beardedetim

Location: Tennessee, US

Remote: only

Willing to Relocate: Probably not but open to PNW/Europe

Technologies: Web (React/TS/etc), backend (node/python/go), infra (everything from ansible to Terraform). When I say full stack I mean I've shipped and owned pager across the stack

Resume: via email

Email: hn@mck-p.com

I'm looking to move from IC into EM/engineering leadership. Over a decade experience across both.

I think of this and the book the author wrote Computer Power and Human Reason every time I try to talk to product about the short comings of LLMs

It's a ~year old product that started on GH. So this is the first time this team has had to think through "okay, so this isn't as reliable as it was at $oldjob."

We're starting to have the conversation of "do we need to replace GitHub as our CI/CD pipeline?"

No idea if/when we decide to pull that bandaid but I think once we can't merge a hot fix into main because of GH being down, it'll be a big org push to replace it.

What's everyone else using? Self hosted Gitlab? Gitea?

Tinfoil hat time but I think they definitely did _something_ at that time that "changed" the system. It's the Cambridge Analytica/Trump time and I believe that FB definitely "changed" at the same time.

This is what I don't understand about this policy. There's no way a senior has enough spare capacity to be the gate keeper on every PR made by AI below them. So now we are just making it so the senior people use more AI to keep up but now they're to blame for letting it happen.

It sounds like a piss poor deal for seniors unless senior engineer now means professional code reviewer.

Early in my career I tried very hard to "be concrete, cold, and direct" because that's what I thought a good communicator would do. It was seen as attacking to anyone below me and confusing to anyone above me. I was naive and I suffered for it.

I definitely agree with what you're saying here where these words actually do mean something, but it's completely opaque to those outside the "know". I also have found that there's not any better way to express information to those in the group than in this coded language, even if it makes completely no sense to me.

I wish younger me understood that the way I'm being perceived is the only important thing, not choosing the "best" words to technically describe a situation

This feels like such a valid solution and is how past $dayjobs released things: send to the free users, rollout to Paying Users once that's proven to not blow up.

I've become a huge fan of A.E. van Vogt and have been slowly collecting all of his pulp books.

This is the reason I left the "main" social media and what keeps me from engaging too much with Reddit/HN or any of the other new hotness like Mast, nostr, BlueSky, etc: it's just rage baiting or karma farming

This is a good callout/distinction you're making. How we view the goal of the experience determines our experience itself. The guitar analogy is really good because if your goal was to learn guitar, it's definitely not wasted but if your goal was to learn this one specific song as quickly as possible, I could see how my perspective would be different.

they have concepts of a product

I am getting

> "error": "Text to speech is not available. Please set Azure speech credentials in .env"

Cannot agree more to this sentiment. I call it "throw away code" and it's always seemed like the easiest to change in the future, and we all know everything is gonna change in the future.

BM25 is definitely a big deal when you're doing FTS. It's one of the reasons I've switched to Arango as my DB for the project I'm working on that needs FTS. The fact it also comes with graphs means I don't need to bang my head against CTEs either.

Not saying Arango can replace Postgres but for my needs, it's a much better fit AND it offers the FTS that I need out of the box.

Oh this brought back memories! Getting a PS file, using px for everything to "match the designs", random jQuery snippets to get a hamburger menu. Not a damn clue what I was doing but loving every minute of it.

We played tag or hide and seek at a school one time after dark. We were probably 16 or 17 since at least some of us could drive by then. Cops called all of our parents and said we'd go to jail if it happened again.

The funniest thing to me was my parents just straight yelling at me about it as my only rule at that time was "don't get in trouble with the cops". I tried explaining it was just tag, the cops were over reacting. They didn't buy it. I told them "I was with Friend A and Friend B. I'm telling you the cops were being ass holes". They immediately changed their tone to "oh, if A and B were there, those cops were ass holes"

For the right price, I'd sell every bit of data I produce!

I really like this concept of `flex-grid` because that's exactly what this display would be.

I was making music in the early 00s and those indie Internet radio stations were the only place I ever got played. Made me feel like a hot shot!

What if you try to treat people the way they want to be treated instead of how you want to be treated?

I think the "golden rule" has been often misinterpreted as " treat people how you want to be treated" which leads to this misunderstanding that you called out. If we change it to being empathetic towards them and treating them how they want to be treated, the NPCs seem to become fully fledged characters.

I read somewhere long ago that there's some chemical released when you talk about your plans, similar to the chemical that gets released when you complete your plan. So when you talk about your ideas, you feel like you've already accomplished them.

Ever since I heard this, I've been protective of what I talk about and it seems to have helped me ship more things than before.

I can definitely second janus. At previous job, we used that for video calls/streaming mixed with FFMPEG for some transformations along the way. Really reliable stuff.

I 100% agree with this. Have always called it `throw-away development` where you build a prototype just to understanding what it is that you are actually solving/building. Then, once you understand, implement the _actual_ thing you need to, taking the learnings from the throw-away. It takes a _tad_ longer than if you had magically known what to do from the get-go but the learning is invaluable.

> while providing nothing of value you can't get from a game that's not for stakes.

When I play poker, I don't get the same fun value when it's for nothing but the clay chips or even if it's for $2 total win (_when playing for pennies_). The _fun_ for me is when it's a $20+ decision, the _fun_ for me is to play against other people where the decision they have to make has _weight_ to it. I think that there is _fun_ to be had when you're playing for stakes that cannot be had when you're playing for nothing. When I throw the dice, it's not _fun_ to see if it lands on a 7 or 11 or whatever the rules of craps are. The _fun_ for me is the betting, the winning or losing of the money. If I just wanted to see who could get a set of numbers from random dice rolls without money involved, I'd play Yahtzee.

I agree that _some people_ shouldn't gamble because it's not _fun_ but an _addiction_. Just like _some people_ probably shouldn't drink because it's not _fun_ but an _addiction_ or shouldn't smoke weed because it's not _fun_ but _addicting_. That doesn't mean that there is _no value_ being added to the people's lives that _find it fun_ and don't find it _addicting_.

We may disagree on if _fun_ is of any value to people vs the harm that that _fun_ might give them and I think we both agree we should make it _really clear_ the consequences of the _fun_ someone chooses to have. But I disagree that gambling adds _no value_ whatsoever or the idea that what I find is of no value means that everyone should agree it adds no value. Let the players have their fun, tax the shit out of it, and offer help to those that have an addiction to it, just like smoking or drinking or anything else that we as a society have deemed not illegal but not directly beneficial.

It is all hevel, vapor. There is no sense to anything, no _meaning_ to anything. It just _is_. Eat, drink, and find satisfaction in your lot.

Three Scientists and their Gods is such a good book! Almost anything by Robert Wright has been a must buy for me ever since!

I think, if I'm recalling it correctly, that the component that is defining it in the docs can be either client or server and by marking the functiom as server only, Next knows to do magic.

Fellow Volunteer here so totally empathize with the summer sun making the runs even harder!

I used to be far more systematic with my life many moons ago, in my late teens and early 20s. That helped immensely and I credit a lot of my personal growth towards that.

I don't think this is the best forum to get into the weeds about it, especially since everyone is different and YMMV. The root of the systems were to 1) create a singular, specific goal that was _the most important thing to me_. More important than pride, than sleep, than food. That's not healthy and only works so far so I then added 2) retrospectives every week on how I'm doing in relation to that goal. Are the steps I'm taking actually helping me reach that goal? Is that goal actually more important than anything else? Is that goal the actual goal I'm after or was it just a flag bearer for what I think the goal might look like? Being solely focused on one thing that influences everything and iterating on that goal are the two "systems" I now use in a general sense.

As an example, I wanted to get into software but dropped out of school and worked manual labor jobs. I decided that my only goal in life was to become a software engineer so I spent all my free time, all of my energy, all of _me_ in order to reach that goal. That came at the cost of the manual labor jobs which meant I had to couch surf for a few months/a year and get food from my friends so I could literally focus my whole life around that goal. I was blessed to have that support network, privileged one might say these days. I'm not saying that's a good choice and I doubt most people have the support network of friends with couches that they'll offer you. But I do think the _severity_ of my desire for that goal was the root cause of success.

Having a singular, focused, concrete goal is the biggest takeaway from all the other "systems" I used. Happy to chat more if that's your jam!

Really good way to say it! In my experience, there's something to do with starting a "flow" that I as a human get stuck into. If the "flow" is doing things that I don't want to do but I _need_ to do for whatever reason (_because I told myself I would, because it will help my future self, etc_), I will be in a "flow" state of doing those things, causing the "snowball" effect or the "virtue/viscous cycle" as you describe it.

As someone posted above, there are limits to this but I wonder if there are systems or ways that we could _stretch_ those limits, possibly by making the _hard_ things not a choice and to be in this _flow_ state without needing to actively expend energy to be in it. Something like a muscle where the more you stretch it past its ability, the stronger it gets (_within reason_). As an example, when I started running, I could hardly do 1 minute without heavy breathing and now am able to run half marathons that, while tired at the end, are completely within my wheelhouse without feeling almost dead.