el_dev_hell

> Working support must suck, but being first line support in a call center truly sounds like hell

I spent my first 3 years in tech working in phone support (a few different Australia companies). I was young and dumb and thought any tech job would be awesome (tech was my passion/love, after all).

It was absolute hell.

I've been journaling several times per week for my entire adult life. Re-reading the entries during that 3 year period is depressing. My feelings towards other humans was truly distorted (I saw strangers as awful even outside of work). I spent every afternoon in a daze of depression and anger.

In my experience, companies treat support staff pretty poorly as well. And the pay sucks.

The mental toll of handling constant abuse from 8-6 every day was insane in retrospect.

After spending a few years as a dev, I wish I could teleport back to my first week in support and punch myself in the jaw. Working at a grocery store and applying for dev jobs would have been a much better strategy.

> It is be impossible to expect a person above you in a hirarchy to be reasonable.

Why's that?

Thinking in any capacity burns energy. The "harder" you're thinking/focusing, the more energy you burn.

An interesting example is high-performing chess players: https://www.npr.org/2019/09/18/762046422/the-chess-grandmast...

If you're super focused/engaged with social media, you're brain is burning energy.

> Employment, and employees, are not fungible - why do people (and more importantly: the news-media and the people elected to direct the economy) continue to speak of it as though it is?

I've seen this mentioned a few times on HN. I find it a confusing concept.

My position is 100% fungible. I write code to solve problems. There are thousands of people that can write equivalent code to solve the same problems.

I'm legitimately interested: can you expand on how my position isn't fungible?

Not the person you asked, but I've been doing the same for a few years.

The cost of a PO box seems to vary based on the location (and even the location within the Post Office if it's large). I pay ~$110 per year for the PO box.

My mail redirect is $165 a year.

Edit: didn't mention it, but I'm also in AU.

That's a truly unbearable wiki layout. I can't be the only one seeing the irony of using an awful UI for a wiki about aesthetics?

The default MediaWiki theme would have been a signifiant improvement.

I don't think this is new.

I've seen ads on SO for at least the last 12 months (in Australia).

I can't agree more.

React with purpose-build components is a great experience.

The majority of my frontend headaches stem from using third-party components and making them work how I require.

Atlassian

That sounds really interesting. Do you have any book recommendations that explain this process (ideally targeted at a non-medical audience)?

I'm not Irish in any meaningful way (a great-great grandmother). I'm an Australian from a regional area.

It's interesting that there's an overlap!

I don't think so.

I host all my personal projects on either GitHub or GitLab (depending on build pipelines).

The majority of my personal projects are private. I get zero benefit from the "social" coding aspects of either platform.

I use remote git repos to both backup my code and have access to it when needed. For example, I have a fairly large personal project with a complex React frontend. I often pull this up to jog my memory at work when I hit similar challenges at work.

For junior role, it might be helpful to have a Git* presence with clear commit messages/branch history (at a minimum, it shows your ability to use git).

Depending on the company size, I'd speak with the co-founders. One of them may be interested in buying back the shares.

Otherwise, speak with your manger about disposing of the shares. Surely one of the existing investors would be interested if the company is doing well.

I'm in the same boat (replace backwoods hick with degenerate bogan).

I visited two speech therapists about this, but both told me it's not their area of expertise (and subtly hinted that it's not a real problem that needs fixing).

I kept a journal for my _broken_ language habits over about 2 years. I'd then pick one to attack per month. Being conscious about it is hard, but it's doable if you actually make it a goal and track your progress.

Some of the ones I "successfully" killed:

- Stopped using me when my is correct.

- Stopped ending sentences in but (apparently, this is a super specific speech pattern local to my childhood suburb).

- Stopped defaulting to bought and learned to use brought (weirdly, I always knew they were different words when writing, but I would pronounce both as bought).

The one that alludes me:

- Pronouncing 'th' in certain words as 'ef'. Two examples of this are three and north. I've been trying to master this for over a year now (I'm fine with 'three' in most cases, but 'th' at the end of a word still kills me).

Goodluck!

I've been wondering the same for a few weeks but can't be bothered checking.

My uneducated inference is that an oracle is a data source and you can hook into it from the smart contract. The oracle seems to live off-chain and live on a traditional server/DB.

Please correct me if the above is way off!

I find "low code" much more palatable than “digital transformation”, but I still wish the concept had a better name and clearer borders (e.g do most people consider Excel low code?).

I don't have a better name to offer, so I have no major gripes with low code.

I remember Njalla (https://njal.la/) being popular a few years ago. They seem to take cryptocurrency and require no details past an email address.

Isn't Next a full stack framework build on React? How does Blitz differ from standard Next?

To answer the direct question:

> Should a startup CEO tell his employees he's buying Twitter followers?

No, unless it's relevant.

To expand on the answer a bit, getting Twitter followers isn't traction or useful (for 99% of startups). Unless those Twitter followers are converting to paying users, that's a vanity metric.

> truth be told, I have to do this for Safari often too

One day Safari will enable smooth scroll.

> a PM will pull out traffic statistics and say ‘see, x% is still on IE, we can’t not support them’

Sure, which can be countered with: "no problem, it will add 30% to the estimate".

Unless the % is significant (over 10%), it's not worth the effort.

I personally prefer Reddit as a non-SPA, but it's interface isn't _just_ the result of being a SPA.

It takes serious effort to build an experience as horrible as new Reddit (especially if you attempt to view anything from a mobile browser).

I agree 100% with avoiding compiled frameworks (React/Angular/Svelte, whatever).

But betting on jQuery being around and functional in 10 years is a gamble.

The modern DOM is very user friendly. I'd advocate for skipping any framework and writing plain JavaScript.

There are quite a few factors that would matter (e.g a 100% tech crowd is going to understand that youname.app is valid whereas a non-tech crowd might think it's yournameapp.com).

Generally, I'd go with the below:

1. .com

2. slightly longer .com (e.g bobsmith.com is taken, so go with bobMIDDLENAMEsmith.com).

3. something relevant (e.g .tech, .accountant, etc).

The reply from @dnh44 is perfectly on point.

It sounds like a terrible situation with an easy solution (a utilitarian email to the first company advising you're not taking their offer).

This part is bizarre:

> Oh, and they want a 30% dividend paid quarterly.

That's a very weird request from an angel investor.

I see this as a common sentiment, but I don't see it IRL.

SPAs aren't a fad anymore; instead, they're the norm.

Web development over the past 3 years has majorly stabilised compared to the last 10 as a whole.

Want to work on the frontend? React. It's everywhere and can't be considered 'just a fad' in 2021.

Backend? Wrap your head around REST and you'll be fine with most languages (C# with .net core is very common, although often underpaid in my experience).

Unsolicited comments:

• Compliment people behind their back. It’ll come back to you.

Super pragmatic. A tad selfish (complementing people in the hope it comes back around), but I still like it.

• Your best response to an insult is “You’re probably right.” Often they are.

This has been my default for years. It also disarms cunty humans (even when drunk at a pub).

• Always cut away from yourself.

When you learn this lesson the hard way, it sticks forever.

• In all things — except love — start with the exit strategy. Prepare for the ending. Almost anything is easier to get into than out of.

"except love" U WOT M8? Begin with the end in mind. You'll enjoy the experience more knowing the good times can end at any point. You also want to have your life in order to handle a massive emotional trainwreck.

I default to https://www.diagrams.net/.

But I've used Microsoft Visio in the past and it's a really nice solution (this was 3 years ago, so it might be better/worse now).

Burner emails on my own domain(s).

When I apply for roles, I'll use an email address with an ID of some kind. Usually these are something like:

* react@MY_NAME.com

* webdev@MY_NAME.com

* software@MY_NAME.com

After securing a role, I'll forward those emails to my "check every few months" email bucket.

That was a wild read.

> Q. Suppose the thief was apparently unarmed but was running away?

> A. Call halt twice at the top of your voice, and if he does not halt, fire one warning shot; and if he does not obey this, shoot to hit him.

There was no chill during the great depression:

> Q. If I hear the command 'Hands Up,' am I justified in obeying this order?

> A. No; fall to the ground and start shooting.