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The Ironic Trajectory of a Senior Developer's Career
VersionControl Post #3222 · source on Telegram

The Ironic Trajectory of a Senior Developer's Career

Description

This image is a screenshot of a tweet from user Vicki Boykis (@vboykis). The tweet is displayed in white text on a dark blue background, with the user's profile picture - a smiling woman with glasses and long hair - visible in the top left corner. The tweet reads: 'Ten years ago, I didn't know what unit tests, version control, or continuous integration were. Today, my code fails at each of these steps at least once a day. Follow your dreams.' The humor is a classic example of ironic, self-deprecating developer wit. It contrasts the ignorance of a junior developer with the reality of a senior's daily work. For experienced engineers, the joke is that adopting sophisticated best practices like testing, version control (like Git), and CI/CD pipelines doesn't eliminate failure; it just makes it more structured, frequent, and visible. The final line, 'Follow your dreams,' serves as a sarcastic punchline, highlighting the often frustrating reality that career growth means dealing with more complex systems and, consequently, more complex failures

Categories

VersionControl BuildSystems CICD Testing Career HR DevCommunities MentalHealth

Common Tags

DeveloperHumor SelfDeprecatingHumor RelatableHumor UnitTesting ContinuousIntegration VersionControl

Comments

30
Anonymous ★ Top Pick Career progression in tech is just finding faster, more automated ways to be told your code is wrong. At least the CI/CD pipeline doesn't leave passive-aggressive comments in the PR
  1. Anonymous ★ Top Pick

    Career progression in tech is just finding faster, more automated ways to be told your code is wrong. At least the CI/CD pipeline doesn't leave passive-aggressive comments in the PR

  2. Anonymous

    True seniority: shipping a commit that fails unit tests, triggers a merge conflict, and OOM-kills the CI runner - three layers of feedback in one push, aka “full-stack failure batching.”

  3. Anonymous

    The real 10x developer is someone who can make their code fail in 10 different CI/CD stages before lunch - and still remember when 'deployment' meant dragging files to an FTP server while praying to the demo gods

  4. Anonymous

    The beautiful irony of software engineering maturity: ten years ago you shipped broken code blissfully unaware; today you ship the same broken code but now you have three different automated systems telling you exactly how broken it is, complete with Slack notifications, failed pipeline badges, and a detailed breakdown of which architectural principle you violated. Progress is knowing precisely how you failed before your users do - and still merging to main on Friday afternoon

  5. Anonymous

    Peak seniority: the pager never rings because pre-commit, lint, unit tests, merge checks, and a flaky CI reject you first - failure successfully shifted left

  6. Anonymous

    Real seniority is when “follow your dreams” means shifting failures left - pre-commit, unit tests, and a flaky CI all reject you before prod does

  7. Anonymous

    Senior dev dream unlocked: unit tests flake, git conflicts erupt, CI ghosts your PR - before second coffee

  8. @SuperiorProgramming 5y

    The fuck?

  9. @Isaonn 5y

    how can anything fail just on version control without CI though? Code review?

    1. @beton_kruglosu_totchno 5y

      git triggers for example, automated code checks on push

    2. @y0un3v3rkn0w 5y

      Maybe it means git-tasks like PR, merge/rebase etc.

  10. Deleted Account 5y

    how does the code may fail at version control tests?

  11. Aleksander 5y

    Unresolvable conflicts with yourself, ha-ha

  12. @brbrmensch 5y

    inspiring af

  13. @Isaonn 5y

    oh I see

  14. @ZgGPuo8dZef58K6hxxGVj3Z2 5y

    Just put everything in a Try {} Catch {} and leave the catch block empty. /s

    1. @RiedleroD 5y

      I recently overheard a conversation between IT Students in public transport. Translated to english, it was something along the lines of "Try-catch is incredibly useful! If something throws an error, just put that around it and boom. The error is no more."

      1. @RiedleroD 5y

        CS students be like try{ … }catch(RuntimeException e){}

        1. @pavloalpha 5y

          Lol

        2. @ZgGPuo8dZef58K6hxxGVj3Z2 5y

          😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

    2. @alhimik45 5y

      Why everything? Just void Main(){ try{ ... }catch(e){ Main() } }

      1. @ZgGPuo8dZef58K6hxxGVj3Z2 5y

        Ufff tgat would cause an overflow but i forgot what type exactly

        1. @alhimik45 5y

          Yeah, just as planned. Emergency exit if program contains too many errors :)

          1. @ZgGPuo8dZef58K6hxxGVj3Z2 5y

            Looool

        2. Deleted Account 5y

          isn't that ub?

          1. @beton_kruglosu_totchno 5y

            what exactly?

            1. Deleted Account 5y

              calling main

              1. @beton_kruglosu_totchno 5y

                it's not main, it's Main

              2. @beton_kruglosu_totchno 5y

                But for lower case main - yes, it is IIRC

        3. @beton_kruglosu_totchno 5y

          tail call, no overflow with almost any compiler

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