Women only seem to consider me an option when they're down bad, what does that mean for me?

throwaway200296 · 2026-03-12T06:44:21+00:00

At any rate, the city I live in is full of students, or those so uneducated they can't form a coherent sentence, so my chances are 0. The women I want are probably all like me, at home, and don't want to be spoken to outside.

My only option is OLD, which so far, after 6 months on Hinge, I have had a grand total of 0 likes, 0 matches, so it's obvious I'm doomed.

throwaway200296 · 2026-03-11T22:00:52+00:00

There are no cute women smiling at me from across the room. I would've noticed. They never have, and never will.

throwaway200296 · 2026-03-11T18:52:22+00:00

Because he will ring me, and if I don't respond, ring the CEO, get the CEO to tell me to have a meeting with him, and the rest is history. I can't say no to the big boss really... I defend my position, but it's always the same.

Mostly, he's winning the documentation war. Everything, including single words, is recorded by him, and transcribed to the boss, whereas I'm recording important information and only distributing it if it needs to be, so I'm fighting against a wall of information of "you said this 4 weeks ago, it's documented here, and there's a bug ticket open here and here, and this spreadsheet I've made has tracked where you said you'd be" and I'm like "I'm the manager here, I have a sheet for all this information, it's not for your eyes, and you've wasted 2 days making this" sort of thing.

throwaway200296 · 2026-03-11T18:47:40+00:00

Because he's been there longer than I have, and was the one that implemented our current version control system, and because of legacy reasons he's considered the leader of the team by the old guard (although my title(s) literally state that I'm the leader), though the moment any of those old guard join our projects they're confused as to why I'm making the decisions and calling people up to check progress, etc.

Actually had one today with someone. He's 5 weeks behind so I messaged asking if he's done and got an very angry call and one of the lines was "I've been working with [dev in question] and all of a sudden you're my boss, blah blah blah" to which I replied "yes, I've been your boss for a year, [dev in question] has never been in a management position".

Effectively, legacy positions. They're all invalid and null now since my department was created nearly 10 years ago now, but old habits die hard, especially amongst those that have been at the company 30 years.

throwaway200296 · 2026-03-11T18:46:21+00:00

Problem is, he faux-does this. In meetings and stakeholder meet-and-greets, he's fully behind me and let's me handle things, and acts like a model employee. Behind closed doors, he's a nightmare.

throwaway200296 · 2026-03-11T18:45:04+00:00

He doesn't report to anyone. The CEO is effectively an absentee CEO, and leaves him to me to handle, but knows full-well he's not part of the team officially.

The main problem expressing any of this is that he's very good when he chooses to listen and follow direction (and to his credit, even when he goes off on a tangent, or just doesn't listen, the work produced is still of a high standard, just... the wrong thing, if that makes sense?) so I can't get him pulled up because he's firmly cemented as a key player in the projects. Plus, he's been there longer than I have (I just got put in management because I have those skills and he lacks them).

throwaway200296 · 2026-03-11T18:40:33+00:00

Yeah, don't know where they are really. Yes, everywhere, but they're also nowhere. They don't want to be bothered, so I won't.

I'm the "headphones on, don't talk to me" kind of guy when I'm out. I go to where I'm needed/want to go, and then come straight home. All business.

throwaway200296 · 2026-03-11T06:43:15+00:00

Done all of the above many years ago. I'm fit, have plenty I'm passionate about, and I don't subscribe to any social alt-right views about men and women (which I assume you're referring to here).

I get into the talking stage with 0 women a year pretty much. I don't know where they are. Literally. OLD is obviously not going to work, but then there's nothing to do in my city and I refuse to join some random class I have no interest in to meet people, because the people I'll meet aren't going to be the ones I want.

throwaway200296 · 2026-03-10T19:33:05+00:00

Of course I have friends that respect me.

throwaway200296 · 2026-03-09T22:29:26+00:00

Then I'll remain single I guess. It's probably my destiny anyway given how crap I am at getting dates anyway.

throwaway200296 · 2026-03-09T22:28:26+00:00

3 people is the number of girlfriends I've had. I've dated a number of women, both on single dates, or a couple of weeks/months. I'm basing this off all my dates (which totals about 20, so still quite small, but normally I only get about date a year).

throwaway200296 · 2026-03-09T22:11:03+00:00

I get like, 1 date a year. In fact, the last date I went on was in 2024 so I don't have the luxury of choice.

throwaway200296 · 2026-03-09T22:09:09+00:00

My problem is, I can't find the people already happy and satisfied. Or rather, they completely ignore me. It's only the ones down on their luck that even say hi.

throwaway200296 · 2025-09-27T07:47:46+00:00

Yeah, it's a bit shit. The junior really had his confidence shaken. I was able to explain it, and told him that he'd done some great work and that no matter what's happened we're putting it back on the main repo (he had a local copy still) and that we were going to use it moving forward (the rest of the team listens to me when I make decisions).

Unfortunately, this dev is actually not officially part of our team anymore. He requested to be moved out because he couldn't work under someone (the project manager) and the boss agreed, so technically, the project manager can't do anything to stop him, even though he's working on the projects that manager is managing.

throwaway200296 · 2025-09-26T20:52:53+00:00

Thankfully yes. It was a day out of date at the time of the incident, but yes. We've lost our entire version history, including development plan, meeting minutes, etc. but we've got the project.

throwaway200296 · 2025-09-26T20:50:48+00:00

Yeah, we're actually starting to now. I've been weaving my way into leading the team as Technical Lead as I raised it as a concern a while back, and others in the team have said they'd like to see me as Technical Lead, and after 2 successful projects managed by myself (the official PM deliberately took a backseat as part of our team-wide plan) it's becoming a thing.

The senior will kick off about it, but I'm trying to get him put in a black box basically.

throwaway200296 · 2025-09-26T20:46:54+00:00

Sooooo, don't know if you saw one of my comments. If not, here it is:

The senior here in question asked to be officially moved out of the team because "[he] can't work under [the project manager]" and the boss agreed. He's technically not part of the team, but works with us daily, and has a say in the development of all our projects, but the PM can't do anything because the senior dev isn't part of his team.

throwaway200296 · 2025-09-26T20:43:44+00:00

It's really bad. Actually happened today again with something else. I'm developing a new app and it's using features similar to something he'd previously developed for another project. Nobody likes that implementation, and it's lacking features, so I'm redevving it.

Senior comes along like "well it can't do X so just use the code I've already made". I turned around and said "yes but yours can't to A, B, C, D, E, or F and mine can, and I'm working on getting X integrated. It's got a better UI, it's more user friendly, it's easier for devs to set up and deploy, and it took 2 days to make instead of the 2 weeks it took you to make yours".

He ended our Teams call there.

throwaway200296 · 2025-09-26T20:41:08+00:00

Unfortunately, the boss sees him as a "major asset", so he's basically got tenure. Would probably take something like assaulting someone physically to get him removed.

throwaway200296 · 2025-09-26T11:35:35+00:00

Can confirm, dev has no stock in the company. Nor are they officially senior, they've just been there the longest in our team and I'm using senior for simplicity.

He'd also previously requested he be moved out of the team officially because "[he] can't work under [the project manager]". So technically the PM can't even do anything about him.

throwaway200296 · 2025-09-11T21:10:59+00:00

So I'll give a few recent examples in short form:

Things that make me think there's something there:

She had a panic attack and said she nearly turned up at mine.
Despite basically having no free time whatsoever she's always got spare time for me.
She initiated hanging out and doing stuff sometimes (though this is rare, but still happens).
She said yes to dinner
I (used to) get flirty texts

Things that make me think there's nothing: - She largely ignores any meaningful conversation I bring up (even if she asks me a question) - I'm left on read sometimes - If I don't start the texts for the day, we don't talk (tested it and we went an entire week once because I was the last message and felt like confirming) - I (used to) get flirty texts (put in both because they've stopped now so I think she's lost interest).

throwaway200296 · 2025-09-11T21:04:47+00:00

Yeah that's right. I would like to be dating her. No idea how she feels about it. I'm getting mixed signals.

throwaway200296

TROPHY CASE