Can I have o365?

We recently had a bug in our software that only occurred with users that were using Microsoft Office – o365. I couldn’t recreate it with my Office 2016, so I logged a ticket with IT to acquire a licence so I could test it out. As a software developer, once recreated, I can fix the issue or pass it on to Microsoft if it is their fault.

Some users are having problems with the Email functionality. It sounds like these users are using the o365 desktop apps. In order to attempt to recreate this issue, is it possible to get a temporary licence for the o365 desktop app for Outlook?
Me

Not understanding this request.
You currently have an E1 licence and Office Standard 2016 should have been installed on your machine as standard during the configuration process.
Are you able to test with that?
IT

It works fine for my Office 2016. These users have the desktop apps for o365, and we don’t have this version to investigate if this version is problematic.
Me

Would you be able to provide a list of users that are currently having this issue?
IT

No, these are our customers.
Me

(I knew he wouldn’t care about people’s details because obviously IT only deals with our staff. I could sense this response coming…)

We only support and manage the software for internal users.
If customers of the business are having issues, it would be up to Support to identify the issue and then find out what version of the software the customer is using.
We have the installers for versions from 2010 to 2016, so if Support or yourself find out which version is required, we can probably work out a way to install and activate this if the situation required it.
IT

DOES THIS GUY EVEN READ. I WANT o365

Users have complained to Support. Support have logged the bug and it’s come to Development for investigation. I’ve picked it up. I’m logging a ticket for myself because I need it to recreate the issue. Then I can fix the issue for our users. I don’t get why it’s so difficult for IT to understand. I think he was just trolling.

I eventually asked my line manager to get involved, and suddenly, IT fully understood the situation. The licence was promptly assigned. It’s strange how fast work gets done when people with authority get involved.

The Becky Special

Becky has worked at the company for several years as a Senior Software Tester. She occasionally does stupid things so I’ve written a few blogs about her. To be honest, she isn’t that bad when it comes to manual testing, but she isn’t technical at all; which then leads to funny mishaps.

I think she does try hard to get involved, but often has a hard time grasping even simple concepts. She seems to forget things too. There’s a few occasions where she has asked a question and stated “I’ve never come across this before”. Yet, if I search Slack, I can find the last time she asked it 3-6 months ago.

Here’s a collection of smaller stories that weren’t interesting for a full-length blog.

Interruptions

One thing that Becky likes doing is acting like she agrees with people. She often does it in an incredibly rude way.

For example, Mick was giving a detailed explanation, and while he was talking, Becky was like “yeah… yeah… yeah, yeah… yeah”. What made it even more funny is when Mick finally finished, she went “ooooh” as if she was surprised.

On a casual/non-work chat, James was informing the team on Best By vs Use By dates shown on food.

James: “Best before means..“

Becky (loudly): “Yeah! Yeah!“

Then, because James got interrupted, someone else diverted the conversation. I knew roughly what he was going to say, but other people on the call may not have, and could have found it really interesting.

I get really frustrated when I am trying to explain how to recreate a bug, or the impact of it – so she really needs to understand in order to do her job – and she is talking over me with her “yeah, yeah, yeahs”. I don’t believe she can take the information in when she is constantly saying “yeah” while you are still talking.

Profiler

Becky found a client-side issue and I was trying to investigate the code to try to understand what was happening. After a while, Becky comes up with an idea:

Becky: “shall we use the profiler?“

Me: “what sort of profiler?“

Becky: “oh, I dunno! I was thinking SQL Profiler“

Me: “It’s nothing to do with SQL“

Becky: “ah right, yeah“

I was really perplexed when she suggested using a profiler. I thought she was going to suggest something amazing like an advanced debugging tool, but no, she was just saying some words and hoping for the best.

Wrong Server

“Some help if possible…I cannot connect to the Application server within SQL Management Studio, but I can remote to it with no problem. I can however connect to the Database Server using my windows login through SQL Management Studio. Does the App server require admin credentials? TIA”
Becky

No, it doesn’t need special credentials, the problem is that Application servers don’t contain databases. A Database Server can be connected through SQL Management because it has databases. It’s in the name, really.

Any server can be connected using Remote Desktop Connection. SQL Management Studio requires Databases.

Criticising Becky

I’ve had a few calls with different colleagues recently, and instead of giving me a standard greeting and then start discussing the topic at hand…they start the conversation with a rant about Becky.

They have been helping her prior to my call. Their statements have been similar to “god, she is such hard work”, and “I have repeatedly told her what to do, but she didn’t understand – so I ended up doing it myself.”

There was one exact quote I wrote down. I thought it was hilarious.

“It’s difficult to come to terms with how useless she really is”

The Fabulous Holiday

Becky: “did you enjoy your holiday yesterday?“

Alison: “Actually, it was sick leave“

Becky: “Fabulous“

I was convinced that Becky didn’t listen to her response.

Are You Aware?

Becky added me to a group chat with a few people. She asked

“Are you aware of this issue?”

There was no previous context, and the chat didn’t have a title, so all I had to go on was her question.

I respond with a “shrug” emoji because I have literally no idea what she is referring to. After a few minutes, she hadn’t responded, so I thought I’d make it clear just in case she didn’t come to the realisation that she hadn’t sent a bug number or description. So I said

“I assume you are referring to a recent meeting you assume I was in, or have added me to a group conversation and assumed I can see the previous chat history”

So she responds

“Sorry, I thought you were aware”

I facepalm, then headbutt the desk.

Box Ticking

When we have a version of our software to release, the “patches” get stored on a server. However, the server was full which was preventing the new release from being created. This was scheduled to be signed off that evening, ready to be pushed to production tomorrow. We have a tool that can view the list of patches, and you can easily delete old versions you don’t care about. Just tick the checkboxes and click the “deprecate” button.

A few hours after I was aware of the issue, a Manager requested help. We point out that someone just needs to tick some boxes and click a button. He then posts an angry response.

“If all that needs to happen is ticking a box and clicking “deprecate”, I’m really struggling to understand why we’ve been totally blocked since this morning? 7 hours of time was absolutely wasted. Now I have to go and somehow explain this to the Senior Management why we are not signing off tomorrow!?
Angry Manager

I see this as a rhetorical statement, because obviously, he is really angry. However, Becky chimes in with:

“you have to make sure you tick the correct boxes.”
Becky

I was in tears. Absolute hilarity.

General Update For The Last Few Weeks

I haven’t written a blog in a while but I do have pages of ideas that I need to flesh out. Some of them I could probably finish if I dedicated some time to them, whereas others need some more ideas to make them interesting. I’ve got various code samples and funny quotes too.

So let’s discuss what has happened over the last few weeks in the crazy world of software engineering.

In our new team structures, we were told that the teams could be quite flexible so people would move teams frequently, which really goes against what makes a successful team. Surely you can’t have much team cohesion when staff are constantly being reassigned. We were also told that each team would have a Tech Lead who would be permanent (which I was). However, a few weeks later, another Senior joined and was instantly assigned the Tech Lead, then a few weeks later, I then moved teams. So maybe the Tech Leads don’t move teams, but can be demoted – then moved!

Recently, all the changes that have happened seem random and we don’t get an explanation of manager’s decisions. However, the person that I replaced in my new team specifically asked to move teams. The thing is, he has reasons why he didn’t like this team and moving me into it isn’t going to change things. He mentioned that there’s 2 people that often argue, there’s a lack of developers, and the developers they do have often tried to get him to do their work.

I mentioned in Mentoring #5 that I wasn’t working with my Apprentice anymore, but now I am. This is one reason why there’s a lack of developers because he isn’t at a level to do proper work.

After a few days in the team, I was invited to their “Retrospective” meeting. I looked through their notes for their previous meetings and they had previously discussed the amount of turnover in their teams, so I brought it back up for discussion. A week later, the Product Owner switched teams.

I think the 2 people that often argue was the Product Owner and the Senior Tester, so maybe that issue has been resolved now.

I keep being asked to do everything. We seem to have loads of projects planned but I don’t see how we can do them given we don’t have enough developers and can’t do multiple projects at once. I end up attending meetings, then am asked to try to estimate the size, then have to fix urgent bugs, help people with various stuff, and do code reviews.

One day, I think 3 hours went by before I even started thinking about writing some code. I said to my Apprentice that I just don’t have time to start proper work. He said he hadn’t done anything either because after the Daily Standup meeting, he decided he wanted a second breakfast! I really don’t get it. I told him stories of developers like Derek that took so many breaks, he only worked 4 hours when he was supposed to work 7.5, and my Apprentice seems to be going down that path. He ends up starting late because he sleeps in, he likes an hour lunch because he likes eating, then finishes early because he needs to pick up his kid from school, but then can’t work because he has to look after his kid. So he probably works 4 or 4.5 hours. I’ve mentioned in previous blogs that I understand people have personal circumstances and it’s possible you could be very efficient and get your work done in half the time – so it’s not really a problem if you literally work half the time you are paid for. But in this case, I see nothing from him.

Major Incident With Comms

that awkward moment when there is a Major Incident, but there is also an Major Incident with the Comms system

When there is a Major Incident with our software, we send out emails to the affected customers. However, our Mailing provider, Mail Chimp had blocked our account without warning – apparently we were now violating their terms of service.

Since we couldn’t send out these emails regarding a Major Incident, we then declared a Major Incident.

Software Developer Wages

In my recent Promotion Special blog, I discussed how I was underpaid by my employer and I am going to end up with £12k extra for doing exactly the same job as before.

When I have looked at Job Adverts for developer roles of my level of experience, it seems I could possibly get an extra £5k-10k if I went elsewhere (~£50k). However most of these adverts seem to imply I would need to learn a few more programming languages and could have extra responsibilities like line management, or dealing with Senior Managers, possibly even relocate. It’s not worth it.

My first job out of uni was £18k and that was a hybrid role of Tech Support and Junior Software Engineer – I additionally spent a fortune in travel costs (I think it was like £80 per week). Last year, we hired loads of Apprentices so I thought they could be on about £18k, but when I stated that to my Apprentice, he said it was £23k. I couldn’t believe it. That was my salary when I was about 25 and I had to work hard for that. These youths have it easy these days.

The thing is, we got these Apprentices via a Bootcamp company so we pay the Bootcamp a premium too for commission. It’s bizarre, because we are well known to be cheap, so why are we paying a 3rd party, and giving a high salary to unskilled developers. Mental.

Quite often when you watch Youtube videos or read blogs, Americans often come up with salaries like $100k+. I think there was one video that said a Google salary was $230k – mental). I guess you need to take into account what a dollar means over there – ie cost of living; but these figures do sound crazy. You can look at jobs in London, England and you can easily see £60k-100k, or sometimes even more if you know an obscure language where the “supply” of developers is limited so you can demand a premium.

These wages can be misleading though. I have a friend that is a Senior Software Developer and his partner is a Lawyer. I went to stay at their house in Bermondsey, central London, and expected he was living the high-life, but he lived in a rough-looking area in an apartment block. It was cramped and looked quite dark and drab. I don’t remember the exact figure, but he said it cost something like £1600 per month in rent alone.

Recently at work, we had a casual chat and talked about wages. One Tester sounded a bit outraged at the wages we pay and she said “Testers should be paid as much as developers”. I strongly disagree with this. I think Manual Testers really could earn £30,000 max. I used to be a Tester and for the most part, I see it as low skilled. Maybe the best testers like myself (arrogant) use better analytical skills, and can read the code and understand how to possibly find gaps and therefore find the most bugs. However, most Testers I work with don’t really think and they just do what you tell them. So it mainly involves mindlessly clicking buttons in the UI.

Anyway, this outraged Tester then stated she didn’t mind disclosing her salary and she gets paid £40,500 for a Senior Tester – which is going to be higher than many developers! Senior Developer wages start at £39,000 where I work, and I was under the impression that Senior Testers were more like £32k. How she managed to wrangle that wage is anyone’s guess. Why she thinks she deserves more is even more baffling.

Department Update – Interview With Colin

We had a department update where the Head of Development, Head of Programme Management and other senior managers were doing presentations on aspects that are happening in the department.

I was well shocked when the Head of Development said he had a special guest, and the next section is Interview With Colin. He was being interviewed about the performance updates and the important bug fixes his team was doing.

The thing is, his team has one of the best developers, David, and David had done ~90% of the work. Colin’s work was minimal and the work he had done didn’t work at all, until other developers had helped him.

Yet there he was, taking the credit for the work by doing this important-looking interview. The annoying thing is, when the Head of Development asked if he wanted to give any “shout-outs” he named several people, but didn’t name David.

There was even one improvement that was hyped up, but that was the first time I had heard about it. So I asked David when that was implemented. He said it was done by a different team, but Colin was basically claiming credit for leading it.

I don’t know how Colin has wormed his way to such status, but he seems to be held in high-regard by management.

The Changes #2: Demotions

Recently, we have a new CTO and a new Head Of Development. Like all new managers with power, they want to make their own changes.

In The Changes #1, I explained changes to job titles of Testers. Some Developers are also affected.

Currently, the hierarchy is basically Junior, Developer, Senior, Principal, Architect. With the new changes, we planned on removing the Principals so they will become Senior.

When I think about it, there aren’t that many Principals, and their job is really the same responsibilities of a Senior. To be honest, there isn’t actually any difference in responsibility between the standard Developer role as well.

I actually like these titles though. If implemented correctly, it gives you a clear indication of people’s skill level. With the new titles, if managers created 2 teams consisting of 1 Senior, 3 Developers and a Junior in a team. If one team’s Senior is a standard Senior, and the other team’s Senior is the former Principal, then this second team has a massive advantage because they have a leader that is at a significant skill level. I know it’s not a competition, but developers will want to be in successful teams.

With job titles, if you manage to persuade a promotion, then your wage should jump up to that band. If you remove the level, then it puts the power towards the employer to suppress your wages. It’s much harder to justify an increase if you don’t accept more responsibility (or have a title that implies responsibility, even if there actually is none).

I can’t speak for everyone, but a better job title is a massive motivator for me. I have been suffering low motivation for a while because my team members see me as a Senior but I have just had the Developer title. It hasn’t happened many times, but there’s definitely been a few occasions where I felt people haven’t accepted my idea because someone with a Senior job title suggested something else – so they automatically sided with them. So I think you automatically gain respect among certain colleagues.

If I had earned a fancy job title and my employer took that away from me, I would be very angry. If it took people a long time to gain that title, it would be devastating. I guess that means that Colin should have moved back down to Senior which is a much more appropriate job title for him.

However, after about a week, this idea was silently squashed. I found out because I asked a Principal Developer what he thought of the demotion, and he said it wasn’t happening due to the amount of negative feedback the managers received.

The thing is though, surely anyone with common sense would know that people weren’t going to react positively. If the managers were willing to back down that quickly, then how did the idea even get to the stage where managers agreed to announce it to the department?

Crying At Work

I saw this statement posted online by a software developer (I won’t name them as to not call them out directly, although you could probably find it if you searched hard enough) and thought it was rather odd:

“Crying at work is normal and it happens to everyone”
Sad developer

As expected, people responded, telling her this isn’t normal. I would have thought it would be due to

Toxic working environment
Bad/bullying managers (maybe ties into point A)
Personal issues; not work related
Maybe hypersensitive person

The thing is, if the job is that bad that it makes you cry, then you probably need to leave. Personal issues are understandable to cry, and it can easily happen in work-hours, but then it’s not “normal”; as in an everyday occurrence. If it’s a personality trait of such an individual to easily cry, then again, it is not “normal” because the average person wouldn’t react that way.

I asked one of my colleagues what he thought about it:

“if your work makes you cry, that’s quite a clear indication you should move on”
colleague

So he has the same line of thinking as me.

The original poster tries to clarify, ruling out that it’s a problem with the company culture or particular members of staff.

“If your job is making you feel upset or unsafe, that’s a different problem. But I often feel overwhelmed with coding and cry it out.”
Sad developer

This makes me think it is more related to point D, or maybe there’s not enough team support. If it gets to the point where you have been defeated, there should be other developers that can help you solve the problem.

She then posts a response to all the people that are still telling her it isn’t normal:

All the people saying “this isn’t normal, you shouldn’t cry at work“: there was the pandemic, many people are isolated and struggling. If I want to cry at work, I will. To anyone who thinks otherwise, I wouldn’t want to work with someone of that mentality.
Sad developer

For me, this ties into the personal issue scenario. This one is understandable but it’s not really work related. I’d say that can be partially solved by supporting team members and managers.

The thing is, I thought they were backpedalling a bit here, and rather than retracting the word “normal”, they were still trying to justify their statement. Additionally, the theme did sound familiar, and I did some more searching to see if I could find a previous quote from them. I was correct, I had read this before. This was from a time people worked in the office:

“I wish I could go back 5 years and tell myself that there would come a day when I wouldn’t cry at work each week and I would feel confident in my programming skills. It takes a long time but at some point you’ll realize how far you’ve come.”
Sad developer

Each…week. Damn.

So they were definitely trying their best to justify their statement rather than retracting it. It wasn’t about the pandemic at all, they just cry when their code doesn’t work, but they won’t accept that it’s not a normal reaction.

I think telling people it is normal is bad advice. I’m still going to stick with my opinion that it’s either a terrible place to work, or you have issues. Advising people to not leave the toxic job, or to not seek help for whatever problems they have – is definitely bad advice.

However, to play devil’s advocate and argue with myself, I did a quick Google search and found a few articles that quote the job site Monster who (apparently) performed a survey with 3,000 respondents. Apparently 8 out of 10 people have cried at work. Of those:

45% stated it was because of their bosses or co-workers.
19% stated personal, non-work issues.
15% stated workload,
13% said they were upset over workplace bullying.
I assume 8% were other reasons.

Note I stressed the word “apparently”. Weirdly, all of the articles I found didn’t link to Monster, and I searched Monster’s website and also tried to use Google to find the source. I saw evidence of a survey for that time, but no statistics on crying. There’s also an article about crying, but then it links to one of the news articles I found! Why would Monster quote a news article that says Monster did the survey when they could just quote themselves.

So what are we concluding? I’m one of the emotionless 20%, or crying isn’t normal and there’s some weird conspiracy.

Skype Isn’t Outlook

Our software has some integration with Microsoft Word and Outlook. I needed to test compatibility with the Word and Outlook desktop apps for Office 365. I posted on Slack to ask if anyone in the department had access. We all have o365 online access but not the licence to the desktop apps. However, I knew some software Testers had done a project to do with Office integration, so thought they may have it.

A Tester, Rob messages me, stating that if I go to office.com, there should be a download link for the apps. I told him I had already clicked it and only have Skype for Business.

He said he had options for all the apps. So I told him to install Outlook. A few minutes later, he says:

“When I click install, it takes me to a screen and only shows ‘install Skype’, but then complains I already have a version of it. I’ll try the 32 bit version instead”.

So let’s reiterate this situation. I have told him to install Outlook. He has seen a box labelled “Skype for Business”, has clicked a button labelled “Install Skype”, a message box has told him he already has Skype installed…then I have to tell him that it’s not what I want. Only at that point does he realise he has exactly the same licence as me.

I don’t understand why we seem to have so many people working in a technology company that struggle with basic concepts. I don’t see how Microsoft could make that webpage clearer that the section is for Skype; it says Skype 3 times, then the installer says Skype.

Absolute wind-up.

The PS4 controller

Years ago, my team was in a meeting room and the presenter was struggling to get his laptop connected to the TV display. There’s normally a HD cable on the desk which goes under the carpet and into the TV. Although there’s often multiple cables, some go to other devices like the projector.

There was also a Playstation 4 next to the TV. I don’t think anyone actually ever played it since it was in a meeting room, but I think it was added because another one of our offices had a “breakout” room with a PS4, and someone complained about how unfair it was.

There were a few technical people trying to decipher the problem, then a manager (who often seemed a bit clueless) picked up a PS4 controller and started pressing buttons whilst declaring “is this doing anything?”.

I think the situation was so absurd that it then became unfunny. That situation should have caused me to howl in laughter, but instead, I actually felt concerned…

Why would pressing buttons on a PS4 controller help connect a laptop to a TV?

A similar situation happened with another old and clueless member of staff called Ron. Ron wanted to dial Steve in on the standup, so he was supposed to open Skype For Business. However, he went to Google Chrome and randomly clicked one of the shortcuts on the bookmark toolbar, and was like “where is it?” and Paul was like “wut? you need to click the Start button and open the application”.

It’s strange when you work in the Tech Industry and some colleagues aren’t comfortable using hardware and software.