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.

I finally got one of these boards, I still need to figure what to track on it, I already have a planner with me for my day to day

any suggestions?

Besides firefox and emacs there is also Linux, the library emacs uses to interact with the computer hardware

why the fuck those images wouldn't load? they come corrupt from K8S, but they are fine if I run the container locally, like... wtf? is Ingress NGINX doing something to them or did I configure something wrong?!

for the life of me I cannot figure out in my mind how to structure this project I want to start, and jumping right into coding does not improve this mental block.

At work this Golang code base has a clean architecture, so easy to maintain and extend, and I'm unable to replicate it on my own project(s). It sucks to be an ignorant.

This emacs thing is starting to piss me off. 😠

Not a Number by "Evil Corp". Gf at the reflection

last week I finished a course on k8s "simply, for developers". Today I decided to fiddle with kubectl to move a project I'm working on to k8s and it was a complete success (thing runs on minikube and pulls containers from a private Gitlab registry).

I'm happy with the results, there is still room for learning k8s and devops in general.

if I have to perform coding tests on CodeSignal, should be good enough to practice some hours on leetcode or hacker rank? I don't want to blow up this one, I need to job

"Per our conversation [Redacted] would like to do a Teams Video call with you to discuss RonR opportunity with us."

What's RonR? I'll interview for a backend software engineer position with an offshore company

honest question: if I know ReactJS, Golang, Python, Typescript, and a bit of Postgres and living in Costa Rica, what sort of freelance services could I promote on the net?

I used to freelance on sites like PeoplePerHour, doing projects of 1 month in 3 weeks or less, but I would like to do that again in my own website under my own terms, sort of speak.

any recommendations?

I don't describe what I did in my CV for any of my current or past job(s). Any tips to end that bad practice?

I'm looking to switch jobs for a larger pay (around 35% to 81% more)

All you emacs cultists, share with me your wisdom. As someone who wants to learn how to use it I have a few questions.

what resources should I use to learn more about it and configuring it?

What's the difference between emacs, doom emacs and all the others I've heard about?

Are you able to and do you use the GUI or the CLI versions of it?

And are there any packages equivalent to VSCode's Intellisense?

please for the love of God don't turn this into a holy war of vim vs emacs I don't mind either I just want to try out emacs cause I think it looks awesome and something I'd be interested in.

Emacs or vim?

> * npm login *
> puts everything right, uses token because of OTP
> npm login fails: incorrect user or password

you know what, fuck you

I don't understand why police use emacs

I'm getting contacted by remotely.works with job offers, I like the idea of doubling my current salary, but it really worries me the job stability and I believe switching jobs to work remote for a US-based company leaves me with responsibilities an employer normally take cares for me.

Should I risk it and give it a try?

what are the basics I should know about "data streaming" for working on video streaming companies as a future senior backend Golang developer?

My latest question on what to do to start freelancing didn't get any traction. My guess is that the question was put incorrectly or was too broad.

Anyway, I'm still interested on working as a freelance

super.so is annoyingly expensive

am I crazy if I want to integrate Notion with a custom site solution built with SvelteKit?

so what do you look when you do a "code review" anyway?

is there a tool I can use to render a candle chart (like those use in trading) but with code? like PlantUML but allowing to render candle charts