Too Political, unfollowed

Too Political, Unfollowed

Linux is important even when I was working in all Windows. Why? Because I eventually worked in Linux. So happy for those weekend where I screwed around installing Arch.

I've learned to be wary for ambiguous buzz words like big data. WTF is "big" data? I've dealt with 10k rows streaming every 10 minutes in Spark and Kafka and dealt with 1B rows batched up hourly in Python and MySQL. Those labels can go fuck themselves.

Not all great jobs are in Silicon Valley. But a lot are.

Finally, if you really want to hurt me, don't downvote I don't care about that. Just ignore this post. Nothing makes me sadder than when I wrote a long post and then nobody responds. So if you hate this post, just ignore.

On the same token, the best leaders I've been privileged to work under did their best to both advocate for my opinions and also explain to me other opinions 'that conflict with mine. I'm working hard to be like them.

Fuck side projects. If you love doing them, great! Even if I had the time to do side-projects, I'm too damn busy writing drunken posts on reddit

Algorithms and data strictures are important--to a point. I don't see pharmacist interviews test trivia about organic chemistry. There's something fucked with our industry's interview process.

Damn, those devops guys and gals are f'ing smart. At least those mofos get paid though.

It's not important to do what I like. It's more important to do what I don't hate.

The closer I am to the product, the closer I am to driving revnue, the more I feel valued regardless of how technical my work is. This has been true for even the most progressive companies.

Dark mode is great until you're forced to use light mode (webpage or an unsupported app). That's why I use light mode.

I know enough about security to know that I don't know shit about security.

Crap I'm out of wine.

Being a good engineer means knowing best practices. Being a senior engineer means knowing when to break best practices.

If people are trying to assign blame to a bug or outage, it's time to move on.

A lot of progressive companies, especially startups, talk about bringing your "authentic self". Well what if your authentic self is all about watching porn? Yeah, it's healthy to keep a barrier between your work and personal life.

I love drinking with my co-workers during happy hour. I'd rather spend time with kids, family, or friends.

The best demonstration of great leadership is when my leader took the fall for a mistake that was 100% my fault. You better believe I would've walked over fire for her.

I've never really started hating a language or technology until I started becoming intimately familiar with it. Also, I think a piece of tech is good if I hate it but I simultaneously would recommend it to a client. Fuck Jenkins but man I don't think I would be commuting software malpractice by recommending it to a new client.

That being said, git is awful and I have choice but to use it. Also, GUI git tools can go to hell, give me the command line any day. There's like 7 command lines to memorize, everything else can be googled.

Since I work in data, I'm going to give a data-specific lessons learned. Fuck pandas.

My job is easier because I have semi-technical analysts on my team. Semi-technical because they know programming but not software engineering. This is a blessing because if something doesn't make sense to them, it means that it was probably badly designed. I love the analysts on the team; they've helped me grow so much more than the most brilliant engineers.

I had a girlfriend in 8th grade that I didn't want to break up with even though I didn't like her anymore so I just started to ignore her. That was so fucked up. I'm sorry, Lena.

You know what the best part of being a software engineer is? You can meet and talk to people who think like you. Not necessarily the same interests like sports and TV shows and stuff. But they think about problems the same way you think of them. That's pretty cool.

There's not enough women in technology. What a fucked up industry. That needs to change. I've been trying to be more encouraging and helpful to the women engineers in our org, but I don't know what else to do.

Same with black engineers. What the hell?

Seriously, why aren't webdevs paid more? They know everything!!!

Carpal tunnel and back problems are no joke. Spend the 1k now on good equipment.

The smartest man I've every worked for was a Math PhD. I've learned so much from that guy. I hope he's doing well.

Once, in high school, there was thing girl who was a great friend of mine. I mean we talked and hung out and shared a lot of personal stuff over a few years. Then there was a rumor that I liked her or that we were going out or whatever. She didn't take that too well so she started to ignore me. That didn't feel too good. I guess this would be the modern equivalent to "ghosting". I don't wish her any ill will though, and I hope she's doing great. I'm sorry I didn't handle that better.

Speaking of titles: early in your career, title changes up are nice. Junior to Mid. Mid to Senior. Senior to Lead. Later in your career, title changes down are nice. That way, you can get the same compensation but then get an increase when you're promoted. In other words, early in your career (<10 years), title changes UP are good because it lets you grow your skills and responsibilities. Later, title changes down are nice because it lets you grow your salary.

Max out our 401ks.

Be kind to everyone. Not because it'll help your career (it will), but because being kind is rewarding by itself.

If I didn't learn something from the junior engineer or intern this past month, I wasn't paying attention.

Oops I'm out of wine.

Paying for classes, books, conferences is worth it. I've done a few conferences, a few 1.5k courses, many books, and a subscription. Worth it. This way, I can better pretend what I'm doing.

I've never worked at FAANG so I don't know what I'm missing. But I've hired (and not hired) engineers from FAANGs and they don't know what they're doing either.

My self worth is not a function of or correlated with my total compensation. Capitalism is a poor way to determine self-worth.

Managers have less power than you think. Way less power. If you ever thing, why doesn't Manager XYZ fire somebody, it's because they can't.

Titles mostly don't matter. Principal Distinguished Staff Lead Engineer from Whatever Company, whatever. What did you do and what did you accomplish. That's all people care about.