#need_help
Dear all,

I'm trying to make a choice, a choice that won't make me regret it for the few years advanced, I'm in a dilemma, I don't know which MacBook should I get for my everyday life, I currently work as an iOS developer (Learned iOS using all kinds hackintoshes, yeah I never bought a single apple computer, yet), and always have motivation to learn new stuff (from machine learning, to web development, to making games with unity (or whatever engine), hell I even like to design stuff from time to time using Photoshop, sketch, I sometimes do video editing using premiere and after effects), and I yet have to choose which laptop to get, I got only one week to make the choice so...

Here are the options:

The new MacBook Pro 2016 (Touch Bar edition):
Pros: 'Latest' and 'greatest', have thunderbolt ports which makes it (sort of) future proof, TouchId for unlocking the laptop using a fingerprint.
Cons: You need a damn dongle everywhere, no escape key (Which I use for the autocomplete feature in Xcode), and this touch bar (Which I really have no idea if i will ever use it other than the nyan cat app for 5 minutes), plus I heard about battery issues with it (don't know if they resolved it or not), fucking huge trackpad, and no fucking MagSafe!

The previous model MacBook Pro 2015:
Pros: Ports, lots of them, small trackpad (Which you don't have to worry about your palm screwing up your work), and MagSafe! (Which I honestly don't know if it'll make any difference for my usage)
Cons: has old CPU from Haswell generation (I know that it won't feel different, it's just that I like to have parts that are the 'latest')

Now some questions, for people who have the old MacBooks and new MacBooks:
For the ones with old MacBook:
If you were given the choice to replace the old MacBook for the new one for free, would you go for it?
After all this time, how's the battery performance? is it still great from the time you bought it?
Foe the ones with new MacBook:
Does the huge-ass trackpad interfere your work day?
Do you miss magsafe to a point where you really want to throw out the new laptop and go back to previous model?
Did you get used to carry out dongles everywhere?
Did you like the TouchBar? Does it help you in your everyday work? from designing to coding to whatever, do you think that now you can't live without it?
How's the battery performance?
Is programming on it joyable? or the new keyboard and touchpad are just a meh?

Strawpoll to make it easier to vote:
http://www.strawpoll.me/12856510

In addition to that I would love that you guys detail me your experience and answer some questions that I posted above, I would be very, very grateful.

i come from a very closely knit family and i kinda like it. i am in close proximity to my parents, they are growing old so i do a lot of home chores. meanwhile a lot relatives and dad's business friends live nearby , and the whole area around my home feels like a place of known people. my free time goes with 5-6 friends , who again live nearby, or with gym buddies. this is a nice life, which could further expand with a wife and my kids in future .

at the same time, i have seen the "work" life. my office is in a different state, 90% of people there are people like me who would be renting a home nearby and living alone/with strangers. their main "family"(well pseudo-family) will be their coworkers, and that's also not a bad thing.

in the workplace the reasons to be happy will be a lot (as parties or celebrations will occur on multiple birthdays/ company growths and other achievements) , and so will be the reasons to feel sad ( company failure, teammates leaving, missing family)

at the end of the day , when you are living an office life, you are a corporate rat running for the cheese you are never gonna (or , if you are a glass half full person, let's say that you are a "dedicated work professional giving your 100% to the company")

but here comes the dilemma : with AIs like chat gpt coming around and redefining nthe expectations from a software engineer, you will no longer be expected to be resourceful but rather how much of a corporate rat you can be. ( https://twitter.com/bajicdusko/...)

so 1) is it the only way forward for an upcoming engineer's lifestyle? to be like a soldier for their company , while their family and friends await for their long return? 2) if yes, what is the positi8 aspsct we can take away from this?

PS : what a stupid profession those AI/ML guys work in. they put out their minds together to make a sword which is gonna cut the heads of s/w engineers, their own breed. not lawyers, not doctors, not even the fucking peons, but their own freaking brothers

update : we are at hr round baby!!!

part 1 : https://devrant.com/rants/5528056/...

part 2 (in comments) : https://devrant.com/rants/5550145/...

the tech market is crazy mann! it's one of the top indie fintech companies in our country and has a great valuation.
i totally felt that they i am crashing the interviews , and am seriously not trying to be humble. before the dsa round , i was trying to mug up how insertion sort works 🥲

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now my dilemma is should i switch if i get the offer. in a summary:

current company:
- small valuation but profitable (haven't picked funding for last 3 years , so poast valuation is some double digit million $, but can easily be a unicorn company)
- very major b2b player in my country. almost all unicorns (including this fintech company) and some major MNCs are their client and they have recently acquired a few other companies of us and eu too, making them- a decent global player

- meh work : i love being a cutting edge performer in android but here we make sdks that need to support even legacy banking apps. so tech stack is a lot of verbose java and daily routine includes making very minor changes to actual code and more towards adding tests , maintaining wrapper sdks in react/cordova/unity etc, checking client side code etc.

- awesome work life balance : since work is shit and i am fast enough, i am usually working only 2-4 hours a day. i joined gym, got into shape , and have already vsited 5 places in last 6 months, and i am a guy who didn't used to have time even on sundays. here, we get mote paid leaves than what i would usually need.

- learning opportunities: not exactly from the company codebase, but they provide unlimited access to various course learning platforms like linkedin learning, udemy and others, so i joined some web dev baches and i now know decent frontend too. plus those hybrid sdks also give a light context to new things

new company :
- positives : multi billion valuation, one of the top players in fintech , have been mostly profitable ( except a few quarters)
- positive : b2c so its (hopefully) going to put me back into racing shoes with kotlin, jetpack and latest libraries.
- more $$$ for your boy :)

- negetive : they seem to be on hiring spree and am afraid to junp ship after seeing the recent coinbase layoffs. fintech is scary these days

- negetive : if they are hiring people like me, then then they are probably hiring people worse than me 😂. although thats not my concern what my main concer is how they interviewed. they have hired a 3rd party company that takes interviews of people FOR THEM! i find that extremely impolite, like they don't even wanna spare their devs to hire people they are gonna work with. i find this a toxic, robotic culture and if these are the people in there then i would have a terrible time finding some buddy engineer or some helpful senior.

- negetive : most probably a bad wlb : i worked for an year for a fast paced b2c edtech startup. no matter how old these are , b2c are always shipping new stuff and are therefore hectic. i don't like the boredom here but i would miss the free time to workout :(

so ... any thoughts about it?