this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2025
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[–] qt0x40490FDB@lemmy.ml 127 points 2 days ago (6 children)

I know someone whose job was to print out a PDF, highlight a set field on the PDF with a highlighter (say, SSN or sometning) then scan it back in and shred the PDF. All. Day. Long. Surely pushing a boulder up a hill is better than that

[–] bulwark@lemmy.world 69 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Stuff like this exists because someone doesn't understand the technology. It's infuriating, and I have had to deal with similar situations.

I had a job where I needed to interact with a PDF doc that came out every month. The person doing it would print out all 50 pages, someone would sign the last page and she would scan the whole doc back in. So now instead of a useful PDF, we just had 50 pages of pictures.

[–] BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

This bullshit exists because of the archaic practice of wet ink signatures that lots of government and corporate entities still insist on, many places refuse to let you use digital signatures, but if there is no compulsion for wet ink signature then only some dinosaur idiots who don't know any better work like this

[–] Jankatarch@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Ok I blame them rather than general tech illiteracy. Surely you would search "pdf appender" at some point in your life if that was your career.

[–] Joelk111@lemmy.world 24 points 2 days ago (2 children)

How long ago was that? I'm an Automation Software Engineer and I feel like I could automate that in an afternoon. Stuff like that grinds my gears.

[–] qt0x40490FDB@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago

This was maybe five or ten years ago. IIRC it was some sort of “insurance compliance” thing, but for legal compliance everyone accepts electronic document AFAIK, and they were providing electronic documents in the end so…. It sure seems like the profound ignorance of technology which is raising your blood pressure. 🤷‍♂️

[–] BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

How do you find a job in this role, I've always liked the idea of bringing modern efficency to dated practices as a software engineer, but most job posts I find are boring crud web app work

[–] Joelk111@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I might just be in a fortunate poison in my company, as my actual title is Software Engineer in Test, so my actual job is writing automated tests. I spend a lot of my time on testing framework, rather than the tests themselves, but also am sometimes tasked with automating repetitive tasks. If I notice something repetitive, I'm usually allowed to just automate it. So I guess my advice would be to find a job as an SDET or SET and get lucky, but that probably isn't terribly good advice haha.

[–] BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I've been considering switching to SDET, but every job post I see for that expects multiple years of experience as a SDET and with their testing frameworks and tools, do you think getting some testing certifications and applying anyway would get me interviews. Also I know the pay will be less than SDE, but is the job stable with good WLB?

[–] Joelk111@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

I've got no idea about the courses, as this was my first job out of college. They trained me on the job to be familiar with their testing framework. At my company it's seemingly been pretty stable with good WLB, but I feel like that depends more on the company, as that's also true for the SEs here.

[–] morphballganon@lemmy.world 15 points 2 days ago (3 children)

They couldn't just... highlight it in software?

[–] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 13 points 2 days ago

No, the pdf was also just a picture of a document and transparency hadn’t yet been invented

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 8 points 2 days ago

That sounds like too much technology.

[–] Rusty@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago

Or write a cron job that would do it automatically.

[–] itkovian@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

Technology is truly a wonderful thing.

[–] ripcord@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Probably meant shred the printed paper, but...

To be pedantic, you can shred a pdf

[–] qt0x40490FDB@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago

Fair. I did mean shred the printout of the PDF.

[–] raman_klogius@ani.social 3 points 2 days ago

Sissyphean with 30 extra steps 😭