447 karma · joined August 12, 2017
I forgot the editor (maybe TextMate?) that was in vogue during the peak of the Ruby on Rails era, but there was such a feeling of magic to using what was a fairly basic editor that still had syntax highlighting.
Was this feeling of magic purely because I was younger? Or perhaps we did peak in terms of the ergonomics of human-controlling-machine without too many aids?
Fighter pilots used to fly with skill and instincts, but now are assisted by all sorts of high tech equipment that has removed much of the "flying skill" and replaced it with "equipment skill". It's not that fighter pilots are worse now. I'm sure they are better at achieving the outcomes desired, while commanding much more complex equipment. But the perhaps the art of flying is less emphasized.
In the same way, perhaps the era of software engineering is changing too?
Mazda CX9: weight: 4,409lbs, 199″ L x 78″ W x 68″ H
Honda Odyssey: 4,482lbs, 205″ L x 79″ W x 70″ H
For us, it mostly boiled down to us needing to periodically drive in snowy conditions. Obviously an SUV is not a magical vehicle for wintry conditions, but 4wd is big advantage.
If so, many minivans are ~similar in size, weight, and capacity to modern SUVs (not all SUVs are a Chevy Suburban :-)). For example, you can compare the Honda Odyssey to the Mazda CX9 and the specs are actually not too different:
Mazda CX9: weight: 4,409lbs, 199″ L x 78″ W x 68″ H
Honda Odyssey: 4,482lbs, 205″ L x 79″ W x 70″ H
Edit: formatting
We tried to hold out for as long as we could without an SUV. Ultimately, taking a week long trip with the family became focused around space management, having to play packing tetris and telling my wife "I don't think we have space for the pack and play". Sure we made it work, but it was stressful.
We got a 3 row SUV (3rd row collapses), and the additional space is just fantastic when it comes to packing. And when the cousins or grandparents are in town, the 3rd row comes in handy.
When considering a change, I was told by multiple layers of management that they would be totally fine with me moving away from the office and becoming permanently remote.
But none of them would put that in an email, or ask HR for formal approval. It was always "as far as I'm concerned, it's completely fine". It was never "yes, this is something that we will stand by if it comes under pressure".
I chose to leave in the end, mostly due to the weakness of this promise. And with each new article covering their RTO debacle, I become more convinced it was the right decision. I had great teammates, and a great direct manager. But the macro situation at Amazon is a mess.
Amazon is just a loose federation of mostly autonomous orgs. This is partially why the employee experience there can vary so much depending on the org. And HR at Amazon is just another org that acts mostly autonomously from the other orgs.
Shameful.
The whole "juniors need easy help and struggle to get it themselves" seems like an artificially concocted narrative to me.
Edit: fixed a word
Source: was sr engineer at Amazon
Their cloud is not top dog. Their search is losing ground.
I guess they have youtube, android, and gsuite.
My friends used to talk about how they loved it there, and got to work on impactful things. But slowly that shifted to "all we do is take a half year to add a field to a proto", and then "at least it pays well".
I don't have anything in particular to add here, but it seems a shame that Google has fallen so far.