Make it a CON save and watch the whole world freak out.❤️
Or every front-liners favorite dump stat - INT!
Playing dumb is fun until you realize…you’re not playing.
bignavy
joined 1 year ago
Good advice already in this thread, but I'd add: ask smart questions, and when you're engaging with a senior/mentor, build the picture for them. Everyone (including your mentor) expects you to have questions - they want you to ask questions, rather than just spinning your wheels for days and days. But they also want to know what you've tried and what you've looked at for resources. And despite appearances, they don't always have the entire code base committed to memory. :)
For instance - suppose you'd been asked to, using the UI, return a piece of information from an external API and display it within the UI.
Bad question: "Hey, so I tried to integrate that third party API, but I'm not getting a return."
"Okay - what kind of code are you getting? And what do the docs say?"
🤷♂️
Good question: "Hey, so I tried to integrate that third party API, but the return I'm getting from it is a 401 error. That should be an authentication error - but just in case, I pinged their server from our server, and they can reach each other. The documentation says that I have to use our key to get a JWT, but hitting the endpoint it says gives me a 401 error. I double checked our token; I've got the right one. And I'm sending it in the header as 'auth' like the documentation says. Where else should I look?"
"Oh yeah, that's a tricky one - you have to encode the token before you send it; let me see if I've got an example where you can see what that looks like....."
One of the things that will happen over time, based on the questions that more senior SDEs ask, you'll be able to 'rubber ducky' problem solve by asking yourself the questions that they would usually ask you, and it's shockingly effective to help you sort your own problems out and clear your own blockers.
You know what I don’t like about them? They’re kind of a symbol of American arrogance and bullying.
It’s only useful where there is zero AAA and zero threat from enemy fighters. It’s a cargo plane - it packs a wallop, of course, but you use it when “the other guy” is a bunch of dudes running around on the ground with no chance to fight back.
The fact that we have them in inventory says a LOT about the types of wars we’ve been fighting for the past 40 years.
(Super unpopular opinion - the A-10 is not much better, but at least it has some genuine anti-armor capabilities.)
The Spurs in many ways created modern load-management ideas - and they also had a big three (Duncan, Ginobili, Parker) that managed to all stay productive until they were almost 40. Shutting Victor down after two summer league games, where the games literally do not count, is very on par for them.
As for the Britney Spears thing - I mean, it’s a good example of why getting Victor some time off is a good idea. All of the Spurs/Vic statements, put together, are maybe two lines of text. Britney, who admittedly has had a rough life and a weird relationship with her fame, is the one that keeps releasing statements and videos and trying to drag out this interaction. It was clearly a low-stakes misunderstanding, there’s been no charges or lawsuit, and EVEN IF TMZ had gotten word of it not from one of the like, six people that were there, it could’ve been squashed very easily by releasing a statement that there was miscommunication, everyone apologized, life goes on. We’re still talking about it three weeks later because Britney keeps posting about it and talking about it to stay in the public view.
Welcome to the NBA Wembanyama. I bet he’s so weirded out by the whole thing he just wants to go hide in a gym and work on his step back three. Which from the Spurs perspective, is perfect.
2+ YOE as DevOps, looking for Software Dev and DevOps-y roles since, say, February.
Not really looking, per se, but was listening and responding to head hunters and treating it as a learning experience and maybe some leverage to get a pay bump - I’m classed as a junior but run rings around the mid-career and seniors we’ve hired recently, who all make more than me.
Anyway, I had a ton of interviews (probably 15 or so), several next rounds (maybe 5?), but no actual offers and nothing that would make me move through about May, and then….everything just went radio silent.
I almost posted this week to ask if I was doing something wrong or the market was that hard right now.
Maybe this is because I'm still relatively junior (2ish years), but my favorite question to ask is, "What are some of the characteristics you're looking for in someone in this role?"
I use it as a vibe check, especially at the end of interviews. If they start reading my resume back to me, or listing the things we've talked about during the interview....well, that's a good sign. If they start describing a bunch of stuff that we didn't talk about, it's a chance to throw a 'Hail Mary' pass and show them how that's me, as well - maybe we didn't talk about something that was important to them, but I have relevant experience or a background.
If they start describing somebody else....well, that's not great.
This was my first thought.
I do this for a living and it’s literally built into Linux.
Set their permissions carefully, ensure that the permission set does what you want (and not a bunch of stuff you don’t want), and keep on keeping on.
I hated everything about this comment, thanks.
I have some experience using git and svn, but really never work in collaboration with others, in my current work we used but only git without external service. Just to keep track of the personal work.
No this is great in and of itself - what I would tell you is to treat your github projects, even if you're the sole contributor, like you're working on a team. Checkout a feature branch, complete your code, then PR it into main/master/release/whatever, even if you're the one doing the code review for yourself. Even if you don't get to experience other devs (inevitably borking what you're working on) in the codebase at the same time, it'll give you a better idea of what the workflow should look like.
I have a “software engineer” job in a research institution, is only the title because I’m a research assistant most of the time with some dev time. The problem is there is no grow and the founding is through a international project, so the time is fixed.
My pay is not so high, is a EU salary in a semi-public institution, tho the pay is lower that the equivalent in the industry, but I’m above the average of at county level, I’ll consider a paycut at least I could still pay the rent and past time with my family.
This all makes the SRE part more understandable and more within reach. I wouldn't lead with, "I don't have any dev experience"; I would lead with "I've been a software engineer for x years, specializing in atmospheric modeling." Whoever is interviewing you will probably dig and figure out that you were a solo developer, but....you were still a software dev, and the first job in this industry is way harder than the next couple. Lean into that - you have the job title, you have the resume, you're looking to take 'the next step' into SRE/DevOps, because as a solo-dev, you had to handle all that stuff yourself, and you figured out that you liked it and were good at it.
We've all been the new guy trying to break into the field - pay it forward after you land that first SRE gig.
This kind of implies that you're crunching and then 'recovering'. That may or may not be something you have any control over - there's a lot that goes into creating an unsustainable 'sprint', and probably 99.8% of it is not related to actual developers or code - but ideally you would be using these 'lulls' to try to pull stuff out of the next crunch so maybe it won't hurt so bad.
In reality, if I'm coming off of a bad crunch, I do anything I can do to avoid burnout. Sometimes that's 'fun' backlog items or research for future features or something else I'm excited about, sometimes it's studying for certs, sometimes it's cutting slack (@[email protected] watching Netflix feels familiar!). But again - whatever it takes to recharge my batteries and feel less bitter and shitty.
The most 'sure' sign that I'm coming off a crunch, though, is that I start reinforcing work/life boundaries. "It's 5p and I'm logging off and I'm not going to think about work shit willingly until tomorrow."
Yes.
Although I was also of an age when I was diagnosed (40), where it not only threw my whole life up to that point into a different light….it also threw my parent’s lives up to that point into a different light. Because part of why I was sure I was ‘normal’ for 40 years was because my whole family did the exact same things….🤦🤷♂️
That sounds brutal man; do you mind if I ask what stack/language? What kind of company were you at before?
We’ve been hiring (for real) but only for more senior positions. Fintech.
Have you tried contracting? Especially if you’re asking them to consider you for junior level positions, that might be a good bridge into something more long term; keep the lights on and let you keep searching and in the meantime some company gets an amazing deal on your talent.