This is what hostile software looks like. When you dominate a space, the choices you give to your users are: "Yes" or "OK". Choose wisely.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45559023

Since it's a coding error, let's run git blame and see what comes out.

Being on the receiving end is never fun. For my case, after I was reinstated, I left shortly after. It was never the same with my colleagues.

I bought a OnePlus 3 when it was the cool underdog phone for $450. That was 6 years ago. After 5.5 years the battery started draining faster than usual so I replaced it. The only reason I had to switch phones was because my children chewed and drooled all over it, destroying the volume buttons.

With such a solid phone, I went back to oneplus to get the latest and greatest. So much has changed in this time spam. In their latest phone, they don't even have the alert slider. I reluctantly got the 9 pro.

Longer version: https://idiallo.com/blog/oneplus3-6-years-later

I still have my OnePlus 3T, my first Android (coming from Windows Phone, RIP). Running Lineage and microg, although all but only a couple of apps are from F-Droid. I haven't seen any need to upgrade yet

My favorite Bullshit Job was my very own. There was an employee that was hired only because, well I couldn't say No during the interview.

He had nothing to do so they turned him into a human website health checker. He had a page with dozens of iframes of all our websites. He would spend the day refreshing the page, reloading the iframes in intervals. If any failed to load he would report them.

Not knowing what the page was for, i was asked to automate refreshing each iframe after an interval. This meant, he wouldn't have to click the reload button anymore. Just sit and wait until a website failed. I thought his job was bullshit. Until, I realized that I had just automated a bullshit job.

Longer version: https://idiallo.com/blog/the-40-million-dollar-job

This reminds me of a job that I had almost a decade ago. Arguably, it's less bullshit than the one you describe, but I think it's close. At the time, it wasn't that uncommon of a job in the animation industry.

The company was a medium-sized animation studio that at the time was doing cut-scenes for a AAA game. My job was to literally stare at a screen with a list of jobs and available computers in the "render farm" and, if any of them turned red or stopped responding, to walk downstairs and press the reset button on the corresponding box. I'd say 80% of my days were just staring at that screen. It felt like the stupidest job ever, even though there was some utility to it, but I was too inexperienced at coding at the time to automate my job.

To kill the boredom, I learned some Python and wrote a Hangman game. That's when I realized I was better off becoming a software engineer and started the career that I have now.

It apparently was useful to someone. It is only BS insofar it can be automated easily.

I had done a similar one, just without the images. My intention was to add a blurb for each of the books, but friction is the enemy of reading.

https://idiallo.com/library

"My name is Ibrahim" -> "My name is Abraham"

This is exactly what happens when I tell people my name in the US. At least, now I know that Americans are deca-lingual.

Above the fold is all ads.

Yeah it's a custom google search, so they're native google ads. Unfortunately we can't get around it.

That's fun. I actually used a similar method to build this page[1]. (see page source). I used script tags for the content.

[1]: https://idiallo.com/nobot.php

Edit: All HTML tags are a CSS rule away to becoming visible.

Update: I've built this page many years ago, and one of the issues was that I couldn't nest script tags. The reason is everything inside the script tag is considered plain text. So having a hyperlink inside a paragraph was impossible.

However, I just found out that you can create nested elements in the script tags if via javascript. So something like script1.appendChild(script2) works and renders correctly. The Possibilities!!!

I used to work for a company that automated customer service. While we were trialing with new a client, our ai service responded to a customer: "Hey B**, thanks for reaching out."

To our surprise, the end user did not feel offended at all. In fact, they were happy because we responded instantly instead of the usual 24 to 48 hours.

[Story]: https://idiallo.com/blog/do-you-make-your-customers-wait

The word is bitch so the sanitised version would be B**

Why portray the bad word as 3 letters - it doesn't make sense.

Ha, the same thing probably happened to GP as has happened to you - unescaped * characters (escape with `\`) resulting in two imperceptibly italic asterisks.

you are 100% correct!

This sounds great in theory. Up until my last job, this is the philosophy I lived by. When I leave, I want that the only thing they miss is my personality. But it is never the case.

When you announce you are leaving, you turn from employee to liability. Especially when your departure comes as a surprise. I always felt the need to document everything, interview prospective replacement, even extend my notice to three weeks. But many times I see all my efforts thrown out the window the second I leave. It's not that what I leave behind is not valuable, it becomes the work of a quitter.

Once my position was replaced by an intern, another time my position had been completely eliminated.

When I leave again, I'll give good smiles and nod politely until my two weeks notice expire and I'll move on.

Edit: Also a great reminder, when your employer wants you to leave, you usually have to clear your desk immediately.