Recently we had this slightly humorous exchange. It’s a good example of how something minor can cause confusion. Java was apparently added to the list of software we could no longer install, but it wasn’t communicated well across the department, including what the alternate plan was. So people had different beliefs of what could be done.
Apache changed the Java licence to be paid for commercial organisations. We didn’t want to pay, so we were prevented from using it.
Manimozhi needs Java to run JMeter.
Nandha tells him to install Java.
Manimozhi says he did that previously but got told off by Devops Team because it was unlicensed
Nandha says to use OpenJDK then since that is free
Manimozhi claims it doesn’t work
Nandha thinks he must be confused and tells him again to use OpenJDK
Manimozhi is sceptical
Matt says if it doesn’t work, then don’t use JMeter
Mukesh then chimes in saying that we actually do have a licence to use Java
I don’t know if we did have a licence to use Java, but I believe OpenJDK did work.
Full conversation below:
Manimozhi We need Java in our environment to run the J meter - to get it we have raised the ticket to IT but that seems they don't have access to the machine, so could someone guide us what we have to do to get install Java in our environment. Thanks!
Nandha you can install latest and compatible Java version yourself in the machine it's pretty straightforward
Manimozhi yea , have already installed but when we did this last time we got email from devops team asking about java license and reason for installation . as Java v8 involved cost and J meter is compatible only after from V8.
Nandha It can't work with openjdk ?
Manimozhi no I suspect being a Apache foundation open source project it must not have any paid dependency. It was free before Nandha, later they have changed it for paid
Nandha No I'm saying about jmeter https://stackoverflow.com/questions/59269365/does-jmeter-works-on-openjdk-13 I suggest you to try openjdk first it's free
Manimozhi ok Nandha, will check this, Thanks! I am worried will I get error while launching, but lemme try that.
Matt If OpenJDK doesn't work, I suggest you find an alternative to JMeter.
Here’s a collection of moments where there was some kind of misunderstanding with communication.
Duplicate work
This scenario has happened a few times in various forms. I don’t get how it can happen when work ultimately comes from the Project Managers.
“we have been pressured to give estimates on the API improvements, but it turns out another team has done 80% of the work”.
Lead tester
Another manager said there was another team involved as well, but didn’t specify in what capacity. So it sounded like a simple project which should have been assigned to 1 team was assigned to 3. Then there was more drama when it seemed the team had been working on it for over 6 months but it shouldn’t have taken that long.
New PC
“It’s over 4 years old (nearly 5). Is it still performing ok or do you want a replacement?”
I was asked if I wanted a new PC, but although I knew others had a better PC, it always seemed a bit of a waste to get rid of a working PC if it wasn’t a significant upgrade. I didn’t know if they had changed the model they were getting in either so I wasn’t sure what was considered “fast performance”. So I was a bit “on the fence” in my reply. I didn’t want to be dishonest and would rather someone decide what the policy was.
It can take a long time to get up and running if I’ve turned it off, and I think building our software can take a few extra minutes compared to some people, but other than that I believe it is fine.
My PC wasn’t new when I started and other people got faster and new PC’s. So maybe I deserve a treat; I don’t want to get left behind if everyone else is getting shiny new PC’s!
But I was surprised that I just got a simple message of acceptance. I suppose it makes his job easier to not order me one.
“I will make a note to ask you again in 6 months.”
Team meetings when you are all at your desks
When we were in the office, we had face to face meetings. As time went on, we seemed more accepting of people that wanted to occasionally work at home. However, when they did, then you needed to dial them in, which wasn’t too bad if you had a meeting room. When we were at our desks, we couldn’t just gather round, we then all had to go on a call.
Me 14:11: what do you think of Skype meetings when you are all at your desks
Dan 14:11: they're shit
Me 14:11: I guess it can be a bit cramped if there's 4 people gathering around 1 monitor but it still looks a bit inefficient/awkward to me
Dan 14:12: yeah I don't think people concentrate when they're on skype/teams/whatever
Me 14:13: I like the one the testers are having Rob "Alex, can you share your screen" Alex "what am I showing you?" Rob "regression testing" Alex "I never did regression testing" sounds organised
The Module handover
There was a time where the new idea was that we would hand over most of our domains to the developers in India, and then we move onto newer, exciting projects. I think most of the handovers happened but then we canceled the idea because they decided it was treating the Indians as “second class”.
We have been on this call for 30 minutes for our handover. Someone just asked what the domain is.
Meeting with entire Team but without Vinitha
Although I implied it was a bad idea to assign Indians to a project that was considered inferior, assigning an Indian or two to every team to make them seem integrated also doesn’t really work. When we worked in the office, we had everyone except Vinitha there, so she missed all the ad-hoc meetings we had at our desks, and also all the office banter. The timezone difference doesn’t help either because there’s large parts of the day where she has gone home and we are in the office. There was the occasion where we booked a meeting but then forgot to dial her in. She eventually requested to leave the team. The key thing is to assign projects to co-located teams and not force them to be distributed. But assign the quality projects evenly between the locations.
Online Communications
One day we received an email to our group Development email account.
Someone has logged a comment on the Support Centre "How to activate a portal in local developer’s system or in any of the test environments" and given us this email address to respond to. This isn't a question we'd be able to answer, we presume someone in Development would be able to answer this/set this up. Thanks. Online Communications
Why would someone think the support centre was the correct place to ask that? Even if it was a new starter, surely they would ask a colleague first rather than contacting support.
Everyone to the breakout room!
When we worked in the office, occasionally something exciting/dramatic would happen and we’d be called into a meeting.
To: Group Development Subject: Please go to the break out room now
Hi all, Please can everyone go to the break out room now. Thanks! Isobel
So with much panic, we all ran in. It was actually for a colleague’s leaving presentation but wasn’t planned in advance. To avoid people panicking further when they see the email, Isobel had to send a clarifying email. On the plus side, there was food:
Apologies for the email sent earlier. It was a leaving presentation for Elliot - nothing to panic about. There is some food that Maria made for Elliot and colleagues in the upstairs kitchen. Isobel
Poor communication
When we started working with the Indian developers, we noticed that it seems a cultural thing that they would message you a greeting, then wait until you respond before asking their actual question.
I think a lot of English developers would see a message like “Hi”, then go back to their work until they get the actual message/question… but it never comes. You might just get another “Hi” or “are you free?”, sometimes having to wait until the next morning for the follow-up message.
I made a joke about that scenario:
Previously on Teams: "Hi" <episode starts> "need one help" <credits roll> tune in tomorrow to find out what the problem is
It’s incredibly irritating to know that someone needs your help, but you don’t know if you can help, or how long they will need you for. So then it just becomes a distraction.
How about you ask me the questions, and I answer them when I am free?
I could say that I am free, then suddenly not be free if I get a call. So it doesn’t really make sense to delay until there’s a time where you think messages can be sent quickly back and forth. Messaging is asynchronous in nature, just send it and wait.
It seems a common problem, and someone made a website about it:
There was one more frustrating scenario where we had both Slack and Teams. Vignesh asked me a question on Slack. I took a while to answer so he then messaged on Teams. Although it was the distracting statement which gives you no context:
“I need some clarification..when you are free please ping me”
Security Training with 2 days to sign up
I’d imagine organising external training takes a while since they always drag out processes. However, we had 2 days notice to choose a live online session to attend. I think the problem is that the CTO sent an email to his direct reports, then they forwarded it onto theirs and so on. It had to go down 4 levels of hierarchy before it actually got to the software developers who needed to attend. Why doesn’t the CTO just send it to the Group Development mail group?
Some people then didn’t attend so it was probably a waste of money.
Further confusion was that there was a Fundamental Session and an Advanced Session. Were you supposed to attend one then the other? Could you skip one if you think you know the basics?
Autocaptions on videos are a useful feature, but have traditionally struggled with different accents, or poor microphone quality. Over the years, software and hardware technology has improved, and I’ve seen dramatic improvements recently as “AI” becomes more prominent.
I had a few examples in some old notes, some from Microsoft Teams, and some from the learning platform Pluralsight.
I didn’t write down the actual transcript, but Luis was talking about Unit Tests in Software development. One of his key points was that Luis’ Mum is desperate for unit test coverage.
“Uhm, that as the code base grows, New York women should come only as soon as they hit.
So it’s about the violence is not about professional shears alone.
if you don’t have a you know for unit tests even when you tested manually, you cannot really be sure that the that the code is working at any given point in time. Because my mom will desperately.”
Then there was this nonsense:
“Check the output of this divide the 2nd 5th Norman Vietnam. Do something else, or if it’s not then go ahead and continue with my with my low right, but this can easily be come on notice so I never can happen here.
Media versus colon. And even when eyes usually refer to in Texas, we can just type ideas for index and and that should also help our our cognitive ability to process the words.
So this story is fetuses.”
On one call, I said “perhaps I put it in About?” and the captions read “pops up in a bowl“. There was a part where I didn’t even say anything, yet it reckoned I said “Got the trick here”.
On another call, we were talking about websites that are helpful for Juniors. One person mentioned the site “Geek For Geeks” but the subtitles humorously stated:
“Dig for *****”
When I was watching Pluralsight, the presenter was talking about CDNs: Content Delivery Networks. Instead of “most CDN’s“, the subtitles say “seedy inns“. For “CloudFront” it then stated “But with Claude Friends“, then “customisations” was “customers. Asians“.
I saw a Twitter post that said that “Jira” was a problematic product name which had a funny and numerous interpretations:
The various ways Google Meet transcribes "JIRAs" – Euros – Yours – Cheers – Jurors – Juris – Gyros – Gears – Jails – Chairs – Cheetahs – Jesus – Judah – Judas – Jeera – Jealous – Jeres – Deers
We used to have two Development Departments but merged them together. The original one was for what we then called “Legacy” software since it was our older product, and emphasis was moving over to our new flagship product which I was working on. The “Legacy” Testers seemed a much older group, and even the younger ones were less technical, yet maybe more socially quirky than our group.
We also noticed different behaviors and preferences. They seemed to have much more stationary so didn’t just have a small notebook and a single pen like we did, but would have a more impressive collection of post-it notes, hole puncher, stapler, and assortment of coloured pens or highlighters. They would often want an ergonomic keyboard and mouse, with a fancy chair. They seemed to love using the printer as well.
No idea if their work actually called for any of these items, because our job certainly didn’t require it.
There’s that meme template “X starter pack” so a colleague liked making ones for the likes of the Legacy Testers. So he included an ergonomic keyboard, fancy chair, excessive amount of stationary and stack of printed paper.
He made a different one which I think had walking boots, wrist support, a programming book used as a monitor stand, and Lego.
With our group, there was a subgroup that loved multiplayer computer gaming, and loved Marvel merchandise, often having figures like Funko Pops or even Lego on their desk; so maybe they were the most alike.
“when there’s a lack of people in the office, it’s either because there’s a new game out, or it’s the Testing Conference”
One thing that I miss about office working is the emergent stories you get from people interacting with people. It can be fairly innocuous scenarios that escalate or become inside-jokes. A classic example is when the cleaner Pauline wasn’t allowed to let us use her towels in the kitchen anymore. One day, a colleague emails to declare that Pauline was taking home the towels for the final time.
Pauline used to take home and wash all the tea towels, but after some office politics with her employers she doesn't do it anymore, hence no more tea towels.
Cheers, Isobel Johnson
Nick has offered to buy tea-towels for the kitchens if we volunteer to take them home at the weekend to wash them (there are no facilities to wash them here).
I don’t mind doing this once a month (for the upstairs kitchen I use). If you currently use the paper towel and prefer to use tea towels and don’t mind washing them now and again then let me know. (Or if you use the downstairs kitchen and want tea towels and are happy to wash them, also let me know.)
Cheers, Isobel Johnson
I’ve bought some fresh new tea towels for the upstairs kitchen.
Please consider others who might want to use them. Please don’t use them to dry your hands or wipe coffee stains from the inside of your mug. There are blue paper towels for that stuff.
Cheers, Isobel Johnson
One of the tea-towels is missing from the upstairs kitchen. Please can you return it if you have it so that I can take them both home to wash.
Cheers, Isobel Johnson
There are fresh clean tea towels in the upstairs kitchen – I’ve replaced the missing one. I’ve bought these and wash them weekly so please look after them.
Thanks! Isobel Johnson
So a thing that you take for granted; having a tea towel in the kitchen – has lots of “office politics” and requires organisation. Isobel initially managed to get the development manager to buy the replacement towels, but soon became stained then one went missing. Absolute disrespect for those towels.
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.
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:
white
black
brown/mixed/other
Total
men
0
1
2
3
women
3
2
3
8
Total
3
3
5
11
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
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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
Stranger Coding Tings 
