this post was submitted on 08 May 2026
958 points (99.0% liked)

Programmer Humor

32021 readers
786 users here now

Welcome to Programmer Humor!

This is a place where you can post jokes, memes, humor, etc. related to programming!

For sharing awful code theres also Programming Horror.

Rules

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] savvywolf@pawb.social 161 points 1 month ago (8 children)

If you're missing deadlines and getting customer complaints because of a new hire, that's a failure in management, imo.

(Of course, that's not saying management will take responsibility)

[–] kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 83 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (12 children)

It's nearly always a failure in management. In every company I've worked in, at some level failures come from bad leadership decisions.

Lack of communication, unrealistic deadlines, bad processes, no guardrails, no redundancy, poor/absent/too-harsh feedback, micromanaging, lack of observability, inaccessible resources, poor morale, etc. All management's responsibility.

[–] applebusch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 points 1 month ago

heh... every management failure you mentioned was a problem at my last job. impressive.

load more comments (11 replies)
[–] oce@jlai.lu 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's also due to the impossibility of estimating non-trivial tasks in engineering. You are asked to estimate the time it will take to solve problems that you have not yet discovered.

[–] Croquette@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 month ago

I fucking hate that.

Here is an open ended task, how much time do you think it will take?

[–] Akasazh@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago

That might be the point, though.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] eestileib@lemmy.blahaj.zone 115 points 1 month ago (1 children)

As you climb the layer cake, be a shit umbrella not a shit funnel.

[–] Omgpwnies@lemmy.world 43 points 1 month ago

Fuckin words of fuckin wisdom, Lahey

[–] aaaaaaaaargh@feddit.org 77 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

That is, until Sr. Dev is forced to babysit AI producing PR slop all day while Jr. Dev is looking for a new job.

[–] nymnympseudonym@piefed.social 65 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Wrong

We fire the Sr Dev and get the cheaper Jr Dev to oversee the AI

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

That would be surprising. Usually, the long-timer who's built up personal friendships with management is the last to go. Sometimes even if they suck.

Although, maybe in giant corporations with a lot of levels above you that would be less true.

[–] aaaaaaaaargh@feddit.org 10 points 1 month ago

Right. Sad but true.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Maybe. Maybe Sr Dev uses their connections to help Jr Dev look for a better job (assuming they like Jr Dev, maybe they look together) and one day Jr Dev helps them back. You never know.

[–] aaaaaaaaargh@feddit.org 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

But according to LinkedIn we're all too crazy about AI to care about Jr Dev if we can have fun with AI. We're all having a ton of fun using AI, right?

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

yes. tons. of. fon. 👏.👏.

[–] aaaaaaaaargh@feddit.org 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

What would be your favorite most fun part about AI? Mine is constant sorrow, face palming and existential crisis ever since management heard of it.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

mine is the bucket of thumbs i gotta carry around if i wanna not look suspicious on camera

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 50 points 1 month ago (5 children)

I was fine with mentoring junior developers until my manager decided pair programming was the way to go. I'm happy to help and teach, but like fuck am I going to sit at the same goddamn computer with some maroon all day. Can't even power-nap properly.

[–] fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 25 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Pair programing with a mentor shouldn't be a day to day thing. Like why waste the time and put so much pressure on the trainee like that anyways?

[–] epyon22@sh.itjust.works 21 points 1 month ago

Honestly pair programming I feel works better with more similar abilities than far off. Also give em a task to let them struggle a bit in the beginning of the sprint.

[–] Rooster326@programming.dev 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

The entire reason we developed git was so nobody would ever have to pair program again.

Does he also request you write the code on paper first?

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] ToxicWaste@lemmy.cafe 6 points 1 month ago

pair programming can be really cool. if you have a complex problem, are roughly on the same level as the pair, are both motivated to do it.

that is a huge if. also the reason why it should never be mandated. suggested at most.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] nymnympseudonym@piefed.social 38 points 1 month ago

Wait till you see how beat up the Dev Manager is who is protecting the Sr Dev

[–] FreshLight@sh.itjust.works 38 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Middle management is also there to communicate both ways in order to manage expectations. Especially when the senior dev is busy as well. And ideally the first few weeks to months after onboarding are there for junior devs to train and to get comfortable with the new environment (programmatically and socially). I get a lot of anti-work vibes from Lemmy communities, and while I get that capitalism is bad and big corps are optimizing profits over the employees' well being, I also think that work doesn't necessarily have to suck. I mean, it's pretty neat when someone's good at a thing and gets paid for doing something they somewhat like and are good at 70% of the time.

If times are rough and you have to take what you can get, that's obviously shit, though..

[–] mirshafie 15 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Apart from perhaps parenting, work is supposed to be the best, most fulfilling thing in life. The root crime of capitalism is alienation, the source from which every other of its more serious crimes flow.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] eletes@sh.itjust.works 26 points 1 month ago

My internship manager was great at giving me challenges that were tough but achievable. I took their offer even though it was low for a fresh engineer because that team was so great to work with

[–] bridgeburner@lemmy.world 21 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Nice meme from the past. Too bad nowadays corpos don't hire juniors anymore, their work is done all by AI. Or at least that's what corpos wish for.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 17 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Didn't all the junior dev roles get taken by 'agentic AI' leaving an entire generation of devs to the mercy of AI mentoring. That's going to end well.

Historically this protection was the role of a competent project manager (Yeah, they existed, rare, but gold), a senior dev wrote code, a pleasing experience that made the slog uphill (both ways) worthwhile, much like art.

If OP got it from a snr dev, kudos to them both.

[–] pedz@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'm doing tech support and customer support. The dev team missed their deadline on the launch of the new ERP and launched it anyway a few days later. There are still Lorem Ipsum in some places. We can't even edit client's names or phone numbers yet. We also can't open new accounts for a handful of clients.

I usually can cover for "my" team. We all make mistakes and sometimes things are not going according to plan. But so far it's the worst deployment I have ever seen. I gave up on trying to help clients and I'm now just telling them I can't do anything, while the dev team is telling me they are working on those issues and they should be fixed "in the following days, bro". It's been two weeks of "this is gonna get fixed soon" while I am bullshitting the clients telling them "oh I've been told it would work now, please try again".

I'm tired and they should be better. I just script for fun. I was doing PHP 20 years ago and still host a few services for a handful of people, and sometimes I think I might do a better job than some junior programmers.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] davidagain@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

I've had a few bosses who were great at shielding the team from shit and sticking up for the department in front of everyone. I'd do absolutely anything for them and we all pitched in because it was us.

I applied for my current role partly because I knew who my boss would be and I knew he'd be great. He has my back and I have his. Same is true for the whole team.

[–] idriss@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 month ago

Well, that wasn't my experience when I was a junior, every failure was blamed on me, PR is deliberatelty stretched to look like I am slower and worse than I am, it was a lot of suffering but we all have to start from somewhere.

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Pretty much. We had the worst junior dev ever and he never got better for a period of two years because he was coddled and allowed to keep submitting horrible code. He was laid off, thankfully honestly, but if there weren't budget cuts I feel like he never would've improved and just kept wasting everyone else's time.

Edit: the point I was making here is that coddling him kept from either being fired or getting better. Not sure why people cannot understand that more than one thing can be true. In this case that the dude is a horrible dev and also that management dropped the ball. I tried to teach him shit. When he didn't improve I let my manager know how things were going. Nothing happened to him for literal years.

And as the cherry on top here he said he was going to start some kind of businessy-sounding machine learning degree program, after he was let go in layoffs. So yeah the dude knows he sucks at coding but definitely wants in on the AI grift.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 19 points 1 month ago (4 children)

So why didn't y'all train him if he was that bad?

[–] FearfulSalad@ttrpg.network 17 points 1 month ago (2 children)

This assumes that Jr Dev wanted to be trained, and could be trained. I've known some AI-brain "devs" from before AI was a thing.

If someone can't be bothered to read an error message, can we really be expected to teach them how to debug? Etc.

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 11 points 1 month ago

Yeah. Several of us tried to train him. He was not only not as good as he seemed in the interview, he didn't care to learn.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Oh a "what the hell's an error message" Dev. I thought they all died out

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

"Someone represented themselves as being very interested in development and getting better at it. It's obviously not their fault if all that was bullshit!"

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago (3 children)

It is a long story but yeah it was about 80% management's fault and 20% the fault of the dude having zero ambition. I didn't expect this comment to get so many downvotes... it's as though I would need to explain that I'm not entirely blaming him for continuing to be employed in a problematic manner as he was. Obviously management should have addressed the issue and didn't, but why am I not allowed to blame a person for sucking at their job... ? If the idea is that if I thought he sucked I should have fixed it, that's silly, but regardless I did try to teach him things. He never retained anything, so after a few months I gave up.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Sometimes it just doesn't pan out.

Had a junior dev that basically decided he would rather try to grift through instead of doing the job. Never seen someone work so hard at trying not to work at all. Every day it was a different excuse, a different other person to point to as to why he didn't even try to do anything that day. I think at least 7 or 8 of his grandmothers died during his tenure. And management ate it up.

Until one day he lost track of things and blamed the manager asking him why things weren't done. Said the manager never sent him some material and of course the manager had. Suddenly the manager believed the rest of us who had been saying he was lying for the last many months...

The key was he was cheap and was in theory supposed to be as good as a higher paid alternative, so management would have to admit to being wrong to ditch him...

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›