9:01 AM

The intern has already broken the build. Again.

I'm halfway through my first coffee when the Product Manager slithers over like a PowerPoint with legs.
He’s got a "simple change" — code that’s "basically done" but just needs “a quick review.”

9:01 AM

The intern has already broken the build. Again.

I'm halfway through my first coffee when the Product Manager slithers over like a PowerPoint with legs.
He’s got a "simple change" — code that’s "basically done" but just needs “a quick review.”

I glance at his ticket:
Title: Add Dark Mode Toggle
Description: Should just work™

No tests. No docs. 73 files changed.
Uses inline CSS and a global isDark = true flag jammed into localStorage like a toddler hiding candy wrappers.

I add a reviewer: [email protected]
Then I approve it.
Then I revert it in a follow-up commit with the message:

"Fixed dark mode toggle breaking the sun."

Meanwhile, Jenkins is having a stroke.
Something about a missing package-lock.json and 14,000 vulnerable dependencies.
Excellent.

I check Slack. The junior dev is asking why her Docker container won't start.
She’s been mounting / as a volume again.

I tell her the issue is layer 8 and link her to a YouTube video of a rubber duck floating in a bathtub.
She says thanks.
I’m not sure if she’s joking.

---

10:13 AM

Someone pings me to say the staging API is returning 500s.
I fix it by turning off the rate limiter for only their IP, set it to infinite, and rename the function to:

void thisUser(String userId)

Meanwhile, the CTO is talking about moving to microservices.

I explain that we already have them:

• One service to read from the database
• One to write
• One to crash if you look at it wrong

We call it "agile."

---

11:00 AM

Stand-up time.
I say I’m “working on performance improvements.”
Technically true: I wrote a script to throttle Figma whenever the designer tries to use more than 40% CPU.

I call it figmaThrottler.sh and cronjob it across the studio.

Then I rewrite his design tokens in Comic Sans.
Italic.
Uppercase.

---

LUNCH

By lunch I mean a stale donut and two fingers of whiskey in a coffee cup labeled:

"#1 Scrum Master"

---

1:34 PM

Someone pushed directly to main.
I git revert, then force-push main to match my local branch,
which is 23 commits ahead, 7 behind, and rebased onto a forgotten feature from 2021.

The intern asks what happened.
I tell him Git is like religion: if you try to understand it, you’re doing it wrong.

He nods solemnly.
He’s already on his third Red Bull.
I mark him as “unstable” in the org chart.

---

3:00 PM

The PM asks for an ETA on the login refactor.
I tell him “4 PM.”
He asks which day.
I say “exactly.”
He stops typing.

I deploy the login refactor at 3:59 PM.
It accepts any password as long as it’s "password"
and the user’s email matches:

/^.*@company\.com$/

It passes all tests.
Because I replaced them with mocks.

---

4:44 PM

I get a ping:

“Hey, did you touch the auth flow?”

I say, “Yes.”
They type a full sentence, delete it, and reply with a 👍.

I mark this ticket "done", add a 😊, and go home.

---

After all, I'm the Bastard Programmer From Hell.
And tomorrow...
the CI/CD pipeline learns pain.