Month: Jul 2025

The Chop

I was once contacted by my manager to review a particular code change, but with the instructions to actually select the Reject option if there was anything wrong with it.

Things seemed a little odd, so I was suspicious about the request. Usually you would only use the Reject option if it was completely the wrong approach, not just if one thing could be improved.

The change was an SQL data fix, but seemed for a bug that would rarely occur, so my instinct is that it should be run manually on the afflicted sites rather than sent out as part of the normal patching process. 

The normal process would mean the script would be run on all servers, and be subject to the usual slow “roll out” process; therefore delay its application to the affected site.

Looking at the comment from Support, it sounded like it was possibly just on one site.

There were 3 cases linked to it; 2 from the same site, 1 with a title of a completely different error number. Then the workaround is stated as “Re-add the Default Location to the Template” so they probably fixed it already. So maybe we didn’t even need to do anything.

Looking at the dates that it was logged, it seemed like it was classed as a minor bug so had a long time period to fix as per the Service Level agreement so I was sceptical it was still an issue after 2 years.

So my initial instinct says it should be applied as a manual patch, then reading the details from Support, it sounds like it was just on one site and they had already manually fixed it, presumably via the UI.

So I asked my manager if the site has been contacted to see if it is still a problem? Then we can just close it.

And that’s when my manager said

“His skills are currently being assessed so he’s been left to figure it out and told to ask for help if/when he needs it.”

Manager

So it seems like they have given him a bug to investigate then fix/close. Since he has struggled to resolve items before and been reluctant to ask for help, they have chosen this one to test if he is collaborating with the correct people. He didn’t, so they sacked him.

I haven’t encountered many sackings; everyone seems to imply it’s a lot of hassle, but certain managers are more willing to do it. Another approach is to declare that a “new opportunity” has come up and they will be placed in a new team to see if that causes an improvement.

Office Pranks

Even though I don’t like mean-spirited pranks, sometimes they do make the day memorable, and even small quirky things people do lead to funny situations.

Simulated Mouse Movements

One good prank was done by a software tester called Chris. I think he unplugged Ryan’s mouse, then plugged his own mouse to Ryan’s PC. When Ryan returned to his desk and moved his mouse (which wasn’t plugged in; or plugged into someone else’s machine for extra bantz), Chris tried to emulate his mouse movements, and tried to match his movements for as long as possible.

Ryan was obviously struggling to hit some icons/buttons, and would see a lag before the mouse moved so was really confused.

Steve in the kitchen

I was in the kitchen, and got the urge to look up, there was a picture of Steve’s face stuck to the ceiling. I wondered how long it had been there and how many people had even seen it. 

Keyboard Hijack

One classic thing people loved doing is sending messages to people if you walked away without locking your screen. There were a few times I got back to my desk to find our tester had messaged my line manager, or even his line manager.

Me 11:10:
I miss working with you Matty
Matty 11:10:
😕
Me 11:22:
I think Suhail hacked me when my back was turned
we do miss working with you though
 
 
 
Me 11:09:
I cant stop touching Suhail
Keith 11:10:
Again?!
Me 11:10:
He's got a nice red top on
Keith 11:11:
Haha
Me 11:22:
I think Suhail hacked me when my back was turned
Keith 11:23:
I figured 😛

Top Hat

There was a Christmas Party where we dressed up and someone wore a Top Hat. Afterwards I think they brought it to the office and left it there. 

Josh placed a Christmas Pudding on Andy’s chair, but because there was little chance he would just sit on it, he decided to cover it up with the Top Hat in hope he would remove the hat and not expect anything else there. It didn’t work, but Andy thought it was funny anyway. 

For a second attempt, Josh decided to place a smaller item; a sachet of vinegar. A manager came over wanting to talk to someone nearby. She initially grabbed the chair and saw the top hat. She began to pick it up but then realised the vinegar was there also. She then grabbed a different chair and exclaimed.

“I didn’t want to take that chair because it had a Top Hat and vinegar on it”

Natalie

So the prank was brilliant because it forced a manager to come out with a statement that you never thought you would hear them say.

Employee Profiles: Neil

Neil was very similar to Gerald. Although I always got on with Neil, his programming skills were a bit lacking.

He was definitely one of those software developers that may have been good in his prime, but the languages he has used are now obsolete and he struggles to learn new things, so was a poor C# developer. Or maybe he has always been poor.

Neil is like “I don’t know why this bug is happening, I might try change random parameters“

So I said “have you found the barcode code since it is that which is displaying incorrectly?“

“No I haven’t. I suppose that’s important to find“

Neil in the Standup update on Thursday: “gonna switch branches”

Friday: “just in the process of switching branches”

Switching branches takes a few minutes (Git, plus some config changes)

“I don’t have a good feeling about downloading nuget packages any more. Before the patch, the fix made 21 changes to .csproj file and .config files in order to work. So far it has made 523 changes.”

Neil

What’s he on about? sounds like Neil is deleting packages then removing the part of the build script that grabs them, then wondering why he can’t log in. 

One trait they had is that he seemed focussed on his own work and didn’t pay attention to what anyone else was doing. So there could be well-known employees at the company and he wouldn’t know who they are. So there were plenty of conversations like “go and ask George for assistance” and he would be like “who’s that?” or “what does he do?” much to the derision of team-mates.

"might be worth getting you and Nick on a call together because you are working on similar items"
Neil: "Nick who?"
"Nick on our team"

He once turned up to the stand up which started at 9:30 but he was supposed to be on a 4 hour training course from 9. He said he joined the meeting but no one was there. Our manager was like “did you join using the correct link? The calendar invite says PLACEHOLDER so that’s not the correct one“. Why didn’t he ask people if the meeting was on? He should have messaged his manager straight away.

A few months later, he missed another meeting. “did you not see my reminder about this morning’s call in Slack yesterday afternoon?“

“I thought it was some advice on where to look in the code“

The team lead had posted “Announcement : reminder that we’ve got a call at 9am tomorrow about MEDS ISN”.

Probably Neil’s brain – “mmmmmmm MEDS ISN call. Sorry, I can’t seem to find the MedsISNCall code. Is that a 3rd party dll?”

I’m still baffled by Neil. If he thought it really was code, then why wouldn’t he ask you how to find it?

He often struggled and didn’t ask for help, even though we repeatedly told him we would help train him up in our software and with C#. He would raise it as a point for himself in the Agile Retrospectives, and say that he will ask for more help and work as a team; but then carried on as normal.

“Yesterday, I failed to log in after 3 attempts. So I am carrying on looking at it“

Neil wants to add a new user to the database because he doesn’t know how to unlock his password by running a script on the database, but it seems he didn’t know how to add users either. I wonder what time he locked it. Did he lock it at 11am, then walked off?

Neil last week: I need to ask for help more

Probably Neil’s brain this week: well, my account is locked, looks like today is a write-off

Later on, the manager asks him if he is all sorted and he said: “I can log in but an error pops up.“

So he is blocked again and never said anything. He is really trying to get himself sacked.

I’ve noticed these types of people often blag their standup updates by saying “Sent a message to…”. Sending an instant message or email to someone could take some time to make sure it is worded correctly, but it’s not really a significant thing. Then there can be times where the recipient doesn’t respond because they are busy or out of office. But then what are you doing whilst blocked? They seem to use it as an excuse to write-off the entire day and shift the blame to someone else.

There were several times where he was working on items that had been picked up by others, had completely misinterpreted the requirements, or just had general bad luck with work being deprioritised as he was working on it. It kinda became a running joke like he was a cartoon character.

We told Neil to take a bug from the backlog. It was one I had investigated and put loads of notes in so it should be really easy for him to fix. He took the one already assigned to me with a status of “In Progress”.

Build Problem

On a standup, he was saying he was struggling with a build error. I volunteered to help him since we didn’t want him stuck all day. I asked him to clarify the situation; “is it on a computer that has always worked then suddenly stopped working?” And is he “currently running the build script without any of his changes in, or could it be caused by something he changed?”. “If he types that az login command, what does it say?”

Then all he says back is

“Curtis from IT is supposed to be setting up elevated access on A20205 but it isn’t working yet“

WHO IS CURTIS? Why is he included in the story now? and what even is that machine name? Am I supposed to recognise it?

“Existing one that has always worked except for these latest build changes. Curtis said “I’ll need to switch your admin access over from Primary to an elevated to match that of the other users on the jumpbox” and under the circumstances I thought it sounded like a good idea.”

I asked why Curtis is involved. Has Neil asked him to fix his build issues? and why does he think it’s an IT problem rather than a Development one?

“He contacted me. He did not give a reason for making the change so I don’t think he knew about my build issues. He may have noticed that others users have elevated permissions. I do not think they have caused the build issues.“

So he is telling me about Curtis but it’s nothing to do with the problem I am trying to help him with?

After looking at Neil’s local changes, I saw that he had made changes to the build script which is basically one of my initial questions which he could have answered. I suppose I need to check each stage for tampering.

So I ask him what the error he got in order for him to start changing the build script. It shouldn’t be necessary; why would it work for everyone in the department but not Neil? He sends me a screenshot, and I noticed that the command prompt showed Isobel’s name as the local user. 

How can he be logging in as Isobel? Have IT merged his account. Is this Curtis’ doing?

I asked him if he noticed he was logging in as Isobel. He says he took the screenshot from her documentation! He is a wind-up. He was getting the same error as her troubleshooting guide but decided to paste her screenshot to me.

I tell him to log in; then run a command. He runs the command without logging in. So I explained again, and I think he logged in but didn’t run the command. Absolute wind-up.

In the end I think we undid all his random changes to the build script and fixed the problem with the Azure Devops plugin, as documented in Isobel’s guide.

How Many Items To Return

There was a bug he was assigned to that looked like it could be simple on first glance. You have a list of items and the code was calling the LINQ method First(). The change could be that it should be FirstOrDefault if it could be an empty collection, or maybe the problem is that there really should be one item in the list and it is missing.

Without recreating the problem, we wouldn’t know what the fix should be.

Looking at the code, it passed in a list of items and possibly switched some depending on the config and certain checks. The method returned a list but was not clear at first glance what was returned. Is it all items? ones that have switched? any that have been modified?

He said it should be all items regardless if they were swapped.

Then when reading the code in this particular method where the crash occurs, why was it returning items when this swapping feature was enabled, but 0 if not?

Another developer, Dean, points out that in the previous method calls, there is another IF statement. When this swapping feature is on, an empty list is returned, and when it isn’t, the original drugs are returned. But then they are placed in a list called switchedItems.

Neil: “I understand it enough to know that this fix will work, but don’t understand it enough to refactor it”

He says his approach is to make the simplest change possible, not increase the scope and chance of introducing a new bug. I say that although that approach is generally good, in this case we see that the original developer had made a mistake in a previous method, and not returned the initial list of items. Then it looked like they had put in a hack to possibly try and work around it.

So I tell Neil that the original change was basically a hack – and the developer was attempting to do the simplest and quickest fix; but it has then made the code look confusing and still has a bug. Then Neil is continuing this mentality, by modifying the if statement to work in this additional scenario where we have found a bug, further contributing to the mess.

We discussed other scenarios and if those scenarios are impacted by this particular code. Then David says “so my change is fine then?”. Dean and I, in unison, say “NO!”. You need to fix the original method to return the initial list.

Not Hitting Breakpoints 

There was another good example where he did ask for help but hadn’t recreated the issue at all, and didn’t adequately explain what point in the investigation he was stuck on.

The bug report was very poorly worded, but the general gist of the problem as I understood was – that there was a certain type of Request Task which contained a list of items. The user then tries to change the item to a Repeat order. Then it crashed triggering a dialogue.

His manager asked him if he had tried recreating the issue, and he said he has been “trying for a while“, but didn’t elaborate on it.

I gave him advice that sometimes you need to look where the crash occurs from the stack trace, then look at the method calls before that to see the initial UI call. Then work out which UI control triggers that.

The next day, he says he is still struggling, so I needed to help him.

I get set up. After I start investigating and getting sidetracked with other issues, he then says he is getting a crash creating the Tasks. What has he been doing for the last few hours?

I sorted his environment out, then asked him if he had found any suspicious code, and he said he hadn’t. I wasn’t sure if he meant he hadn’t even found any relevant code, or hadn’t identified what could be the problem, but I left him to it for a bit.

He sends me some method names which lead up to the method which was mainly from the stacktrace, and some were irrelevant. I pointed out that the line of code that was crashing was when a collection was empty, and reminded him the exact method he needs to look at. 

A few hours later, he asked me if I had made any progress, and then said “there is a null being returned in the If statement”. So I remind him that null is fine, we are looking when the collection is empty. Empty or null are similar, but there’s a difference in the world of programming.

So we need to find what can return an empty collection. The returned list sometimes does stuff with the swapping feature so that made me think it could be that.

Neil 
Which dialog are you referring to when you say "in that dialog"?
Me 
In the Task
Neil  
Are you adding a task that appears in the To-Do list or Inbox?
Me 
Requests, not To-Do list
have you not got that far, or have I just confused you by giving you random bits of info 

I don’t really get it because it sounded like he knew it was Requests, and then is now thinking it could just be some other type of task. Then when I explain where the link is that the user is clicking in the stack trace, he is like “oooooooh I haven’t got this far“. 

It said Requests in the bug report. I told him to first work out what the user was clicking in the UI. But he hasn’t got far enough to know it was a Request nevermind what the user was clicking on.

As he was showing me debugging, it was hitting all kinds of breakpoints. He had like 50 and hadn’t been hitting them before because he wasn’t using the correct dialog. He had speculatively changed the method I had told him to look at as an experiment, but if he was never using the feature that called that code, then what is the point of experimenting by changing it?

He could have told me that he can’t hit his breakpoints at least. Either a problem in Visual Studio, or most likely; he isn’t in the correct feature of our program.

I don’t really understand how he can be a developer for 30 years and not understand how to work out a problem from the stacktrace. It’s not 100% possible due to a feature might needing configuration to be enabled, so you may still wonder how code is called, but at least you can deduce some information and come up with several scenarios then rule some out.

Conclusion

I always say it is hard to tell how good developers are, but there’s certain red flags that suggest they are bad. Obvious ones for me are not asking for help, not understanding basic debugging, showing a lack of interest in the project or code quality.

Seeking Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI)

I’ve said in previous blogs that our head office is located next to a city with a high Asian population, so therefore we employ a disproportionate amount of Asians. There tends to be a lack of women applying to be software developers but we employ a lot of women testers, and managers.

A few years ago, we started some “working groups” with a woke agenda. We had one specifically for women, then for ethnic minorities, and then one for people of different sexualities.

I have no idea how many meetings were arranged or what came out of it, but then their groups were all merged under the umbrella of DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion).

I’ve always said I am fine with these groups as long as they are solving a problem. But what problem are they trying to solve? We don’t have any relevant problems as far as I am aware, but then often forming these groups and pursuing agendas causes the issues they claim to solve. 

I remember someone made a point about not talking about politics, religion or sexuality at work because it can cause arguments, make people feel excluded or bullied. You mainly go to work to do your job, not discuss your private life, so I think this unwritten rule has mainly been abided by. 

Now with this modern woke movement, people are being told that we need “diverse opinions” from “diverse backgrounds“. However, if you do attempt to talk about these topics, you soon find out that it’s completely the opposite mentality, and you actually need to align with the group-think. Political opinions are fine as long as it aligns with the left-wing. Talking about religion is great as long as it’s not the negative aspects of it, and talking about sexuality at work is normal now.

What happens if you just want to write some software?

Pride meeting

During Pride month, we had a meeting with a guest external speaker. Presumably paid them a lot of money to talk about their identity and sexuality at work; which is incredibly weird.

“Conforming means compromising your own identity.”

You could argue having to go to work “compromises your identity”. In a work situation, what part of your sexuality is required to be known? Why is gender really relevant?

The speaker was talking about being bisexual, gender-fluid and polyamorous. Do we need to know this? Did that ever impact her career? People like that seem to imply that you need to be different to stand out.

At the end of the month, a Director sent out a message:

Special thank you to all our colleagues in the LGBTQ+ community across our organisation. We are truly thankful for the talent and value that you bring to us every day. We Belong! 

Imagine the outrage if they only praised straight colleagues. Targeting a group of people implies that the people outside that group are excluded and don’t bring value. If we really are equal then you don’t single groups out like that. A similar commendation was given during Black History Month.

Representatives

So they were looking to appoint some DEI Representatives to bolster their working groups:

“Our mission is to be a company that welcomes diversity amongst our workforce and provides

opportunities for everyone to be themselves and thrive at work.”

“The role involves identifying new and creative ways to raise awareness of key DEI topics and break down barriers through sharing educational content, organising webinars or other events and sharing experiences for others to learn from, helping us to become a more equitable, diverse and inclusive workplace.”

7 people volunteered: 1 Indian, 6 white. 5 women, 2 men

I would have thought it would be key that the leaders are diverse and I don’t think that is diverse, and far too skewed towards the women too.

One of the first posts they made contained one of those dramatic videos where each person takes it in turns saying a sentence and holding up a sign with a slogan like “I belong” with emotional music playing in the background.

"Wellbeing and inclusion are closely linked. The human brain is constantly assessing the environment for signs of rejection and social exclusion and adjusting our behaviour to keep us safe from threats and harm. When people are regularly reminded that they belong, they are likely to give their best, think clearly, feel safe to express their views and ideas and be happier, engaged and supportive of others, too. As such, we all have a responsibility and part to play in driving a culture (and beyond) of increased inclusion; one which boosts wellbeing and enables everyone the opportunity to apply their full potential.

For this campaign, we decided to create a video, involving individuals from across the business describing what an inclusive workplace means to them and characteristics that make them who they are. 

Wow – trying to do this required openness and bravery and led to both tears and laughter.

We learned that who we are is different to what we are, or how we are perceived.

We questioned if people would treat us differently after they read our post.

We understood how hard this was to do but how powerful too.

As you will see, we all answered in our own way and felt bonded as a team. 

Please watch with an open heart and an open mind."

This kinda sounds like propaganda that teaches people they are victims and people are out to put them down. Like I always say, DEI seems to create the problems it is trying to solve. They talk about diversity but then seem to imply that groups of people are targeting you. I wrote a blog about that recently.

DEI In Practice: Marketing

There’s been a big push over the years to show more ethnic minorities in marketing material. Ideally it should be representative of the country’s demographics, but it never is. I end up noticing when you’ve gone through many slides of a presentation and not seen a picture of a white man.

One example is the slides we were given for a new company values, each value had one or more people photographed in an office environment. I made a note of who they were:

whiteblackbrown/mixed/otherTotal
men0123
women3238
Total33511

Is that representative? Not at all.

DEI In Practice: Leader executive program

They recently announced a “Leader executive program” which sounded like a way to train senior leaders. Out of 44 people chosen for the scheme, only 5 were men.

Is that representative? Not at all.

Dartmouth Scar Experiment

If you see yourself as a victim, you'll be convinced that the world views you that way too. The Dartmouth Scar Experiment reveals that. Participants thought they'd be interviewed for jobs with a fake scar on their face, which they saw being applied by a makeup artist. However, during the touch up phase, unbeknownst to them the scar was removed. Those participants who believed that they still had a visible scar, reported a massively increased level of discrimination. They also "displayed heightened feelings of powerlessness, self-pity, and an increased tendency to blame others for their failures." They believed that they were discriminated against and thus internalized it in a negative way. The study essentially revealed that regardless of whether there's actual discrimination or not, when one believes themselves to be a victim it results in negative consequences.

North Face

Companies are going too far with virtue signaling and victim mindset. Like when Retailer @thenorthface are offering 20% off if you complete their “digital course in racial inclusion”.

Customers are told that “white privilege grants access to the outdoors” and warns others are “excluded” from the outdoors because of “racism”

James Esses

The irony is that North Face is implicitly acknowledging here that all its customers are white. After all, why would black customers need to take a course about ‘white privilege’ to get a 20% discount? But if all NF’s customers are white, shouldn’t it be examining the beam in its own eye?

Spotify & Diversity Fatigue

Spotify posted a blog about “Diversity Fatigue”, which sounded like some companies were abandoning the initiative.

"Organisations like Spotify, that are committed to DEI (and not ‘tired of it’) are increasing their focus on data-informed decision-making when setting global DEI strategies… Data provides a stronger evidence-based approach to executing DEI programs and inoculates against the ‘diversity fatigue’ virus, as you can see the progress"
"Conclusion: At Spotify, and amongst other DEI professionals, it is foreseen that we can be smarter with our work, embedding the results and changes deeper into the business so that they become the norm. So if you’re feeling frustrated, I ask you not to quit your DEI work. Instead, look to the HR Community as your support network. We need to band together and point-blank refuse the existence of such a thing as ‘Diversity Fatigue’. This way we are not giving each other and our leaders the permission to give up. Most of us already know from experience – it’s together and with community (and only then) that we can continue to make progress towards a more equitable future. "

One large critisicm of DEI that it’s just reverse discrimination. So there’s the idea that the workforce is too white or too male so then the hiring goes against them even if they were the best applicants for the role. In Spotify’s next blog, they show that they are intentionally doing it for race, although the apparent 50/50 split on gender you could say is more representative of the world.

Our internships help us to identify and nurture potential future employees, and we find that interns often bring new ideas, perspectives, and approaches to our work. Our interns’ fresh insights contribute to innovation and help us stay competitive. Diversity is also fostered through our internships by attracting candidates from different backgrounds, cultures, universities and organizations.
Offering a hybrid experience, provides us access to a broader pool of talent and reach into areas we likely would not have been able to hire from. As a result, we welcomed 161 interns from around the world with over 50% identifying as female globally and 60% of those in the US identifying as being part of an underrepresented group. 

They keep saying “systematic racism”, but they don’t have a problem with systematic racism, they have a problem with meritocracy. You have to discriminate to hire more people of colour, and choose less qualified people (and that is systematic racism)

James Klug

When people make statements against DEI, it starts to sound racist. But I argue that DEI initiatives produces racism. Flip the scenario where whites are the minority…

Charlie Kirk made a great point, around 73% of NBA players are black, and around 17% are white, with the rest of other races like Latino and Asian. Assuming these metrics have happened based on a meritocracy, if diversity quotas were enforced, and there had to be 50% white; would you expect the quality of the league to go up or down? Everyone he asked reluctantly admits it would go down.

Conclusion

So what does the phrase “Seeking Diversity, Equity & Inclusion” actually mean? It’s seeking to create a culture of systematic sexism, and racism, and gaslighting people into thinking it’s acceptable.

Victim Mindset

DOWN WITH THE PATRIARCHY!

I’ve written some blogs on the Woke mindset that seems to be progressively impacting my workplace. I stated that there was previously no sexism/racism from what I have experienced. We have a high percentage of Asians that work here, and if anything, women seem to find it easier to get promoted. So I think you could argue bias towards certain minority groups, or maybe we are pretty much perfectly balanced in diversity and equity.

The “woke” mindset seems to create a “victim” culture, and often tries to rectify “issues” (read: non-existent issues) by actually creating sexism/racism that it aimed to combat. Here is an example of such a “victim”.

At work, there was a post on Viva Engage about Recycling, informing which items cannot actually be recycled, and how some councils actually end up incinerating rather than recycling. There was the following comment:

Really informative. Thanks for sharing this. What is interesting is that out of the 13 reactions, only TWO are from men (well done guys)… is it just we women who recycle the most or are most interested?!!

My initial thoughts are: what made her read the article, then check the likes, then observe that it was mainly female? Surely she has a victim mindset and is going out of her way to feel the victim and claim “sexism”, showing  clear misandry.

I was also thinking, if she has a point that 2 men and 11 women added reactions, then why was this?

  • Do women more likely add a reaction to articles they read?
  • Do men check Viva Engage at the end of the day, but women like to check at the start; so men haven’t read it yet?
  • Do men focus on their work more, but women like slacking off?
  • Do women care more about environmental issues?

If it was the case that women are more interested in the article content – recycling, is it because in their household, the woman is the one that sorts out the waste in their house? It’s quite common for families to assign certain chores, and pulling a heavy bin up your drive ready for collection could be down to the man.

I told one of my colleagues about the person’s comment and he was outraged by the comment. He did say he tends to check Viva Engage at the end of the day so hadn’t read the article yet. He also said his wife tends to put the rubbish in the bins, but he was the one to take it to the street for collection day.

He rightly pointed out that you could say “why are there no blacks/asians or Muslims/Jews commenting on the article?”.  So it seems she very much was man-hating since no other relevant demographic was called out. He made the classic point that if you switched out the word “men” for “asians” or similar, then does it sound offensive? If so, then the original statement is offensive. People seem to think it is much more acceptable to be sexist than racist, then also more acceptable to criticise men than women. 

When I checked who left reactions, everyone looked white apart from the women that posted the comment. Her profile picture was black and white, but her general looks seemed likely to be tanned, and her surname would suggest she could have some middle-eastern country heritage. I think it’s a clear case of her having a victim mindset, and seeing confirmation bias in data, leading to a clear over-reaction.

Dev.to review

Dev.to is a blogging website for developers. At one point, I had an RSS feed to it, but there’s so much content posted daily that it is impossible to read it all. Some of the blogs can give good insight into other developer’s lives and mentality. Some of the blogs have informative tips for developers. There’s also a lot of social justice awareness.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for equality, and promoting the amount of female developers, but I think a lot of people end up doing it in an obnoxious way which does nothing. I don’t think you get equality by excluding males or putting them down.

There was one blog which opened with the greeting “Hey ladies and non-binary friends!”. Not a great start to your blog when there will be a range of people reading it, but predominately men. If the blog’s content was strongly geared towards a particular demographic, then maybe it could be debated to be appropriate language. As it goes, although she was criticising behaviour in the office, it was nothing to do with male behaviour. She comments on some rubbish banter (a developer who happens to be male) had said. But the banter was nothing to do with being male, and it wasn’t against women or any other minority group. So why attack him for being male? Why exclude your blog from males?

In the comment section, I saw a man had commented on the blog. It was a polite reply and rightly advising her to stop putting her colleagues into groups. She replies “I think you’re a bit out of your depth here mate.” Not really a good thing to say to one of your readers.

Again she seemed like she had a victim mindset, seeing confirmation bias in behaviour, leading to a clear over-reaction and bringing out her misandry.

Eni Eluko 

I was discussing the drama around ex-footballer Eni Eluko with a friend. Andrew Gold speaks out against DEI practices, and invited Eni onto his Heretics podcast. Eni Eluko stated an anti-DEI stance is clear racism. Andrew asked her why 3.5 times more black presenters than white are employed by the BBC? She could only say they must be better than the white presenters. Yet, she was still adamant that DEI practices, which favour employing people from minority groups – is needed because black people are overlooked. Eni herself is a black woman who has got lots of work from the BBC.

Andrew was a victim of such DEI practices when he wanted his show commissioned by the BBC, with him presenting, and he got told they would accept if he agreed to let them choose a new host, who would be an ethnic minority – to which he refused.

Eni was recently involved in a slander case with ex-footballer and controversial, outspoken personality Joey Barton, who had criticised her ability as a football pundit and also had the views that women shouldn’t work in the men’s game. She thought it was outrageous. She more recently came under fire after saying Ian Wright, (a well-known black pundit who works on both men’s and women’s game) shouldn’t be commenting on the women’s game as he is stealing a position from the women. Not only is that exactly like Joey Barton’s opinion (sports pundits/commentators should match the gender they are working with), but Ian Wright has helped raise the profile of the women’s game, and possibly more shockingly, helped mentor Eni as a pundit. Yet she is blinded by an agenda, that she betrays a friend and someone of the same race that is allied to her cause.

Dumb/Strange Statements

Here is a collection of dumb or strange statements my colleagues have said. These have often come from old chat-logs and emails.

EIS – Internet Explorer

Nithya: It uses EIS
Sam: what is EIS?
Nithya: Internet explorer
Sam: Internet Explorer?
Nithya: Internet Information Services

That’s literally how the conversation went. Nithya was saying random words and letters when he meant “IIS:  Internet Information Services”

Posting deleted wikis

Paul, a software architect, was writing some blogs, which looked very useful, and posting them on our internal social media. A manager asked if it can be put on Confluence where all our official documentation was, and would get better visibility from the development teams. He replies

“The projects on this Tech Blog are only for demonstration purposes and are not official projects. If there is any documentation it will be on my personal space on confluence, this will no doubt be cleared soon as I will be leaving at the end of this month.”

So he was refusing to move them to a better location, and even knew he had information in places that will soon be deleted.

Stating the obvious

A tester was trying to create a new test environment and got an error when deploying the server code.

“added all the config values but still getting install errors
Failed, 7.2.1.0000, 28-Sep-17 10:48:29, 28-Sep-17 12:10:26, 4, (Inner Exception) Exception of type Common.PatchFailedException, message = 'One or more databases failed to patch correctly: A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: Named Pipes Provider, error: 40 - Could not open a connection to SQL Server)'

“Can it be because there is no SQL Server installed on the server?”

“erm yes not having SQL installed might be the problem”

Surely that’s an obvious thing to check. Can you manually get to the database? No. Well, that’s the problem then.

Only reply if you still need to do this?

In the release stand-up today, I requested that ALL teams create the required test data before 7.1 is applied. Can I ask if all teams have done this?
Only reply if you still need to do this?
Regards 
Robert

What do you do if you get no replies? Wouldn’t you wonder if everyone did the work, or forgot to reply/didn’t see your message?

If you are James

From: Rachel West
Sent: 19 April 2017 15:47
To: Testing
Subject: If you are James Brown please reply. If not, please delete
 
Just checking my request has been actioned 
 
Rachel West
Principal Software Engineer in Test

Why would you send a message to everyone in the department, asking for one specific person that you could have contacted directly?

“not many people have Dave Sampson-level knowledge, apart from Dave Sampson, possibly”

Francis

Script is missing

“let’s say Script A is missing. There is possibility that Script A might not get executed.”

isn’t it 100% certain it won’t get executed?

coooooooeee

There was one guy that started his forum posts with “cooooooo-eeeeee” like he was talking in a queer dialect. He described himself as a “forum queen”. Strangely, he claimed he had got banned so didn’t post for a few weeks, before chiming back in with a “cooooooo-eeeeee!” I don’t know how you can get “banned” on an internal forum at work, but he permanently disappeared a month later so presumably got sacked for causing a scene.

Charlotte

“I made it up in our heads. Half in my head, half in your head”

Charlotte

Charlotte also once claimed she was bitten by a bee. Another colleague said his mate once claimed he “saw a bee punch another bee”. I can’t imagine a bee doing anything than sting.

Tech Depth

“Will create tech depth and try to fix this”

Rammohan


He meant “technical debt” item, as in; “I will do future work to improve this code.” I’m trying to imagine what “tech depth” looks like https://media1.giphy.com/media/GGkqULbznGpLW/giphy.gif?cid=6104955ewizx9p87brkmf67mqlxyf4vg1tqxzsx1e0bbkbwu&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g

Wilfred’s Dying Words

This is like some dialogue in a game/film/book where the person is dying and he is trying his best to get his final words out.

I hope you can manage….everything should be clear…once you experiment with it…try to query any website first…to get a feel of it…(GET http://www.bbc.co.uk/)

Wilfred
"Sir, We have lost another developer" 
"Godammit! Did we get the information from him before he passed?" 
"Well, he seemed to want us to query the bbc" 
"mmmm, cryptic. Get our best analysts on it ASAP"

Oil

Me 11:15:
"Chickens come from seed which comes from oil" - Steve
Andy 11:16:
hahaha what
Me 11:16:
Steve said all food comes from oil, then said that
I was instantly lost
Finnerty was talking about cars
Me 11:22:
now Bellamy is talking about mowing cat poo
these conversations evolve quickly
Me 11:36:
"The Git Server is kaput" - Bellamy

Deliver The Impossible

“we are capable of delivering impossible things”

Hari

everything is broken and we are all idiots 

they are dangling a reverse carrot in front of me

Bob

Read Codes

 When doctors add information about a patient to a computer system, they use a standardised “coding” system. This allows better searching, reporting and  data analysis compared to relying on free text entries which could contain typos, abbreviations and synonyms to represent the same data.

I was sent a collection of interesting terms by a friend using the “Read” coding system which is quite old and no longer used in England. Some of them must be really rare to have on your record, and some must have bizarre reasons for their existence.

9N46 – Doctor walked out  

TM281 – Legal execution by beheading 

TG80A – Accidental burning by soup, stew or curries 

T5500 – Spacecraft launching pad accident, occupant of spacecraft injured 

1BX5 – C/O sweet/pleasant dreams 

TE6Y6 – Run over by unridden animal 

TP8 – Injury due to war operations but occurring after war stopped 

22J-1 – O/E dead -condition fatal 

13HV4 – Seven year itch – marital 

7G020 – Buttock lift 

T412 – Crushed by lifeboat after abandoning ship 

U1282 – Bitten or struck by crocodile or alligator, occurrence at school, other institution or other administered area. 

[X] 197 – Victim of cataclysmic storm

I’d love to know why the word “cataclysmic” was added there, since that sounds like it should be world-ending. Then why didn’t they just stop at “bitten by alligator”? Why did they have to have several versions that specify really random locations?

Whether to log a new bug

Recently, we had the classic debate whether when discovering an (unrelated) problem, a bug fix:

  • should be rejected/marked as failed, 
  • or if you pass it, but log a new bug.

Sam said he had never logged a new bug if testing failed, even if this issue wasn’t called out in the bug report; in the description or recreation steps.

So to explain using this situation: I had fixed the Entity Framework code which saved a new row to the database table. The bug was for passing correct values into it, and my change was fine; the correct values were now saved in the appropriate columns in the new row. However, if you send multiple calls at once, Sam noticed it wasn’t incrementing the number by 2 as expected, only by 1 (the first call was then essentially being overwritten – a classic concurrency problem).

I think it’s reasonable to use the original Work Item (Bug Report) to flag any issues testers find, but once we confirm the new issue isn’t caused by my change it should go into its own Work Item. You might assess that the new bug could be fixed in a later release. It makes no sense to fail bug A because you found bug B. 

Sam is basically increasing scope, then moaning that we might fail the sprint, because we cannot complete the new item within the 2 week deadline.

Time management – A manager’s perspective

A manager recently posted the following. I think this sounds like good advice. Although I always think with us breaking work down into 2 week “sprints”, then the tasks just expand to fill the time allocated. So I think you need to process change or a collective mindset change across the team for this to actually work…

“Some thoughts on getting more for less…Individuals in all teams should analyse what they currently do in their role on a daily basis (i.e. where the time is spent). 

Then see what that could look like moving through transition (modernisation) and what next year could look like.

Right across the business, all individuals should take a moment to analyse where they spend their time each day (not high level timesheets, actual analysis). If we are ever going to get more productive output from already lean (stretched) teams then we need to work out where to optimise time and get the most quality output out of each day.

Examples of questions that individuals should ask themselves each day:
 
1. Am I managing my time properly? 10 minutes planning the start of your day can save hours. Write down what you would like to accomplish during the day. If you plan ahead and write it down, you can enjoy any breaks without thinking about work. Heads full of tasks that are not written down creates brain chaos meaning we break away from smart thinking.

2. Am I spending too much time playing around with ideas before I decide what to do? By the time I decide what to do there’s no time left. Stop procrastinating. Putting things off can affect your productivity.

3. Do I need to be in these long meetings? What am I contributing? What else could I be doing? Meetings are crazy expensive. I have been in meetings of 20 people where 3 people talk/contribute. Could I skip a meeting and watch the recording later?

4. Can this repetitive task I’m doing be automated? Should I be doing it or someone else more suited? Am I using technology to speed up my job? If I am a developer, do I spend too much time manual testing when it could be automated? Just because it’s always been done this way doesn’t mean it’s the right way.

5. Am I working in ‘smart mode’? Is there an easier way to accomplish what I’m doing? Am I over-elaborating? Finish unimportant tasks within 10 minutes.

6. If I have 5 things to complete concurrently, try allocating time to each task and set a timer. This speeds up work. Divide your day into time increments. Then, assign specific tasks during each portion of your day.

7. If you need to concentrate hard on certain tasks, then minimise distractions. Block time away from people.

8. Prioritise your tasks. Starting off with your most difficult or important tasks first can help you feel more accomplished.

9. Group similar tasks. When you focus on related assignments, you spend less mental energy context-switching between different tasks.

10. Finally, set aside personal time to disconnect from work. This can increase your productivity. A stressed and tired brain cannot work efficiently.”