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The last two frontend devs I interviewed.
First:
He had 15 some years of experience, but couldn't answer our most basic of technical questions, we stopped asking after the first couple.
Based on a technical test I got the impression that he couldn't distinguish between backend and frontend.
So, I posed a simple question "Have you interfaced with REST API'S using Javascript before?"
Which lead him to talk about arrays. I shit you not he droned on about arrays for five minutes.
"I have experience using big array, small arrays, breaking big arrays into littler arrays and putting arrays inside other arrays."
Never been in an interview situation where I've had to hold back laughter before. We refer to him as the array expert.
His technical knowledge was lacking, and he was nervous, so he just waffled. I managed to ease his nerves and the interview wasn't terrible after that, but he wasn't what we were looking for.
Second:
This was a phone interview.
It started off OK he was clearly walking somewhere and was half preoccupied. Turns out he was on his way back from the shop after buying rolling papers (we'd heard him in the shop asking for Rizla), and he was preoccupied with rolling a joint.
We started asking some basic technical questions at which point he faked that he'd seen a fight in the street.
We then called him back five minutes later you could hear him smoking "ah, that's better". After that the interview was OK, not what we were looking for, but not bad.
Top tip: If you require a joint to get through a phone interview, roll and smoke it before hand.17 -
We Developers Are Organisms That Covert Caffeine into Code ☕
How many of you are Caffeine Addicted?4 -
I just invented a new JavaScript operator. It's named "plus with wings", and it's used to sum to numbers without ambiguity or any need of type conversion, for example:
3 -+- "2" // 5
"2.1" -+- "4" // 6.1
"-1.1" -+- "" // -1.1
So, from now, you won't have to wonder anymore what type is that variable.
Tested on all browsers25 -
Not sure if I'm disappointed or relieved.
Just spent 5 years trying the get into this class. Studying and asking and getting recommendations. I knew it had less than a 5% pass rate but it's all that I've been aiming for for years.
Finally got into it, and spent 4 months working my ass off. Today I got told that I'm maybe being dropped. And honestly, as disappointed as I am, and I might need a new dream to aim for, I'm actually pretty okay with it.
I've been so stressed and annoyed and unhappy lately. I was starting to debate if this is even what I want. And for the first night in a while I can just drink whisky and not worry about the next test or doing classwork at midnight instead of sleeping.... I can just relax and whatever happens happens. I can't control how tomorrow goes.
Not sure if "oof. I need a drink" or "thank god, lets celebrate with a drink!"2 -
I started a nee personal project few weeks ago. I named it SelfVPN. Its simply a VPN client that lets you create DigitalOcean droplets and install vpn server without opening DigitalOcean panel. You just need to add your api key in application.
It takes like 5 min to create new server and deploy vpn server. So I am paying hourly usage of vpn! Even if I don't destroy droplet it wont cost more than 5$ a month.
I am thinking to open source it. But code is too messy 😅 Here is the first look of it
26 -
Manager: "How long do you think this will take?"
My brain:
Don't do it
Don't do it
Don't do it
Don't do it
Don't do it
Don't do it
Don't do it
Don't do it
Me: "Shouldn't take too long"4 -
I found out recently that Facebook is embedding tracking data in the form of IPTC metadata in images that you upload. This way the images can be tracked even after you download them.
Because I'm an anarchist and just want to watch the world burn a little, I made a tiny server to replace the id hash that they embed with a random one, just to see if I can't fuck with their algorithm a little bit.
You can check out the project here https://github.com/watzon/fbmdob15 -
True Story. Good rant bad pitched.
Just a small information before: In Germany, if you want to be a softdev and want to learn it, you can either go study IT or you can have a apprenticeship, which is 3 years with 75% of work in a company which will pay you (around 1K / month) and 25% in a school.
I work for this city-govermant company nearly 1 year now. Around 6 month into I told them I which to have a intern for 3 years (apprenticeship) at my site. Most likely because I really enjoy to teach.
My boss agreed to this very fast, told me it's a good idea, it would be a new way for our company to evolve. In Feb 2019, when we had interviews with candidates, we decided for one and I made a resource plan for most of 2019 in which I blocked 3 weeks for the start of his apprenticeship in July (2 weeks ago) because I knew he is a kid, 18 years, etc, never coded etc.
7 days into his apprenticeship my boss called me and my boss to her and told me there is a project which should be done by end of june and why it isnt finished.
It was the same project which I had ressources for 4 weeks in June but the department didn't come up with proper feature requests etc. so another department got the time from me. I told my boss exactly this: not my fault that it isn't done, showed her emails, reminders etc.
I also offered her to spend a weekend soon if everything is there now, but she told me: no. It has to be done ASAP. ASAP means, start now, don't stop until its done.
I told here, I have a intern on my site, I blocked the time.
She told me one sentence I will never forget:
"If your intern is blocking this project, he has to go. You decide. Now."
I was so surprised that I didn't even got any word out then "yes, I will start." I was shocked by this words and her decision to quit this young guy.
Just to give a a bit more background: we hired him in Feb 19 for Jul 19. If we would quit him right now, he would most likely not have any chance on the market for another apprenticeship and has to wait for Jul/Aug 20 and 1 year without job, money etc. He even moved to our city for this job...
So I moved back to my desk and today, 2pm, I finished all of the project, nearly 50h+ work done in 5 days, so he can stay.
What the actual fuck...15 -
Sometimes I wish I was allowed to just strangle my colleagues...
Example from the 'code base':
try:
do_something()
except Exception as e:
log(e)
do_something()
When I asked why they would redo the same call right after it failed I was told that 'It works the second time because it takes time to raise the Exception '.
Bitch, you've got a race condition in your sensitive banking software. You know it's there. Do you really want to trust the time needed to raise your exception will always be enough to synch that dumpster fire you call code?
Show some fucking respect for your craft and fix that shit. But of course they won't, because it will work flawlessly until it suddenly stops working. Taking down who knows what in this damn, undocumenred monolith with it....
Sometimes I'm honestly afraid to trust banks with my money.7 -
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
― George Carlin1 -
Millennials are getting right f*cked.
Low paying jobs,
Many hours of travel to work because one can't afford to live closeby,
working 10 hour a day, and
there is no hope of owning a home.
Then people say 'oh what do you do when you get home?'
Sleeeep for the limited hours left!
Then your partner says 'oh you just come home to sleep'
Then you have instagram and all these 'influencers' saying go after your dreams... while they very well know they only get paid for heavily edited images.
Wish things were better for everyone.25 -
What's that name of that classic fairytale about that boy that struggles with build automation?
...
Hansel and Gradle -
"FOAAS (Fuck Off As A Service) provides a modern, RESTful, scalable solution to the common problem of telling people to fuck off."
https://foaas.com/
I think the world needed this13 -
29-year veteran here. Began programming professionally in 1990, writing BASIC applications for an 8-bit Apple II+ computer. Learned Pascal, C, Clipper, COBOL. Ironic side-story: back then, my university colleagues and I used to make fun of old COBOL programmers. Fortunately, I never had to actually work with the language, but the knowledge allowed me to qualify for a decent job position, back in '92.
For a while, I worked with an IBM mainframe, using REXX and EXEC2 scripting languages for the VM/SP operating system. Then I began programming for the web, wrote my first dynamic web applications with cgi-bin shell and Perl scripts. Used the little-known IBM Net.Data scripting language. I finally learned PHP and settled with it for many, many years.
I always wanted to be a programmer. As a kid I dreamed of being like Kevin Flynn, of TRON - create world famous videogames and live upstairs my own arcade place! Later on, at some point, I was disappointed, I questioned my skills, I thought I should do more, I let other people's expectations make feel bad. Then I finally realized I actually enjoy a quieter, simpler life. And I made peace with it.
I'm now like the old programmers I used to mock 30 years ago. There's so much shit inside my brain. And everything seems so damn complex these days. Frameworks, package managers, transpilers, layers and more layers of code. I try to keep up. And the more I learn, the more it seems I don't know.
Sometimes I feel tired. Yet, I still enjoy creating things and solving problems with programming. I still have fun learning. And after all these years, I learned to be proud of my work, even if it didn't turn out to be as glamorous as in the movies.30 -
- have/share an agenda as soon as possible
- each talking point should identify a problem. Make a list of strategic questions answers to which would make it perfectly clear what and by whom has to be done to resolve them.
- plan meeting duration according to the list of questions. Make sure you meeting room reservation gives you enough time
- take notes
- be prepared for a need for another meeting(s), if during that meeting it comes clear that:
> more/other people need to be engaged
> some things are not clear and need more investigation before going further
> you have run out of time
> there are other problems tgat need to be worked out and it might cobsume too much time to do this in a current meeting
- do not turn the meeting into a chat. It's counter-productive, tiring to the listeners and a waste of time
- do not try to cover many topics. The less, the better. Unless they are very tightly coupled.
- do not invite people you do not need or there is a very slim chance you will need.
- only schedule meetings when the situation needs to be DISCUSSED among multiple parties
- that being said, do not schedule meetings when it's more convenient to communicate otherwise, like email, chat, etc.
- after the meeting make a summary and send it our to all the participants. They might reply and clarify if you have misunderstood smth or missed some important point.
- during the meeting assign tasks to each other. Verbally. Make notes. After the meeting reflect them in jira, rally, wtv.
- while assigning tasks nake sure the assignees have no blockers to work on them and make sure they understand what, when and how should be done. Some tasks might be dependedt on each other, work the sequence out.
- while assigning tasks ask "for ETAs. They might be as silly as 1-hour-to-2-weeks, but they still let you know what to expect.
- offer your assistance to the task assignees if they need any while working on their tasks
- work on your language, grammar, syntax, etc. Reading texts with typos/mistakes is repelling
- be a leader, an authority everyone is looking up to. Not a boss.
- avoid saying NOs. Be more of a "do we really need this; can we do this some other way/time; I can't promise anythibg but I'll see what I can do about it" kind of person.











