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Drunk Post: Things I've Learned as a Sr Engineer

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Re: Drunk Post: Things I've Learned as a Sr Engineer

#391

Post by arduinomancer »

vsareto wrote: post #128

>I don't know why full stack webdevs are paid so poorly. No really, they should be paid like half a mil a year just base salary. Fuck they have to understand both front end AND back end AND how different browsers work AND networking AND databases AND caching AND differences between web and mobile AND omg what the fuck there's another framework out there that companies want to use? Seriously, why are webdevs paid so l…

Why is everyone saying they’re underpaid?

You can make doctor level salary at the ceiling if you move to a FAANG as a full stack dev.

The fact that boot camps even exist shows that it’s not that difficult of a job.

Other industries boot camps don’t even exist.

Re: Drunk Post: Things I've Learned as a Sr Engineer

#392

Post by giantg2 »

linuxftw wrote: post #368
giantg2 wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I completely get that. I'm just adding some of my background to show my thoughts. I know there are other areas and other people that command higher prices.

Learn the skills for the job you want, claim you do that stuff on your current resume (within reason), and jump ship. Most prospective employers won't push too hard with needing references from your current place of employment. Find your best mate at your last job, edit that portion of your resume, and fill them in on the details.

I've been at the same company for 9 years straight out of college. The company doesn't allow employees to give any references for people who are leaving.

Re: Drunk Post: Things I've Learned as a Sr Engineer

#393

Post by mr_toad »

giantg2 wrote: post #273
OminousWeapons wrote: post #268

> If people are trying to assign blame to a bug or outage, it's time to move on. This is one of my favorite excerpts. I once worked in a lab where we would have frequent catastrophic failures because there was never any disaster planning or contingency management plan. I personally triaged 3 such incidents alone or with people who happened to be there when the problem arose and attempted to disseminate some suggestio…

I was on call as a new developer on a system. I was not given any procedures or trouble shooting documents. I got a call at 1 am, missed it, and waited one minute to see if there was a message. I did see a voicemail, so I started listening and logging on. Before I could even get halfway through, the person called again (why not leave the voicemail on the final attempt?). So I'm looking for the issue/fix for 5 minutes…

> SME didn't create documentation because they are "too busy".

Because they keep getting shoulder tapped to put out fires. Because they’re the only one who knows the system. Because there is no documentation…

Re: Drunk Post: Things I've Learned as a Sr Engineer

#394

Post by thrav »

retsibsi wrote: post #352
robocat wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same dynamic occurs with real estate agents. A successful agent optimises for quick sales, while giving the appearance of trying to get the best price. Very important to know when dealing with agents if either selling or buying a home.

Some real estate agents will, if asked, agree to a more top-heavy commission -- e.g. instead of x% of the total sale price, y% of the amount over $z. (I don't know the exact details, but my dad did this when selling his flat.)

I think someone like Derek Sivers (maybe not actually him) talked about doing this. From what I remember, it was quite painful finding one who would agree to it, and was probably only possible because it was a stand out property.

This would likely be more difficult for an average person to pull off, but can be a great mutual win if you pull it off.

Re: Drunk Post: Things I've Learned as a Sr Engineer

#395

Post by xzel »

topkai22 wrote: post #278
tsimionescu wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an old xkcd about this, though I will admit I have never experienced this: https://xkcd.com/323/

Oh the Ballmer peak definitely exists for POCs, school work and side projects. A couple beers in and then you lose the fear of doing something stupid and start cranking out code. Not sure about producfion code though, the values are different

Sort of a guilty secret but I used to save POC work for right after a company talk or party and a few beers. I could spew out a few hundred lines of code that was a bit messy but was got the job done. I’d go over it and clean it all up the next morning. Almost always an incredibly productive exercise for me but ymmv.

Re: Drunk Post: Things I've Learned as a Sr Engineer

#396

Post by seoaeu »

OJFord wrote: post #333

> Hacker News and r/Programming is only good to get general ideas and keep up-to-date, the comments are almost worthless That's a weird one. I don't know anything about that subreddit, but HN comments are frequently great. I submit stuff because I want there to be HN comments on it for me to read. I typically read the comments first and only bother opening the link if they were interesting.

Obviously HN commenters like us are going to think that. Honestly, I bet even YouTube commenters would say the same about their own community.

Re: Drunk Post: Things I've Learned as a Sr Engineer

#397

Post by Ericson2314 »

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #348
dmlittle wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It all depends on your use case. If your input is bound to a small N, I’ll take the simplest to understand implementation regardless of algorithmic complexity. Future you and other people will thank you later.

I'm fond of saying that one of the big differences between theory and practice in CS is that in practice, we don't immediately drop the coefficients. Instead we study the problem to learn what the coefficients are and use that knowledge to guide our approach. For instance, there are times a linear search will just flat out beat a binary search due to cache effects.

But if you care about the coefficients the first time you write the code, you are prematurely optimizing. The theory here is wiser than it intended to be :).

First draft: don't be stupid with asymptotics as PP says.

*only if there is actual problem in prod or whatever: bust out the concrete measurements.

Re: Drunk Post: Things I've Learned as a Sr Engineer

#399

Post by meowface »

brundolf wrote: post #216

> It's not important to do what I like. It's more important to do what I don't hate. This one has started to dawn on me. I'm never going to love my job as much as I love my personal projects, so a job that I don't get very excited about but doesn't drain my energy is better than one that I get somewhat excited about but does drain my energy (not that it's impossible to have both, but it's rare)

This is a very pessimistic long-term view, in my opinion.

Life is extremely, infinitesimally short. If it's at all possible for you, you should try to spend as much of it as you can doing things you love. I know many people can't, but it's bleak to just give up and permanently settle, I think. (Especially if you don't currently have any dependents who rely on you; it changes the equation if you do.)

Re: Drunk Post: Things I've Learned as a Sr Engineer

#400

Post by granshaw »

ggregoire wrote: post #179

> The older I get, the more I appreciate dynamic languages. Exactly the opposite for me. I just can't stand hovering a variable or a parameter and not getting its exact type, or typing "." after a variable and not having my editor gives me all the available methods on that variable, or running my code just to discover that it instantly crashes because I made a typo or forgot an argument or passed the wrong argument o…

Especially the typos part. In Ruby and plain JS sometimes you feel you need unit tests even for the dead simple stuff cause there might be a typo in there... and such tests are an awful chore to write and much more efficiently caught by static typing
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