> 8. Avoid hero culture. Build systems that don’t require heroes.
This right here is the what I always have encountered at every team I have ever worked. There will be a production outage, one person comes in and be like "Oh, let me do this.." Magically fixes things that was never documented becomes a hero and then we do a root cause analysis and then never address the fact that, what that one person knew that service that no one else on the team did.
Almost 12 years ago, I wrote my first web server in C. It was for a router/firewall device running Linux From Scratch(LFS), I can't recall the kernel version(2.6.x?).
Reading this just took me back and made me realize even though we have progressed so far with tech stack and new technologies(LLMs), there is so much joy in just writing plain C code. To me its just feels like working on a classic old 68 mustang and getting your hands dirty. What a joy!
Funny how I got rejected today from crowdstrike because I couldn’t code a hard leetcode problem under 40mins. I guess leetcode isn’t true software engineering after all.
During my early days in my tech career. I joined a small tech firm that did linux kernel programming and embedded stuff. It was my first job out of college and I was really excited. My mentor was a 50+ guy whom I walked everyday from work to back my home. It didn't started out like that, we would leave work around different times and one day it was raining, so we waited and then it became sort of habit. I learned so much about programming and life in general. Made me a better programmer for sure. I'm always grateful!
I switched companies and I had to use teams. From my experience coming Slack, teams feels heavy app. The bootup is slow and overall it felt like its bloated app. I'm using M1Pro Mac.
What I don't like the most of the teams app is, the freaking code editor. If I paste code in teams, it feels hard to read, in Slack it looks much better. Also, I hate it when on teams having some serious chat about prod issue and some in the group post a random message and whole thing just goes side ways. Lack of threads is bad experience for me. I can go on..
OK, I wasn't going crazy then. I had recently used Google Maps for a road trip that I was planning and I asked my GF if it looks weird. My initial thought was if someone changed my monitor settings. (I use different one for just gaming) . The design and graphics reminds me of Apple Maps a lot(the mac version). The look and feel was slightly off and it felt dullish. Not sure how I can explain it.
The suggestions are definitely good in the post. I like to have a clean maps panel and rest can be hidden away.
My urge to work for FAANG company is faded away. Being in my late 30s I don;t want to grind leetcode anymore. I had interviews in Apple/Google/Facebook and I felt luck played a huge part of that. I got some live coding questions that prepared the day before and I aced them and in some cases I practiced so much and couldn;t even write more than 10 lines of code.
They already have army robots on the streets. Some day the cars will become fully aware and then can replicate. They will make better versions of themselves.
I'm always optimistic and I believe humans will do good thing. Looking forward to more advancement in AI, curing cancer, moving to more cleaner energy.
Going to watch some good ol star wars my girlfriend and enjoy my Macallan sherry oak 18
I was working in tech in Bay Area and left to a mid-west 13 years ago. My friends called me crazy. Who is crazy now?!!
I was really burned out and though the tech scene was good in silicon valley(startups, good companies), it still felt my life was just monotonous. I had same tech friends, which were competing against each other. Talking about FAANG companies.
I took a pay cut when I moved away to my new place. I joined a small tech company and was happy. 9-5 job and skiing on the weekends. Taking dog to the walk everyday.
(I had this issue, not sure if its fixed now or I was doing something wrong)
I'm not sure if its related, but I had some DNS resolution when I switched on WARP. I know that 1.1.1.1 is DNS over SSL, some ISP don't like that? I don't remember which applications had issues(guessing it might be steam client, I could be wrong)
Also, never noticed a significant gain in network speed or reliability either. I don't use it anymore, but will give it a try again.
I have been in situations were I had to pair program for an interview. The artificial pressure is true, I don't know how to react and even speak out when I'm trying to show my coding skills.
I don't have issues with whiteboarding and pair programming with my current teammates. I can speak up and have enough confident to do. But its not the same in an interview situation. I prefer take-home as well.
This is the 4th time I have heard this news in a month. I wasn't paying much attention till it happened to my girlfriend.
A person with a linkedin profile, that looks very legit saying they work for Nike at a senior level position reached to my gf for a job role. Well, at first she was excited and then she forwarded me their profile. It was really good presentation, however, few things were way off. Like the timelines on their profile were not accurate. The related experience was shady and more. As I dig deep I was convinced its a scam.
This right here is the what I always have encountered at every team I have ever worked. There will be a production outage, one person comes in and be like "Oh, let me do this.." Magically fixes things that was never documented becomes a hero and then we do a root cause analysis and then never address the fact that, what that one person knew that service that no one else on the team did.