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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: December 25th, 2023

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  • I have had difficulty focusing and learning since middle school, and was constantly ostracized and bullied throughout my entire childhood. My parents knew that I had ADHD since kindergarten, but refused to take action because my narcissistic mother could never have a child who was different.

    I was 38 when I finally decided to get an official ADHD and autism diagnosis. My diagnosis has been bittersweet. Medication has helped me to focus and improve my skills as a software engineer, but I still mourn the life that I could have had if we’re treated earlier.






  • I find most bad codebases exist because of a culture that isn’t focused on quality, and I’m not talking about bug counts or code coverage. Clean codebases stay clean by being proactive about keeping them clean. This should include meticulous peer reviews, establishing design patterns, enforcing best practices, and taking initiative to leave things better than you found them (we used to call that boy scouting).

    If your teams PR comments only contain LGTM, and the average time spent reviewing them is 5 minutes, your team isn’t focused on quality. If a PR contains more files than an average person can keep in their mental context window, it won’t get the attention it needs to be properly reviewed. If there is no accountability to keep a clean codebase, you’ll end up with 2 hours of work taking 5 days to complete.



  • I have been been actively interviewing for software engineering leadership roles. A few years ago, the process would have involved submitting a resume, maybe a technical round, a chat with the CTO, and a vibe-check with another employee. It has now become a gauntlet of 5+ STAR format behavioral rounds, presentations, take home tests, systems design whiteboard sessions, and the beloved technical review where you share your screen and someone watches you fumble through some stupid leetcode challenge.

    I have been finding it difficult to control my anxiety as I progress through each round of interviews. The steaks are higher after each round to make it to the next.

    It sucks getting rejected after round 3-4+ rounds. Sometimes I won’t hear back at all, other times I might get the canned rejection email from the ATS. I take feedback and criticism very personally, which makes personalized rejections even more painful.

    I wish I didn’t love software engineering so much. I wish I had another skill to fall back to that made as much money.

    How do you all deal with the social, executive, and operational rigors of finding jobs and interviewing?





  • Professional, industry-standard applications running natively on any major distro.

    I use Adobe and Ableton products every day. I simply cannot use Linux as my main OS until these products can run in a real Linux environment, no matter how much I want to.

    Argue all you want about Linux alternatives being just as good. The point is, they’re simply not what what the majority of professionals use.