Page 7 of 8
Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2015 5:57 pm
by Malcolm
Idiot manager has decided to try for two major changes in the next release (we usually fuck up if it's only one, thank jeebus it's zero 95% of the time).
Result:
Half a dozen killer bugs threatening to halt release.
Absolute shit deploy plan which has crippled our QA environment.
Edited By Malcolm on 1444082289
Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2015 3:57 pm
by Malcolm
As part of our new corporate cultural makeover/stupification, we've rebranded ourselves as the "answer company." I've been holding back on the wise-ass remarks, but I'm waiting to bust out, "What if the question is, 'Who's a fucking moron?'"
Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2015 10:54 pm
by Malcolm
We're in the middle of redoing our entire DB-report function for our team's website product. No one really showed me much concrete code until a couple weeks ago. It was written by our new intro dev who's barely, if ever, used .Net.
Me: So, how'd you handle all the table joins?
Newbie: Exhaustively hardcoded them.
Me: We have around 1500 possibilities you'd need to deal with for this to work for everything we want. How many do you have so far?
Newbie: About 20.
Me: Well, you wasted that time, then, because we're doing it a sane way instead.
After clawing and fighting for the sane way, I finally got a shot this upcoming week to present some ideas to the other devs on the team. Either way, I've cut down (through clever use of Oracle) the number of SQL fragments needed from linear growth down to constant, and c = 1 or 2 at worst. That means we don't need hundreds of the fucking things, just a few dozen at most. Should handle 90% of the queries we run daily and only selects/projects need customization. Hopefully the rest of my team isn't as dense as Idiot Programmer and Dumb-ass Manager.
Ah yes, today's wtf. It's performance review time, and goddamn I fucking hate that shit because it's when everyone whines about their feelings. Anyway...
Dumb-ass Manager: You need to pick 3 coworkers for your peer reviews.
Me: ... fine.
There's a couple dozen people I can select.
[Malcolm submits 3 names after a few beers at the pub, a day passes]
DAM: Why didn't you include Idiot Programmer in your peer review list?
Me: [thinks silently, "The same reason I don't ask Pauly Shore, Dennis Rodman, or Vanilla Ice about their views on acting."] Just fill in the "correct" 3 however you want.
Edited By Malcolm on 1444964071
Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 6:32 pm
by Malcolm
Idiot Manager: Hey, I put a new bug under your name. New query builder service isn't working.
[Malcolm checks into the code and history and makes an interesting discovery.]
Me: Remember how I said hardcoding every SQL fragment wasn't a viable design except I constantly got pushback from the dev you trust more than me in spite of me objectively having more experience? I just spent two hours tracking through his "more readable" code in an effort to fix a problem which was a direct result of his hardcoding an SQL fragment incorrectly. You'll need at least tenfold the fragments you have currently to support 100% of your reports like you want. That means you can expect around tenfold the number of errors like this. I might have caught this, except it looks like the dude that edited the files skipped the normal code review procedure and cut corners.
Edited By Malcolm on 1445639579
Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 9:13 pm
by GORDON
And close it with, "GOD DAMN am I tired of being right all the time."
Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2015 6:26 pm
by Malcolm
GORDON wrote:And close it with, "GOD DAMN am I tired of being right all the time."
It almost reminds me of the time they had a website resource security problem. In short, they wanted a code fix for the issue of IE disallowing a certain type of resource as it caused an annoying popup. The only hurdle being that most of our customers have their IE security settings locked down by admins. The resolution required the resource provider to stamp on some HTTP headers. Then reality reared its ugly head because "locked down" IE security settings involves telling any instance of that resource type to go fuck itself.
This would be the third or fourth major issue they've encountered since they hastily switched their website from HTTP to HTTPS without due analysis. I recall warning them several times to have take a good, hard look at the website code before making the change. As usual, no one takes one goddamn thing I say seriously until it crawls up their ass, bites them, lays eggs, and inconveniently bursts from their chest during dinner. In order to really be done with it, they have no alternative but to convince the provider to duplicate resources using some short bus web services techniques.
Edited By Malcolm on 1445812100
Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2015 12:19 pm
by Troy
Been an eventful two months.
In September, the 3 people above me at my office broke off to make their own company. Corporate and the new company both wanted me, so was given some cool options by both groups. I choose to stay with my company, get promoted and be relocated to San Fransisco.
I also found out that week I tore my ACL playing soccer. Which is a huge bummer - so I got the surgery ~ 4 weeks ago and have been rehabbing like a mad man to be able to make the move as planned in January. Referring to it as a "Kelvin Benjamin sympathy injury"
Moving cross-country is a little scary, but we have no kids, and live in 800 square feet, so it's easier than it might be for some.
Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2015 12:37 pm
by TheCatt
Nice! (Except the ACL). In SF, you might be able to get 400 sq ft.
Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2015 12:51 pm
by GORDON
The SF Bay Area is one of the top-3 nicest places of any area I've ever seen.
And you can't get a decent place to live for less than a million five.
Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2015 12:58 pm
by Malcolm
The SF Bay Area is one of the top-3 nicest places of any area I've ever seen.
If you're a seafood fan, that place is mega tits.
Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2015 1:03 pm
by GORDON
And don't think about trying to commute during the 2 daily rush hours.
Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2015 1:55 pm
by Troy
Our cost of living is going to go up, a lot. The same apt we have now would probably be 1.5k more a month in SFO. Jesus.
Luckily the wife is interviewing already and we have great savings from the low cost of living and being DINKS in Atl for so long.
As far as seafood - we love Sushi, another bonus 
Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2015 7:57 pm
by GORDON
Troy wrote:Our cost of living is going to go up, a lot. The same apt we have now would probably be 1.5k more a month in SFO. Jesus.
Luckily the wife is interviewing already and we have great savings from the low cost of living and being DINKS in Atl for so long.
As far as seafood - we love Sushi, another bonus
There's an amazing barbecue place near Mt. Diablo.... and it's famous... I will google around and try to remember the name. We ended up eating there about 5 nights in a row when we were doing a job in that area.
Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2015 8:57 pm
by GORDON
Google told me there's actually a shitload of barbecue in the Bay area, but I found the place we were going to... "Kinder's." I have seen them on some "best of barbecue" shows on the Travel Channel. It's near Martinez.
They are a smokehouse and they serve you cooked meat on butcher paper.
Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2015 9:32 pm
by Malcolm
Malcolm wrote:After clawing and fighting for the sane way, I finally got a shot this upcoming week to present some ideas to the other devs on the team. Either way, I've cut down (through clever use of Oracle) the number of SQL fragments needed from linear growth down to constant, and c = 1 or 2 at worst. That means we don't need hundreds of the fucking things, just a few dozen at most. Should handle 90% of the queries we run daily and only selects/projects need customization. Hopefully the rest of my team isn't as dense as Idiot Programmer and Dumb-ass Manager.
I think I got 2 devs plus a different manager plus an architect or two that agrees with me. It's almost like I went to school for this shit forever and I know what I'm doinng.
Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 6:34 pm
by Malcolm
Hah. Had a chat with the project arch today. Showed him the hardcode design. He was not amused.
Posted: Mon Nov 09, 2015 6:02 pm
by Malcolm
Malcolm was briefly let off double s33kr1t probation today because a real problem showed up that no one else could solve because some mofos don't understand debugging our DB workflows tends to be a 8-10 hour game just to analyze the data.
Me: You get that query going yet? It's going to take a bit.
Patron Saint of Hardcoding: Yeah but I cancelled it after two hours when my query didn't return. I couldn't find any info in the DB itself, either.
Me: ... just don't worry about it. I'll find it.
This is the dude we hired on his DB strengths.
Edited By Malcolm on 1447110205
Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2015 11:12 am
by Malcolm
Corp culture and values seminar. FML and fuck the motherfuckers that suckered the fuckwit execs. Fuck pop psychology.
Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2015 10:55 am
by TPRJones
We had some dumb bitch give a talk at our all-hands gathering recently. Part of her setup was a system of charts to take incoming texts and build tag clouds. She would ask a question about some pop psych idiocy and we were all supposed to text in one-word answers.
This was a mistake. Words like "bullshit" and "dumbass" started gaining popularity pretty quickly.
Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2015 11:24 am
by Malcolm
I stopped showing in person to company-wide meetings years ago.