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TheMongooseon Ask HN: How do you feel about using AI tools on your phone? Privacy vs. Utility

What actually sounds useful?

Why do you care if everyone starts work around the same time? And why in the name of DOG do you think that a meeting is the best way to enforce that?

You were doing so well until you didn't say "so we got rid of them, end of post. Catch us next time"

TheMongooseon Ask HN: Are you considering retraining or changing careers due to AI?

Due to AI? No.

Due to corporate morons chasing the hype train? Absolutely. The job market sucks. Considering new fields for the next little while, once everyone discovers that vibe coded trash is not sufficient I'll probably come back.

Or maybe I'll just decide I don't want my livelihood to depend on the sort of moron who sees an LLM and decides to replace half their company with it and stay out.

TheMongooseon Ask HN: Are AI Agents a Lie?

https://www.wheresyoured.at/ has a lot to say about the topic.

TheMongooseon Ask HN: Does vibe coding hurt good software engineers?

Good software engineers don't vibe code.

TheMongooseon Ask HN: Escaping a Low-Paying Nepali IT Job and Ineffective Learning Cycle

You need projects that you care about. Making something you actually want to have will help motivate you to push through the problems that you run in to, and help give you more exposure to the million little problems you encounter once you step out of tutorial hell.

Couple this with a promise to yourself. At least 1 hour per day of your best effort. On days you're feeling it you'll do more, and that's good. On days you're not feeling it you're gonna struggle bus through your best effort for an hour, and then you're gonna go do something else guilt free knowing that you made SOME progress and kept the promise to yourself.

TheMongooseon Ask HN: My company is forcing 1 week sprints. What should I do?

Still doesn't matter. Make Jira say whatever they want. Or you could enjoy applying endlessly in the currently completely hosed job market.

TheMongooseon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (May 2025)

  Location: Texas
  Remote: Yes, preferred
  Willing to relocate: Would consider for the right opportunity
  Technologies: Go(Golang) Python, C, Open API, PKI, Windows and Linux, Jenkins, MongoDB, SQL (various flavors), Rabbit MQ, Elasticsearch, Docker, Grafana
  Résumé/CV: https://drive.proton.me/urls/RQMHCZCXZ8#QErciYhWULju
  Email: hirethemongoose.z5svw@passmail.net

TheMongooseon Ask HN: My company is forcing 1 week sprints. What should I do?

Realize that when a company is doing Agile at you that everything is made up and the points don't matter. Make your t-shirts smaller and do whatever you were going to do anyway.

TheMongooseon "just" is a four letter word

This TBH. I consider "just" to be shorthand for "have you tried this idea?"

TheMongooseon Show HN: Go from Idea to Revenue in Just Days

If you get stuck setting things up imagine how stuck you will be when the things you DIDN'T set up break.

TheMongooseon From Zero to Coding Hero: How Biela Is Changing the Game for NonnCoders

Small business websites already have issues with security because they don't have the expertise/budget to secure them. I'm sure injecting a slop generator into the process won't make that worse. /s

TheMongooseon Show HN: Be My First User

I have an email app that notifies me of new mail and allows me to respond with real human content. It doesn't require me to send my inbox through a random third party's slop machine.

Next you'll tell us that you vibe coded it.

TheMongooseon Can Agentic AI disrupt recruiting? I think it already has

"The tooling is bad and making things harder. The solution is another tool!"

I applied for a SWE role at FedEx. They had a chat bot that asked me if I fulfilled the minimum requirements one by one with yes/no clicky responses and then linked me to a regular job application.

Truly transformative.

Never heard back, I'm sure another AI system rejected my application for some nonsense reason or another.

TheMongooseon Where are you in your dev career?

At the stage where I'm wondering what to do for money in the short term while everyone re-discovers why they need good devs.

TheMongooseon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (April 2025)

  Location: Texas
  Remote: Yes, preferred
  Willing to relocate: Would consider for the right opportunity
  Technologies: Go(lang) Python, C, Open API, PKI, Windows and Linux, Jenkins, MongoDB, SQL (various flavors), Rabbit MQ, Elasticsearch, Docker, Grafana
  Résumé/CV: https://drive.proton.me/urls/RQMHCZCXZ8#QErciYhWULju
  Email: hirethemongoose.z5svw@passmail.net

Summary: Product-minded software engineer with experience in multiple languages. More than 15 years of experience in technical roles of various kinds including software development, quality assurance, system administration, Dev-Ops, and support. Looking to join a team that prioritizes delivery of quality software that delights users.

Note: the email and resume are anonymized, because I get a ton of phishing email every month I post this. I'm happy to share "real" contact information with a real employer.

TheMongooseon Ask HN: A Message in a Bottle from Gen Z

Yes, good spot, I ranked them least to most effective.

TheMongooseon Ask HN: A Message in a Bottle from Gen Z

Your manager is not your friend. Your company is not your friend. The internet is not your friend.

Good news is that you're here asking for advice on how to drive your career instead of letting them do it. Bad news is I don't know how to help you if you don't actually want to write code outside of work.

In general I've experienced a lot more valuable growth out of personal projects than LeetCode bullshit. I like to MAKE things, not solve pointless CS puzzles. My eyes also glaze over when I try to read a book or watch a video on some silly CS trivia. So if I had to rank effective strategies for me from least to most effective it's books -> videos -> stupid puzzles -> making things (using videos or other materials to get over sticky points)

You'll notice some things here if you look closely. I have explained what works for me, and why. You'll have to do some experimentation to figure out what works for you, then lean in to that.

Lastly for anyone that has trouble consistently doing a thing I always suggest the "just one hour" method. You promise yourself one hour of your best effort per day of working on that thing. If you're feeling good and get sucked in and work on it for multiple hours that's fine, if you struggling to give any fucks that day you complete the hour and move on to whatever other things you wanted to do.

TheMongooseon AI will take your job. Get over it

Super credible when the "article" telling me that AI is gonna take my job comes from the CEO of an AI company.

TheMongooseon Why is there so much [deleted] on Reddit, they clearly didn't delete themselves?

Lots of people deleted their posts and accounts because of Reddit's decisions to kill their third party app ecosystem with API fees and selling of data.

Congratulations on waking up from your coma or escaping from underneath the rock or whatever other circumstance lead to you missing large events from the past few years.

TheMongooseon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (March 2025)

  Location: Texas
  Remote: Yes, preferred
  Willing to relocate: Would consider for the right opportunity
  Technologies: Go(lang) Python, C, Open API, PKI, Windows and Linux, Jenkins, MongoDB, SQL (various flavors), Rabbit MQ, Elasticsearch, Docker, Grafana
  Résumé/CV: https://drive.proton.me/urls/RQMHCZCXZ8#QErciYhWULju
  Email: hirethemongoose.z5svw@passmail.net

TheMongooseon Ask HN: Concerns around knowledge loss from vibe coding?

Not at all. I don't use AI for anything, so when everyone has become so dependent on the magic chat box to do everything for them and it falls short I'll have lots of work to do fixing it all.

TheMongooseon Ask HN: Best way to summarize a webpage using LLM?

1. Close the GPT tab for the first time in years.

2. Read it with your eyeballs.

3. Parse it with your brain, think about it, maybe learn something.

Stop outsourcing your thinking to a freaking chatbot.

TheMongooseon Will AI take web developer jobs?

I, for one, look forward to seeing the mess that results from the C-Suite lemmings all marching off the LLM cliff with their companies in tow.

TheMongooseon Ask HN: How to assess SWE in times of remote and AI?

Why would it be any different from assessing us in person? The only good thing to come out of AI so far IMO is that leetcode puzzles are basically useless now.

TheMongooseon Meta says this is the make or break year for the metaverse

Didn't they also say they were replacing mid level engineers with AI?

TheMongooseon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (February 2025)

  Location: Texas
  Remote: Yes, preferred
  Willing to relocate: Would consider for the right opportunity
  Technologies: Go(lang) Python, C, Open API, PKI, Windows and Linux, Jenkins, MongoDB, SQL (various flavors), Rabbit MQ, Elasticsearch, Docker, Grafana
  Résumé/CV: https://drive.proton.me/urls/RQMHCZCXZ8#QErciYhWULju
  Email: hirethemongoose.z5svw@passmail.net

TheMongooseon Ask HN: Will secret tech be obsolete in the age of artificial superintelligence?

Dunno, let me hop in my time machine and skip forward a few hundred years. See if they've managed to make something that can count the r's in strawberry by then or not.

TheMongooseon Ask HN: How to explain to execs why gen AI hasn't 10x'd feature dev

I would look at why you're outsourcing this thinking to HN instead of putting together data and an understanding of your own environment.

Or just ask the LLM's to write it for you.

TheMongooseon Ask HN: Anyone else find LLM related posts causing them to lose interest in HN

It's deeply funny that they hit you with the ole "you don't understand AI" when it's your day job though. So you've got that going for you.