Boop? 😂 Is your first name Boop?

Really? The closest thing in the US -- at all -- is from the 60s? Why do you suppose that is?

Trump would be impeached

Let’s assume that happens. What would that do, exactly? Can you think of any precedent where something like that has happened before? What was the net effect?

“They’re never going to call a train to take us to the bad place. They can’t. Because we’re already here. This is the bad place.”

the developers of WeChat […] have modified the Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.3 protocol, creating a version called MMTLS.

Man in the Middle TLS

When a former employer sent me on business trips, the bean counters would complain that my descriptions for the purpose of meals on my expenses were not descriptive enough, as if the purpose of eating was not obvious. I ended up writing something like “nourishment to remain alive while traveling for XYZ project” out of frustration after that. That did the trick and shut them up. I suppose it was hard to argue that description, because if they disputed it, they’d basically be admitting they were sending me away because they wanted me to die.

Because wherever you go, there you are.

attend a service

Then they won, didn’t they.

I grew up in a city of 1M, moved to a city of 100K, moved to a town of 7K, and then back to the city of 100K at my wife’s behest. I was happiest in the town, because it was uncrowded and affordable.

she explains that life in the city isn’t all that great and I ain’t missing out because most people aren’t more social in cities than in our town or small city next to our town.

Your wife is completely right, in my opinion. Quite frankly, it comes down to what you make of it. If you don’t make the effort to make friends, it doesn’t matter where you are, you are going to be lonely. The bigger the city, there is going to be a better opportunity to meet people of your type, sure, but the odds of getting together regularly, let alone finding them, are slim because everyone is busy working to afford where they are.

it would be awesome to have a gym in the same block, a grocery store under my flat, a nice bar or coffee around the corner where I could socialize with others. But then my wife comes again with reality: "And it all costs money.

You are right, it would be awesome. And your wife is right, that setup is expensive AF. The people living that life are trust fund beneficiaries. But you should know the coffee shop is just a whirlwind of all the other people getting in, getting their morning stimulant, and getting out to get to their job to afford it all.

The time to have the city experience that you are wishing for was more than 30 to 40 years ago, when houses were affordable, and there was more free time, so you could afford to get together, and the odds of other people being available was greater again, because they could afford it too.

Your fomo is not just for another place, but for a bygone era.

There are many things I also don’t like about the city, for example sometimes the smell, the homeless, the traffic, and I sometimes think I’d still need a car because of groceries, visiting family in the country side where I live now so I couldn’t sell my car anyways.

Please believe me that this is the reality of city life today. I’m so glad you notice it. All of it is wearing.

I visit the city to go shopping for clothes or just eat out I am always glad I can leave again. […] I was always happy leaving the city and I still am happy when I can leave after a whole day in the city

IMO, you are getting a taste of the wear.

I feel like I [am not allowed an] opinion on this subject and this makes me crazy.

This is really where the problem lies I think. You have a dream you can’t shake, but all external signs are pointing to it not being a good one.

Can I give you some perspective from your wife’s side? My wife is a bit like you, trying to move to a bigger center for dream reasons.

It drives me crazy when she talks about moving to a bigger center that is unaffordable, and is not what it is cracked up to be. She even knows it, but still insists. Her dreams are not founded in the reality of our times, but that’s just my opinion. And it is wearing to have the same conversation about it over and over.

From one married guy to another, if your sex life, home life, and job life is otherwise good, for the love of god, try to invest in inventing something social where you are already at, to fill that missing piece. The city is a shitty, expensive, noisy place now. If your relationship with your wife is good, and you trust your wife, just believe her, she has your best intentions at heart. If you have all of that, and live away from it all, man, I envy you deeply.

Sorry to hear that. My ex was neglected in a bunch of ways as a child, and both her parents are narcissists. She may never fully heal from that, but she is better now than when we were together, she took the time to focus on herself better. That said, I’d never go back to her in a million years, I will never be able to be the person she needs. I can see the person she was supposed to be, she can too, but there’s nothing I can do, the damage was done before I even met her.

Don’t feel pressured to reply, reply more, nor even at all if you aren’t feeling it. I understand, and you owe no obligations. If I got you amped up, I apologize. If I didn’t, don’t worry that I apologized. Just chill and take it easy. You take care of you, one step at a time.

Don’t let your RSD get to you in this post. Convince yourself I wrote this for another person.

Bro, you are in a bad way, and I’m going to talk to you like no therapist ever would, because they have certain obligations and will dance around things until you finally get it on your own while they waste years of your life waiting for you to do so. I have ADHD and was in a relationship with a person with undiagnosed (at the time) BPD, which was no picnic, and some of your writings give me flashbacks.

I will be blunt with you, because I wish someone had been blunt with me and gave me direct advice. Get out, the relationship is not worth it, and the really unfortunate thing is that you can only really comprehend this properly once you are out.

If I could give you a gift, it would be to advance your life 15 years into the future when you are well out of this relationship – the moment you finally snapped you were so fed up and realized there was more to life is all but a distant memory – so that you finally have some perspective and relief. Your future self is glad that’s all in the past, and that you are finally safe and free of the toxicity you were living in.

Most of the time, it’s good.

I wish you knew how truly miserable this phrase is. You think you know, but you don’t, I can tell from how you defend things. I used to tell myself that same thing.

Our fucked up brains are just great at causing unintentional harm from time to time.

Stop trying to justify it. That’s what I did. I can tell you this is a bad defense. Things are much better with a partner without a fucked up brain, or at least a lesser one. I’d bet money that you’d find your brain less fucked up without hers around. Just because you are both fucked up doesn’t mean you can help each other, it makes it worse. Just because you are both fucked up, doesn’t mean you deserve each other or are right for each other even with therapy.

Our increasing [ability] to better express ourselves […] amplifies our ability to hurt one another

Isn’t that telling you something?

I’m madly in love with her and she with me

Yes, and? So what? This can be true even while she is still hurting you and you are miserable. People think this is mutually exclusive, but it isn’t. “I’m madly in love with her and she with me” what does this even matter if you are miserable?

She […] regrets [things] deeply. There was a lot of good that came out of our previous attempt at couples therapy and she’s made concrete changes, in addition to apologies.

That’s nice and all, but what good is this if you are still getting hurt and are miserable?

You have been patient, more than patient. You think there is an end in sight to your misery while remaining in this relationship, but it’s an illusion.

In my opinion, you’ve been strung along enough. You’ve given it way more than enough time for you to be happy, it’s time to try something new, something different, free of the encumbrances of this relationship. It’s probably scary to you. I know it was for me. But damn if it isn’t eye opening to be in a relationship where you aren’t being made miserable, your partner genuinely cares about you, and the physicality is a match. It’s exciting, refreshing, freeing. You can start fresh and put all that you’ve learned to use with someone who genuinely makes you happy, and you do the same for them. Things can get better.

The wrong way. *flip* The wrong way. *flip* The right way.

Fuck’s sake.

Exactly

Same old, same old

Translation: still stuck in some horrible cycle

Tell me you are too oblivious to implement CI/CD without telling me you’re too oblivious to to implement CI/CD. Their builds and packaging should have been fully automated if it was such a pain. If you can make a Mac version of any software, you can make a Linux version. The debate internally was likely management being dumb as rocks and overruling anyone who actually knows anything.

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“Do you have any bovine lactations?”

Before you take the advice of anyone here, try to find out how long they have been in the business, because I think that’s going to change the kind of feedback you get. I’ve been doing this for over 20 years, and I’ve worked in all kinds of places, from small business, to large, to government, as an employee and consultant. Not bragging, just providing a reference point.

Your concerns and situation are ones I have experienced myself. You are not alone. I’ll give you advice I wish I could have given myself decades ago.

unsure if I was good enough

Every programmer starting out has this feeling generally. Please don’t take this as dismissive. I actually take this as an indicator of someone who will succeed at becoming a good programmer. The brazen ones who do not introspect and understand their inabilities are doomed to flounder perhaps forever.

I feel like I flip between I am a god and can code anything and omg I know nothing show me the nearest bridge.

In my experience this feeling can last for decades, probably forever, but as you gain more experience and hours of working on code, the bridge diminishes. If this doesn’t make you feel better, you’ll just have to take my word for it… it does get better and you will be happier over time. As you get more experience, you will be able to better estimate things, so you can know when something is way too big to go alone, or without more resources/support, or without more budget, and how to say so/no in those cases.

It took me a while to realize, that if something doesn’t work out the way you planned it, it’s not all on you, the business and how it functions (or not) has more to do with it than anything. Small businesses are, frankly, generally more stupid. It can be the blind leading the blind, so what hell were you gonna do anyway. They didn’t want to pay for a super team with mentors, so they get what they get, and that’s not on you. I’ve found that most of the time in business, failure happens and shit just moves on, because there are other fish to fry and fires to deal with. What you think matters, as an introspective person, hardly crosses the mind of business folk.

boot camps [said, in] your first role you would get lots of support

You have to keep in mind the source of these boot camps and what they are for. They are funded by silicon valley so that they can get as many (hopefully talented) bodies in the door as possible, to keep costs down. More supply, lower costs. As such, they are aimed at people who will work for those companies, and those companies are desperate (depending on the market I suppose), so they will definitely have support in order to retain folks.

I work for a small company < 10. I don’t feel I get the support I expected.

Speaking from experience, being a developer at a small company is generally fucking garbage, for some of the reasons you and I have touched on. They have anti developer and anti productivity practices, and they don’t care to improve. They generally don’t know what they don’t know. Depending on the place though, this can be an advantage: they don’t know enough to know that “you suck” (you don’t suck, by the way). They can also be desperate to hang on to anyone dumb enough to keep working for them (no offense. You are not a dummy, circumstances are just not in your favor yet).

the spec is kept in the […] (owners) head

Aha, yeah there’s your problem. The owner is a developer running this shit show, and I guarantee they’ve never run their development the way the software development industry would. They should know better than to run things this way; if you can’t have the fundamentals of your business shared with the team that are trying to make it a success, how could you ever hope to make it work? Some places hobble on in spite of this, but they will only have the fraction of the success they could have had if only they’d had a person with genuine vision (or smarts enough to hire that person) at the helm.

[when given a task I get no timeframe]. [the task is given verbally]. [confusing to understand their vision].

If you had worked at a big silicon valley place first, you’d have first hand experience with agile/scrum, and how it works to solve all of these common issues. This is not a criticism of you, I’m saying working at a place that has agile/scrum should be your next pursuit.

In A/S, tasks are written down in tickets, estimated, and prioritized. Effort and vision are made clear before the work starts, written on the ticket so everyone is clear on it and about the deliverables. If it’s too much effort, the ticket can be split into manageable chunks. It vastly reduces the people problems that come with managing development work by turning it into a process that can be refined according to how the team works, instead of a negotiation with a lead maniac.

By not doing/knowing about this kind of practice, your business is at risk from competitors who implement this correctly, are therefore more efficient, and will naturally out compete you. Not your problem though.

If wrong I’m not called out and they will spend a little more time going over what they want.

Good. As much as I am shitting on them, they are at least reasonable seeming.

The boss is always so busy that sometimes you feel like a burden asking for pointers.

That’s on them, and that’s business life. Honestly, IMO they need to get some of their shit together, but that’s not your place to advise or worry about. Also, they probably knew they were getting a greener guy, so they’d be expecting questions. There’s a balance between knowing when to ask, and just trying stuff, and newer people should bias towards asking, IMO. Your leader may feel differently, it seems like they’re reasonable enough you could just ask.

the newest will start as a copy of the last one

Having done this myself before, this is the path to hell, in my opinion. It can work, but it’s a shortcut and in my experience it’s a maintenance nightmare. This is not the practice of a company with vision, it’s a company that’s just chugging along for now. If you had the vision to be acquired one day, you wouldn’t do this. There should really be a core code base that all instances share, so even old implementations can benefit in the future, if need be. I’m sure this opinion will be controversial. Again, not your place to worry or talk with them about it.

[Existing code is] second nature to [my colleagues] and I feel stupid

20+ years in and it’s still like this for me when starting at a new place. The difference is experience lets you know not to worry. Practically nobody is a genius, and the geniuses are writing white papers, not code. My advice to you is to just delve into the code base and read as much as possible and follow along with how it works. If you want to get a leg up (which I would advise for a green person) do some of this in your spare time, as much as you can afford. Otherwise you will get experience with the code eventually through your day to day work regardless. Don’t get too invested in them though, you should move on as soon as possible (for a bunch of reasons).

is this normal

Feeling stupid in this situation is normal, you are just green and will be fine. The small business that operates like this is all too common, and you are not in the place to do anything about it, and I would not advise getting involved with trying to fix it. If you were an investor, then I would try to fix it. You should worry about you, not them. Use them as a stepping stone to your next opportunity.

to gauge how I am doing

Ask for a performance review. They may be too small to know how to do this properly, if at all, however. You know them, you will have to be the judge on if they will take kindly to that request. Any place that isn’t garbage should be happy to do that for you however. Agile/scrum would have metrics you could just look at to know how you are doing, any time, just saying.

there is no remote work and no headphones in the office

Here we are back to the dumb shit. They are leaving money and productivity on the table, and that is not the mark of a good business. Unhappy workers are not the mark of a good business. They might be smart coding wise, but they are not smart business wise, which is a real problem when the whole point is to make money. Imo you should get out ASAP, but that might involve sticking it out for at least another 6 months, so you have at least a year for the resume.

when is a good time to start looking for your second role

Always be looking. If I could go back in time and give myself one piece of career advice it would be this: always be looking, interview often, even if it’s just to say no, and never stay in one place more than a year or two. If I had done this, I would have been happier so much sooner, and would be making at least twice the money by now.

Do not be loyal to these folks, small businesses will cut you at the drop of a hat like any other business. For them it comes down to business no matter what.

In my opinion, for your career, you need to get on a real development team that does agile/scrum as soon as possible. Agile/scrum not a panacea, nor the end all be all, but it should give you a good reference for how well/things should function on a good development team.

You seem to have a good head on your shoulders, you are worried about the right things, and are asking the right questions. Good luck out there.