Not surprised Node doesn't have a great auth lib at all. Most of these esoteric languages, like Node, Clojure, Haskell, Erlang, etc, don't have very good libs, and prefer configuration over convention.

Is it possible to just use a polyglot stack here?

suzz, I think you know how to proceed. lets see if you can pull 2 paychecks from the same company.

hell, your company sounds so clueless they will proly just let you interview yourself for the contracting gig.

Suzzer maybe try sails?

Update on the terrible code above. Dev fixed everything I commented on. Still didn't fix when it was another instance of the same thing (like looping over an object just to access one property). He figured out he needs to use a promise for the async call, but still doesn't seem to understand as his promise is just returning the metadataObj to the ether.

I had an IM discussion with his lead.

Bat**** ****ing crazy man. Get me out of here.

Its hard to believe that code sample isn't the guy trolling hard.

lmao

This is definitely the type of stuff you see from bottom of the barrel offshore devs.

I've seen almost as bad from onshore Infosys type places too.

It's a scary world out there

I think I figured out what's going on with my group, and it's depressing.

Background is basically we're the architecture group that's supposed to feed into a bunch of internal and external sites and apps. We support one mega-site and a bunch of smaller ones. The mega-site team is generally the first group to implement the *next big thing*, which in this case is microservices. We're supposed to work with them to get a working prototype and turn it into an MVP, etc.

In reality though the mega-site team usually just throws away our stuff and does their own thing. It's a running joke with our team. In this case we've been talking about microservices for months, only to find out their team has already implemented a prototype of the whole platform.

What I think I figured out though is why this continues and nothing seems to be done about it. You'd think a group sucking in tons of funding to do nothing (which is mostly what I've had to do for a year) would eventually be a problem. However, both the mega-site team's boss and our boss have an incentive to say we’re feeding into his team when we’re really not. Our boss because he doesn’t want to lose funding, the megasite boss because he can say he’s taking guidance and then just do whatever he wants.

Beyond this particular situation, the whole feeding into/throwing stuff over the wall mentality is flawed. It wasn’t good on my old team when we had a "genius" architect shoving stuff down our throats then disappearing when things got tricky, and it’s not good in this situation. The teams need to be combined and integrated - so everyone is invested in the product all the way through production into maturity. You'd think that would be obvious.

I’m on these meetings and people say stuff like “I need 6 devs” for what should be a first-pass at brand new technology - done only by one senior dev or architect. It’s crazy - and you how you wind up with code like the stuff above.

Does the company you work for have a process that incorporates code reviews and a defect logging/tracking system?

Unfortunately people have done that in the past. All contractors have to go through approved vendors.

Yes although it varies by group/project. But this dev seems to be on his own for some reason. Apparently the only senior dev on his team doesn't know anything about JS or node - which is why they're pulling me in from a different department for the code review.

I'm just completely fed up with the "yeah it's FUBAR but there's nothing we can do about it" mentality. I'm gonna keep being a blunt squeaky wheel until they fire me, move me, or give me something substantial to work on.

When you give someone code to review, and the feedback is "this person shouldn't be anywhere near a production app unsupervised", the response should never be "yeah, but what are you gonna do?". If you give that response you're part of the problem.

I feel like Gordon Ramsey coming into a disaster kitchen and they tell me they can't fire the cook who's so bad he's about to poison people - because reasons.

Uh I'm about to say something I never say, but wouldn't a unit test prove that that guy's garbage code doesn't even work?

Tomorrow is last day at $current_****show_job, on to the next one. At least its on React for real. Current one I was brought in to do a new project, I do almost all of it in React, it's 80% done and I'm told I have to remake it in Riotjs which turns out to be a ****show as well. fml.

What is this sorcery of which you speak?

Well this relevant: https://medium.com/@micaksica/your-n...g-f1a3bf831a46

After reading that article I'm definitely going with Auth0. Now I know why they decided to go with Auth0 on the side job before I came on board. One of the only great decisions they made. At the day job it doesn't matter because we're always using some pre-existing auth service.

Hell I'd rather learn rails than try to go through the stuff the author describes from scratch.

If I had time I'd write a Devise for node. Seems like you'd have an instant audience. There has to be some reason that doesn't already exist.

Leaving an inexperienced developer to their own devices while other departments do code reviews is ****ed up. Since interviewing is a popular topic here, could you describe what candidates go through in the hiring process when interviewing for both contractors and directs?

I have no idea since we got bought out and I haven't been around the hiring process of the parent co.

In the old days our boss would find people. Our bosses were so lazy we never knew when they'd bring in another candidate. So we'd give anyone a shot who seemed decent. Contract-to-hire was the usual way. So we weren't risking too much.

Then we hooked up with infosys and rarely hired any new employees and no contractors.

One reason I don't get these companies like Netflix demanding weekend-long projects and world class mega-rock star devs. Why not just hire anyone who shows promise to a 3 month contract or something? Or hell a month trial. You know almost immediately with a new dev if they're any good. But white board, interviews, homework projects - can be hit or miss.

I think they just like to suck their own ***** - as our beloved Mooch would say.

I'm not sure I follow that.

Based on your environment and experience, how does Netflix's hiring standards have anything to do with it?

I would not take a contract to hire job, most likely, so theres that. I want a job.

Anything to do with what? I'm just talking about hiring strategies.

Well they could always hire the mega-rock stars and give the others a contract to hire chance. I probably wouldn't have taken it because I didn't want to move to SJ and my gf said she wasn't going to do long distance. But if it was in LA I would take contract to hire in a heartbeat if it looked like an interesting job.

My current job started as contract but after 6 months they offered me full time. The side job was hourly and after a few months they said they wanted to pay me straight 80% of a full time salary. Um, ok.

For me it would have seemed more logical if your point was "look at this insane code I reviewed... we have to use outsourcers who don't even know JS...the way we hire is broken... maybe Netflix misses people sometimes, but at least they seem to avoid anything resembling this experience".

Given what you've shared, it seems like people who do the exact opposite of what your company does may be doing it better, at least in a general sense.

As a data point, I know one person (other than a certain 2+2er) who works at Netflix, and he went from customer success to UI dev at the company we worked at, and then got a UI dev role at Netflix. So his background was at least a bit different than your cookie cutter CS degree from top school career engineer.

As I mentioned - that insane code came from the parent company whose hiring practices I have no idea about.

From what little I gather overhearing in meetings it sounds like this:

Boss: How many people do you need for this bleeding-edge green-field app?

Employee: Um, 5?

Boss: Great, we'll write up a fixed-bid contract and get you 4 CS grads and a lead with 3 years of experience. In the meantime you are not to touch code. No touchy!


Regarding the rest, I was describing our hiring practice from years ago - before the parent co. came into the picture and the last time I was actively involved - which worked out ok for us.

I would think Netflix gets 1,000 applications per day and I would think there is a higher collection of viable candidates, being near all those colleges and stuff. How would they afford to churn that many developers every month?

I would like to take this moment to say that the Shopify API is the most disastrous pile of flaming garbage I've ever had the displeasure of working with.