how's your Friday at work going?

Chip from sales just had webdude restart the server, apparently.

The network is down!

If your sysadmins are anything like me, let's just say not all Friday outages are unintentional. Server app needs a patch installed and requires a reboot? *looks around* There's hardly anyone here....click.

#ringggg#

Hey, is FARTS* down? I can't get in.

Let me take a look. Oh yeah, not sure what happened. I got it now. Should be back up in a few minutes.

*Made up application acronym.

Spartom said:

If your sysadmins are anything like me, let's just say not all Friday outages are unintentional. Server app needs a patch installed and requires a reboot? *looks around* There's hardly anyone here....click.

#ringggg#

Hey, is FARTS* down? I can't get in.

Let me take a look. Oh yeah, not sure what happened. I got it now. Should be back up in a few minutes.

*Made up application acronym.

Click to expand...

We are told it was an MS mistake.

We are in the middle of a data scrub and a couple of planned deployments are supposed to take place this evening.

We will definitely discretely 'fix' something when it seems safe, especially if it is low impact.

As long as it is not my mistake, I am OK with whatever happened.

I feel bad for the people that need to do the recovery, though.

My Friday starts in a couple more hours.
Back on night shift for this set.

I already know we will have some contractors in the plant overnight cleaning cooling fans.
Other than that, hoping for a routine and uneventful 12 hours.

And no computer troubles.

lets see,arbys,a nap,walk the dog and car show tonight...a full day.

redcoats1976 said:

lets see,arbys,a nap,walk the dog and car show tonight...a full day.

Click to expand...

Where's the car show?

I would love to spend an hour on a Friday night looking at some cool cars.

In the acute care area I was in today, unusually quiet. And Friday before a long weekend up here. A welcome ramp down. Homeward bound. Guitar night, chill.

filed the company's annual report with IL and changed the address to FL. gonna be doing that a lot.

Got the rounds done. Moon Valley Nursery for plant fertilizer, TJ Maxx for 40 minutes while my wife decided to get nothing, Costco for gas and a few items, Safeway for the Friday five dollar sale on six packs of Stella and Dos Equis. Came home had lunch.

It doesn't really matter...

I'm just a shower door guy

mdubya said:

Where's the car show?

I would love to spend an hour on a Friday night looking at some cool cars.

Click to expand...

Lakeland,fl.every friday night,5-8 barringbad weather.

It took from 4 pm to 8 pm to get the servers back up and get all of the connections to data sources working again.

Just in time for our 8 pm deployment.

A 14 hour Friday. I worked through lunch and dinner. And we had a two hour deployment Thursday night, also. 8 pm to 10 pm.

Then as we were saying goodnight, the new manager said, "mudub, up the chain they are asking what you actually do....can you compile a list for Monday morning?"

mdubya said:

Chip from sales

Click to expand...

Of course there's a "Chip" from sales.

Is there a "Bud" from warehouse / inventory too?

LtDave32 said:

Of course there's a "Chip" from sales.

Is there a "Bud" from warehouse / inventory too?

Click to expand...

At the previous company, Bud was the Program Manager.

Not Friday but Thursday, had a big blow out with the project manager. Yelling, swearing, the works.

The words I dread a PM saying were said, "I've done this before."
Which means someone in the project manager's past figured out a way to implement what the PM said the client wanted, as the PM can not explain what they did or how they did it. Or didn't.

The PM also decided to say the database is a dumpster fire and needs to be redone because it doesn't follow good data base practices, and started saying the code isn't as efficient as it could be. Of course without understanding how anything actually worked, the language used, or approaches to data or code that aren't from 1970. He also made the mistake of telling me how the implementation of a Map data structure was done (he wasn't even close, I've hand rolled these kind of things in the dark days of 1988). I guess he was trying to impress me somehow. He's done that before and I usually just let it slide.

This is a application that has under 200 users who only crack it open once a year to upload their malformed data so they can get a check from Uncle Sam, so the design I came up with along with the devs who worked on the original system, was something that was maintainable, easy to grasp by someone who hasn't worked on it before, hard to screw up by following a few simple rules.

And to support these under 200 users we have a team of over 25 people implementing things of little actual value over what was in the original application rolled out in 2011.

Of course he's put himself into the role of guru for databases, QA, system architecture, software architect (my role as well as being development lead), and DEV/OPs. Most roles which we don't really need.

And it's gotten worse as there is pressure to keep this dog of a project alive from the Gubbies who let the project go on for 15 years without upgrading out of business or end of life technical stack, who are pressuring my company to keep it alive as the DOGE Boys have been shooting zombie projects in the head left and right causing a revenue hit in our bottom line, who are pressuring the department heads, who are pressuring the client relations team, who are pressuring the PM who is grasping at straws to make this thing somehow worthwhile to the taxpayer.

I'm ready to retire. The money is in the accounts, the hobbies are lined up, the travel plans ready, all I need is for my work to stop being interesting or fun and I'm gone, and that may have happened as on my last vacation I didn't think about work or come back ready to dive back in. Rather it was a giant "meh".

Rant over.

I feel you.

I did have that thought, "I am getting too old for this sh!t" the last two days.

Was a time I was amused by such things and welcomed the chance to prove just how robust my constitution was.

Maybe I have become soft?

I grin and bear it as much as possible.

Our tech lead can be unpleasant and she was less than charming under pressure the last two days.

You could hear the resistance to her unpleasant approach in the entire team.

Somehow, I managed to make light of the situation and heap praise upon her in a single reply. It broke the ice and she laughed and appreciated the praise acknowledging her efforts. It let everyone else get their part done without the unpleasantness. 3 or 4 of us really enjoy working together and appreciate what each brings to the table. We were able to finish up our task in harmony. So simple. Actually enjoyable. Not so easy to pull off such an atmosphere.

mdubya said:

I feel you.

I did have that thought, "I am getting too old for this sh!t" the last two days.

Was a time I was amused by such things and welcomed the chance to prove just how robust my constitution was.

Maybe I have become soft?

I grin and bear it as much as possible.

Our tech lead can be unpleasant and she was less than charming under pressure the last two days.

You could hear the resistance to her unpleasant approach in the entire team.

Somehow, I managed to make light of the situation and heap praise upon her in a single reply. It broke the ice and she laughed and appreciated the praise acknowledging her efforts. It let everyone else get their part done without the unpleasantness. 3 or 4 of us really enjoy working together and appreciate what each brings to the table. We were able to finish up our task in harmony. So simple. Actually enjoyable. Not so easy to pull off such an atmosphere.

Click to expand...

That's the way I usually am too. But at a certain point he's telling me that all the leads are incompetent (except me), and is asking if he should fire them. Not my place and good luck with that as that's a call for who they report to to make, and not me or him. Hell, we may get downsized anyway if Elon's boys realize that the ROI on this project is not much. I've already volunteered twice to step aside and turn the role over to the guy I've been grooming to take over my role.

I'm heading out next week to see my grandson for the first time, that may be the final nail in the coffin for me regarding giving a care about this project.

The good news is I'm now officially out of management (moved my last direct report to someone else) and ready to hand off the lead dev role.

Funny part is the PM and I usually get along fine. But I don't carry grudges so Monday is another new day.

MikeyTheCat said:

That's the way I usually am too. But at a certain point he's telling me that all the leads are incompetent (except me), and is asking if he should fire them. Not my place and good luck with that as that's a call for who they report to to make, and not me or him. Hell, we may get downsized anyway if Elon's boys realize that the ROI on this project is not much. I've already volunteered twice to step aside and turn the role over to the guy I've been grooming to take over my role.

I'm heading out next week to see my grandson for the first time, that may be the final nail in the coffin for me regarding giving a care about this project.

The good news is I'm now officially out of management (moved my last direct report to someone else) and ready to hand off the lead dev role.

Funny part is the PM and I usually get along fine. But I don't carry grudges so Monday is another new day.

Click to expand...

I realize you are ready to ride off into the sunset, but there is still plenty of demand out there. Even full time remote.

We have a couple of urgent projects on the boil in they are bringing in (remotely) senior devs from anywhere they can.

It is all a big power play until sh!t needs to get done.

When I drove in a few months back to get a new laptop the service desk tech said they had people drive in from Richmond and PA fairly regularly.

I work with a couple of people from FL and TX everyday.

mdubya said:

I realize you are ready to ride off into the sunset, but there is still plenty of demand out there. Even full time remote.

We have a couple of urgent projects on the boil in they are bringing in (remotely) senior devs from anywhere they can.

It is all a big power play until sh!t needs to get done.

When I drove in a few months back to get a new laptop the service desk tech said they had people drive in from Richmond and PA fairly regularly.

I work with a couple of people from FL and TX everyday.

Click to expand...

You know MW, that’s what worries me. I haven't, after 40 years, become obsolete. Rather I've become more valuable. And I'm arrogant enough to bask in that value. I can't imagine myself not doing this at the moment as I really do enjoy building applications, leading teams and even dealing with bullshit from above.

I count myself as a mid-level software developer. I didn't start out wanting to be one, I wanted to be top tier, but compared to some of my friends and associates, I wasn't at their level. I'm solid, can do a lot, understand a lot, but not quite that level. My strength turned out being geeky enough to twiddle bits to create libraries and understand good software design, but to also be able to understand business and talk with executives.

I have to say that many of my current cohort of peers can barely do either one. The more "technical" ones spend all their time learning the nuances of the AWS console, but have little understanding of how memory works. And very little idea that clicking those buttons on the console costs money. The business ones make decisions to climb the management ladder and don't understand the snake oil they're selling to the guys higher up the ladder.

One of my bosses already told me if I ever want to keep working I can knock down my hours to 30 with benefits, or 20 with some benefits or hourly with no benefits. I'm sticking with 40, since I'm usually only working 30 hours a week on average anyway. Not slacking, I just have enough experience to see a problem, come up with a reasonable solution and implement it.

Maybe I'm having a late mid-life crisis of sorts.
I'm going to contact one of my recruiter friends and see what's out there, get a change of scenery, find a new project with some good smart people. I know they're out there.