Hacker News Reader

navyadon Ask HN: Tired of software career. What now?

Into 10 years into the career, I have found that in the end its all about the people. Most of the comapanies suck making life easier for software developlemt, with useless standups, lack of documentation, proper testing, quick tasks, and on top of it micromanagement, un-productive meetings and with no foucs on culture. To me, all this energy drainging activities. It is hard to find the real joy for the job, in such cases.

navyadon Ask HN: An engineer resigns -> How tech companies manage knowledge transfer?

Most of the companies fail at knowledge transfer as they have very poor documenting culture.

navyadon Ask HN: What is your company doing with AI?

There will be very few companies which will be really using the AI to solve problem which AI can solve, otherwise every next company slapping "AI" on their prodcut.

navyadon The Time I Convinced the CTO Not to Outsource Our Developers

Same situatiom came in past, where CEO was trying to hire the agenecy team. I was senior dev into the team, opposed this idea. Their argument was hiring will take lot of time and we have to ship fast. Worst happened ( although I expeacted that), slowly internal team had "no" work. all the work was directed to agency.

navyadon Ask HN: When was the last time you used your tech skills for a real life task?

I built the movie torrent finder of my IMDb's movie watchlist

https://github.com/navyad/moviematch

navyadon Ask HN: Do you think software quality is going downhill? If so, why?

IMO, people who are running the company has very little or no perspective of software quality and how it will impact in the long run, specially if company is run by sales (CEO) guy. They just want to "release" feature, even if there is know bugs are there. Its a sad reality of lot of software shops.

navyadon Ask HN: What software/tech blogs/magazines should I be reading in 2024?

This guys rocks !!

navyadon Ask HN: What books do you want to read over again?

Start reading Bhagvad Gita few days back.

re-read: 1984, Animal Farm and flowers of algernon.

navyadon Ask HN: Anyone Use Firefox in 2023?

Yes, I use it for my personal browsing. For company related stuff i uses Chrome

navyadon Ask HN: Who here loves their job?

what is FI ?

navyadon What's the worst codebase you've ever worked on?

Nested code with no tests or docs and devs are afraid to fix bugs. That's where i coined the term "Fear Driven Development". The code is so mess such that no dev wants to touch the code. when they do touch, something is surely broken.

navyadon Staff+ engineers, how do you learn new technologies at a new company?

-- Read official docs

-- Use Repl to try examples in the doc

-- build side project

navyadon What startup snakery have you experienced as a developer / employee?

After covid started, team started working from home. week into it, HR told team that screen tracker software is to be installed. so that CEO can track what team is doing. I objected to this and left the job. since i find this unethical also very childish approach to micromanagement.

Even in office CEO was tracking the "work" via installed cctv from remote since he was in US.

It turns out that guy was control freak.

navyadon What startup snakery have you experienced as a developer / employee?

yeah, that happens

navyadon Ask HN: What is a movie you keep watching again every couple of years?

Nice one, Ek Doctor Ki Maut.

navyadon Ask HN: What is a movie you keep watching again every couple of years?

- Fight Club

- Mulholland Drive

- Mall Rats

navyadon Ask HN: When you code at work, how do you code in your time off?

Totally agree, as one have to enjoy the time spent in code. Also no pressure to make that perfect (although one may). Important thing that mentioned is project can be worked in "on-off" mode, because giving free time always not viable, specially if one has family.

navyadon Should I contribute to open source before my first job?

Sure, certainly, that will be good.

navyadon Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

built this and using this: https://github.com/navyad/moviematch

navyadon Ask HN: What IDE do you use and why?

always vim and "been able to exit, successfully"

navyadon Ask HN: Skills that give you joy/flow

running

navyadon Ask HN: What problem can I help you with?

First write tests without touching existing code. Once tests are complete, do refactor.

navyadon Ask HN: When to Quit?

people you are working with nice, and you can enjoy working with. Also not much strees of work, then staying would be better option.

As far as learning is concerned, you have various opportunities to learn outside of work as well, taking course or building project.

navyadon Ask HN: I’m starting a new job and things feel off. Am I overreacting?

Its a red flag. Happens to one if my friend, where they ask to go through the product document and get on call to discuss. But eventually found that(after joining) the company was in complete mess, more of co-founder were clearly lacking vision to run the company. Friend left that company after a year.

My advice would be if you do not any other offer, join. See how things are on the ground and take decision whether to continue after 6-12 months.

navyadon Ask HN: Been writing code for 40 years and can't get hired

+1 learn, build and show.

navyadon Show HN: I am not a dev, but published a Chrome extension: Cowboy Copy

if you have built project on github, you are dev.

navyadon Ask HN: Learning Python for job interviews if I already know Ruby?

Refer python documentation as a reference and build some side project.