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I absolutely HATE "web developers" who call you in to fix their FooBar'd mess, yet can't stop themselves from dictating what you should and shouldn't do, especially when they have no idea what they're doing.
So I get called in to a job improving the performance of a Magento site (and let's just say I have no love for Magento for a number of reasons) because this "developer" enabled Redis and expected everything to be lightning fast. Maybe he thought "Redis" was the name of a magical sorcerer living in the server. A master conjurer capable of weaving mystical time-altering spells to inexplicably improve the performance. Who knows?
This guy claims he spent "months" trying to figure out why the website couldn't load faster than 7 seconds at best, and his employer is demanding a resolution so he stops losing conversions. I usually try to avoid Magento because of all the headaches that come with it, but I figured "sure, why not?" I mean, he built the website less than a year ago, so how bad can it really be? Well...let's see how fast you all can facepalm:
1.) The website was built brand new on Magento 1.9.2.4...what? I mean, if this were built a few years back, that would be a different story, but building a fresh Magento website in 2017 in 1.x? I asked him why he did that...his answer absolutely floored me: "because PHP 5.5 was the best choice at the time for speed and performance..." What?!
2.) The ONLY optimization done on the website was Redis cache being enabled. No merged CSS/JS, no use of a CDN, no image optimization, no gzip, no expires rules. Just Redis...
3.) Now to say the website was poorly coded was an understatement. This wasn't the worst coding I've seen, but it was far from acceptable. There was no organization whatsoever. Templates and skin assets are being called from across 12 different locations on the server, making tracking down and finding a snippet to fix downright annoying.
But not only that, the home page itself had 83 custom database queries to load the products on the page. He said this was so he could load products from several different categories and custom tables to show on the page. I asked him why he didn't just call a few join queries, and he had no idea what I was talking about.
4.) Almost every image on the website was a .PNG file, 2000x2000 px and lossless. The home page alone was 22MB just from images.
There were several other issues, but those 4 should be enough to paint a good picture. The client wanted this all done in a week for less than $500. We laughed. But we agreed on the price only because of a long relationship and because they have some referrals they got us in the door with. But we told them it would get done on our time, not theirs. So I copied the website to our server as a test bed and got to work.
After numerous hours of bug fixes, recoding queries, disabling Redis and opting for higher innodb cache (more on that later), image optimization, js/css/html combining, render-unblocking and minification, lazyloading images tweaking Magento to work with PHP7, installing OpCache and setting up basic htaccess optimizations, we smash the loading time down to 1.2 seconds total, and most of that time was for external JavaScript plugins deemed "necessary". Time to First Byte went from a staggering 2.2 seconds to about 45ms. Needless to say, we kicked its ass.
So I show their developer the changes and he's stunned. He says he'll tell the hosting provider create a new server set up to migrate the optimized site over and cut over to, because taking the live website down for maintenance for even an hour or two in the middle of the night is "unacceptable".
So trying to be cool about it, I tell him I'd be happy to configure the server to the exact specifications needed. He says "we can't do that". I look at him confused. "What do you mean we 'can't'?" He tells me that even though this is a dedicated server, the provider doesn't allow any access other than a jailed shell account and cPanel access. What?! This is a company averaging 3 million+ per year in revenue. Why don't they have an IT manager overseeing everything? Apparently for them, they're too cheap for that, so they went with a "managed dedicated server", "managed" apparently meaning "you only get to use it like a shared host".
So after countless phone calls arguing with the hosting provider, they agree to make our changes. Then the client's developer starts getting nasty out of nowhere. He says my optimizations are not acceptable because I'm not using Redis cache, and now the client is threatening to walk away without paying us.
So I guess the overall message from this rant is not so much about the situation, but the developer and countless others like him that are clueless, but try to speak from a position of authority.
If we as developers don't stop challenging each other in a measuring contest and learn to let go when we need help, we can get a lot more done and prevent losing clients. </rant>14 -
We build a backup infrastructure at work to make sure that clients can restore their files and databases themselves when something gets fucked up.
We also have step by step tutorial on how to do this.
Every fucking day we get requests to restore backups.
Mostly used reason is "I'm a technical so I won't understand it".
With all due respect, if you don't understand this and keep asking without even trying, please don't host with us.
Because, if you did as I asked and actually read through the entire article, you would.
In case you're wondering, anytime one of us asks what part they don't understand, that question is simply ignored and they pushing for us restoring it anyways continues.
Sometimes they get angry and want to talk to someone higher up or start complaining that they're paying loads of money already and that it would just take us a second anyways.
If you would read the fucking tutorial/manual instead of trying to eat out your mother's badly shaved pussy and hopefully choke on it while you're at it, you wouldn't come asking us for it.
If you genuinely don't understand this article, feel free to ask but also provide us with cocksucking feedback.
Why do you think you have the right anyways to ask us to do it for free? We maintain the backup infrastructure which definitely isn't cheap but we do it so that you, pubic sniffing weazel, can do this shit on your fucking own.
You're entitled to ask us for help but not for asking us to restore your bullshit for free every freaking time.
Tip: give your parents some condoms. Because that way they hopefully won't reproduce again, we don't need more of you in this universe.7 -
To all young freelancers in low-income countries: I want to share my experience, of 6 years working for a piss-poor country, and 6 years working in freelance, and then emigrating. Here's what you should watch out for, and what to expect:
My first salary was barely 1.5$ per hour. I lived in a piss-poor country that taught me a lot (like why it's piss-poor).
The main thing to note when you're a developer in such a country, is that you're being fucked. Your employer might scream at you and tell you how bad you are, while barely paying you. That is you ... being ... fucked. Gain some confidence with the help of friends and family, and a great effort from yourself, look at what freelance gigs you can find, and ditch anything related to jobs in your country.
Being a somewhat able developer, but with modest experience, I started my freelance gigs for 5$ per hour. Because I was lazy, and freelance gigs weren't exactly being thrown at me, I was making 100$ per week, AFTER the companies I worked for appreciated what I did and offered themselves to up my pay to 12$ per hour. Yep. I was lazy. You will likely get lazy in freelance too, so be prepared for this.
My luck changed when one of my clients became a full-time employer, at 15$ per hour, with a well organized team where I actually worked for 40 hours per week (I had already amassed 8 years of experience...). For people in first world countries that will seem laughable, but in my country I was king of the hill, getting paid more than government CEOs that ended up in the news as the "most well paid".
That was the top of the pyramid for international indie freelance, as I would later find out.
I didn't do stuff that was very difficult. In fact, I felt like my abilities were rotting while I worked there. I had to change something. So I started looking for better offers. I contacted many companies that were looking for a senior developer, and the interviews went well, and all was fine, except for my salary demands. I was asking for 25$ per hour. Nobody was willing to pay more than 15$ per hour. That's because of my competition - tons of developers in cheap-to-live countries that had the same, or more to offer, for the same rates. Globalization.
So I moved to Germany. As soon as I was legally able to work, I was hunted down by everybody. I was told that it takes a month to pass the whole hiring process in Germany. My experience demonstrated that 2-5 days is enough to get a signed contract with "Please start ASAP".
There is freelance in Germany as well. And in the US. And everywhere else. A "special" kind of freelance, where you have to reside locally. The rates that this freelance goes for is much, much higher than international freelance. I'd say that 100€ per hour is ok-ish. Some people (newbies, or foreigners who don't speak the language well) get less, around 60 or so. Smart experienced locals get around 150-200 or even more.
It's all there. Companies want good developers to solve their business problems with IT solutions, and they'll beg you to take their money if you can deliver that.
So code!
Learn!
Accummulate experience!
Screw the scumbags that screw you for 1-2$ per hour!
Anyone able to write something more than "Hello World!" deserves more.
Do the climb! There's literally room for everybody up there! There is so much to do, that I feel like there will never be too many developers.
Thank you for bearing with my long story. I hope it will help you make it shorter and more pleasant for you.12 -
Clients can such cheapskates, client asks me for hosting options, I suggest Webfaction ($10/m), decent service, storage etc. Client goes and buys ($20/year) hosting, storage space 2GB. Client has 2.9GB worth of emails. Now am charging said client ($110) for migration.4
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Gotta love clients which ask you for a quote to expand the system you did for them, then a week or two later "accidentally" found some cheap absolutely garbage dev that made it for 1/5th of your price and during all that destroyed half your work, by e.g. replacing uuids with just ids, making the system now leak how many users there is, all their user saved content, allowing to just increment through them all, also then acting surprised when I decline any further work with them.
Then theres also clients that even after explaining all physical or software limitations, act like you should be a core developer and just fix that, for fucks sake you were using freaking excel sheets before, be happy with any possible change.3 -
*Got a request for installing and configuring an online shop for a client*
Me: Do you have a web space already?
Client: No, I don't want to pay for it. (FYI: They only cost about 20€ a year)
Me: Okay, but free hosters are often slow and unprofessional. I really do not recommend using free hosting services.
Client: Doesn't matter, do it.
Me: *Working on the shop for several weeks, finally goes online*
One week later, client contacts me saying shop is offline. I realize the free hoster he used shut down their services (bankruptcy), resulting in the loss of about 90% of the work that I had done (no proper backups due to complexity)
Client: How can that even happen? You'll redo the shop, right?
♪~ ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ5 -
"No We Will Not Code for Free"
(Parody of the "Cheers" theme)
We're underpaid, clients' scope today takes everything we got.
You turn to us with all your troubles cause "companies charge a lot."
You want our work but you won't pay.
No we will not code for free.
You are not exempt from our fee.
If you want a free site, build it yourself. We're not your coding slaves.
We won't build your crap no matter how much you plea.
"Paying us back" don't mean a thing, money talks, bullshit walks.
If you want a cheap site then go to Geocities.2 -
Upwork Job post:
I want a small website where you can post product images with title, price and descriptions. It should have a search functionality like amazon. The users must be able to add products it in their cart, post reviews and buy from there. I want it to integrate with PayPal and other payment methods. And yes, i want to be able to write blog post too.
Budget; $50
XD6 -
Been a while but I'm back with fresh rants.
If you look in my history you will see support wanted us devs to start paying for writing bugs. Now the release presentation has passed but we're still in crunch time because we can't put clients onto the new version yet. And in the meantime our coffee machine broke. So support has started to manually pour coffee, which was actual real nice of them.
Now yesterday I'm in a hurry and the coffee is out so I decide to pour a quick cup for myself with the leftover grounds. When I'm back at my desk I get a call asking if I just made coffee. I'm like yeah something wrong? Proceed to get chewed out for being selfish and that they see how it is with me, then get hung up on before I can even explain.
So yeah not only is my company too cheap to get a new machine, the lack of one causes drama.
Today however our network guy, who was present when my colleagues asked what was with the weird phone call, brought in his own machine and let me have coffee from it. Meanwhile suport can keep their crappy manual pouring. And I don't need to go into their office anymore.3 -
Two years and a lot of money my company has been building a peice of software for a client, I spent the day yesterday talking and watching the client, our software doesn't even come close to matching their requirements. It barely matches the brief my boss wrote and *never showed me*.
The following isn't necessarily a lesson I've learnt, but rather solidified it very much: FOLLOW THE SODDING BRIEF AND ACTUALLY LISTEN TO THE CLIENTS.
Also don't hire low paid devs just because they're cheap because they WILL produce shocking, unmaintiable and unchangeable code.
I honestly think starting this again will be much faster.2 -
After working on 7 projects last year with 7 different groups and learning to "flow like water", I don't feel the urge to rant anymore. There are always going to be all kinds of weird scenes, cheap clients, incompetent coworkers, people that pretend to know something when they actually know shit. All of those are just tests life is presenting you to make you learn to be peaceful and tolerant.
The world is broken, accept it, and allow yourself to be an ordinary human being, you'll be free and happier. Stuff like the law of attraction does exist. Just learn to be happy and grateful for what you get and you'll get a ton more reasons to be happy and grateful9 -
Client writes a bug report: This and that doesn't work.
Me: This functionality never was implemented. Please open a feature request.
Client: But this is a bug. Without this feature, the service won't work as we expect.
Me: But this wasn't in the requirements for release. So you have to contact the PM for a feature request.
Client: THIS IS A BUG! FIX IT!
Me: GO FUCK YOURSELF! THIS IS A NEW FEATURE AND YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR IT!
Unfortunately, I never sent the mail. But I kept it in the drafts. Maybe someday...1 -
I may have over delivered my service to this first customer i got.
It doesn't help that pricing was dirt cheap and i over promised in a bid to make it attractive.
But in my hurry to please the client, I've been feeling so much stress since last 24 hrs. Dealing with customers suck. I hate this.
They can be little dumb and doesn't think much before blaming you if something's not working as expected.
I hate this feeling and now i remember why my initial business model was designed such that I wouldn't have to deal with clients.
But somewhere along the way, i forgot about that. :/
I wish I could get rid of this customer.3 -
Baby I don't need dollar bills to have fun tonight ~
I love cheap clients ~
Baby I don't need dollar bills to have fun tonight ~
I love shit bugs ~1 -
Can someone help me understand?
I subscribed to a nifty IT-releated magazine, and on its back, there's an ad for "Dedicated root server hosting", nothing unusual at a first glance, but after I read the issue, I decided to humor them and see what it is that they offered, and... It just... Doesn't make sense to me!
An ad for "Dedicated Root Server" - What is a dedicated root server first of all? Root servers of any infrastructure sound pretty important.
But, the ad also boasts "High speed performance with the new Intel Core i9-9900K octa-core processor", that's the first weird thing.
Why would anyone responsible enough want to put an i9 into a highly-reliable root server, when the thing doesn't even support ECC? Also, come on, octa-core isn't much, I deal with servers that have anywhere between 2 and 24 cores. 8 isn't exactly a win, even if it has a higher per-core clock.
Oh, also, further down the ad has a list of, seeming, advantages/specs of the servers, they proclaim that the CPU "incl. Hyper-Threading-Technology"... Isn't that... Standard when it comes to servers? I have never seen a server without hyperthreading so far at my job.
"64 GBs of DDR4 RAM" - Fair enough, 64 gigs is a good amount, but... Again, its not ECC, something I would never put into a server.
"2 x 8 TB SATA Enterprise Hard Drive 7200 rpm" - Heh, "enterprise hard drive", another cheap marketing word, would impress me more if they mentioned an actual brand/model, but I'll bite, and say that at least the 7200 rpm is better than I expected.
"100 GBs of Backup Space" - That's... Really, really little. I've dealt with clients who's single database backup is larger than that. Especially with 2x8 TB HDD (Even accounting for software raids on top)
This one cracks me up - "Traffic unlimited"
Whaaaat?! You are not gonna give me a limit to the total transferred traffic to the internet for my server in your data center? Oh, how generous of you, only, the other case would make the server just an expensive paperweight! I thought this ad was for semi-professionals at least, so why mention traffic, and not bandwidth, the thing that matters much more when it comes to servers? How big of a bandwidth do I get? Don't tell me you use dialup for your "Dedicated Root Server"s!
"Location Germany or Finland" - Fair enough, geolocation can matter when it comes to latency.
"No minimum contract" - Oooh, how kiiiind of you, again, you are not gonna charge me extra for using the server only as long as I pay? How nice!
"Setup Fee £60" - I guess, fair enough, the server is not gonna set itself up, only...
The whole ad is for "monthly from £55.50", that's quite the large fee for setup.
Oh, and a cherry on top, the tiny print on the bottom mentions: "All prices exclude VAT and are a subject to..." blah blah blah.
Really? I thought that this sort of almost customer deceipt is present only in the common people's sphere!
I must say, there's being unimpressed, and then... There's this. Why, just... Why? Anyone understands this? Because I don't...12 -
Spend >3 days preparing a proposal to a potential client...made it a bit cheaper to get into the company...
Now I'm too cheap to be good apparently...
FUCK CLIENTS!!!1 -
I really hate this disgrace of a burnout.
Seriously.
Who can live with this thing crippling your energy?
This guy that comes to a ride but you only realize after 3 hours driving.
You came this time? When I fucking need to do hundreds of things on my life and for my clients?
Now I gonna spent my fucking MONEY and my fucking TIME to make this sucker less present.
Because doctors aren't cheap, nor changing my diet.
At least I can handle my clients. And tell them that some personal things came up.
But family?
They don't give a shit.
Specially when you are a guy that they love to tell you to work a 'regular' 9 to 5 but love even more your salary. Because you don't work a regular 9 to 5 job!
And I think that's more messed up.
Don't having a fucking support is frustrating. -
People are so cheap. I hear people say things like "Frontend Masters is too expensive." I'm pretty sure that I just got 2k of value in the last 3 hours... Maybe those people aren't 'cheap' per say - but more generally, don't understand the concept of value. I'm sure they see that attribute in their clients, but never themselves. Better for me I suppose!
4 -
My boss is cheap so:
- My machine randomly crashing
- Internet disconnecting
On another note:
- Clients calling every 5 minutes instead of putting together a list and coming back when they have more than one point at a time -
Those working as freelancer, how many times has a potential client told you that if you do this job for cheap he would refer you in his business circle and you would for sure get atleast X projects in next quarter ?4
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Just logged into clients hosting account with host gator. I'm greeted with masses of adverts and up sells.
Few mins later I login to clients go daddy account. Yet more adverts and overly invasive up sells.
I hate bulk cheap hosts like this :/
Cannot wait to logout.4 -
I was thinking about the problems one of our clients faced with the launch of their project the other day, because things were rushed, stuff was omitted and in the end they could not meet the launch date, and I started making a list of hard lessons I learned over the years that would have helped them avoid this situation.
Feel free to add yours in the comments.
- Never deploy on Friday
- Never make infrastructure changes right before a launch
- Always have backups. Always!
- Version control is never optional
- A missed deadline is better than a failed launch
- If everything is urgent, nothing is important
- Fast and cheap, cheap and quality, quality and fast. Only one pair at a time can be achieved
- Never rush the start or the end of a project
- Stability is always better that speed
- Make technical decisions based on the needs of the project two years from now
- Code like you will be the only maintainor of the project two years from now. You probably will...
- Always test before you deploy
- You can never have too many backups (see above)
- Code without documentation is a tool without instructions
- Free or famous does not necessarily mean useful or good
- If you need multiple sentences to explain a method, you should probably refactor
- If your logic is checked beforehand, writing the code becomes way easier
- Never assume you understand a request the first time around. Always follow up and confirm
There are many more that should be on this list, but this is what came to mind now.2 -
Hey, freelancer programmers, web developers, etc. I need your help. I’m writing a “Mother of All Blogs” post about why clients should a) pay you for your work and b) expect to pay you your asking rate. I’m trying to make the argument more forcefully that you get what you pay for with this work and that when you cheap out you only hurt your business bottom line. So, what are your experiences (positive and negative) or points that you would make to a potential client, who wants you to work super cheap or even for free, that you find are irrefutable about this topic? I want to include as many as I can! Thanks.9
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So I get to work on building a client at work for industrial automation. I am building a mini hmi to show customers how our server works. The code uses opcua. The reason I am making a client is because all the opcua hmis on the market are really expensive. There is nothing less than $600. There are hmis for free out there, but none of them say they support opcua. opcua has become a major protocol in the industrial automation industry.
It took me about 2 days to gin together a client that is pretty much abstracted and will be easy to maintain. A lot of that was just learning the opcua library client code.
Now I want to create servers and clients geared toward home automation for fun and profit. I want to take sensor data from arduinos using a simple serial protocol like modbus or other protocols that are supported. Then have an opcua server that collects this data. Then finally have an opcua hmi that I develop talk to these servers. The security model is much better and would be compatible with other vendors clients/servers. I already have a game engine I want to use for the hmi portion. It has tons of widgets for displaying data, graphs, lists, text, etc. It does both 2d and 3d.
This sounds like a project that could really fun, meshes with my work learning, and provides value to people that want to automate their lives.
The other side effect is that the next time I go looking for a simple and cheap hmi that supports opcua, there will be one. -
Looking for potential clients on Upwork is like finding a holy grail these days.
Cheap clients with laughable budgets and high expectations on the right.
"Devs" and "Designers" with questionable skills who will work for the lowest rate possible on the left.
And don't forget the ever growing service fees and absurd measures like turning your profile private if you don't make any income in 30 days. Suuure, that's totally going to help anyone who isn't willing to work with low rates.
I am getting done with Upwork. Back on Elance I managed to get a couple of really good clients for long term projects and good commissions. Here it's impossible, even with lower rates.
You're competing against people whose portfolio involves changing a few colors for a envato template or logos made of stock graphics, and they are still more likely to be hired over you because they are willing to work on a t-shirt design for $4!
Networking is where is at. Getting contacts, talking to people, force yourself to introduce to companies as a potential asset.
That's how you get the good projects, right?
... Right, folks?1 -
I hate myself. I’m trying to grow my client base by proactively cold-calling and cold-emailing and cold-visiting dozens of likely prospects. There just appears to be no other way to do this in my area. I don’t have the thousands of dollars per month required to get traction in online ads. Why do I hate myself? Because I have to stoop as low as the sales bros I can’t stand to be around. Feeling like a car salesman in a cheap pinstriped suit. I got into tech so I wouldn’t have to do this crap. But how am I supposed to get clients without the shuck and jive of being a salesman? Ugh.2
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some old time clients finally decided to pay me, so I had a bit of cash on me (I feel rich, lol).
here's the thing: I am torn in between buying a second monitor and investing in that server i planned to build in a previous rant.
I could just save the money, I dont know if I am being extra right now, I remember when I just had half a laptop screen to work with, now i have a this used 24 inch monitor I bought for cheap now I want to expand with another 24 inch probably. this arrangement will make things a bit comfortable and faster for me but it still wont affect me if I dont get it...........ok I'm talking too much5 -
Listening to clients & producing goods for a ridiculously cheap price & still manage to get yelled at. I swear everyone wants shit done for free. That's the amazing part of being a developer :)1
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I have a dream that one day companies will understand that most people who pirate music/movies/games etc. do it because they don't have enough money or because they can't get them any other way. They don't lose money, as those people are not able to buy their products anyway, instead, they gain supporters and possible future clients. Piracy is one of the reasons Windows is the king OS(prove me wrong...) and also the reason Game of Thrones is the most popular show on the planet. Instead of hunting torrent site founders maybe they could, I don't know, build great and cheap services. Spotify is such a service, no reason to pirate music anymore, but everything else still lies in the middle ages...8
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So basically, im here to ask, is there any good website, to freelance, I have try workana and freelance, but god damn clients are so cheap2
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Everyone here rants about clients, and as far as I understand frustration, I understand client's side too.
For 2 years I have developed a tool for our company, my manager was responsible for outcome and was directly accountable to company's management, which made him a client for our product. Of course requirements changed many times, he pressured us much, but he is nice guy and gave us knowledge why we had to change things again. We had meetings with him, HRs, PMs and others to gain requirements for features to implement and that made me better understand client's point of view.
My point is that when you work for external companies, you only see changing requirements, pressure, deadlines, etc, but don't think that your work is just a part of process - your client is responsible for your delivery, wants to make good impression on superiors or company needs some feature ASAP. He does not have to know tech stuff, he wants outcome to be good and to be fast and cheap - that is business.
And yes - we had to tell people that X is impossible many times, had to tell Y people how things work over and over. It may seem easier when it is your own company, but note that every single employee knew that you developed that tool and you have answers for his questions. -
!rant
found this android app dcoder where you can write code and it compiles/interept it on their server
and you can do some in/out challenges
feels like passing tests, the whole thing feels like work, but easier
and you can pick any language of the list to do the task, fuck cheap clients and their php 4 shared fucks
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