I applied for four jobs today, including GitHub. I feel kinda proud of myself.

After a week’s vacation, I felt the briefest feeling of being a person again. I was able to do something small and enjoy it, and even planned to do another small thing.

Damn it, why does the power company not use their notification system for planned outages?

WSL is my worst enemy :'(

My $18 eBay find has Blockbuster app on it.

I got a crap raise — lowest I’ve ever gotten anywhere, and well below inflation — despite busting my butt, having somewhat better health and therefore productivity, etc.

I complained to my boss about it, and said it was insulting. He said that direct managers have zero say in raises, and instead it’s entirely up to execs and HR. Makes sense, since nothing makes sense at this company.

Anyway, he apparently talked to his boss, who talked with his boss, who talked with the execs and HR, and they decided to give me a raise on my raise, a whole $1k/year more, all the way back up to the usual insultingly-low 3%. Yay.

Their reasoning?
“Money is tight.”

The last all-hands?
“Record profits! Record sales! Record numbers across the board! And most of all: record profits! Give yourselves a round of applause for making this all possible!”

Money is tight, eh?
I hope they get smushed by a meteor, given a snuggle-struggle by a roving Somali gang, or kept warm for the rest of their lives by another Hawaiian/Californian wildfire.

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 😊

Lesson I learnt the hard way today: ticket every fucking task (including admin) to:

A. Cover your arse (if the tickets are not ready because they haven't given us enough information, push back on it before committing too much effort to doing it)
B. Better deliverable (what you output will probably be better quality because you worked out the requirements upfront + you know the audience)
C. You have something to show management when they want to try and overwork you some more

I wish this weren’t me, but it is. I’m terrible at my job.

Literal "Dream" Job

//////

//////

$work: Ey @Root, make this super simple thing.
$work: No, not like that.
$work: It also needs to do A, B, and C.
$work: No, not there. You should build it somewhere else, but I won't tell you where.
$work: You need to build out F and G, too.
$work: What do you mean you don't have the data? Just ask support drone #3. (who directs me to #2, and that one to #8 who doesn't know, and that one to #12 who won't answer)
$work: Why can't I do K, Y, or S? You should be able to infer these from the mind of whoever wrote the ticket by its wording, despite no mention of them whatsoever.
$work: Are you done yet? It's a super simple ask!

BE GONE CLOWN!!!! MAY YOU BE CAST BACK UNTO THE DEPTHS FROM WHICH YOU HAVE SPRUNG!!!!!

🪄✨

👻👹👺

🤡

can't wait to be absolutely fuck you rich while the clowns continue to fumble around in the sandbox for the next 5 years 🪣⛏️😂😂😂

all those years, crouched over a laptop, learning React, then TypeScript, then PostgreSQL, then .NET, then React Hooks, then Redux Toolkit, then Golang, then GraphQL, and even RabbitMQ and gRPC mixed in... more and more and more............ IT'S TIME TO SPREAD MY WINGS AND FUCKING FLY BABY!!!!!

why work for clueless clowns when your own technical know-how is literally 1000x (or perhaps infinitely) theirs? Was I an idiot? Yes, I was! Way too nice and I bought into the hype fake idiot brain culture, but now I've finally woken up. Time to ascend to the stars by myself.

Cheers devRant, this 🤡 is finally going to transform into a 👨‍🚀🚀

You may not hear from me for a while sadly, but I'll be sure you guys get the first shoutout - see you on 🪐

🎄 Happy New Year! 🎄

Merry Christmas, all you beautiful people!

Week 278: Most rage-inducing work experience — I’ve got a list saved! At least from the current circle of hell. I might post a few more under this tag later…

TicketA: Do this in locations a-e.
TicketB: Do this in locations e-h.
TicketC: Do this in locations i-k.
Root: There’s actually a-x, but okay. They’re all done.
Product: You didn’t address location e in ticket B! We can’t trust you to do your tickets right. Did you even test this?
Root: Did you check TicketA? It’s in TicketA.
Product guy: It was called out in TicketB! How did you miss it?!
Product guy: (Refuses to respond or speak to me, quite literally ever again.)
Product guy to everyone in private: Don’t trust Root. Don’t give her any tickets.
Product manager to boss: Root doesn’t complete her tickets! We can’t trust her. Don’t give her our tickets.
Product manager to TC: We can’t trust Root. Don’t give her our tickets.
TC: Nobody can trust you! Not even the execs! You need to rebuild your reputation.

Root: Asks coworker a simple question.
Root: Asks again.
Root: nudges them.
Root: Asks again.
Coworker: I’ll respond before tomorrow. (And doesn’t.)
Root: Asks again.
Root: Fine. I’ll figure it out in my own.
TC: Stop making it sound like you don’t have any support from the team!

Root: Asks four people about <feature> they all built.
Everyone: idk
Root: Okay, I’ll figure it out on my own.
TC: Stop making it sound like you don’t have any support from the team!

Root: Mentions multiple meetings to discuss ticket with <Person>.
TC: You called <Person> stupid and useless in front of the whole team! Go apologize!

Root: Tells TC something. Asks a simple question.
Root: Tells TC the same thing. Asks again.
TC: (No response for days.)
TC: Tells me the exact same thing publicly like it’s a revelation and I’m stupid for not knowing.
TC: You don’t communicate well!

Root: Asks who the end user of my ticket is.
Root: Asks Boss.
Root: Asks TC.
Root: Fine, I’ll build it for both.
Root: Asks again in PR.
TC: Derides; doesn’t answer.
Root: Asks again, clearly, with explanation.
TC: Copypastes the derision, still doesn’t answer.
Root: Asks boss.
Boss: Doesn’t answer.
Boss: You need to work on your communication skills.

Root: Mentions asking question about blocker to <Person> and not hearing back. Mentions following up later.
<Person>: Gets offended. Refuses to respond for weeks thereafter.

Root: Hey boss, there’s a ticket for a minor prod issue. Is that higher priority than my current ticket?
Root: Hey, should I switch tickets?
Root: Hey?
Root: … Okay, I’ll just keep on my current one.
Boss: You need to work on your priorities.

Everyone: (Endless circlejerking and drama and tattling)

001 REM Code review

010 PRINT "Nitpick nitpick nitpick nitpick nitpick"
011 GOSUB REFACTOR

020 PRINT "This function is too complicated, break it up"
021 GOSUB REFACTOR

030 PRINT "Why do you have three methods for this? Put all the logic in one method."
031 GOSUB REFACTOR

040 GOTO 020
041 REM ARGH

998 PRINT "Looks good."
999 STOP

The nightmare continues.

Currently dealing with a code review from a “principal” dev (one step above senior), who is unironically called a “legendary dev” by some coworkers. It’s painfully obvious he didn’t read the code, and just started complaining and nitpicking.

It’s full of requests to do things that make absolutely no sense, and would make the code an unmaintainable mess.
• Ex: moving the logic and data collection from the module’s many callers into the module instead of just passing in the data.
• Ex: hiding api endpoint declarations by placing them in the module itself, and using magic instance variables to pass data to it. Basically: using global functions and variables instead of explicit declarations and calls.
• Ex: moving the logic to determine which api endpoint to use, for all callers, into the view.

More comments about methods being “too complex” (barely holds water) right next to comments saying “why are these separate? merge them together!”

Incredulously asking how many times I’m checking permissions and how ridiculous it all is. (The answer? Twice.)

Conflating my “permissions” param and method names with a supposedly forthcoming permissions system overhaul, and saying I shouldn’t use permissions because my code will all have to get rewritten. Even if that were true, and it’s likely not, the ticket still needs to use the current permissions. I can’t just ignore them because they might be rewritten someday.

Requests to revert some code cleanup because the reviewer thought the previous heavily-nested and uncommented versions (with code duplication) were easier to read. Unsurprisingly, he wrote them.

On the same ticket, my boss wants me to remove all styling and clientside validation, debouncing, and error messages from a form. Says “success” and “connection failed” messages are good enough. The form in question sends SMS and email using arbitrary user input for addresses. He also says it shouldn’t be denounced on the server, and doesn’t want me to bother checking permissions. Hello, spam!

Related: the legendary dev reviewer says he can’t think of a reason why we would want to disable the feature for consumers, so I should remove the consumer feature flag.

You can’t make this stuff up.

I was recently hired as a lead devops to a giant shit show. The CTO said he needs someone to do things correctly instead of quickly. This is a conversation I just had this morning

HR: We want you to interview a potential new DevOps engineer
ME: okay, when?
HR: Tomorrow
ME: I won't be able to create interview tests and materials for tomorrow. How's next week
HR: This hire is urgent! It has to be tomorrow
ME: Then you'll have to do the interview without me
HR: We need you to interview them because we've had a few bad hires in the past that we don't want to repeat
ME: The best way to filter out bad hires is with technical tests, which will take time to develop. I can be ready by next week.
HR: We can't give you a weeks notice for each hire, we are in urgent need for more devops.
ME: ...

Trash, trash, trash.
Who the fuck writes this shit?

Who the fuck lets these trash should-be-junior devs roll their own crypto? and then approves it?

The garbage heap of a feature (signing for all apis) doesn't follow Ruby standards, doesn't follow codebase conventions, has `// this is bridge` style comments (and no documentation), and it requires consumer devs to do unnecessary work to integrate it, and on top of all this: it leaks end-user data. on all apis. in plaintext.

Fucking hell.

Had QA call my "simple, quick" ticket a "monster ticket" in front of everyone. Hear it and weep, micromanager!

Also had them tell me i thought of everything, it was beautiful, and that i have a knack for frontend :)

Got laid off last week with the rest of the dev team, except one full stack Laravel dev. Investors money drying up, and the clowns can't figure out how to sell what we have.

I was all of devops and cloud infra. Had a nice k8s cluster, all terraform and gitops. The only dev left is being asked to migrate all of it to Laravel forge. 7 ML microservices, monolith web app, hashicorp vault, perfect, mlflow, kubecost, rancher, some other random services.

The genius asked the dev to move everything to a single aws account and deploy publicly with Laravel forge... While adding more features. The VP of engineering just finished his 3 year plan for the 5 months of runway they have left.

I already have another job offer for 50k more a year. I'm out of here!

Hey. This code look broken. What should I do?

It isn't broken. It's doing what it's supposed to.

Well, it's hard to follow, but it certainly doesn't look right. And it isn't doing what I expect. Also, why is it calling method(a_class1_or_class2) with a class3?

It isn't hard to follow, and it works just fine. Let me show you. ... huh. looks like it isn't right. and there's a comment here saying the calls aren't clear. but it works just fine. Just copy it over and do it the same way.

I already did that. and it isn't working.

What are you talking about? Of course it works fine. Did you check your code?

------

Really, dude? It doesn't work fine. but, guess what? It works fine* when I change it to call that method with a class2 like it asks for. (Surprise!) But I can't tell him that. Nope. Bossmang get offended. Still won't admit I was right about anything, either.

Ahh... the continual joy of working with (and for) trash.

* well, more fine; the rest of the feature is still wrong. but nope, i'm not allowed to fix it. because why would they want anything to work properly? Already-accepted wrong behavior is good enough. Can't clean up the code, either, because that "muddies the waters." Bitch, I couldn't see the bottom of this sewer if it was half an inch deep! Which is more important: the last contributor entry beside the code, or that code being readable and maintainable? or it, you know, working?

doot doot.
need to scoot.

Ticket: Add <feature> to <thing>. It works in <other things> so just copy it over. Easy.

Thing: tangled, over-complicated mess.
Feature: tangled and broken, and winds much too deep to refactor. Gets an almost-right answer by doing lots of things that shouldn't work but somehow manage to.

I write a quick patch that avoids the decent into madness and duplicates the broken behavior in a simple way for consistency and ease of fixing later. I inform my boss of my findings and push the code.

He gets angry and mildly chews me out for it. During the code review, he calls my patch naive, and says the original feature is obviously not broken or convoluted. During the course of proving me wrong, he has trouble following it, and eventually finds out that it really is broken -- and refuses to admit i was right about any of it. I'm still in trouble for taking too long, doing it naively, and not doing it correctly.

He schedules a meeting with product to see if we should do it correctly. He tells product to say no. Product says no. He then tells me to duplicate the broken behavior. ... which I already did.

At this point I'm in trouble for:
1) Taking too long copying a simple feature over.
2) Showing said feature is not simple, but convoluted and broken.
3) Reimplementing the broken feature in a simpler way.
4) Not making my new implementation correct despite it not working anywhere else, and despite how that would be inconsistent.

Did everything right, still in the wrong.

Also, they decided I'm not allowed to fix the original, that it should stay broken, and that I should make sure it's broken here, too.

You just have to admire the sound reasoning and mutual respect on display. Best in class.

ARGH. I wrote a long rant containing a bunch of gems from the codebase at @work, and lost it.

I'll summarize the few I remember.

First, the cliche:
if (x == true) { return true; } else { return false; };
Seriously written (more than once) by the "legendary" devs themselves.

Then, lots of typos in constants (and methods, and comments, and ...) like:
SMD_AGENT_SHCEDULE_XYZ = '5-year-old-typo'

and gems like:

def hot_garbage
magic = [nil, '']
magic = [0, nil] if something_something
success = other_method_that_returns_nothing(magic)
if success == true
return true # signal success
end
end

^ That one is from our glorious self-proclaimed leader / "engineering director" / the junior dev thundercunt on a power trip. Good stuff.

Next up are a few of my personal favorites:

Report.run_every 4.hours # Every 6 hours
Daemon.run_at_hour 6 # Daily at 8am

LANG_ENGLISH = :en
LANG_SPANISH = :sp # because fuck standards, right?

And for design decisions...

The code was supposed to support multiple currencies, but just disregards them and sets a hardcoded 'usd' instead -- and the system stores that string on literally hundreds of millions of records, often multiple times too (e.g. for payment, display fees, etc). and! AND! IT'S ALWAYS A FUCKING VARCHAR(255)! So a single payment record uses 768 bytes to store 'usd' 'usd' 'usd'

I'd mention the design decisions that led to the 35 second minimum pay API response time (often 55 sec), but i don't remember the details well enough.

Also:
The senior devs can get pretty much anything through code review. So can the dev accountants. and ... well, pretty much everyone else. Seriously, i have absolutely no idea how all of this shit managed to get published.

But speaking of code reviews: Some security holes are allowed through because (and i quote) "they already exist elsewhere in the codebase." You can't make this up.

Oh, and another!
In a feature that merges two user objects and all their data, there's a method to generate a unique ID. It concatenates 12 random numbers (one at a time, ofc) then checks the database to see if that id already exists. It tries this 20 times, and uses the first unique one... or falls through and uses its last attempt. This ofc leads to collisions, and those collisions are messy and require a db rollback to fix. gg. This was written by the "legendary" dev himself, replete with his signature single-letter variable names. I brought it up and he laughed it off, saying the collisions have been rare enough it doesn't really matter so he won't fix it.

Yep, it's garbage all the way down.

!!fml

"Root, go fix this bug. It'll take you two days."

The "bug" is a feature that was never implemented for one particular payment type.

The code in question is two years old, full of typos, smells, junior-isms, and is convoluted AF. The feature's commit touched 190 files and implemented many other features as well. Thus far, I have been unable to narrow down where this particular feature's code lives for the other payment types, nor which code or payment paths lead to it. Burned out, I can barely focus on the screen, let alone follow its many twisting and dynamically-inferred paths. I hint as to the ticket's scavenger hunt nature during standup.

"But I wrote comments on the ticket telling you exactly where to look to fix it," Thundercunt admonishes in front of the team.

"Sure, you did," Root replies. "You reworded what the original dev had said in the comments 20 minutes prior, and agreed with him. His comments were helpful, but it doesn't tell me how any of it works," she continues.

TC scoffs and closes the meeting.

Root stares blankly, seeing neither code nor screen, questions her life decisions, and recalls the previous tickets she has worked on: nearly every one of them busywork, fixing other people's bugs. Bugs she never could have gotten away with if she tried.

"Why do I put up with this?" She asks. "They don't care, and it's killing me."

But the bills remain, and so must she.

"Fuck my life" she finally decides.

Inheritance

I, Firefoxo Giovanna, have a dream.

I won't succumb to Manifesto V3.

*landing page: "state of the art". "look how many companies use this"
*6 months later: have some problems. discover github open issue that it can go into an unrecoverable state and every commenter migrated to competitor.