Tag: communication

Annoyed at Autonomy

To illustrate how awkward it is these days to do something simple… we needed to disable a button, but it’s not clear to the user why the button is disabled. I quickly put a tooltip on the control.

I knew we needed approval from the UX team who are responsible for the “User Experience”, so I emailed them.

When our Product Owner was told, she was really annoyed and started moaning that I made a decision behind her back.

A decision hadn’t really been made, I was just exploring one simple option and trying to get things done. There was always the chance that UX wouldn’t agree with it, but it’s given them context and a possible solution.

The Product Owner didn’t like the tooltip at all. I did point out that other areas of the system do disable the button but don’t show a tooltip. So my button is an improvement that we show a tooltip – at least the users know why the button is disabled.

I suppose showing a tooltip for this disabled button is inconsistent UX, but that’s why I emailed the UX team. I know UX Team tend to hate “dynamic” UIs so don’t like things appearing/disappearing. This isn’t something we are removing, but just disabling/enabling.

After the Product Owner contacted UX, they wanted me to basically redo the dialog because other aspects don’t conform to their standards, but all that functionality has been around for years.

The bug/enhancement wasn’t actually reported by our users. It was just a Developer who decided it would be beneficial to change.

Conclusion

When there’s many people in charge of deciding what work needs to get done, and many people in charge of how things get implemented; making any change is a slow process and most things end up getting thrown on the backlog because the effort of implementing anything increases.

OpenJDK

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.

  1. Manimozhi needs Java to run JMeter.
  2. Nandha tells him to install Java.
  3. Manimozhi says he did that previously but got told off by Devops Team because it was unlicensed
  4. Nandha says to use OpenJDK then since that is free
  5. Manimozhi claims it doesn’t work
  6. Nandha thinks he must be confused and tells him again to use OpenJDK
  7. Manimozhi is sceptical
  8. Matt says if it doesn’t work, then don’t use JMeter
  9. 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.
 
Manimozhi
Sure Matt
 
Mukesh
 Java JDK was licensed now recently,

Retention Policy

After we got taken over, we were notified that our parent company has a “Retention Policy”. This is the time when information will be permanently deleted. 

This affected emails, Teams messages, OneDrive files, and SharePoint data.

Emails90 days
Archived Emails3 years
Shared emails3 years
Teams personal chats90 days
Team Channel posts3 years
OneDrive5 years since modified
Sharepoint1-5 years (decided via approval process)

When we were told this, we thought it was ridiculous. How many times has someone needed to dig up an old email to determine why code was written the way it was? How many times have we dug up an old Team chat to know how to fix a random configuration error that suddenly happened?

If they are deleted after 90 days, then we will lose a lot of information.

After raising concerns, we initially got pushback along the lines of “if it’s important, then it should be in a Team Channel or on Sharepoint“.

But even then it can still be deleted after a length of time. 3 years might sound a lot but it soon passes by.

It sounded like there was no warning when information was about to be deleted either. It just disappears silently and there’s nothing you can do about it if you didn’t copy it elsewhere.

There was more pushback when some long-standing employees said they would have to go through 10 years of emails to decide what could potentially be useful and what isn’t. After a lot of pushback, we got the email policy increased to 3 years.

Let’s read the words, the words, the words, of the developer

Introduction

When working with Indian developers, their English skills can vary. You also need to be aware of certain words exclusive to Indian English; some of which I actually like. For example they have the word “prepone” which is the opposite of “postpone”, but in UK English, we don’t seem to have a single word for that.

Some phrases seem more like poor grammar. An example of that is “Can able” or “Can’t able” when we would say “I’m able/unable”.

  • “i think you can able to see the second image is it?”
  • “I can’t able to find any relationship between those two codes” 
  • “still we can’t able to recreate the issue”

“For the same” is an interesting phrase because it just refers to something earlier in the sentence without having much meaning. It’s similar to when they say “do the needful” which just means “do whatever is required” but often doesn’t really add anything to the instruction; if they have requested something from you, then surely you will do it if you can.

There’s a few strange greetings like saying “good noon” which I’d assume is just a shortened version of “good afternoon” rather than being appropriate for a very specific time period. There’s a few people that have a strange greeting of “Ho!”

“Ho!! Is it please can you share those knowledge with me…”

To take time off, they like to “avail”. As a bonus, here’s a strange requests:

Morning Team,
I have picked up fever and heavy cold. Availing AL today.
 Please conduct stand up and end call.
Available over mobile for any urgent issues.
Thanks and Regards,
Jeeva

I’m glad you told me to end the call Jeeva, because I’d have stayed on it all day otherwise.

Indian Pull Requests

When it comes to the Code Review process aka Pull Requests (PRs), it can be hard to ask them why they are making certain changes. Sometimes asking questions can just lead to further confusion. Also, sometimes I’m sure some developers try to blag and hope you move on.

I was discussing this with a Lead Developer and he agreed that asking questions can either result in

  • Blagging
  • Revert the code and hope it works
  • Or you actually get a good answer. But then if it’s not clear why the code was written like that, then maybe it does need a code comment or some documentation so others don’t get confused in future.

Even though I often got frustrated with their comments, in recent times, a lot of them use AI like ChatGPT to rewrite their responses, or sometimes I get the impression they just put your question into the AI and hope it comes out with a good response. So instead of poorly written English, it’s all robotic and a blag of jargon. So you can’t win really.

Row

“Refresh on special while saving special note, row background, Radio button alignment based on include exclude” 

Blagging with Words on PRs

I questioned their pointless try/catch blocks which were catching an exception then rethrowing the exact same type of exception.

“Yes, as I couldnt use the dll in the resourcepicker project, so we can thrown the exception and catched it in resourcepicker class”

And

“The resources can be used due to filecahe, but no changes can be saved, when service is down. The above message is already used in Picker solution.”

Then when their project was being merged into the main branch, another developer questioned the same code. This time they said:

“To restrict that, have drilled up the ux tree and displayed the error message.”

Observation 

“Found an observation while testing 12602 in 9.3.6 branch”

what does that even mean? I assume “observation” means “bug” or “potential problem”.

Bad Refactoring

He refactors some existing codec but also changes the return type of the method, which means the caller’s logic will have to be changed so was causing cascading changes which weren’t really relevant to his main change. Also, the logic didn’t look equivalent so I wouldn’t call it refactoring:, more like introducing a bug. He then claims he hasn’t changed it…

Me: "is this equivalent? It was checking >1 not >=1"
Them: "Actually, I haven't attempted to modify that as the logic written working as per acceptance criteria, and it already tested"
Me: "I don't understand, this method has been changed in this PR"
Them: "Just used expression for methods as commented by Andy. Apart from that i haven't changed any logic around that."

Down Merge

Vignesh
Here after no comments fixed against assurance branch?
Just need information about down merge
 
Andy:
sorry I'm not sure what you mean?
 
Vignesh
Two comments pending for our side... if any one raise PR I will raise PR also. Because of down merge... Incase only I will raise PR again do down merge that's why I am asking

IsMobileEnabled 

IsMobileEnabled needs to return boolean value, so removed exception caused by null and also the GetResources during Trigger prompting needs to include Template also along with Protocols.

Didn’t Launch The Portal

me: “where is this used?”

developer: “This is used at TryLaunchPortal()…. At this point of time we never know the portal type to compare and verify the condition because the user didn’t launch any portal“

walkie talkie comms going on here

This reminds me of walkie-talkies, stating “over” so you know it’s the end of the message.

Roshni 
give line break after method over
 
Shoban
Ok Roshni, Updated the changes
 
Shoban
Completed with the Changes
 
Roshni 
give line break after method over not before the method over
 
Shoban
Thanks Roshni, Got your point. Made Changes
 
Roshni 
and again please remove the empty line no 267
 
Shoban
Code changes completed as mentioned

Welsh 

PR: Updated the Walsh text

Description: Updated the resource file with Walesh text

Do you think the text is gonna be accurate if he can’t get the title correct in English? It should say “Welsh text” as in “the Welsh language”.

Customer

Merge from Curomer first branch to main

Accelerator Keys

To define an accelerator key (allows you to use Alt key to select it), you place an & character before the letter. So Export has E defined. Edit can’t use E because Export has taken it, so they have chosen D. Cancel seemed an odd choice of N.

btnBackup.Text = "&Export";
btnContinue.Text = "E&dit";
btnCancel.Text = "Ca&ncel";
btnBackup.DialogResult = DialogResult.None;


Me
can't C be used as an accelerator key?
 
Kalyanaraman
C for Continue
 
Me
what is the continue button? Isn't this it? btnContinue.Text = "E&dit"; that is using D

SQL is up to 10 times better

yes i have tried with mocked 10 lacks data in local
and while this query the data was well optimized.
For data, I ran sp thrice

I bet you can’t tell if this is from some old children’s folk tale or an Indian’s PR

New Comms Process

I’ve made many blogs about communication. It seems that over time, there can be a new tool that managers start using which then becomes the cool thing to communicate with. Email was always a popular way of sending the information to all. When messaging apps like Microsoft Teams or Slack were available, then these became the cool way, but it involves people subscribing to the channel in the first place. Then we had Social Media style apps, initially “Facebook for Work” and then Yammer which was recently renamed to Viva Engage. Then there’s documentation style websites like Confluence, Sharepoint.

There was one post that made me laugh where a manager highlights the problem of having too many apps which then people have their favourites and have different frequencies checking them. So he points out the absurdity of cross-posting, and wants to fix the problem by carrying on cross-posting, but mainly causing you to divert from one platform to another.

As one colleague hilariously pointed out: 

“I’ve just followed a link posted to Teams to a Yammer post that contains a link to Confluence…”

Here is what the manager announced:

Hey everyone,
You might have noticed, during this quarter, that I have been trying out various different ways to get a message out to the whole department. I've put content on Confluence and Teams, and sent messages by Teams, Slack and Email cascade. The bottom line is, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to getting important info out smoothly.

But this is a problem we can solve. And it's a problem that we must solve: with this many people in the team, it is critical to have a way to announcements and updates out to everyone. So this is how it will work from now on:
You are reading this on Viva Engage. This is a new community set up specifically for long-form comms across the train. If you Follow this community you will get updates of new announcements. But I won't rely on just that - I will also send out notifications on Teams and Slack, with a link to new posts. I will also use Teams and Slack to post short-form updates that do not need a post on Viva Engage. So here is the call to action:
• I will commit that the leadership will use both Teams and Slack to send out department-wide notifications. As long as you look out on one or other of these channels, you will not miss out.
• I ask everyone to do this right now: whichever tool you prefer (Teams or Slack), make sure you have access to the right channel (see screenshot), pin it or star it, and make sure notifications are turned on.
For this first post, I will also send out an email cascade but in future I will drop this step. It's vulnerable to delays and with the other channels set up, we don't need this as well.

For the Viva Engage posts - please "like, share and subscribe"!! Let's make this a conversation
Thanks

Managing The Message

We released a much anticipated feature to our users, and it was going through our roll out process. This means only a group of users got the update, then next month it would go out to more, and so on.

So the initial users were excited to use it, and other users were eager to hear their opinion. As part of the release, there were other changes that went out, and some users were encountering issues with Feature A which had some bug fixes and improvements, and this was unrelated to our Feature B which went out in the same release version. Since both features involved some processing in the background, some users were falsely attributing a problem with Feature A to a problem with Feature B.

They took to Facebook to complain, and even suggested some workarounds that were complete nonsense. It’s basically a placebo effect of making a change and the crash goes away so you falsely conclude it helped when it was mere coincidence.

We are told that we must never respond to users on social media. All posts have to go through official channels that Marketing and Support use.

A developer raised the issue with a group of managers and a liaison from Marketing.

“Are we doing anything to combat this line of thinking that Feature B is causing crashes? This is one of those really fun Facebook threads that has popped up because our company has remained silent on the cause of an issue with Feature A, and the users have clutched at straws to come up with ideas for a fix and pooled them all in one place. One of their suggestions is quite harmful to us because it involves clearing the cache which then requests a large download to our servers. We now have a fix for the main crash they are reporting, so we should make it clear a fix is coming, there is no workaround, and it has no relevance to Feature B.

Concerned developer

I agree that as we’re quite clear on what the cause is (and isn’t) it feels like we should explicitly clarify this and address the incorrect speculation.

Product Owner

As I’m sure you can expect, we have been very close to this for the past four weeks and are working with relevant senior people to agree what messaging we can send out to the market.

Marketing Manager

“close to this for the past four weeks”! Yet have stayed pretty much silent the entire time. Then that resulted in Feature B getting a bad reputation which puts people off using it, and it’s generally damaging to the company that we responded so slowly to address what the users consider a big issue with our software. Marketing have been really bad in recent years, and is a reason why we have lost market share because the opinion from our users has declined.

Innovation shambles

Recently, managers decided that every few months we should have an Innovation Week. The idea is that you can work on ideas that can improve our work processes or even add a new feature to our products. However, the time limit of one week is a bit limited to actually get something complete in my opinion.

To be efficient, we really need to come up with a great list of ideas before the innovation starts, otherwise it cuts into the week. Some people did submit ideas before, and others on the day.

The initial meeting quickly became a bit of a shambles. Paul had created a Miro board under a different account that the attendees didn’t have write permissions for. Even when we clicked the link to request access, and Paul claimed he approved it; it still didn’t work.

He then tried creating a different board, but that didn’t work. To not waste further time, we just posted ideas into the Microsoft Teams chat which then he transferred onto Miro.

Since the ideas were essentially just titles on the board, people were supposed to explain their ideas but I don’t think many explained too well. We probably needed some kind of formal process to:

  1. describe the problem, 
  2. ideas on how to solve,
  3. pros and cons, 
  4. any possible costs like software licences,
  5. prerequisites to be able to investigate or implement the idea.

Another thing was missed is that you have to have accounts to use many of the AI tools, and that was a focus of this month’s innovation. With a lot of software, it often needs a special licence for commercial use and we weren’t advised how to acquire licences. We had Github Copilot and Office Copilot but what about other AI tools?

One guy apologised for misunderstanding that the ideas should be process improvements and he had come up with an idea for our software that our users would use. Paul said he hadn’t misunderstood at all and we could suggest either process improvements or new features… but that’s not what the Miro board said. It was only for process improvements and so all but one idea was for process.

We needed to assign our names to them, so initially Paul tried to create a spreadsheet but couldn’t work out how to share it so we could all edit at the same time. He ended up pasting the ideas into a Microsoft Teams “Whiteboard” which I had never used before but it looked like the Miro boards.

There were loads of ideas, but many were of debatable value. However, like I stated, we never discussed them effectively. Without knowing the pros and cons or prioritised the business value; there were loads of ideas that definitely weren’t strong enough. So with a large list, it was hard to pick something to work on. Some of them would need more than one person, but what guarantee is there that the team will be full? Less likely when the list is so big.

So I asked the question if we should only put our name against 1 item, or vote for several so we can see which teams are full, then the full teams get approved. Paul said to only vote once otherwise it will look like teams are full, but you’d end up dropping out if another one of your votes were successful. I suppose that’s a good point, but only voting once will mean you could be the only person to vote on a team project, so would then have to choose something else anyway, or gamble and go by yourself.

With most people finally assigned (and many just disappearing, presumably to slack off), with many going solo, and some probably having more team members than required; we got told to communicate with our team members.

I was in a team of 3 but I thought the ideal team would just be a pair. I waited for 30 mins or so but the guy that came up with the idea hadn’t contacted me, and you would assume he would take the team leader position.

I then took initiative and added a group chat with my 2 team members, and after another 1.5 hours, I finally got a response from one person who asked how we should begin to plan. I responded with my notes I had created to set the scene. He suggested one extra point to my notes, then didn’t hear from him for the rest of the day. The other team member didn’t respond at all.

The next day, my manager contacted me and said I was assigned to help finish a project that was behind schedule so my “innovating” had come to an end.

Absolute shambles really.

Manger Advice

I had some notes that I think were originally from a Twitter thread.

I think the question was from someone who had been a developer for several years and had just got a new role as a manager, so asked for advice.

One point someone made was that as a developer, you can gain a lot of success via individual contributions. Fixing a bug, delivering a feature, fixing a test environment etc, but as a manager, you are only really successful if your team is. Therefore, the focus is no longer on yourself. It’s about enabling people to work by dealing with impediments, and motivating them.

Another point was to value the 1-on-1 meetings. This builds relationships and trust, and you can learn about emerging problems and concerns. It gives you new perspectives and reminds you of how people are progressing when it comes to performance reviews.

Management goes in 3 directions, and all these directions have their own traits and challenges. Down – take care of your people and ensure they are cared for. Talk to them; lead them. Sideways – be aligned with another manager. Understand what is happening in other teams and how that will affect your team. Collaborate with them. Expand or adopt practices that they are adopting.

Up – you must sell your team’s success and communicate potential problems/challenges… Ensure the boss knows and understands the right things at the right time. Embrace the fact that you must balance these three directions well to make it work.

Although some managers could keep programming, a proper transition means you should be using your expertise to guide.

You are managing people, not Kubernetes pods. People have good days, bad days, birthdays, divorce, death… it’s all part of the “people deal”. You have to have a healthy distance/relationship as, at the end of the day, you must hire/fire/manipulate/lead/promote/demote them. Be humane, but be professional.

Invest in culture and lead by example. Don’t do things that you wouldn’t want to be done to you, and show a positive attitude towards whatever comes. Negative emotions and scepticism can ruin so many beautiful things.

See yourself as the conductor of an orchestra: Realise that, on the night, the instrumentalists can do this without you ONLY if they’ve worked well with you in rehearsals That your place is not to make the best sound from one instrument, but to bring the best out of all the players cohesively.

Communication Breakdown

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:

http://www.nohello.com/

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?

A shambles as always.

Auto Captions

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