theshadowknows

I had the same reaction :)

I often think about working to level up my actual programming abilities because I feel that, surely the folks who are pulling those kinds of salaries are working on really interesting problems. Part of my dissatisfaction with my job is that while I do work on difficult problems a lot of the difficulty comes from process or legacy systems. The really hard problems that my org faces arent the same league of hard problems that someone at a FAANG company (or similar) is working on.

Oh yes I am not complaining by any means. One thing is that I grew up very poor, so honestly I was excited the first time I got a job paying 40k/yr.

in my org we have basically three levels of architect:

enterprise architect (me) domain architect (something like "communications domain") solution architect (like Azure architect)

My job isn't to sit down and write code, most of the time. What I do is take a business requirement, go back and forth with a ton of business people to nail down exactly what they need or want to do, and then go on a series of requirements gathering sessions after figuring out the impacted or required systems. So let's say someone wants to digitize a specific set of communications. It makes more sense to build internal and scalable capabilities to be able to digitize any communication - so working out the technologies required to do that, the integration points, the patterns for how to do it. It involves learning a lot and then evaluating what you learned, and eventually diagraming it all out into an architecture that the domain and solution architects use.

The domain architects then would add in more detail and requirements within the systems that are affected and finally the designs get to the solution architects.

The solution architects go through the whole sketch and make sure it makes sense, that the data or whatever required will get to them and that their platform(s) are empowered and capable of performing the work thats being asked. They then design the solution for those technologies and when programming needs to get done then that is sent to the engineering teams to actually build it.

In terms of hierarchy the programmers/engineers tend to be the recipients of requirements rather than really being involved conversationally. I don't necessarily agree with this approach and I try to work directly with programmers where I can. And more often than not I'll work with them doing PoC coding in whatever technology - usually java, of course.

I’m wondering if I’m just not worth as much money or if I’m not paid as much because I don’t work in California or both, lol. I work for an enormous company. I’ve got about 8 or so years experience. As of right now I’m a sr architect and I work on enterprise-level systems - either designing or enhancing existing processes and platforms. I don’t really code much these days, though I do write a lot of sql, build lots of diagrams, and build a lot of sample requests for various groups when they aren’t quite getting something from the docs. I make 180 TC and live in the north east though not NYC or Boston. That said, I also have a two floor plus fully finished basement home with three bedrooms, four bathrooms, a nice yard, garage, and a nice deck that I can work on when the weather is nice. So, I’m not complaining, I feel like I live comfortably. But man if I had an extra 200k to just throw into savings and investing? Whooo boy…

Right? Say if you know there will be a 2% chance to have a 1% increase over the yearly average at LocationX on Thursday…what can you do? Add police and first responders? Reroute traffic? Tell people to stay home? I feel like nothing that can be done will be able to solve the problem but just move it somewhere else

I bookmark it :)

We just launched a new product. It wasn’t really new, though. It’s a copy of a product that we used to buy but for some reason decided to build in house. It got rushed forward by a month (the announcement internally was “the new prod date is X is your team ready?”).

It’s been awful for users since the second it went live. I’ve personally had to spend dozens of hours on it so far and I’m sure some fresh hell will show up tomorrow.

But everyone is excited because it’s one more dot on the PowerPoint of stuff team X has achieved this quarter.

And tracking down errors? Logs? Ppfftttt…guess what got descoped as low priority when everyone had to scramble. So chasing down even seemingly simple bugs is a nightmare.

That makes sense. I was sort of thinking there’s likely something similar with regard to selling national secrets.

I’m no lawyer but I do recall an episode of Cops waaaay back where a guy got busted for selling “weed” except it was actually oregano. He still got charged with something. But I can’t remember what.

Until companies begin just sharing specific parts of their server side logging. I can see a future where all the tracking happens in a fully server-side network of companies just sharing data back and forth or between a central database.

When I was in middle school I had a science class where the computer was a few feet ahead of my desk. And it always had Warp on the screen. For some reason I couldn’t look at it for more than a few seconds or I’d start falling asleep.

That’s sort of how things are where I work. The systems are so complicated and the interactions are often algorithmic and machine learning based. We try to maintain documentation and architecture artifacts with as much accuracy as possible. But in some cases things may as well be magic because no one really understands the whole process.

Yeah as part of my job I often have to work with our DNS team to provision say a subdomain or get some domain verified. They’ve got like…three people…trying to service thousands of teams across the enterprise. I do not envy their job at all.

There was an Addams family episode way back where Gomez was depressed because everything he did would win big. So he decided to dump all of his shares of some stock that he knew was going to go up. And when news spread that he’d done it the stock tanked and he ended up “winning” because he saved so much money by selling before the huge dip. I’ve always thought that was interesting.

I know nothing about how processors work so tell me if this even makes sense. But other than the time and money is there any reason that say a Google can’t create their 100% from scratch CPU and instruction set? Same for apple and all the others?

Yeah I’m a “sr architect” on an enterprise team where I work. I work from home in my home office and I get to see my wife all day or play with the dog. But at the same time I have dozens of people screaming at me over Teams it email or sometimes just calling me. Everything is always top priority. Everything is mission critical. Every project deadline is static and can’t be budged even a little bit. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve worked in factories before. And gas stations. And warehouses unloading trucks. I know what a hard day is like in a physical job earning a fraction of what I earn now. But at the end of the day it’s also about what it costs to earn that salary. And when sr leadership refuses to listen or understand something and when projects change wildly or have no direction…it might not be the same as unloading trucks of heavy boxes in the summer…but it really, really sucks to work so hard and build things that are genuinely cool only to have then be pulled into meetings the next day asking why you suck at your job.

It’s 12:15 pm and I’ve been working since 3:00 am trying to keep on top of deadlines but in my current role I’m an architect and I’m also the engineer that builds the things I design. And I’m also the only point of contact for testing. And I’m the only point of contact for troubleshooting. I don’t have an engineering or qa team..it’s just me by myself. And it crushed my soul every morning when I wake up. I’d quit right now if my wife didn’t require expensive and complicated medical treatment. I guess that’s more a problem with the medical system than anything. But even with savings we wouldn’t be able to last more than a year if we didn’t find similar income with similar insurance.

I can tell you marketers are freaking out. And it’s delicious to watch.

One time, many years ago now, I was interviewing and made it through several rounds. The topic of salary didn’t come up until the end when I spoke with the CEO and she asked how much I was looking for. When I told her she laughed and said “I think we can do better than that.” And my entire world view shifted and I realized I’d been undervaluing myself for years.

I agree. And I say this as someone who lives in a house with two iPad Pros, air pods (three pairs)/pro (two pairs) /max (two pairs), home pod, home pod mini, iMac, and two MacBook pros..I’m a big fan of Apple products. But I’m more than happy to talk about all the stuff they do that I don’t like and the lock in which seems to get worse each year…it’s so crazy to me when people make their favorite products/brands/politicians part of their identity when truthfully most of these entities see you as nothing except something from which to extract value.

Wouldn’t it just be easier to dust food sources with tiny probes and then scavenge them from the sewers? That way they don’t need to fly and I’m sure you could build them in such a way that for specific foods no one would notice.

We’re mad that the Bidens profited from coverups but assume the Trumps haven’t ever benefited from the same type of coverup? Do people really think Trump became a billionaire by just being a sweet person? Do people really think that Trump hasn’t ever used his influence to squash a story or report that he didn’t like?

Extra points for “earth-shattering kaboom” :)

It’s so crazy to me that people wonder about this. Maybe it’s people who’ve never had a normal job. But most jobs suck. Most jobs are demeaning and poorly compensated. Most jobs can and will fire you for no good reason and most jobs provide little to no protection. Most jobs will fire you for being late a couple of times. And most jobs come with no respect or prestige at all..what’s wild to me is that people don’t seem to understand that. I guess they never unloaded trucks in 100 degree weather for 8 dollars an hour or mopped up gas station toilets at 5 am for 12 dollars an hour.

I wonder if they left out a few words. The Windows subsystem for using audio. The Windows subsystem for using graphics. The Windows subsystem for using modems. (I made those up…I think)

I always wonder what it takes to find this kind of exploit. Are the programmers at NSO group just the best in the world? Or are they incredibly lucky? Both? I’d love to know what a normal day at work is like for their engineers. Clock in, sit down at a…crazy expensive hardware and software testing station? Crack open a brand new iPhone and start probing away while referencing internet sourced chip documentation and software manuals? What does it even look like?

Mech Warrior 2 was one of my very favorite games, ever. Right up there with Monkey Island, Myst, StarCraft. Man now I want to go play a bunch of old games. Maybe even Starship Titanic, which came a bit later but was so much fun.

I cringe whenever people describe their app as “beautiful.” For the same reason.

My very first “school computer incident” was so innocent by comparison for most people.

I was maybe 11 and I was learning about batch files and I made one named win.bat that printed “hello”. Well I’m sure most folks know what happened next time the computer rebooted …hello hello hello hello hello…and the computer teacher said I had installed a virus and tried to kick me out of school. Luckily I was only expelled from computer class for the rest of the year.