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I'm drunk and I'll probably regret this, but here's a drunken rank of things I've learned as an engineer for the past 10 years.
The best way I've advanced my career is by changing companies.
Technology stacks don't really matter because there are like 15 basic patterns of software engineering in my field that apply. I work in data so it's not going to be the same as webdev or embedded. But all fields have about 10-20 core principles and the tech stack is just trying to make those things easier, so don't fret overit.
There's a reason why people recommend job hunting. If I'm unsatisfied at a job, it's probably time to move on.
I've made some good, lifelong friends at companies I've worked with. I don't need to make that a requirement of every place I work. I've been perfectly happy working at places where I didn't form friendships with my coworkers and I've been unhappy at places where I made some great friends.
I've learned to be honest with my manager. Not too honest, but honest enough where I can be authentic at work. What's the worse that can happen? He fire me? I'll just pick up a new job in 2 weeks.
If I'm awaken at 2am from being on-call for more than once per quarter, then something is seriously wrong and I will either fix it or quit.
pour another glass
Qualities of a good manager share a lot of qualities of a good engineer.
When I first started, I was enamored with technology and programming and computer science. I'm over it.
Good code is code that can be understood by a junior engineer. Great code can be understood by a first year CS freshman. The best code is no code at all.
The most underrated skill to learn as an engineer is how to document. Fuck, someone please teach me how to write good documentation. Seriously, if there's any recommendations, I'd seriously pay for a course (like probably a lot of money, maybe 1k for a course if it guaranteed that I could write good docs.)
Related to above, writing good proposals for changes is a great skill.
Almost every holy war out there (vim vs emacs, mac vs linux, whatever) doesn't matter... except one. See below.
The older I get, the more I appreciate dynamic languages. Fuck, I said it. Fight me.
If I ever find myself thinking I'm the smartest person in the room, it's time to leave.
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 little.
We should hire more interns, they're awesome. Those energetic little fucks with their ideas. Even better when they can question or criticize something. I love interns.
sip
Don't meet your heroes. I paid 5k to take a course by one of my heroes. He's a brilliant man, but at the end of it I realized that he's making it up as he goes along like the rest of us.
Tech stack matters. OK I just said tech stack doesn't matter, but hear me out. If you hear Python dev vs C++ dev, you think very different things, right? That's because certain tools are really good at certain jobs. If you're not sure what you want to do, just do Java. It's a shitty programming language that's good at almost everything.
The greatest programming language ever is lisp. I should learn lisp.
For beginners, the most lucrative programming language to learn is SQL. Fuck all other languages. If you know SQL and nothing else, you can make bank. Payroll specialtist? Maybe 50k. Payroll specialist who knows SQL? 90k. Average joe with organizational skills at big corp? $40k. Average joe with organization skills AND sql? Call yourself a PM and earn $150k.
Tests are important but TDD is a damn cult.
Cushy government jobs are not what they are cracked up to be, at least for early to mid-career engineers. Sure, $120k + bennies + pension sound great, but you'll be selling your soul to work on esoteric proprietary technology. Much respect to government workers but seriously there's a reason why the median age for engineers at those places is 50+. Advice does not apply to government contractors.
Third party recruiters are leeches. However, if you find a good one, seriously develop a good relationship with them. They can help bootstrap your career. How do you know if you have a good one? If they've been a third party recruiter for more than 3 years, they're probably bad. The good ones typically become recruiters are large companies.
Options are worthless or can make you a millionaire. They're probably worthless unless the headcount of engineering is more than 100. Then maybe they are worth something within this decade.
Work from home is the tits. But lack of whiteboarding sucks.12 -
We recently received a request to recover your Microsoft account ja**5@hotmail.com. Unfortunately, our automated system has determined that the information you provided was not sufficient for us to validate your account ownership2
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My former employer refuses to pay out my vacation time per state law. Left a month ago but they have not disabled my company email account.
Small shop so no active directory but still shocked they have not disabled my access. It’s only outlook/ office 365 no access to network drives.
What kind of small, petty and (mostly) legal havoc can I cause?
Something annoying but causes no monetary damage.3 -
MAUI shell is killing me.
Maybe it was a bad choice to choose MAUI at this point.
Shell functions Don't have docs,
Only one page on Microsoft docs,
And the functions Don't even do what the Microsoft docs says they do.
And they throw errors without any information or reason.4 -
I hate it when I go to bed early to sleep early but can't sleep a blink for some unknown reason & I just move left & right hoping to fall asleep any minute but end up not being able to sleep at all the whole night :(
whyyyyyy? why cant humans sleep within seconds like a computer???? :(1 -
Google Photos <-> Google Drive <-> Google Keep <-> Google Calendar interoperability is _very_ limited as I already knew, but it seems to be even worse for "non-technical" people trying to actually use it3
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Unattended laptops will have Arch Linux with KDE Plasma installed on them.random kde plasma plasma laptop archlinux laptops btw i use arch arch btw i use arch linux linux kde6
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Gotta love it when you wake up, with the deadline still ringing in your head, and your Intellisense breaks from one day to another, all because there was an update. Gosh how I love modern WebDevelopment8
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i hate these frickin javascript libraries. ive seen ppl say theyre for compatibility bc some magical thing makes normal js break, but then i see ppl bitch about particular libs being hell to upgrade. i see ppl say it's for ease of use, but then it seems like a hell hole.
you know what it is? it's frickin DRM. that's it. someone wanted to make sites and not have it be as easy to copy as looking at the javascript you have to download to view and use the frickin page. and they wanted some hopped up garbage to come out the other end but somehow still get used by a browser.4 -
Wrote some code that solved a program in a semi unique way for the codebase. As in not oft used functionality of language.
Some time later... This might be hard to understand. Maybe I should do a different way.
Some time later... No, I will leave a comment to describe what is going on.
Some time later... That comment is kind of cryptic. Maybe should rethink.
Some time later... No, if the next dev doesn't know how this works then they should learn how it works. (reasoning here is that the functionality requires a knowledge of internals of language)
Some time later... Also, if nobody else gets this then they have to ask me how it works. Job security?
Some time later... STOP THINKING ABOUT THIS CODE AND MOVE ON!5 -
Okay that's not a rant BUT I'm very grateful for whoever built Devrant. We definitely needed a safe space to be rude and just let it out without much filter.
To our toxicity 🥂
Cheers!9 -
So we started using React with Polaris and Supabase and Vite and guess which one doesnt have very good documentation, all of then. Kill me like a command window task5
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HR is getting so desperate they are prescheduling me interviews attached with CVs in the hopes that I will interview the candidates for a senior, even though the candidates have no experience whatsoever in embedded software programming. Workday, JIRA and Excel does not count you absolute fucknuggets.
For fuck sake, I asked management to hire new grads or juniors, at least I can get a person motivated to learn, but I swear they just don't listen.
They just are content with wasting my time lol2 -