this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2024
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Our tooling saps my will to work (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 4 days ago by CrackedLinuxISO@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/experienced_devs@programming.dev
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I hate every interaction with our tooling. I loathe our older-than-dirt source control system. I hate our 4+ hour build times from scratch. I can't stand our "never plan shit" development process. I despise waiting 3+ months to see my changes in prod. I'm baffled by our RTFM onboarding process when the "manual" is some document written at project launch that's never been updated in the 10 years since.

My current task is simple, took a short time to write my code. But I've had so much trouble with tooling that the process of submitting a code review has stretched over a week. At this point, I know what I can do next to fix it, and it would take maybe 20 mins to do. However, I can't bring myself to even do that.

As cruel as it feels to say, my manager is like some NPC. I am on two teams, one of which I meet with every day who doesn't understand the work I'm doing for team #2. Team #2 meanwhile consists mostly of people I've never met, not even on video calls.

The company is huge and I don't feel like I can make any impact. My plan at this point is to try and hold out for my 1 year shares to vest and then bounce. Take 6 months to brush up on dev-ops skills and then look for a new line of work.

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[–] MrPoopyButthole@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 days ago (2 children)

4h build times... ouch! I'm betting this is Rust or TypeScript.

[–] CrackedLinuxISO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Actually, C++. An enormous codebase plus we build all dependencies from source. I asked my dev lead why we don't have access to pre-compiled dependencies and he answered with a mix of embarrassment and "that's just how it's done".

A 4h build would be OK if I only needed to do it once. However, our source control system lacks even a basic conception of branches, so each new ticket requires destroying and regenerating your workspace.

[–] sukhmel@programming.dev 1 points 4 days ago

If you want an unsolicited advice:

…There may be reasons to keep building everything from the ground up (usually reproducible builds and security are presented as such), but there also may be ways to fix build times while adhering to the requirements.

We use Nix for building and binary cache plays nicely with it, but it is also not always too fast, it's hard to start with, most of our team hates it and wants to replace with something simple (not fruitfully, yet), but it may solve some of the issues.

That is, if you want to solve those, I'm not sure I would if I were in such a situation.