352
Root
7y

preface: I'm fucking exhausted and angry.

Why does everyone assume I know how to do frontend?
Why am I always the design girl?
Why?

You hire me to do backend. STOP GIVING ME FRONTEND DESIGN CRAP. I HATE IT.

AND STOP GODDAMN YELLING AT ME FOR NOT MAKING SOMETHING RESPONSIVE.

I DON'T KNOW HOW.

yes i can learn, but I CAN'T FUCKING PICK UP A SKILL LIKE THAT IN A DAY. Also, I fucking hate it.

STICK IT UP YOUR (min-width: 1400px) ASS.

But seriously, I've spent 13 hours today figuring out completely new things (webpack, susy, express.js, cloudinary, responsive best practices, more webpack) because the boss is in panic-mode (his preferred state) and wants this project released last monday.

guess what? it isn't done.
because i still don't know how to do everything. and ofc there's nobody to ask because there never fucking is.

Seriously, boss-man. hire a fucking designer, and stop being an illiterate sales goon while you're at it. ffs.

Comments
  • 18
    oh boy... πŸ™ˆ
  • 11
    thats f@#ked.... up hope you have a nice weekend
  • 36
    @jamescaduke I'm supposed to have the site responsive by monday afternoon.

    With my complete lack of skill, that could take three days. -_-

    idk if I'll even have a weekend.
  • 4
    ok... i have nothing else to say tough luck... to put it mildly @Ashkin
  • 39
    @ThatDude plastered all over my resume and during my three interviews.

    This happened at my last job, too.
    "Hey! We need a Rails developer." -> cool, that's me. -> "'kay, here's your only real project. It's in Angular! Go learn it! :)"
  • 15
    @Ashkin
    I once applied for a job as an asp.net dev, so i took my time to prepare for it. In the interview i noticed that none of them knows anything about it and they don't use it. They wanted someone to maintain legacy access and vba stuff but asp.net would have been cool for the future.
  • 8
    Does your boss think "oh but its all the same code" and not really know there is an ever growing difference between front and backend developers?
  • 19
    instead of pixels use vh (viewport height) vw (viewport width), vmin, vmax, instant responsiveness with the screensize based formats.
    https://web-design-weekly.com/2014/...
  • 7
    If there is no front end dev i think your boss is just killing two birds with one stone cause they do not want to hire a designer. You should probably talk to your boss and explain your position because you would probably want to work at where you are most productive. If you cannot come to an understanding you probably should find another place to work
  • 27
    @Alice
    ... yeah.
    honestly, this has been my experience as well.

    When doing game design, everyone always assumed I did art or level design because that's what most of the other girls did. When I told them (and/or showed them) that I wrote code, only a few ever believed it. and most of those thought I learned that from customizing npcs in the levels I designed. -.-

    I've had similar experiences in web dev companies, too, where I've been relegated to the art department because I showed some proficiency in photoshop. or going from the domain/sysamin to being in charge of product photos for the same reason: i showed the boss how to use the "lasso" tool in photoshop.

    just...
    ugh. :(

    let me code, please. that's all i want.
  • 11
    @Ashkin
    @ThatDude
    I think that's because girls are seen as the more artsy of the sexes, so it can break some peoples brains that there are girls who are good with logic and maths and programming.

    But it all comes down to people being dumb and not learning from mistakes. Have an open mind and let people do what they do best. Like women who code backend and men who code frontend!
  • 9
    @heyheni
    Thanks! I'll look into vmin/vmax. I don't know how to use those yet.

    Overall, I'm fairly proficient with CSS, and can usually make things look pretty and size well. I just don't know like anything about responsiveness.

    like. @media (rule: size) {...} is the full extent of my knowledge of the subject. (so making an entire site responsive in a day is beyond my abilities.)

    I'm currently trying to get a background image to always fill the screen, and fetching different sizes based on screen height (since the image is landscape). I'm using it as a background (with cover for nice sizing) and centering it so the browser clips any overflow off the sides.

    kinda proud for coming up with that :) just sad that it doesn't work better.
  • 13
    @Jonnyforgotten

    Probably. he's very computer illiterate. "frontend" to him means everything he can see. i suppose he's not wrong. However, he introduced me to the new intern as "One of the computer engineers who's more of a frontend person." I wanted to cry.

    The CTO (also technically my boss) doesn't do frontend at all, and knows I don't either. I think the only reason he's pushing me to do the responsiveness is because he definitely can't.

    Sigh.
  • 4
    @Ashkin if this goes on you will be doing things you do not want for a very long time. You should address this before it gets out of hand
  • 5
    Are you trying to make the site responsive from scratch? Can't you just use bootstrap and get it over with? Or another responsive grid system?
  • 2
    Oh well that truly sucks. Well I don't know if this would actually work, but it's worth a try. Maybe if you showed him a article/webpage/paper explaining the differences between frontend and backend or maybe even a couple. That could possible help him understand the differences. Anyway I'm wishing you the greatest of luck :-)
  • 2
    Express.js is a backend framework tho. So there's that ☺️
  • 1
    Why don't you use GRIDS ?? It will make your life easy trust me
  • 2
    @ThatDude i'm using the CSS GRIDS of materializecss and it works on all browser, it's just sole margin left stuffs and widths,,,,, how that can't work on all browser ?
  • 3
    @Ashkin Do you have to support old browsers? If not I would recommend using display:grid it's incredible easy to use and especially for responsive stuff.

    P.S. that it's assumed that women in tech automatically do frontend, sucks. :/ wish you all the best to fight this crap. And his yelling is so unprofessional.
  • 1
    @ThatDude Use postcss with cssnext plugin. Then it'll work anywhere
  • 1
    You have CSS on your profile 🀷🏻‍♂️
  • 9
    @Ashkin

    Hey Ashkin, you write excellent rants, you're good with words.

    And you're a girl.

    Guess what, you're a SEO/content-creator now.
  • 3
    @jsframework9000
    From scratch, yes.
    I'm using Susy for a css grid. It's a little difficult to figure out, but works really well.

    I avoided bootstrap because I don't like bootstrap, and decided to use MaterialUI instead. Also, susy lets me define my own grid, and keeps sizing out of the markup.
  • 2
  • 2
    Because you are girl, most girls are know how to make up (if you know what i meant) 😁
  • 3
    @Alice I took a look at your website, and to be honest, it definitely screams design. And pink.
  • 2
    You sound like my colleague. Talk to a senior or CTO or someone like that to bring in a designer or a frontend developer. It's not uncommon for companies to ask their developers in other departments to do other tasks is the company is under pressure but putting the said developer under stress and making them work 13hrs in a single day is just bullshit.
  • 3
    @Ashkin
    Is this a real occuring theme you having to work the weekends?

    I get that you probably don't mind but you could also learn. New technologies on side projects.

    For me to work the weekend either pay me double the hourly rate or go FUCK yourself. And even if you pay me double if it is becoming the norm go FUCK yourself. You want to fire peace out.

    Don't burn yourself out ashkin, they won't appreciate you and what you do until you say No. Especially with sales people. You work with machines you're not one.

    If they put in a request give them a timeline when you're finished with the work you're on right now. Etc etc etc.
    If they want it faster they need to start hiring. And you are at the interview.

    If everything is urgent nothing is.
  • 2
    @Triskelion Fortunately it's not the norm, and I totally agree: weekends are my time. Do not intrude. And if it becomes the norm, I'll seek gainful employ elsewhere. My last two jobs burned me out enough that it was physically painful to look at their projects. Never again.

    However, you're right about the "if everything is urgent, nothing is." It isn't the typical "five projects, all top priority" but more of a carousel of top priorities.

    I really need to talk to the boss about that.
  • 2
    @Ashkin: Just setting high priority on all projects is very bad management -- it is no management at all, in fact.
  • 2
    Man, this one hit me hard. =/
  • 1
    Use this opportunity.
  • 1
    @DLMousey Thanks!
  • 1
    @runfrodorun That's a pity. For how unintuitive and non-sensical it is, I really like CSS.
  • 4
    @runfrodorun honestly, I don't like web development.
    It feels like a bastardization of coding.
  • 2
    @Ashkin
    I'm glad to hear it ain't the norm. How is you're design coming along? I bet you're a natural because you're a girl and stuff πŸ˜€

    In the 7 Habits of highly effective people Steven Covey(a must read imho).

    In a part on planning etc. There is this graph it goes in depth.
    The gist is you want to work in Quadrant 2. Alot of companies live in Q1. A characteristic of those company's a high number off managers against low number of skilled workers. Q3 never survives.
    Q1 is firefighting and highly stress full.
    Q2 has vision with a solid plan of execution. Ofc in Q2 you'll have some fires. But it's rare.

    https://amazon.com/Habits-Highly-Ef...
  • 1
    Well fuck app and ask for raise
  • 3
    I know how it feels,
    I guess the thought process goes some thing along these lines ..
    “If this person knows backend stuff, then he should also be a pro at front end” πŸ™„
    Happened to me a couple of times as well. Freaking hate it when I have to do deal with these kinda things.
  • 2
    You know, it's all about politics sometimes. Somehow I've been limited to doing boring front the stuff as well.
  • 2
    @Ashkin @Alice If that's really a reoccurring thing you experience (and that's what it sounds like from what you wrote), that's sad. :/
    I guess it 's partially incompetence of managers and partially bias.

    @Alice, on the other hand I have to agree with @AlgoRythm about your website: The first thing that comes to mind when visiting it was "Wow, she must be a good designer". :D
    Maybe you should make the site more ugly, less responsive and use frames in order to be acknowledged as backend dev.
  • 1
  • 2
    I had a similar problem at a company I worked at. The description of the position I applied for mentioned that I would need php skills and some backend knowledge. Easy I thought. On the job my boss asked me to first fix some problems on the site, bc I would need to change it for the project. He took it for granted that I knew html/css bc "everyone" can do that stuff... yeah sure I will Learn to make it responsive, even if my knowledge of html is nonexistent...
  • 1
    @Ashkin just outsource the work to a designer like @heyheni
  • 0
    @demortes hey! πŸ˜†
  • 0
    Well, if @heyheni doesn't charge too much... πŸ˜‹

    But alas, NDA.
  • 2
    Totally feel ya. I was hired as a backend dev to do Django to serve restful API to an iOS app. Client demanded a dashboard, to which my manager agreed, and lo and behold features started creeping in like Lindsay Lohan's drug addiction. Spoiler alert, I'm the one tasked to do it. 6 months later there's still a backlog of features to be done and the iOS app had basically stopped development.
  • 0
    @Ashkin Responsive layouts can be really easy to code if that makes you feel any better. I'm with you though, web development kind of sucks. It's kind of boring to me when compared to creating games or programs.
  • 1
    Tbh, this is why I refuse to do anything web related. I don't trust my employer to respect my boundaries around keeping my work novel and technical, so I just make sure I'm unqualified to do anything in that area.
  • 1
    @starless I so badly want to do this, but it would leave me unemployed πŸ™
  • 0
    @Ashkin I'd suggest looking at application development, but I bet most of that'd be mobile, and I could see the same issues coming up there.

    Have you considered looking for work/becoming qualified as an architect instead?
  • 1
    @starless I should look into it. Thanks 😊
  • 1
    I am feeling so sorry for you. Hope everything turns out right. πŸ˜•
  • 0
    Was in the same boat, so I changed teams. Glad I did, that role I had moved under a team that thinks "engineers = can and will do everything".
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