Job thread

[Yegolev]

It has happened.  I'm convinced to switch to a Mac for work.  Summarily this is because I'm now developing & deploying software.  Turns out this is an enormous pain on Windows.  Unless maybe you are developing for Windows, but I'm not at all convinced about that.

[Merusk]

Shouldn't you be on an open-source *nix distro then, rather than the Apple-branded version?

[Yegolev]

 

I'll ask about that.

[Trippy]

It has happened.  I'm convinced to switch to a Mac for work.  Summarily this is because I'm now developing & deploying software.  Turns out this is an enormous pain on Windows.  Unless maybe you are developing for Windows, but I'm not at all convinced about that.

Welcome to 2005!

[Yegolev]

Thanks!  Glad to be here.

Related to this Mac situation, I asked for a big monitor and they ordered this: Seiki SE39UY04 39-Inch 4K Ultra HD 120Hz LED TV

[Polysorbate80]

39 inch is too small.



That's 4k on a 55-inch LG UB8500.  Normally I don't do LG televisions, but the current selection that will do 4:4:4 color at 60hz is limited...

(Feel free to critique my office, btw)

[Ard]

It has happened.  I'm convinced to switch to a Mac for work.  Summarily this is because I'm now developing & deploying software.  Turns out this is an enormous pain on Windows.  Unless maybe you are developing for Windows, but I'm not at all convinced about that.

Welcome to 2005!

Heh, thanks, I was trying really hard to not post that this morning.

[ezrast]

I'm not a dev, but in my experience MacOS has few enough modifications from FreeBSD at the core level that after you open a terminal you can pretty much forget you're running an Apple product. The OS has enough little things that bug me that I'll suffer through configuring yet another Linux install rather than use it, but it works well for many of the tech people I've interacted with. There are a few gotchas, mostly relating to either package management or BSD-specific stuff that Linux users don't know how to deal with, but it's the closest thing to being the best of both worlds in terms of being a supported, standardized workstation system with a decent UI out-of-the-box, and still being easy to set up a development environment that doesn't suck ass.

[Yegolev]

easy to set up a development environment that doesn't suck ass.

This is all I want.

[Signe]

Your office is too neat, Poly.  It's scary.  It doesn't look like anyone works there.  It looks like a trap.  I would not expect serial killers to be hiding behind your ginormous TV but I'm sure they are waiting there to kill me. 

[Yegolev]

The Mac is online and, as predicted, I have no idea how to use it.  OK, some idea.

[Trippy]

Edit: correction, fix CTRL key first

Step 1: remap Control to the Caps Lock key (System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Modifier Keys)

Step 2: replace Terminal with iTerm2: https://www.iterm2.com/

[Yegolev]

Awesome.

I did managed to clone one of our private repos already from terminal.  Can't wait for that new monitor to come in.

[Miasma]

I was toying with the idea of buying an iMac for home and to maybe look into this Swift language but then I asked some apple fans at work and found out they can no longer be used as external monitors?  Is that true and why did they do that, I would have had an easier time justifying the purchase if I could have at least used it as a monitor for my PC as well.

I guess I could buy an air but then I'd need to buy a keyboard, mouse and the crazy expensive adaptor to make use of that one output port it has (which I also don't understand).  I guess apple just really doesn't like ports?

And can you develop code and test it out on an actual iPhone or is even personal mucking about gated through the app store?

[Trippy]

I was toying with the idea of buying an iMac for home and to maybe look into this Swift language but then I asked some apple fans at work and found out they can no longer be used as external monitors?

Not true as long as it's not a Retina 5K model

Is that true and why did they do that, I would have had an easier time justifying the purchase if I could have at least used it as a monitor for my PC as well.

Well why didn't you say you wanted to use this with a PC in the first place Compatibility may be hit or miss using a PC. In theory if you can finagle your video output to be a resolution and frequency the iMac can handle and it's sending the signal over a DisplayPort or Thunderbolt cable it should still work.

And can you develop code and test it out on an actual iPhone or is even personal mucking about gated through the app store?

No you can't -- every time you want to deploy your own dev app to your phone you have to get Apple's approval which takes weeks and weeks...NOT!

You do still need a developer's account to deploy your own apps to your phone, though (app needs to be signed with your dev key to install on phone).

[Ard]

You do still need a developer's account to deploy your own apps to your phone, though (app needs to be signed with your dev key to install on phone).

I'm quoting that because that's an extremely important point.  It's not horribly expensive, it adds another $100 to your toy per year to mess around with iphone development.

edit:

I guess I could buy an air but then I'd need to buy a keyboard, mouse and the crazy expensive adaptor to make use of that one output port it has (which I also don't understand).  I guess apple just really doesn't like ports?

I use synergy to get around that and just slave it all to my windows box at home.  It can be a pita to get working properly on the mac though, or was for me.
http://synergy-project.org/

[Miasma]

No you can't -- every time you want to deploy your own dev app to your phone you have to get Apple's approval which takes weeks and weeks...NOT!

That's literally what I've heard from people who don't actually have any first hand experience so it's good to know it's an urban myth, even if I have to pay a hundred bucks a year like Ard said.

More on topic - I hate my job now that all the old management I respected and admired have been replaced by corporate lackeys more interested in bullshit metrics than actual work getting done.  If it can't be summed up by your manager on a weekly scorecard in a power point slide with a snazzy graphic you are clearly a drag on the company even if you are the last person standing who actually understands how over a decade's worth or proprietary software we developed works - software without which the company simply stops.

That said, being the only person maintaining all that old code while management wants massive changes is giving me so much stress that I think I might die at my desk so it would be great to learn something new and move on to a clean slate.  I don't know how many people have had to maintain code that they themselves wrote fifteen years ago but it is a humbling and demoralizing situation.  All of it should just be replaced in a great firey purge but it's too important.  I managed to rewrite most of it once but the upgrade was refused because the old stuff all worked so they didn't want to risk replacing it.

I am so tired of java.

[Yegolev]

We can have a contest.  Is it worse to maintain your own 15-year-old code, or someone else's uncommented Perl?

Hell, everyone pitch in for this one because I don't want to be the winner.

[Selby]

We can have a contest.  Is it worse to maintain your own 15-year-old code, or someone else's uncommented Perl?

How about 50 year old hardware that wasn't well documented, has had at least 5 engineers resign from it, & at least 2 dozen technicians who think they know what they're doing modify it when it breaks to get it running again?  And you have 275 of them.  That was my former job.

[Torinak]

We can have a contest.  Is it worse to maintain your own 15-year-old code, or someone else's uncommented Perl?

Hell, everyone pitch in for this one because I don't want to be the winner.

At least with your own code, there's some tiny chance you might be able to recreate the mindset that led to whatever got written.

I don't think anything can beat having to "maintain" Perl. Perl is a write-only language.

How about mission-critical code written by non-developers whose closest brush to education was working through "Learn Java in 21 days" while writing it? You could tell what chapter they were on for each part of the code base. That led to a great discussion with management about just how much money was "saved" through outsourcing.

Another fun one: contractor-written code that used the style guide as a laundry list of things to avoid at all costs, and used great idioms like "everything in the system happens as side effects of constructors".

Or spending 6 months on an already-late project trying to isolate a problem that turned out to be due to hardware whose capabilities had been misrepresented, and whose relevant diagnostic tests literally consisted of printf("pass"); ?

Or deploying a system in an hardware-constrainted environment where it turned out that our development partners had managed to produce a launcher/execution manager that consumed over 80% of the system's resources? At least junking their 8 months of work and replacing it with a few scripts kept everything from imploding...

None of the above involved Perl, thankfully.

[Lantyssa]

We can have a contest.  Is it worse to maintain your own 15-year-old code, or someone else's uncommented Perl?

Hell, everyone pitch in for this one because I don't want to be the winner.

It's lose-lose.

On the one hand you're forced to admit how often you were a dumbass.  On the other, you pull your hair out over how big a dumbass the other person was.

[Xuri]

I use synergy to get around that and just slave it all to my windows box at home.  It can be a pita to get working properly on the mac though, or was for me.
http://synergy-project.org/

Whut. Is Synergy still alive? Development of it had all but stopped some years back... so I switched to Input Director. And then to some Microsoft program. Hm. Mouse Without Borders, maybe. Both of those are Windows only though.

[Ard]

Honestly, synergy is one of those things that didn't really need more continued development.  It worked.  It still works.  Nuff said really.  The only big change is that they went to a pay model on the newer versions since they weren't making anything off of it, but you can still find the old free versions that still work fine if you're inclined.

[Yegolev]

relevant diagnostic tests literally consisted of printf("pass");

Nice.  Going in the code bank.

Also:

We simply ask that you be innovative without mistakes while working as a team to achieve individual performance goals.

https://twitter.com/docondev/status/642701943060738048

[Xuri]

Honestly, synergy is one of those things that didn't really need more continued development.  It worked.  It still works.  Nuff said really.  The only big change is that they went to a pay model on the newer versions since they weren't making anything off of it, but you can still find the old free versions that still work fine if you're inclined.

I don't remember exactly why I stopped using it, but I think it was because I switched to Windows XP (or maybe it was Windows 2000 :P) and it had some troubles (and hadn't been updated for a looong time at that point). Great to see it still going strong.

[Yegolev]

While looking for work, I applied for a slot at GA Tech but didn't get a call.  Now I get a LinkedIn message from the hiring mgr regarding a systems engineer slot.  I don't think I'm going to reply positively.

[Merusk]

You don't want to work for a university unless you're angling for free tuition for the kid. Just ask the guys here who work for them.

[Tannhauser]

"Have you ever worked in the private sector?  It's brutal!  They expect results!" 
-Dr. Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) Ghostbusters

[Selby]

You don't want to work for a university unless you're angling for free tuition for the kid. Just ask the guys here who work for them.

Even the private "prestigious" ones on the west coast: unless you're getting tuition for the kid, stay away.

[Chimpy]

You don't want to work for a university unless you're angling for free tuition for the kid. Just ask the guys here who work for them.

I wouldn't say that. But expecting anything hiring related at an academic institution to be fast (as it sounds like Yeg is complaining about) is not a good idea. Even a fast job search takes months in most cases to get from closing date to the point where they call people for interviews.

But Yeg doesn't strike me as the type of person who would enjoy working in academia, that I agree on 

[Fabricated]

My co-worker that was getting the bum rush out the door finally had his last day today. He was my officemate so it's going to be weird and quiet.

They did him really dirty and it really fucking pisses me off. The middle/upper management are presumably on the way out if the Justify Your Existence Email->Director Evaluation->One of my two Supervisors leaving chain of events is any indication. Why the fuck are they punting people?

[Lantyssa]

Businesses.  They do stupid shit.

[Hawkbit]

Businesses.  They do stupid shit.

Early this year our parent company decided we didn't need an IT team on site anymore. We're a tech company of 200 employees in that office.

So they canned the five guys and told us we could contact home office IT support for assistance. Welp, with nobody on the ground to update software and install systems, we ended up with about 15 of 200 people sitting around doing literally nothing while they waited for computers to be shipped back and forth.

Of course they learned their lesson, so they hired one new IT guy onsite who is doing the work of five people and looks ready to jump ship after just a few months.

[koro]

After being thoroughly miserable at my current manufacturing gig, an opportunity is finally opening for me to get out of that hellpit and move into that boat-maker I mentioned a while back, which is finally going to open soon. They started applications today, and I hopped in on the first wave of them.

$9-14/hour, depending on qualifications (I can maybe wrangle $10-11). 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, first shift only. I'd also have to travel only about a mile to work, as opposed to the 18 miles each way I do now.

But there are no benefits. At all.

On the one hand, I could deal with the loss of pay without a lot of problems, but losing health insurance unless I pay wholly out of pocket? That is massive.

I don't know what to do anymore.

[Tannhauser]

Can you sign up for ACA?  You might qualify for nice subsidies so that would let you work there, have coverage and you can jump ship once you find a better place.