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Fuck open office spaces.
A few months ago I landed a super sweet job as a senior full stack developer, mainly going to work with their Python microarchitecture. The company pays well, has a sweet balance between freedom and responsibility, 30 days vacation etc.
During the recruiting process they walked me around the office that was super cozy with 14 devs in on large room and 10 people from marketing in another. They also mentioned that they would move and merge office with operations and customer service (around 100 more people) in a few months.
Life was good in the old office, I thought that this is the company where I will work for a looooong time.
Now we are in the new office and its fucking shit. No walls or FUCKING CEILINGS between departments. Right above my head there is balcony with customer service talking loud as fuck 24/7. Everyone that is not a developer is just so fucking loud.
I have to use earplugs AND earmuffs to get silence, or blast my ears with way to loud music. Every day around lunch I'm completely done mentally.
I know I'm extra sensitive to noise because of my ADHD, but seriously who the fuck thought this was a good idea?
All the devs have told our boss what needs to be done. If they listen i don't know. In the meantime I will start looking for a new job....18 -
Built the website. He took 2 weeks to test. Then asked me for changes. I took two weeks for changes. Someday during the second week I login (wordpress), I see the old version of the site, all my changes are gone.
I ask him,
Him: I had a customer who needed to see my site... So I reverted to the old version. I had a backup.
For fuck sakes! 1st of all, if he is a customer he doesn't need to see your marketing site anymore give him a flyer idiot.
Then, for fuck sakes: Give me a fuckin call so I back up your site. Idiot.
Why you didn't fuckin back up my fuckin version.
I stopped working and passed him to a more patient, more wordpress guy.
Just idiot.12 -
Fuck my life...
Okay, so I’m working on a web app with a small group... the app is basically a lead generator for new business in another country. We just need contact details cause they’re a fucker to buy.
Step 1: prototype to the investors, working with the ceo to make this thing look shiny AF.
Goes well as fuck.
CEO: “when can we get this out?”
Me: “it’s basically done mate, get your guys to look at it and we can talk about marketing”
Que a shower of 10 or so bellends with senior in their title going into a room and coming out with:
Bellends: “so on this page we want the user to confirm and accept the contract”
Me: “cool, makes some sense, that’s what it’s already doing.”
Bellends: “afterwards we want to show them the price and have them put in their banking details.”
Me: “Wait, you what when?”
Bellends: “Yeah, well Jenny says we should have as few clicks as possible to get to the final stage and have the customer accept.”
Me: “Jenny’s on fucking crack, moving the contract formation phase to after the contract acceptance stage is not an option”
Bellends: “Oh it’s okay, Andy in legal said that would be okay”
Me: “Andy’s a fucking moron, tell him that online contract formation laws were updated 2014/2015 and you can’t do that anymore”
Bellends: “No, andy’s legal, surely he knows”
Bellends: “We want all of this above the fold”
Me: “OH FUCKING SUCK A DICK YOU ABSOLUTE BAND OF FUCKWADS... which one of you, which one hasn’t looked at a website this millennia!?”
Needless to say I ignored all their shit, got the lead generator out and told the CEO those ten people are certifiably fucking useless.
Bonus round; recent, but “it has to be on internal infrastructure”
“Why? It’s a mobile app sending rest calls to a third party saas.”
“It just has to, we have this thing called the private cloud and w”
“Wait... you what son, priv 🤦🏼♂️ private what mate?”
“Private cloud”
“You... you mean a server rack?”
“Nah we spent £2mn on it, it’s brilliant”
“Hahahaha you fucking dick, you blew £2mn on server infra with fuckall to put on it!?”
“No, no it’s the private cloud”
“Fucking idiot, aye son, where’s the fucking bean stalk you prick!?”
“It has to go on internal infr”
“Shut up, that won’t work”9 -
Always the same story:
Marketing: hey I'm gonna do a demo to a customer. They were asking for feature XYZ. That's ready on thr staging server right? Do you think I could use the staging server for the demo?
Devs: well feature XYZ is not 100% done. Basically just feature X is done, and it still has a few bugs. The deadline ain't for another month, since we gotta finish ABC first. I guess you could use the staging, but it has a lot of bugs.
Marketing: perfect!
*after presentation*
Marketing: the staging had so many bugs! Why didn't you tell me?! It was so embarrassing showing it to new customers! Anyway, they loved the new feature. We need it to be ready ASAP.
Devs: What?! That's gonna mess up with our schedule. You know what? Fine, but feature ABC will have to wait another month.
Marketing: Well, it'd be ideal if we could do both...
Devs: Pay for more devs or dor extra hours.
Marketing: Just do XYZ. It's a pity that you'll have to push back ABC but it's fine, XYZ is more important.
(I might ask, if it was so important, why didn't you notice so in the meeting where we had decided that ABC would be prioritized?)
*tons of working hours later*
Devs: There, we finished XYZ.
Marketing: Yay! Wow, this month we'll have two major features done: ABC and XYZ!
Devs: No, ABC is not done yet.
Marketing: What? But the deadline was this week.
Devs: It was, but then you decided to prioritize XYZ and we said we had to push back ABC to get XYZ ready, and you agreed.
Marketing: Did we? Fine. But do it quick.
Marketing and their mood swings.5 -
Apparently, part of being a software engineer means knowing how to read minds and do other people's jobs.
While implementing a user story for marketing, we found some associated features that, according to the database, have not been used for years. We tell them this. We do the courtesy of asking, "Hey, is there anything on the site that is utilizing these features? We'd like to clean up the DB."
"We don't know."
Engineering suggests, "Ok, lets turn the feature off, then, and see if anyone complains. It's been years according to the DB."
Marketing gets angry and hostile and says, "That's not the way to do things!"
I don't vocalize, "Well, not knowing how to do your own damned job is not the way to do things."
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Marketing asks us to integrate a third party feature to the site. We ask, "Ok, what page do you want it on, and what information do you want to collect, and what should it look like?"
"I don't know. You're engineering. You tell us."
We implement it as best we can.
Marketing says, "HEY! This isn't done right! It's missing this and this and this!"
"Did you ask us to implement that? According to the user story, it passes acceptance criteria."
Marketing says, "I thought you would just know that! I didn't know it was a separate thing. Just put it on all the pages, then. You guys really should know the site better."
Engineering gets angry and hostile
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Marketing says, "We need this removed from the site."
Engineering replies, "We have a GUI for that. Just go to this URL and you can do it yourself."
Marketing replies, "Well, if that's a really complicated thing, can you just run a script against the DB?"
Engineering says, "If we've built a UI for you, we really shouldn't be executing SQL scripts directly against the DB."
Marketing gets angry and hostile.
-
Engineering tries asking nicely.
"Marketing, if you want us to add new stuff to the site, or change stuff, please tell us what it is and where it should go and what the customer experience should be like."
Marketing replies, "We don't know the site that well. We are leaning on you to tell us."
I do not vocalize, all while trying to keep my eyes from bulging out of my head, my face red with rage, "YOU ARE IN CHARGE OF SELLING SHIT ON A WEBSITE THAT YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT. YOU ARE ASKING FOR CHANGES TO SOMETHING YOU DON'T EVEN UNDERSTAND. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?"
Engineering is angry and hostile.3 -
I'm going for longest rant. TL:DR; version here:
http://pastebin.com/0Bp4jX9y
then:
http://pastebin.com/FfUiTzsh
Twat Client,
As per our conversation, here is an invoice for the work you requested on behalf of U.S. Bloom. I realize that you ended up going with another designer, but you did request samples of what my take on the logo design would be. The following line item is indicative of 1 hour of graphic design consultation as per your request via Skype.
As I recall, you mentioned that this is not how Upwork "works" but considering it was you who requested that I converse with you via Skype instead of via the Upwork messenger, and since there were no clear instructions on how to proceed with Upwork after our initial consultation, It is assumed that you were foregoing Upwork altogether to work with me directly, thus the invoice from me directly for my time involved in the project. I would have reached out to you via Skype, but it seems that you may have severed our connection there.
After spending a little time researching your company, I could not find current information for Basic Media Marketing, but I was able to reach out to your former partner Not A. Twat, who was more than helpful and suggested that he would encourage you to pay for the services rendered.
It is discouraging that you asked for my help and I delivered, but when I ask for compensation in return for my skills, you refused to pay and have now taken your site offline and removed me as a contact from Skype.
{[CLIENT of CLIENT]},
I am sorry that I have bothered you with this email. I copied you on it merely for transparency's sake. I am sure that your logo is great and I am sure whatever decision was made is awesome for your decision. I just wanted to make sure that you weren't getting "samples" of other people's work passed off as original work by Twat Media Marketing.
I can't speak for any of the other candidates, but since Twat asked me to conduct work with him via Skype rather than through Upwork, and since he's pretty much a ghost online now, (Site Offline, LinkedIn Removed or Blocked, and now Skype blocked as well) one has to think this was a hit and run to either crowdsource your logo inexpensively or pass off other artist's work as his own. That may not be the case, but from my perspective all signs are pointing to that scenario.
Here is a transcript. Some of his messages have been redacted.
As you can clearly see, requests and edits to the logo were being made from Jon to me, but he thinks it's a joke when I ask about invoicing and tries to pass it off as an interview. Do you see any interview questions in there? There were no questions about how long I have been designing, what are my rates, who have I done work for in the past, or examples of my previous work. There were none because he didn't need them at this point.
He'd already seen my proposal and my Behance.net portfolio as well as my rates on Upwork.com. This was a cut to the chase request for my ideas for your logo. It was not just ideas, but mock designs with criticism and approval awaiting. Not only that, but I only asked for an hour of compensation. After looking at the timestamps on our conversation, you can clearly see that I spent at least 3 hours corresponding with Twat on this project. That's three hours of work I could have spent on an honest paying customer.
I trust that TWATCLIENT will do the right thing. I just wanted you guys to know that I was in it to do the best design I could for you. I didn't know I was in it to waste three hours of my life in an "interview" I wasn't aware I was participating in.
Reply from ClientClient:
Hello Sir,
This message is very confusing?
We do not owe your company any money and have never worked with you before.
Therefore, I am going to disregard that invoice.
Reply from TWATCLIENT's boss via phone:
I have two problems with this. One I don't think your business practices are ethical, especially calling MY client directly and sending them an invoice.
Two why didn't you call or email Jon before copying my client on the email invoice?
Me: Probably because he's purposely avoiding me and I had no way to find him. I only got his email address today and that was from a WHOIS lookup.
Really, you don't think my business practices are ethical? What about slavery? Is that ethical? Is it ethical to pass of my designs to your client for critique, but not pay me for doing them?
... I'LL HAVE TO CALL YOU BACK!
My email follow up:
http://pastebin.com/hMYPGtxV
I got paid. The power of CCing the right combination of people is greater than most things on Earth.14 -
After returning back from the company we were purchasing a new phone system (hardware+software, $100K+, kind of a big deal)
VP: “I need the new phone system software integration for our CRM by next week. I need to demo the system for the other VPs”
Me: “No problem. Were you able to get their API like I asked?”
VP: “Salesman didn’t know for sure what that was, but he said all the developer software documentation is on their site.”
Me: “Did he give you a URL? Their main site is all marketing mumbo-jumbo. I assume there is another one specific for developers.”
VP: “Yea, he might have said something, but I don’t understand why you need it. The salesman said the integration would be seamless. He showed me several demos.”
Me: “No, I mean I need to know, is the API a full client install? a simple dll? is this going to be a web service integration? How will I know what to program against?”
VP: “I think I heard him say something about COM? Does that sound like an API?”
Me: “It’s a start. Did he provide you anything, a disk, a flash drive, anything with the software?”
VP: “No, only thing he told me was our CRM integration would be seamless and our development team would have no problems.”
Me: “OK..OK…I get it…he’s a salesman. Is there an 1-800 number I can call? A technical support email address? Anyone technical I can reach out to?”
VP: “Probably, but I don’t understand what the problem is. I need the CRM integrated by next week. I gave the other VPs a promise we would get it done. I do not break promises.”
Me: “Wait…when are we installing the new system?”
VP: “Well, the purchase order will be cut at the end of the month’s billing cycle, the company has about a two month turnaround time to deliver and install the hardware, so maybe 3 months from now? Are you going to be able to have the integration ready for next week?”
Me: “If we won’t see any of the hardware for 3 months, what exactly am I integrating with?”
VP: “That API you wanted or whatever it is. COM…yea, it’s COM. I was told the integration would be seamless and our developers would have no problem. I don’t understand why you can’t simply write the code to make it work. Getting the hardware installed is going to be the hardest part.”
Me: “OK, so I have no documentation, we have no hardware, no software, and no idea what this ‘seamless integration’ means. I’m afraid there isn’t anything I can do right now. ”
VP: “Fine!...I’ll just have to tell the other VPs you were not able to execute the seamless integration with the CRM.”
Which he did. When the hardware+software was finally installed, they hired consultants (because I “failed”). I think the bill was in the $50K range to perform the ‘integration’ which consisted of Excel spreadsheets (no kidding). When approached with the primary CRM integration, the team needed our API documentation, a year’s development time and $300K. I was pissed off enough, and I had the API documentation, I was able to get the basic CRM integration within 3 days. When an agent receives a call, I look up the # in our database, auto-fill the form with the customer info, etc. Easy stuff when you have the documentation.
The basics worked and the VP was congratulated by ‘saving’ the company $300K. May or may not have been bonuses involved, rumors still out on that one, but I didn't see em'. Later my manager told me the VP was really ticked that I performed the integration ‘behind his back’, but because it was a success, he couldn’t fire me.10 -
Worst hack/attack I had to deal with?
Worst, or funniest. A partnership with a Canadian company got turned upside down and our company decided to 'part ways' by simply not returning his phone calls/emails, etc. A big 'jerk move' IMO, but all I was responsible for was a web portal into our system (submitting orders, inventory, etc).
After the separation, I removed the login permissions, but the ex-partner system was set up to 'ping' our site for various updates and we were logging the failed login attempts, maybe 5 a day or so. Our network admin got tired of seeing that error in his logs and reached out to the VP (responsible for the 'break up') and requested he tell the partner their system is still trying to login and stop it. Couple of days later, we were getting random 300, 500, 1000 failed login attempts (causing automated emails to notify that there was a problem). The partner knew that we were likely getting alerted, and kept up the barage. When alerts get high enough, they are sent to the IT-VP, which gets a whole bunch of people involved.
VP-Marketing: "Why are you allowing them into our system?! Cut them off, NOW!"
Me: "I'm not letting them in, I'm stopping them, hence the login error."
VP-Marketing: "That jackass said he will keep trying to get into our system unless we pay him $10,000. Just turn those machines off!"
VP-IT : "We can't. They serve our other international partners."
<slams hand on table>
VP-Marketing: "I don't fucking believe this! How the fuck did you let this happen!?"
VP-IT: "Yes, you shouldn't have allowed the partner into our system to begin with. What are you going to do to fix this situation?"
Me: "Um, we've been testing for months already went live some time ago. I didn't know you defaulted on the contract until last week. 'Jake' is likely running a script. He'll get bored of doing that and in a couple of weeks, he'll stop. I say lets ignore him. This really a network problem, not a coding problem."
IT-MGR: "Now..now...lets not make excuses and point fingers. It's time to fix your code."
IT-VP: "I agree. We're not going to let anyone blackmail us. Make it happen."
So I figure out the partner's IP address, and hard-code the value in my service so it doesn't log the login failure (if IP = '10.50.etc and so on' major hack job). That worked for a couple of days, then (I suspect) the ISP re-assigned a new IP and the errors started up again.
After a few angry emails from the 'powers-that-be', our network admin stops by my desk.
D: "Dude, I'm sorry, I've been so busy. I just heard and I wished they had told me what was going on. I'm going to block his entire domain and send a request to the ISP to shut him down. This was my problem to fix, you should have never been involved."
After 'D' worked his mojo, the errors stopped.
Month later, 'D' gave me an update. He was still logging the traffic from the partner's system (the ISP wanted extensive logs to prove the customer was abusing their service) and like magic one day, it all stopped. ~2 weeks after the 'break up'.8 -
Devs: Hey, what should we do?
A:
provide our SDKs for download as easily as possible so that any potential customer can try it out and see how much better we are compared to our competitors?
Or…
B:
Should we lock our SDKs behind a login where the customer needs to create an account and enter the most amount of private information possible, just in case, then also require to create some security access tokens that he needs to configure in his app to have access to our service via the sdk and also hide all of the documentation behind a login which requires some permission based roles to access and also make the sdks closed source so that it’s a pain in the ass to debug and understand?
Marketing people:
B! Definitely B! Make sure to piss off and annoy our customers as much as humanly possible! -
Some of the penguin's finest insults (Some are by me, some are by others):
Disclaimer: We all make mistakes and I typically don't give people that kind of treatment, but sometimes, when someone is really thick, arrogant or just plain stupid, the aid of the verbal sledgehammer is neccessary.
"Yeah, you do that. And once you fucked it up, you'll go get me a coffee while I fix your shit again."
"Don't add me on Facebook or anything... Because if any of your shitty code is leaked, ever, I want to be able to plausibly deny knowing you instead of doing Seppuku."
"Yep, and that's the point where some dumbass script kiddie will come, see your fuckup and turn your nice little shop into a less nice but probably rather popular porn/phishing/malware source. I'll keep some of it for you if it's good."
"I really love working with professionals. But what the fuck are YOU doing here?"
"I have NO idea what your code intended to do - but that's the first time I saw RCE and SQLi in the same piece of SHIT! Thanks for saving me the hassle."
"If you think XSS is a feature, maybe you should be cleaning our shitter instead of writing our code?"
"Dude, do I look like I have blue hair, overweight and a tumblr account? If you want someone who'd rather lie to your face than insult you, go see HR or the catholics or something."
"The only reason for me NOT to support you getting fired would be if I was getting paid per bug found!"
"Go fdisk yourself!"
"You know, I doubt the one braincell you have can ping localhost and get a response." (That one's inspired by the BOFH).
"I say we move you to the blockchain. I'd volunteer to do the cutting." (A marketing dweeb suggested to move all our (confidential) customer data to the "blockchain").
"Look, I don't say you suck as a developer, but if you were this competent as a gardener, I'd be the first one to give you a hedgetrimmer and some space and just let evolution do its thing."
"Yeah, go fetch me a unicorn while you're chasing pink elephants."
"Can you please get as high as you were when this time estimate come up? I'd love to see you overdose."
"Fuck you all, I'm a creationist from now on. This guy's so dumb, there's literally no explanation how he could evolve. Sorry Darwin."
"You know, just ignore the bloodstain that I'll put on the wall by banging my head against it once you're gone."2 -
Me: "ok for the following changes you must pay the following charge because it's not in the scope"
Customer: "bUt tHiS Is Not whAt I wanT, wOnT pAY thE ResT iF yoU arE nOt DoiN It blablabla"
Marketing: "please do it for him"
Fuck me.1 -
Ticket from legal department: implement GDPR recommendation, log customer consent, separate checkboxes to opt-in to T&C and newsletter
Ticket from marketing department: small print T&C on sign-up, remove "conversion killer" checkbox
This is why we need a product owner4 -
Apple at it again.
The new iPad mini suffers from "jelly scroll", and Apple tries to gaslight its customers into believing that this is normal.
No Apple, this is not normal. It's you. You and your shitty engineering, your shitty testing (too much secrecy, hence too few testers), your shitty marketing, and your shitty customer service. You are shitty as usual.
(Reference article: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/... )10 -
On the game front, I see so much conflicting advice. "Start getting feedback" as soon as possible. "Donnt soft launch on steam! The algol will wreck you.", "soft launch on itch to get feedback", "dont soft launch on itch!"
"Start marketing today", "focus on influencers", "get to know communities *before* you advertise", "dont get to know communities beforehand if you're just planning on self prompting", "dont self promote".
"CPM is important.", "CPA is important". Etc.
Sounds a lot like "have a bunch of money upfront." The solution is just to succeed from the start! It's so obvious. Just invent the next gta. The next facebook. Get a small loan of 50,000 dollars, or a million. Donate for a year to other kickstarter projects so people will know you and reciprocate! But also dont ebeg!
How about no. How about fuck all this advice by silver spoon assholes that didnt have to work on shoestring budgets. The advice is the equivalent of having a 300 page tonedeaf book, every page blank except page 150, where the words "fuck you. I got mine." Are printed in times new Roman, 14pt font, neatly in the center of the page.
The truth is most of the "indies" already made it in the software industry proper, before switching over. $5k kickstarter videos, with $15k marketing budgets, no doubt funded in part through their own money funneled through services that provide shell donations, because KS is being used as a glorified advertising service. People buying off steam curators for promotions, youtubers making sponsored videos without disclosing they're sponsored. Fake viralility. Fake campaigns. Predetermined success for those who could *already* afford to develop and go commercial without a publisher. And they came into the market and cannibalized the opportunity, raising the bar for everyone that wasnt them. I guess that's actually a good thing, because we wouldnt have half the amazing games we do, and the pressure to produce quality. But then I see fantastic games utterly ignored or flailing in an attempt to compete for eyeballs in an industry frequently dominated by gatekeeping marketeers and influencers, where human grace determines success or complete oblivion. And I'm just disgusted with it.
Also buy my game. Preorder NOW! And you'll get a REAL canvas bag, I'll go to like the goodwill and buy one and screen print the game logo on it or some shit. Buy the special collectors edition and get pictures of my feet. Buy the game of the year edition and get a real gasmask. Preorder now and I'll fucking suck your di k right now. No lie. Preorder the diamond edition RIGHT NOW in the next six minutes and I will send you one hundred thousand dollars in gold plated bottle caps. Limited supply. one million per customer. Offer expires soon. This is not a scam. I repeat. This is NOT a scam.
In other news I'm soft launching Atom Ranger in six months (assuming the nuclear apocalypse hasn't *actually* started by then). Its state of decay and fallout meets rimworld. Build and manage a sprawling base, resolving conflicts, exploring post apocalyptic Colorado and surrounding territories of no-mans-land. Navigate hazardous weather, radioactive terrain, collapsed bridges, dangerous rivers, and deal with cultists, bandits, slavers, and hungry cannibals. Broker peace between not just the factions outside your settlements, but within your base too. Manage conflicts, settle disputes, avert disasters, barter, scavenge, and survive in a fully dynamic world, where buildings slowly crumble, grass and trees sprout up in the road and vacant lots, fires burn out of control, and factions loot, ruin, and takeover settlements. Watch the world and the survivors in it change and survive. Help them to survive, or become a warlord and rule over the wastes.
Lets be honest. It's basically kenshi but less complicated.
If you want to volunteer to test (instead of paying to be a glorified tester, aka "alpha") let me know in the comments.
I'm currently setting up a discord and mailing list.28 -
I wish I can fucking clone myself.
We have been providing digital marketing services for like 5 years without having a proper QA team. Well because we cannot afford to hire one. Technically I am supposed to check and control the quality of our operation team. But I have been juggling so many balls and couldn't do that properly.
So this year we decided that we have to seriously take care of that. But we are providing all kinds of services and creating a QA team for all those services is gonna be costly. We wanna solve it, but also doesn't wanna hang ourselves with another rope. So we have decided to just found a QA team with leaders from various departments mainly Sales and Customer Services. They are the ones who have talked with clients. So they should be able to judge the quality of the services our operation made.
It is a fucking nightmare. It is like we have doubled the amount of clients. And that extra half of those newly popped up clients are sitting in our office. -
I am calling this a premonition rant, of more rants to come.
I have a feeling in my bones.
We have a newly acquired fat cat customer with bucks to blow who we have done some digital work for already and swag bag of marketing perkiness.
I will call the CEO of this whale "The Porcupine"
The Porcupine has a business degree and industry experience, nothing to do with websites or applications.
It claims to be a visual perfectionist yet never delivers an overall coherent review.
It likes to fixate on minor brand style differences in websites and apps we have built.
The Porcupine seems to be always busy with policy and legal and other things rather than participating in their own projects.
Procrastination on feedback or reviews until the day before release is common.
Many overtime hours worked, not a sliver of thanks. The haughty attitude indicative of somebody who thinks web development is like desktop publishing.
"It's just code" in response to a crash production server change they were warned was a risk that borked all of our responsive templates and took 3 hours to fix.
Their entire brand is shades of pea green, grey and lime. No serif fonts because they are suck. Arial and Helvetica are boss.
One of my devs missed a CSS style on privacy policy hyperlink text that went times new roman and I had various account directors and our CEO on phone telling me how embarrassing it was for us to let this happen.
Anyway. They pay on time and the cost estimates for all the upcoming work are juicy.
We have shitloads going on for an upcoming hard date conference and everything is already compressing.
Therefore I can already smell doom and feel those porcupine quill getting closer to my ass as I beg their AD today if we have any feedback on the 10 or so project reviews yet?
Nope.4 -
It began when I was tasked with creating a better and more engaging experience for our new Facebook page. This was in Facebook's early days, so there were not really any "best practices". We were making it up as we went along. I decided one way would be to game-ify things, since gaming, at the time, was a Big Deal on Facebook and people were starting to use it to build customer funnels.
Grasping for low-hanging fruit, I decided a Tetris variant around our topic would be fun. I had to hire a dev because at the time I was a static HTML web developer just getting into social media management. I knew nothing about game development or how to use Facebook's API for such things.
Long story short, we got about $10,000 (FB app devs came at a premium then) into the project when I came across a very recent article about the history of Tetris games. It said that even though Tetris had once been considered for all intents to be public domain due to it being created by a Russian coder during the Cold War, it had just been acquired by an IP protection entity that was charging royalties for any variant of Tetris created from a specific date onward and paying the original developer. So, even though I thought I had been thorough in my initial permissions checking, it turned out we were gonna be in deep doo-doo with licensing fees and restrictions if we released this game to the public.
I had to call my boss and admit my error. She was FURIOUS and really gave me an ass-chewing over it. I then had to call the marketing person whose budget I'd been slaving away at wasting. She was a bit more forgiving (her budget was in the millions). Then I had to call the corporate legal department and explain what was going on. They told me to immediately pay any outstanding hours, then fire the dev but not before getting him to send me all code and assets, deleting his copy, and then, upon my receipt of those assets, deleting MY copy so that nothing of it ever existed. And I was supposed to say _nothing_ to the dev about why he was being let go, so that there would be no "trail" leading back to this fiasco. (The dev hounded me for weeks asking what he'd done wrong. It killed me that I was bound and gagged by corporate legal and couldn't tell him.)
I was in so much trouble. I was literally in tears over it. I'd never wasted that much money in my life. That incident pretty much sealed my fate as far as any trust my bosses ever put in me again (not much at all). I was a bit of a pariah in a lot of ways for the next 5 years whereas I had come onto the team as a young social media rockstar at first.
After that, and a couple of other bad scenarios that were less my fault and more due to a completely dysfunctional management and reporting structure, they eventually "transferred" me to another team. Which was really just a way of getting rid of me by sending me to a department that was already starting to outsource overseas and lay people off. It was less messy that way. I was in the first set of layoffs.
Since then, I've had a BIG fear of EVER joining a large corporation EVER again. I prefer to work for small businesses now, even if I get paid less. Much less stressful from an office politics and impact of mistakes standpoint.3 -
So I had this internship in highschool for some marketing company creating simple databases for them to help out with their business.
When I came back from college for I think winter break they had asked if I would come in to help with a task that was going to take all day so they wanted me to come early. I agree and show up the next morning.
They had an Excel spreadsheet with about 5000 records in it and one of the fields was the name of the customer. They told me that the records came in as lastName, firstName or as lastName,firstName.
They wanted the field to look like firstName lastName. For a minute or two they had someone show me how they have been doing this which was just by hand. I don't really work with Excel so im not too keen with the macros. But it took me about 1 Google and 30 seconds to find someone with a similar macro to achieve this, I altered it a bit and let it go through all the records.
It was an awesome feeling when I went to the boss to let them know I was done (it had only been 10 mins), they almost didnt believe me.
Funny how one line of code can turn a day's work into a matter of minutes.2 -
PIM systems https://dinarys.com/blog/... provide a centralized location for businesses to store and manage their product data, including descriptions, specifications, images, and other important information. PIM systems are designed to improve the accuracy and consistency of product data across multiple channels, including e-commerce websites, marketplaces, print catalogs, and other marketing materials.
They help businesses ensure that their product information is up-to-date, complete, and relevant to their target audience. Here are some of the key benefits of using a PIM system: Centralized data management: PIM systems provide a single location for businesses to store and manage their product data. This makes it easier to ensure that the data is accurate, consistent, and up-to-date across multiple channels.
Improved data quality: PIM systems help businesses ensure that their product data is accurate, complete, and relevant to their target audience. This can lead to improved customer experiences and higher conversion rates. Increased efficiency: PIM systems automate many of the processes involved in managing product data, such as data entry, formatting, and translation. This can save businesses time and reduce the risk of errors. Greater scalability: PIM systems are designed to handle large amounts of product data and can scale as businesses grow and add new products. PIM systems are particularly useful for businesses that sell products across multiple channels and need to ensure that their product data is accurate and consistent across all channels. They can help businesses improve their operational efficiency, reduce costs, and improve the customer experience.6 -
Oh boy, this is gonna be good:
TL;DR: Digital bailiffs are vulnerable as fuck
So, apparently some debt has come back haunting me, it's a somewhat hefty clai and for the average employee this means a lot, it means a lot to me as well but currently things are looking better so i can pay it jsut like that. However, and this is where it's gonna get good:
The Bailiff sent their first contact by mail, on my company address instead of my personal one (its's important since the debt is on a personal record, not company's) but okay, whatever. So they send me a copy of their court appeal, claiming that "according to our data, you are debtor of this debt". with a URL to their portal with a USERNAME and a PASSWORD in cleartext to the message.
Okay, i thought we were passed sending creds in plaintext to people and use tokenized URL's for initiating a login (siilar to email verification links) but okay! Let's pretend we're a dumbfuck average joe sweating already from the bailiff claims and sweating already by attempting to use the computer for something useful instead of just social media junk, vidya and porn.
So i click on the link (of course with noscript and network graph enabled and general security precautions) and UHOH, already a first red flag: The link redirects to a plain http site with NOT username and password: But other fields called OGM and dossiernumer AND it requires you to fill in your age???
Filling in the received username and password obviously does not work and when inspecting the page... oh boy!
This is a clusterfuck of javascript files that do horrible things, i'm no expert in frontend but nothing from the homebrewn stuff i inspect seems to be proper coding... Okay... Anyways, we keep pretending we're dumbasses and let's move on.
I ask for the seemingly "new" credentials and i receive new credentials again, no tokenized URL. okay.
Now Once i log in i get a horrible looking screen still made in the 90's or early 2000's which just contains: the claimaint, a pie chart in big red for amount unpaid, a box which allows you to write an - i suspect unsanitized - text block input field and... NO DATA! The bailiff STILL cannot show what the documents are as evidence for the claim!
Now we stop being the pretending dumbassery and inspect what's going on: A 'customer portal' that does not redirect to a secure webpage, credentials in plaintext and not even working, and the portal seems to have various calls to various domains i hardly seem to think they can be associated with bailiff operations, but more marketing and such... The portal does not show any of the - required by law - data supporting the claim, and it contains nothing in the user interface showing as such.
The portal is being developed by some company claiming to be "specialized in bailiff software" and oh boy oh boy..they're fucked because...
The GDPR requirements.. .they comply to none of them. And there is no way to request support nor to file a complaint nor to request access to the actual data. No DPO, no dedicated email addresses, nothing.
But this is really the ham: The amount on their portal as claimed debt is completely different from the one they came for today, for the sae benefactor! In Belgium, this is considered illegal and is reason enough to completely make the claim void. the siple reason is that it's unjust for the debtor to assess which amount he has to pay, and obviously bailiffs want to make the people pay the highest amount.
So, i sent the bailiff a business proposal to hire me as an expert to tackle these issues and even sent him a commercial bonus of a reduction of my consultancy fees with the amount of the bailiff claim! Not being sneery or angry, but a polite constructive proposal (which will be entirely to my benefit)
So, basically what i want to say is, when life gives you lemons, use your brain and start making lemonade, and with the rest create fertilizer and whatnot and sent it to the lemonthrower, and make him drink it and tell to you it was "yummy yummy i got my own lemons in my tummy"
So, instead of ranting and being angry and such... i simply sent an email to the bailiff, pointing out various issues (the ones6 -
12 years in the industry. For significant part of that time, I've juggled leadership roles, project management, customer facing role, testing, hardware debugging, marketing .......
Oh, I also code.
My designation is still a software engineer.2 -
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 -
Ok. This is not a rant.
My company invites our customers each year to something like a exhibition. We have a very complex business software which is installed on the intranet of our customers. So the customer representatives are very used to us.
After the presentations we all joined an event prepared by our Marketing people.
That was so great and fantastic. Honestly.
The best part - if you once drank with a customer, the comunication is much different than before 😵
I'm still having a hangover. So sorry for typos.... -
A client's site got malware infected, so we decided to remove everything and replace the site with a fresh WordPress installation (very basic site with 4 pages of content).
Contacted iPage live support asking them to check and unsuspend the account (with no files on it), but they kept on insisting that I buy their "firewall" and "SiteLock" services, with zero reply related to suspension. I've had live chat with many other hosting companies, never had such a lousy fucked up conversation. Without providing technical support, they keep marketing their useless expensive services. Fuck you iPage, you just lost a customer.2 -
This post is kinda late. For those who haven't read my previous rants, a marketing coworker bragged about a feature that we hadn't yet finished. (I'm thinking that they perhaps did it to put extra pressure on the dev team 🤔.) Of course it backfired pretty bad, because this feature was a plug-in for another service, and even though the dev team was on time with the feature, the other service we were writing a plug-in for took _sooo_ long to approve of our code, and it made this marketing guy look so bad in front of these clients because the feature was a few weeks late.
A part of the new feature was that some of their data would be synced with this service. These customers were so important that we couldn't afford to disappoint them, and the solution was... *drumroll please* ... that this marketing guy would have to manually copy the customer's data from the service into our platform to make the customer think this feature is ready. Row by row. I'm hearing it takes about one hour of their day 🤣
I mean I'm good friends with the guy but... they kinda deserved it2 -
Hey DevRant, I'd like you to meet "Marketing Brandon", his favorite daily activities include:
- asking me when that landing page is going to be ready
- asking how to support a customer on live chat even though he chose to assign the ticket to himself in the first place
- explaining how important social media is
- telling me he's working as fast as he can on some website copy I need and then sitting and composing tweets for 40 minutes
- asking if I can "just real quickly when I get the chance" implement a huge new feature for our users
- announcing to the entire office that he "has to leave early today" because the pet store closes at 5 and his ferret ran out of food yesterday
-.-
Does your office have a Marketing Brandon or similar?
3 -
!Rant
Tldr: great spike to solve deployment problem may be a wasted effort.
Deployments of an ancient electron application need to be done in CodeDeploy to deploy the latest build. Customer hour restrictions cause this to be done only after midnight, and manually checked.
The whole team knows this is the wrong method of deployment and that there are many other operational problems with the project.
A few other senior team members get together and decide to spike out a way to use electron auto-deployment to accomplish this without using code-deploy at all.
After a shallow dive into this subject, we all get pulled aside to handle a change in another part of the software ecosystem. It happens. We leave the spike behind.
A junior-intermediate developer on the team pics the project up and gets a good spike going in a day and a half! We are all high fives and beers. This is Friday.
By Monday there is a pull request in for code review and it looks solid. Seems like it will make deployments a lot better.
Preparing the last deployment (hopefully) with CodeDeploy ever...
Marketing team members inform us that they are running an add system on the customer devices and to do it they are using Linux.
The current application being deployed is using Windows 10 (yeah, another problem).
They say they have made plans to move our application over to Linux. This means we may not be able to launch the junior devs great spike and the old deployment method may stay for the time being.
Meetings soon to find out how all of this will hash out.
End of rant. I hope I'm doing this right -
!rant
How should I put this... I have REALLY enjoyed help desk job more than anything thus far.
I've seen people posting about how dumb clients may be, and I know there's also those cases, but ultimately those are usually just good inspiration to comedy.
So here's the background: I was working in growing website development company (marketing called it digi-office for some reason). The clients were firms ranging from local bakeries to international suppliers.
The intriguing thing with working in help desk was usually smaller tasks and direct customer contact through e-mail. I got feedback (which always important) and the rush of good feeling at the end of every task; faster and more frequent than working on a year project. But the cherry on the cake is that I got to investigate problems within each websites' and the CMS's code base, fix them or point out bigger flaws in systems and blame others from them. 😂
How your help desk experience differ? Or do you also recognize the good side?1 -
@Flux
I read https://devrant.com/rants/1845851/...
I was going to comment until I realized it was a post from 300 days ago.
Just want to say ask you how it went or give a post mortem. Also Congratulations. I hope you brought a long run way when you started almost a year ago.
Remember starting is 80% of finishing, and carrying through is the other 20%.
Success looks easy when all you see are the success stories. Steve jobs wasn't the most famous marketer, he was the most famous salesman, and what he sold was a dream.
Marketing is a buzzword, and a lot of companies try to use marketing as a replacement for sales people, but nothing really beats a good sales person or team. Thats the secret to marketing: forgo it as much as possible and work on sales and relationships instead. Awareness is nice, but money and sales are better.
This coming from a guy who had six businesses by the time he was twenty six and helped his family to start two other successful businesses.
Apparently I'm good at helping other people make money just not good at helping myself do it.
What I've learned is if you can get 1 customer you can get 10 and if you can get 10 you can get 100. And then keep going.
Good luck.3 -
Thanks google for creating the illusion of an option to change the shipping address for a repair order. You even mention the new address in your notification email, but when I click on UPS tracking, I can see that you sent the shipment to the old address, which is in a different city where I can't quickly go to pick up my repaired phone. After charging an extra 95,- Euros for additional damage supposedly not covered by my warranty. Lucky you that my old phone had connection problems with the shitty Vodafone station wi-fi router, which is one of the few reasons that I still even want to use a google hardware product. Thanks google for just being slightly less wretched and mediocre than your competitors, that might grant you some more years before you will be buried in history forever. Pixel phones are just like Macbooks: high quality product and good marketing, good enough to make your customer accept everything else being bullshit. Google search is even worse, but based on the same concept: just suck a little less than your competitors but don't waste any effort trying to actually be really good at anything.3
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TIL running a proper CRM and Customer Support channel is quite insanely expensive.
All the services charge per agent.
And if you add their other services like email marketing, the price just shoots up.
Had to pull a jugaad, and currently have it split between 3 different platforms - hubspot for customer support, sendinblue for email marketing and zoho for free custom domain email.2 -
Cereal is one of the most popular breakfast foods worldwide. According to the National Cereal Day website, Americans consume approximately 100 billion bowls of cereal every year. With such a high demand for cereal, manufacturers are constantly looking for ways to make their products stand out. Custom cereal boxes are an excellent way to differentiate your product from competitors. In this article, we will explore the benefits of custom cereal boxes.
Enhanced Brand Recognition
Custom cereal boxes allow your brand to stand out on the shelves. With unique packaging, your product is more likely to catch the attention of potential customers. When a consumer sees a distinctive box design, it becomes easier for them to remember your brand, making it more likely they'll purchase your product in the future. Custom packaging can also reinforce your brand's messaging and values. Whether you want to promote a new product line, a charitable initiative, or just your brand's logo, custom cereal boxes provide an excellent opportunity to showcase your brand in a visually appealing way.
Increased Product Appeal
Custom cereal boxes can make your product more appealing to consumers. Unique designs, vibrant colors, and creative patterns can create an emotional connection with your target audience. Your custom cereal boxes can be used to convey the quality of your product, the nutritional benefits, and the flavor. Consumers will be more likely to pick up your product and try it out if they are attracted to the packaging.
Competitive Advantage
The cereal market is highly competitive, and custom cereal boxes can give your brand an edge over competitors. With unique packaging, your product will stand out among the other cereal boxes on the shelves. Custom cereal boxes can also be used to create a sense of exclusivity, making your product more desirable to consumers. Consumers are more likely to purchase a product that appears to be of higher quality, and custom cereal boxes can help create that perception.
Improved Customer Experience
Custom cereal boxes can improve the customer experience by creating a memorable and enjoyable shopping experience. Unique packaging can create a sense of excitement and anticipation for the consumer. Additionally, custom cereal boxes can provide useful information to the consumer, such as nutritional facts, ingredients, and serving suggestions. Consumers are more likely to have a positive experience with your brand if they feel informed and engaged.
Eco-Friendly Options
Custom cereal boxes can be designed with eco-friendly materials, making them an excellent choice for environmentally conscious consumers. With the rise of eco-friendly products, custom cereal boxes can help your brand appeal to consumers who are looking to make more sustainable choices. Additionally, eco-friendly packaging can reduce waste and promote a positive image for your brand.
In conclusion, custom cereal boxes offer many benefits to cereal manufacturers. From enhanced brand recognition to improved customer experiences, custom packaging can help your brand stand out in a crowded market. Whether you're looking to promote a new product line or create a sense of exclusivity, custom cereal boxes are an excellent tool to help you achieve your marketing goals.
If you are also looking to increase your sales, get custom cereal boxes from OXO Packaging.
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Remember, marketing does not want a better product. They just want dumber customers. So no need to push more features.1
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