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David J Eddy
David J Eddy

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90% of my job is...

To many jobsdescriptions are over complicated just to sound fancy. Let's have a little fun here. Explain in the shortest and simplest way possible what 90% of your day to day job is. I'll start:

Directing people to read the documentation.

Top comments (34)

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buphmin profile image
buphmin

Looking at the requirements of a project, then looking at the code, then... (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

In all seriousness though its taking requirements and implementing them. Sometimes its in very old bad code, some ok code, and sometimes some really good code. The hard part is understanding the big picture when there are thousands of tables, separate systems that need to talk to each other and with almost none of it documented.

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simoroshka profile image
Anna Simoroshka

THIS. Exactly my job real description.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

Fiddling...

I’m always fiddling with something. Code, design, copy, whatever. I’m a fiddler.

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juanfrank77 profile image
Juan F Gonzalez

I'm assuming you use this site a lot then jsfiddle.net :'D

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almostconverge profile image
Peter Ellis

Knowing and telling everyone what everyone else is doing.

Okay, I do a lot of translating between coder-speak and human too, and help everyone with everything, both coding-related and other stuff. Keeps everyone happy if they only have to concentrate on their own job. And happy means efficient.

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phlash profile image
Phil Ashby

This, pretty much, plus a bit of talking about security stuff so we can all be equally paranoid, and have less 'bloody infosec'/'bloody idiots' in relationships!

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jsn1nj4 profile image
Elliot Derhay • Edited

#ParanoiaEquality

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darkain profile image
Vincent Milum Jr

"How do I print?"

uuuhhhggggg, not again!?

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jsn1nj4 profile image
Elliot Derhay

I get called about the copier pretty frequently too, though mostly by the same person -- and usually when convenience is low.

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darkain profile image
Vincent Milum Jr

One of my favorites is those that try to fax. They type in the phone number, put in the paper... But then never hit "start fax", and get confused when it doesn't work.

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jsn1nj4 profile image
Elliot Derhay

I can't say I've seen that where I work. So far, everyone I've worked with here at least knows there's an extra step to send.

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gregorgonzalez profile image
Gregor Gonzalez

I know that feel bro 👊

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sturzl profile image
Avery

Communicating: teaching, learning, planning, aligning, reporting etc. 80% out loud, 20% written. Notably, not a ton of documentation.

Even when I'm hands on keyboard writing code it's still paired programming.

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ondrejs profile image
Ondrej

Honestly 90 % of my job is refactoring legacy code to the point in which it is usable & wondering if my client will pay me for it.

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david_j_eddy profile image
David J Eddy

"fixing the prev. persons leftovers"

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ondrejs profile image
Ondrej

This.

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coolgoose profile image
Alexandru Bucur

Making things work, be it code, managing people, new hires, hardware issues and so on. There's no dull day from that point of view, there's always a 'fire' to extinguish somewhere.

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rpoirier profile image
Reese Poirier

90% of my job is keeping the lights on.

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elmuerte profile image
Michiel Hendriks

Avoiding meetings.

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gab profile image
Gabriel Magalhães dos Santos

In job test: make a funcionar to calculate Fibonacci and draw the LINE with canvas/react/graphql/gulp

In job day: padding-top: 30px;

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xfuturecs profile image
Daniel Uhlmann

Review server-sided architecture - cry a bit about non-automated things - automate it - straightening it on each node - smile.

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darksmile92 profile image
Robin Kretzschmar

... thinking about whether you really need to implement it and if so, whether there is a better solution.

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helenanders26 profile image
Helen Anderson

Asking "but what are you trying to achieve?"

Most of the requests that come my way say "I need this dataset, please provide it".

90% of the time there is a better dataset the analyst isn't aware of or some aggregating that I can do upstream that will get rid of a lot of the heavy lifting the analyst has signed themselves up for.

It's a nice feeling to be able to add value and not just be a 'data donkey', but I find myself asking "but what are you trying to achieve?" over and over and over.

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jmfayard profile image
Jean-Michel 🕵🏻‍♂️ Fayard • Edited

Android development: write Kotlin code that fetches data from internet, display it in a list, and open a detailed view when you click on an item.

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ardentia profile image
Plamena Radneva

Figuring out actual acceptance criteria (since requirements are often too vague) by asking TPMs, architects, discussing AC of dependant teams, etc.

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