more of a loose, calendar-based setup. We're also in a small, open office so it can be difficult to remember to log things in the software when you could tell the person opposite you that their task is finished. On top of that a lot of the time it takes me longer than the scheduled time to get a job finished as I'm learning a lot of new stuff, so digitally documenting things like that worry me a little. I don't want to look like I can't hack it just because a job takes me longer than my much-more-experienced colleagues.
I should note that I understand it's all incredibly useful data to the company, but I hate doing it and it's very easy to forget or ignore.

Love the feeling of closing all those open tabs when you finally fix that bug and finish that task.

Trying to decide between two places, one was full of cliquey staff who would talk to someone they didn't like through someone else in a child-like "Tell X I'm not talking to them" despite X being next to you, and management who wouldn't always pay you on time or the right amount.
The other was also run very poorly, management looked down on staff who wouldn't work for free after their shift finished, they'd also throw you under the bus for clients and wouldn't take staff speaking up. I once went to my direct manager noting that I was burning out as the only member in a department when every other was staffed by multiple groups of multiple staff. Told them that I needed someone else with me, next thing you know I'm out on my ear and replaced by a young lad just starting his apprenticeship.

How is everyone handling their day job lately? I'm feeling pretty safe about my position, but my day-to-day is definitely suffering as my mind wanders off.
Cost of living crisis, trying to have a social life, impending fatherhood, all while trying to do good work and improve my knowledge. Not easy.

My previous employer, which I've described on here many years ago as "the best job I've ever had", pivoted a couple of times during my time with them.
I felt obligated to help them, next thing you know I'm no longer developing, the company focus changes and I end up in a general IT support position.
I knew I needed to get out, but the skills I'd picked up were mostly forgotten because they weren't being utilised. When I looked for other positions nowhere was taking on someone at my barely-existent skill level, despite being well liked in terms of company and team fit.
I was tired all the time, stressed out, miserable. I couldn't grow in the company and was starting to worry about finances due to company issues. I thought COVID and lockdowns would help me get myself back in the game, but I burnt out with everything I was trying to take on at once and didn't make much progress.
When I was made redundant I'd thankfully picked up enough to finally find a much better position. The old company was in a lot of trouble and it's a case of when, not if, it will fold.
Now I really am doing the best job I've ever had, feel much better about myself and my relationships have improved.

It turns out I'm the only dev in the company this week as my teammates have been approved for the same week off.

Still a junior, only been here 6 months, still haven't so much as looked at most of the clients we have, still mainly doing frontend stuff and the last minute handover I received exists as approximately 20 Slack messages (although they're greatly appreciated because otherwise I'd be well and truly screwed).

Let's do this shit.

Through my previous employer's complete incompetence and lack of a spine I had to work two days during my last holiday. He'd managed to approve time off for all three of the remaining staff at the same time, so as a compromise, our six day work week was covered by all of us for two days a piece. Sooo maybe not technically not coding on holiday?

The business could just about scrape by on one staff member, so the boss should've allowed the holidays to those who requested it first (myself and one other), but that would've caused problems with the third person who he just so happened to be related to.

I was made redundant a few months later. The company is in the a lot of trouble and on its last legs, but the one member of staff who kept their job was the least capable and, surprise surprise, the relative.

Don't automatically count yourself out of positions because you haven't done them before, you can learn and grow.

I'm in the best job that I've ever had, but didn't meet all the criteria the vacancy had as "requirements". I had some experience in some of the areas that they were looking for, none in others, but they thought I was the right person for the job. I'll always be grateful for that.

At the same time, you need to be realistic, if you've never even heard of half the things on a job vacancy then it's probably not for you.

Thanks for your help Experian.

Just people. Meetings, emails, phone calls that tear me away from work. Please, just let me work! 😭

I'd been with the company for maybe two weeks, pushed some changes and updates to a client's site on a Friday afternoon as instructed by my boss, checked everything over and it's all fine.

Come Monday morning and this client is seriously miffed, not all of the changes had applied and the site was a mess all weekend. Turns out a bug with the caching plugin meant what we were getting in the office was different to outside.

Meetings were held and a new QA procedure was put in place.

How I feel working with code that's been worked on by at least three different teams at three different companies over the past couple of years and not a single person has left any comments or documentation.

When you're a web developer and the building's internet is down.

Taking over from/working with an external dev company on an existing project.

Listen Mr CEO, I'm not here to mess with your firm's code and undo all of your work. I'm just doing my job. Stop telling me that the only thing left to do is "data" without any context. The site that I'm here to work on isn't even finished.