New engineers are always green in some aspect. It sounds like you’re combining a number of different engineers from different programs and drawing conclusions.
Courses teach a lot, but they also miss out on tons of topics as well. There’s limited reinforcement between classes, so even if your professor covers your topic of choice, the next course may not.
Unit tests for instance are generally used by students for checking their homework assignment as they go, but it’s the (incomplete) grading rubric. I didn’t actually write many unit tests in college until my software design class which was in Smalltalk.
I didn’t use version control until I worked on a few projects with a fellow student who self hosted SVN.
I used 6-8 different programming languages in school, each for a semester at a time. There’s simply no place for repetition and mastery until you get a job, either as an intern or permanent position—and then you’re the engineer you talk about.
Every new engineer is different, depending on their program and interests, even within the same school’s degree program. They’ll all need mentoring to grow. No one is ever going to graduate and be a mid to senior level purely from school.
I believe this only applies to a few sections—soda, chips, and magazines(?). Your produce and canned food aisles are stocked by the store employees, though the planograms for the shelving layout comes from corporate, sized for the store’s footprint. There may be some distributor input into those, such as cereal, but I’ve never seen those processes, only the resulting stock plan.
I read Elements of Programming Interviews rather than do LC questions online. That book has a few flavors for popular languages—-just level up on the language you know best, don’t try to learn a new one.
I spent about a month covering the book, and then grokking the systems design.
It’s not so much the knowledge as the familiarity with the interview format and expectations (ask clarifying questions, explain your reasoning). The company I ended up joining had an opportunity for a mock phone screen interview, which I took advantage of. It was roughly a LC easy but covered the format and gave me some feedback on how I conducted myself.
The mix packs of blades works best while you figure out which is best for your skin and hair. I personally find Feather too aggressive, Astra and Dorco Prime Platinums worked best for me. You should know after the first shave whether the blade is okay enough to use for day 2, otherwise toss and move on.
Soaps are also quite variable in lather and feel—affecting the shave. Tallow, glycerine, and oil based soaps all coat differently. Get a good brush and it’s a nice way to get ready in the morning.
For traveling I use a disposable 3 blade and aerosol shaving cream because you’re not supposed to take the safety razor blades through security.
There are a set of “listed” parts that must be designed by the constructor team. There was a bit of a controversy this year because Racing Point used last year’s Mercedes brake duct design. The part was not listed last year, meaning it was ok then, but it became a listed part in 2020 season. Racing Point was penalized a few points in the standings as a result, but allowed to use the design since they couldn’t unlearn how Mercedes designed the brake duct.
Directions: Apply liberally 15 minutes before sun exposure. Reapply: after 80 minutes of swimming or sweating; immediately after towel drying; at least every 2 hours
I’ve always heard this as time to absorb to become waterproof, but I’m not sure if it’s actual skin absorption or the liquid used to convey the sun blocking compounds to dry or evaporate. Either way, apply and then wait.
I have the first gen Surface Book for home after replacing an old Macbook and I like it. The pen feature, battery life, and the OS are all great, with the following caveats
- It’s the only device I’ve ever cracked a screen on. There’s a vertical crack from the bottom of the screen to the top, which I attribute to some kind of weight on the laptop in my bag since there’s a gap between the keyboard and screen when closed.
- My WiFi chipset required me to disable an advanced TCP setting (offload? Can’t recall, found in a forum) in the registry to not crash my WiFi router or slow it down to 3Mbps
- Periodically my laptop will crash while sleeping (maybe it’s going to hibernation? Haven’t dug too hard) and prompt me with Bitlocker recovery every time.
Replaced our Dyson upright with a Miele canister -- it's considerably easier to use, and picks up dog hair better. It uses more consumables but the combo pack of a filter + 4 bags they sell will cover about a year of use. Overall I'm much happier with the Miele.
If you prefer the video format over a book, Grand Designs (BBC, select seasons available on Netflix) is a series covering the build from nothing to completion of complex or unconventional building designs. Most of the time the episode covers how the build goes wrong.
There are certain themes across the variety of site locations and designs and backgrounds of the individuals building:
1) It costs more than expected
2) It takes longer than expected
3) Project managing it yourself is extremely difficult
In Slack's case, yes they're proactive. But this is not the norm when enterprises violate their SLA.
If a service outage is particularly bad, some providers will be proactive and reach out with credits. This is rare.
In most other cases, the company relies on you to contact them and claim that they were out of SLA, at which point they'll investigate and give you back a pittance of what you paid that month.
The claims is normally a fun go-around process of pointing fingers.
See for instance the Amazon EC2 SLA - https://aws.amazon.com/compute/sla/. In order to even begin to claim it, you need to be running in 2 AZs. You must provide evidence in a ticket. Your service credit will be either 10% (99.0 - 99.9) or 30% (< 99.0). Whether you were down for 1 day or 14 days, it's the same SLA credit. The credit is applied to future service, may be applied as a refund to the current bill at their discretion.
This is why the theaters are transitioning into more of an Alamo Drafthouse style setup with a kitchen and alcohol. While the theaters have to be reconfigured and actually lose seat count, the type of customer drawn in by food, booze, and reserved larger reclining seats will net more per showing than a cramped theater full of buckets of popcorn.
Source: I know a manager at a theater chain whose location underwent the conversion -- his store's profits went up. But the location at the mall stuck with the higher seat density because it had more foot traffic and removing seats would decrease profits
Maybe sometimes. Purchasing cards sometimes have limits per line item, and you want to be able to slide under it as strictly less than comparison.
500 limit? $499
1000 limit? $995
While this could sound sketchy, business absolutely love it. If that monthly charge is $1000 or $1001, now I need another level of approval and signatures.
We switched our large breed from Blue to Fromm’s after the chicken byproduct reports and subsequent lawsuit. From research it seemed similar quality to what I thought Blue was, and is commonly stocked online (Jet.com, Chewy.com) and available at local boutique pet shops if I need to run and pick up a bag.
This looks similar in terms of total spending to what I was doing on my own in a medium COL city out of college, but I'd strongly suggest you categorize things better so you can figure out where you spend your money. For example, you have Whole Foods, Aldi, Sprouts, Costco, HMart. Is that all grocery/pantry? What about Target, they also sell grocery, but could also be clothes along with JCPenny. You've got Tmobile and Republic wireless -- add that together for just Cell Phone. It's impossible to tell what your vacation costs were. I see some expedia, six flags citypass, and whatnot, but no direct hotel charges. Just drop that all into vacation and/or entertainment.
It's also hard to see if we're not familiar with what things are, like DCU? Is that a Credit Union for your savings account? Is that paying off student loans? What about STASH? Is that your drug budget?
Some things jump out at me though
State Farm = renter's insurance? That's fine. Your AAA is concerning though for Auto, $854 every 6 months. You can probably get that lower without cutting coverage unless $2K was paying off the balance of a brand new car and/or you're under 26. See about bundling the renters and auto and shop around for rates. Is that $750 car service plan really saving you more than $750 per year? If the 2K was a super cheap car lease, $750/yr maintenance should not be required.
You have a car but significant expenses on Uber/Lyft. Are those related to vacation travel? Or are they to get around while your car is in the shop? Or are they a designated driver for when you go out?
Where did the $800 in ATM withdraws go? That's over 2% of the spending.
So overall I'd suggest updating your spreadsheet to get some higher level categories. From there, see what jumps out at you to drill in to as something you can possibly cut. So long as you're happy with your savings rate you can actually spend money on things you want. If that's food, clothes, hobbies, toys whatever. It's your life so make sure you enjoy it.
If you want to work at a particular company, interning there is a good way to get in the door before graduation.
If you want to develop tech skills, you may develop them somewhat in the internships (I can't see the internships making you a manager, that'd be post graduation), but looking 5+ years after college it may not be to the degree you're seeking.
Pay freezes are a thing in government. You may go a few years without a pay raise if there's another recession.
Reasons for taking the fellowship:
You'll learn tons about dealing with people and their priorities. You'll have to coordinate with different departments and agencies. Hugely underrated skill.
Your work schedule will be 40 hours a week.
You mentioned middle-manager for IT initiatives. I can guess that the systems targeted for those initiatives are 10-15 years old at least, and you'll be responsible for maintaining the legacy whatever while transitioning to new technologies. Great experience combination.
If you can obtain a security clearance as a part of your government work, doors open in the private sector (Boeing, Lockheed, Harris, etc). Active TS/SCI clearances are worth pretty good money because you can be productive immediately and not have to do desk work for a year while you're cleared. If you hate the pay/benefits you can always jump ship to a contractor. This should still be true in 5 years.
Good list, I'd also say permissions. The number of problems I fix by understanding users/groups and assigning the appropriate permission (not `chmod 777 *`) is huge. It shows up in a variety of "Cannot access file" type messages or "File does not exist" application errors and people sometimes freak out because the file is there.
Courses teach a lot, but they also miss out on tons of topics as well. There’s limited reinforcement between classes, so even if your professor covers your topic of choice, the next course may not.
Unit tests for instance are generally used by students for checking their homework assignment as they go, but it’s the (incomplete) grading rubric. I didn’t actually write many unit tests in college until my software design class which was in Smalltalk.
I didn’t use version control until I worked on a few projects with a fellow student who self hosted SVN.
I used 6-8 different programming languages in school, each for a semester at a time. There’s simply no place for repetition and mastery until you get a job, either as an intern or permanent position—and then you’re the engineer you talk about.
Every new engineer is different, depending on their program and interests, even within the same school’s degree program. They’ll all need mentoring to grow. No one is ever going to graduate and be a mid to senior level purely from school.