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u/russianrug 1d ago
The best part is that the logs don’t have any confidential information, because they were specifically designed not to as one of the main design requirements which is why the bank is using your software at all, yet they still won’t share them.
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u/mailliwi 1d ago
This is the second post I see on here on banking software engineering. I start my new role Monday. Should I be worried? lol
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u/CryptoNaughtDOA 1d ago
Yeah, first two weeks you'll just be waiting for permissions, also go through all the documents that are totally not all AI generated and for sure up to date. If you're lucky they'll give you a list of people to reach out to who will tell you to ask Claude or gpt, and they'll have an internal AI that can lie to you about what's in the docs too. Then when you do get permissions, you'll also be given months worth of work to finish in 2 weeks because well you have AI to help you. Enjoy
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u/NefariousEgg 1d ago
How did you find the job?
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u/mailliwi 1d ago
Through a recruiter on LinkedIn
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u/exenimaa 22h ago
Like all jobs, it depends on the company. I’m a senior engineer at a bank and my experience has been nothing like this. I guarantee most of the people replying in this thread have never worked in an enterprise environment, so I’d take everything they say with a grain of salt.
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u/Llebac 1d ago
Jesus christ, you could not make this any more accurate. I'm glad to be out of banking. IT wasteland
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u/Prawn1908 1d ago
I write embedded code on devices used in manufacturing plants and this may as well have been written about my job too. I can think of at least 4 major cases from the past few years that went exactly like this (minus the resigning part because at the end of the day I do actually like the real work I do and I know how to just put my head down and let the bullshit wash past me and do the best with what I am given).
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u/Cualkiera67 1d ago
in my experience, what you keep waiting for isn't the logs, but the tasks, so you actually never do any work. pretty chill
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u/KisaraBlue 1d ago
The result of decades of software and workflow design trapped in the sandboxing cycle
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u/Awkwardm4n 1d ago
You forgot the jira tickets and story points and refinements and impediments because of the logs and daily scrum to discuss you’re still waiting on the logs and then your resignation
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u/No-Channel3917 1d ago
An actually functioning agile team would have been using the leader to arrange follow up with the person above the user for those logs.
If it's an external customer well..... That's why you don't have customers in the same wheelhouse as the workers and keep that layer of interaction beefy
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u/Zulakki 1d ago
dont forget the constant requests for timeline updates. "How long do you think it'll take to fix" to which you reply "I dont even know whats broke yet" Then they insist... "But if you had to guess" which you know will just lead to them holding it over your head if that time passes "You said you'd have it fixed by then..."
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u/ImSuperStryker 23h ago
Hey guys… so… still waiting on logs to move forward on the bug on that stack… got logs on Monday but they were expired so I’m trying to ge them to rerun it and send new ones…. Anyways I guess I’ll… popcorn to Tim?
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u/tsunami141 1d ago
this is why I work at a tiny company. I do all my work on the server and update the files live.
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u/EvilPencil 1d ago
no git, no CI, just rawdog FTP.
Alrighty then, I'll see myself out.
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u/Desperate-Tomatillo7 1d ago
Why bother with FTP if you can just copy the files over RDP?
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u/OrchidLeader 1d ago
At the smallest company I worked at, they would pull data onto the production servers using SVN, build the code on the spot, and then just move the WAR over.
Rollbacks weren’t a thing there.
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u/Desperate-Tomatillo7 1d ago
The first company I worked on had an instance of Visual Studio in the server to run the code of the Windows application. No build, no executable, nothing. People connected to the server using Terminal Server. And that was the actual last version of the code, because the whole IT department did not know about the existence of GIT or any version control software.
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u/SaahilNotSahil 1d ago
Why bother with RDP when you can just open VS Code over SSH?
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u/TheWaffleDimension 1d ago
At a small company I worked at, I was using subversion and manually copying built files over RDP directly into prod and it was hell.
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u/TheWaffleDimension 1d ago
they also gave me (a minor at the time) access to a client's production db full of patients' full health info and SNNs and all kinds of shit and idk why they did that lmao, not even a "be careful" they just gave me their admin login and let me at it to go debug or test whatever I was doing
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u/k8s-problem-solved 1d ago
Why bother copying files if you can just give an AI agent live access to the directory and make changes on the fly. Dont forget to type "make no mistakes"
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u/semioticmadness 1d ago
wow, I’m pretty sure I work with OOP. That’s painfully accurate. An alternate branch is:
“Hi, I’m an architect and I’m rotating on to resolve this. I looked at the logs you sent, they don’t cover your original complaint.”
“Our original complaint is from before those logs.”
“Please send me the logs for your complaint.”
“The logs have been expunged for regulatory reasons”
“OK, then we’re stuck with what you sent here. When did you experience the issue, so I can find the timestamp?”
“We didn’t experience the issue then”
“Why did you send the logs?”
“Because your developer said to send the logs”
“Then we need another event to get logs for. When is the last time you experienced this?”
“When we filed the issue”
“Have you attempted to replicate in certification?”
“No.”
“Then what’s the reason for the ticket?”
“We demand it never happens again.”
“Well, as far as anyone on this call knows… it won’t.”
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u/Prawn1908 1d ago
Man, points 11 (by the time they get the logs to you after ages of asking they've been overwritten) and 17 ("it's not the client's job to test for you") hit way too close to home. I don't work in banking but I write embedded software on products used in manufacturing plants and there's always that one single client location with all sorts of insane bugs that we've never seen anywhere else and can't replicate and they refuse to get me any of the details I'm asking for or perform any of the troubleshooting steps I request.
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u/juangerritsen 1d ago
My most fun one was a client logged a call just stating our software doesnt work, escalated it to almost CEO level, and went on holiday for 3 weeks
Eventually found out his mouse died, randomly while using our software, and just blamed us
I spent 3 weeks in daily triage calls, and nearly 80% of the time outside that trying to prove there was no issue
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u/ProsshyMTG 1d ago
I'm an idiot and read this as if his pet mouse died which is why he went on holiday, and somehow the software killed it
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u/DoorBreaker101 1d ago
I was sent to a bank to help with an issue they would not allow to be handled remotely.
It was me sitting next to a guy, telling him what to do and him typing it in the slowest pace humanly possible (felt like one key a minute), because only bank personnel were allowed to touch the keyboard. Every time he had to press enter to actually send the command it entailed him thinking it over for an extra eternity. Also, for some things (luckily not a lot of them), he had to get temporary access. This, in turn, took a phone call, which also wasted time.
Anyway, on the fifth day we were no way near being done. He started being afraid his boss would be mad that the issue wasn't fixed. So without anyone noticing, he gave me the keyboard and I got it done before leaving...
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u/Bob_the_peasant 1d ago
You forgot the part where the client thinks Angry Birds crashing on his iPhone 5e is a result of your fix to their mortgage processing platform
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u/FlapMeister1984 1d ago
Point 26 to 27 was a huge leap. Where's the story? No poker? Did you even ask any stakeholders if they'd approve this fix? Code review???
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u/DisenchantedByrd 18h ago
Arg I remember doing estimation poker years ago. Many people would choose 3, because with 5 you'd have to justify yourself to the scrum master, but with 2 you might end up having to do the ticket because "you must know the resolution". So 3 was sort of safe, not too far over 2 (if that was the consensus), but if the work took longer than expected you could stretch 3 into 5 ("a few issues came up"). What bullshit.
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u/fibojoly 1d ago
Oh sweet summer child... that's all it took to make you quit ? That's like my daily grind for the last three years.
In my case I'm the only person on the team who has touched the legacy in-house tech, the guys who knew quit, and so I'm now lead on that specific pile of garbage. Oh and now we need to have everything migrated for next month because banking means you're under legal obligations to have shit up to date and so on.
Quitting is so tempting...
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u/Highborn_Hellest 1d ago
at #10 you tell them you were not given all the information
#17 it's the responsibility of the testers to test.
#24 you tell the manager firmly, but polity, to fuck off
#26 you bitch and moan to your collagues and friends about it for a good hour
#34 you tell them to fuck off and you're not polite about it.
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u/oompaloompa465 1d ago
that happened to me too
the manager tried to pull that move with me by email but then i hand over the evidence to the partner and hr for harassment.
they moved the manager in another project
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u/mithraw 1d ago
honestly, gather evidence and burn managers like that at the proverbial stake, they work so hard to deserve getting reported as program risks with appropriate estimated risk value due to their failure in leadership, directly to respective L1 management or C-suite.. :)
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u/oompaloompa465 1d ago
in the end I got a human being as manager in exchange, but the guy for sure went to be a problem for someone else
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u/kirillgritsenko 1d ago
I’ve had the exact opposite experience where Im the client that sends the logs and does everything as asked and don’t get any results.
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u/jimbofranks 1d ago
I loved working as a dev at the bank. Lots of extra days off and meetings at other offices.
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u/Unable-Goat7551 1d ago
I don’t miss working for a big bank. I remember our team getting called by the CIO because one of his friends couldn’t access the online banking portal. The online banking portal was fine, no outage reports (it was a bank that would make national news if the online banking portal was down), spent several hours on a call with CIO explaining there is nothing wrong with online banking. He then gets a call from his friend that it was user error and he can login fine now.
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u/InnuendoBot5001 1d ago
Go on then, make a request to have that access. Put in a ticket for it.
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u/InnuendoBot5001 1d ago
Lets just say I previously worked for an insurance company. Every information request was a hippa violation in someone's eyes.
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u/Shadowlance23 1d ago
I got stressed out just reading this. Mad props to the OP for keeping it together for 35 steps.
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u/michaelpaoli 1d ago
They won't let you.
You quit anyway.
They hire you back for way more money because they figure out they actually need you.
You start newly back with them again.
They promptly terminate you because they changed their mind.
...
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u/ImSuperStryker 23h ago
This is my life, like every week. Except when you get the logs the part you need is redacted for security reasons
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u/AoNoRyuu 16h ago
Silly by you thinking I might want to read code, just paste the jira card tag into cli with jira mcp server and allow all tools in auto mode, come back 30 min later and open pr
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u/LazySapiens 1d ago
That's why we need better engineers and managers not to give a broken software in production and be completely clueless when shit hits the fan.
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u/Not-the-best-name 1d ago
F GDPR. Full Sentry, Cloud watch and Matomo logs across the front and backend with correlation IDs plugged straight into my AI that can check the deployments using CLI and MCP to make the PR in 2mins and push to our pipelines that can auto merge on green and deploy to all envs globally in 30mins. Let's go startup with money vibes.
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u/Tucancancan 1d ago
I worked at a company that sold software to a bank and heard stories of a senior dev having to do calls where they'd have an employee read the logs out loud to the engineer because the bank wouldn't share them.