I Am The User Now

The classic developer mantra: "Nobody is going to die if you write bad software" paired with "Faking it till you make it should probably be fine" and a dead platypus in the middle. The perfect encapsulation of that voice in your head justifying why it's OK to push untested code to production on a Friday afternoon. Just remember, somewhere an aviation software engineer is reading this and having a panic attack.

While you're busy debating the merits of Trello's simplicity versus Jira's feature bloat, I'm over here managing projects with a combination of sticky notes, existential dread, and a text file that hasn't been backed up since 2019. Project management tools are just digital bureaucracy with prettier UI. The real pros know that chaos is the only true methodology—it's agile without the ceremonies and scrum without the meetings. We're not fighting over which flavor of micromanagement we prefer; we're rejecting the premise entirely.

Oh sweet mother of all that is holy in tech! 😩 The CEO beaver is having another "visionary moment" while the developer beaver is just BEGGING for stability! The absolute TRAUMA of hearing "I have big plans" for the 47th time this quarter! Meanwhile, the developer's soul is actively leaving their body as they contemplate how they'll rewrite the ENTIRE codebase AGAIN because someone read a Medium article about microservices over breakfast! The eternal startup cycle of build, pivot, cry, repeat!

OH. MY. GOD. The AUDACITY of that one ugly class to EXIST in my codebase! 💅 Here I am, innocently reaching for the finish line of my side project when suddenly—GASP—I spot that monstrosity of a class with its disgusting variable names and spaghetti logic! And what do I do? OBVIOUSLY the only reasonable response is to BURN THE ENTIRE PROJECT TO THE GROUND and rebuild it from scratch! Who cares about actually finishing things when your code can be BEAUTIFUL? Sleep is for the weak, and deadlines are merely suggestions when there's refactoring to be done! That dopamine hit from perfect code is worth sacrificing WEEKS of progress, darling!

The most brutally honest pie chart that doesn't actually have a legend for the massive red section. Spoiler alert: that's where all the existential dread, burnout, and "why does this code work but that identical code doesn't" lives. Notice how the wellness and stable mental health sections are mysteriously absent from the chart despite being in the legend? That's not a graphical error—it's a feature of modern IT life. The salary slice is there but suspiciously small compared to what recruiters promised. And confidence for the future? That tiny orange slice is what remains after your 17th framework migration this year.

Ah, the classic software development lifecycle as interpreted by aeronautical engineering! Started with dreams of launching a space shuttle, ended up with a paper airplane. You know your project is doomed when the requirements start with "We're building the next SpaceX" but the budget says "We have $12 and some paperclips." The steady devolution from space shuttle (ambitious architecture) to fighter jet (scaled back but still impressive) to small prop plane (bare minimum viable product) to paper airplane (whatever ships on deadline) is the universal language of project management despair. The real miracle is that anything flies at all. Ship it!