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Showing posts from June, 2021

VoIP overdose

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  I have been working remotely for on and off through my career. I started back in the day when Skype was actually working good and video calls were still not a thing. Web cams were just making a break through and the calls were slo-mo by default. I have seen and tried almost all of other tools as well, mostly by necessity and I don't have a favorite, every tool for the proper job. Even though VoIP tools are irreplaceable long distance communication tool, my opinion is that they have been abused since day one. These tools are abused on so many levels, the biggest being the abuse of time. I will get to that later, I first want to share a couple of misuses I have been doing as well. Heavy data storage. I find myself often sending files to someone just so I have them for later use on another device. Its stupid, I know, but I still do it sometimes, I'm just used to it. Light data storage. Talking to a person sitting next to me. This is again for recall purposes and for chat history

SOAP is all you need

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I have been fixing and tweaking bicycles since I had my first bike. So it comes as no surprise that I know how to change a bike tire. I have changed tires and patched tubes even on the trails with the bare minimum of tools, while raining. Regardless, I recently got new tires for my mountain bike and replaced the old ones in less than 5 minutes. However, after a test ride, I noticed that both tires were lopsided and improperly sited on the rims. I thought to my self, I probably inflated them too quickly, so I tried again with no success. Then I removed them and put them back on, tried again, and again and again. Same outcome, I tried multiple approaches. Nothing helped. I was doing something so typical for programmers, that this behavior even felt natural to me. I started a typical debugging rampage: I checked whether the rims were straight, I started suspecting the tubes were damaged or their walls thinned out. I even considered returning the brand new tires back to the store. The stan

Software epaulettes

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 Can you imagine army generals being forced to start as privates or corporals at the beginning of each war? Or if they change unit? Can you imagine having to start over as first grader everytime you change schools? Its absurd, isn't it? Now do you know what happens when one changes a programming company? Gets degraded 1, 2 or in some cases 3 ranks. It makes you wonder why? I have tried to rationalize this behavior, I have even heard the actual reasons, but it never made sense to me. It's even put into law, at least everywhere I lived and worked so far. The new employee is on a trial period in the first 6 months, and this is by law. Why? Companies don't trust their own recruiting process? What do they expect to happen in 6 months, that can't happen after 6 months and 1 day? What is the drawback of this? Its a lose-lose scenario for the companies. Considering every software company has a shortage of developers. Here is my logic: Great profiles hesitate to switch companies