tuckerpo

"Woah dude, this is so revolutionary that if we keep pace, it'll like, change the world even more, man... we'd better slow down..."

"BUY BUY BUY BUY BUY BUY BUY"

Gone? It started rotten with Bell and hasn't gotten much better.

Ah, I remember when reversing hardware took weeks / months, an oscilloscope, logic analyzer, Ghidra/IDA, Wireshark, breakout boards, wireless sniffers... back in the olden days of... 2019.

> zero touch

> look inside

> there's a touch

Out of scope in this case means "we don't wanna pay you"

  Location: Denver, Colorado (CO)
  Remote: Yes, or hybrid, or on-site.
  Willing to relocate: Yes, within Colorado, east coast USA, or EU/UK 
  Technologies: C++, C, Python, (Java|Type)Script, assembly (ARM, MIPS, SHARC), Linux (userspace), Linux (kernel), embedded Linux (buildroot, Yocto, OpenWRT, uboot, grub), networking (802.11n,ac,ax,be,k,v,r,s, hostapd, wpa_supplicant, nl80211), , Windows (kernel, C runtime, MFC, WPF, C++, C#), Docker
  Résumé/CV: https://tuckerpo.me/ or curl https://tuckerpo.me/short-resume | jq
  Email: tuckerpolomik[@]gmail.com

Hi, I'm Tucker.

I'm a Senior Systems Engineer who specializes in making complicated systems actually work. My background is primarily in C and C++, Linux, embedded systems, networking, and low-level software development.

Over the past 8+ years I've worked everywhere from bootloaders, firmware, and Linux kernel modules to networking daemons, distributed systems, protocol implementations, backend services, and production user-space applications. I'm comfortable moving between hardware bring-up, operating systems, networking stacks, and application-layer software depending on what the problem requires.

I have particularly deep expertise in Linux and wireless networking, including 802.11 protocol development, Linux networking subsystems, hostapd/wpa_supplicant, OpenWRT-based platforms, authentication systems, cryptography, and large-scale connectivity infrastructure. My work has resulted in conference talks, published papers, patents, and contributions to major open-source networking projects. I'm additionally involved in standards bodies like the WFA, IEEE, and CSA, so very well versed in Wi-Fi infrastructure, standards, and implementation.

I tend to thrive in environments where engineers are trusted to solve difficult technical problems, own systems end-to-end, and ship software that customers actually use. Whether it's debugging kernel crashes, chasing race conditions across distributed systems, designing protocols, optimizing performance, or bringing up entirely new platforms, I'm happiest when working close to the technology.

Currently interested in systems programming, embedded Linux, infrastructure, backend engineering, networking, security, developer tooling, and performance-critical software.

If you need someone who can move comfortably between kernel space, user space, networking stacks, operating systems, back-end dev, front-end, mobile, and production software without needing n-many separate specialists, I'd be happy to chat.

Anecdotally I'd argue that it's not just "plenty", but the majority of people who only work one single job barely and/or pretend to work. I regularly see Principal+ engineers, VPs and Directors waddling around looking important or just staring at their monitors with a glazed over look.

Most corporations don't need nearly as many employees as they actually have, so if you can deliver exceptional results in 20 hours, why not dedicate the remaining 20 hours to another corp, and double your comp? Everyone wins.

HackerNews dudes claiming they do a true minimum 40 hours per week, every week, forever, of heads-down hard-work are deluding themselves. I really don't understand the overemployment hatred this forum has. There are plenty of folks who really do solid work at 2+ jobs, not half-assing and politicking.

Disclaimer: I am not OE.

All anecdotes I see about this dude is: "we hired him and he did a fantastic job, but once we found out he had multiple employment we fired him".

... why? If the guy's doing well by all metrics and not leaking IP, literally, who cares?

  Location: Denver, Colorado (CO)
  Remote: Yes, or hybrid, or on-site.
  Willing to relocate: Yes, within Colorado, east coast USA, or EU/UK
  Technologies: C++, C, Python, (Java|Type)Script, assembly (ARM, MIPS, SHARC), Linux (userspace), Linux (kernel), embedded Linux (buildroot, Yocto, OpenWRT, uboot, grub), networking (802.11n,ac,ax,be,k,v,r,s, hostapd, wpa_supplicant, nl80211), FPGA (VHDL, Verilog, Xilinx, Intel), Windows (kernel, C runtime, MFC, WPF, C++, C#), Docker
  Résumé/CV: https://tuckerpo.me/ or curl https://tuckerpo.me/short-resume | jq
  Email: tuckerpolomik[@]gmail.com

Hi, I’m Tucker — a senior systems engineer with 7+ years of experience and the battle scars to prove it. I’ve written firmware for chips that barely boot, kernel modules that talk to hardware no one admits to designing, and userland code that somehow still runs in production. Occasionally I get dragged into front-end work too, usually as penance for something I did in a past life.

Strong C++/C background, systems-level orientation. I’m at home in resource-constrained, real-time, or just-plain-hostile environments. Embedded Linux, networking stacks, wireless protocols, FPGAs, weird bootloaders—if it’s not glamorous and people usually avoid it, there’s a good chance I’ve done it. Currently getting into Rust and Zephyr in my free time. Also very very strong background in networking/Wi-Fi, with several talks, published papers, and patents.

Looking for roles where software is the product, not an afterthought. I’d prefer to avoid places where Jira boards are sacred texts, architecture is decided by slide deck, and everyone’s calendar is 95% “syncs” to discuss work nobody’s doing. If your team measures value in working code and shipped products, and not in "alignment", we’ll probably get along.

Spoken at conferences (NetworkX, prpl Summit, SCTE Expo), given demos to customers, and generally enjoy making things that actually work.

If you’ve got an interesting problem, and you aren’t staffed wall-to-wall with MBAs LARPing as engineers via spreadsheet, shoot me an email.

I’ll admit, I’ve shown some of the same symptoms you’re describing. Not out of malice, but as the end-state of long-term burnout and disengagement, at an old job, many years ago.

In my case, it was a slow, creeping decline. I started out hungry: shipping quality work, stepping up for projects well beyond my role and pay grade, even leading teams through fire drills and heroic launches. And the reward? A generic "atta boy!" and more work. Never the raise, the title bump, or real recognition.

My attitude over the span of years regressed considerably, shifting from a bright-eyed aw-shucks happy-go-lucky get-it-done engineer, and asymptotically approached, "dude, please leave me the fuck alone" whenever I heard a Teams ping or an Outlook inbox notification.

Really just smells like symptoms of extreme burnout, the input of which can only be determined by talking to this person. Could be 10 years is far too long in one job and they just want to coast now, could be personal reasons like a divorce or death of a close relative, could just be mid-life crisis, could be "I've got 1.8mm in my 401k, what're you gonna do, fire me?"

I work at a place that's very much in the spirit of Bell Labs — CableLabs — a nonprofit R&D organization that serves the global cable industry. It’s been a pretty unique experience, especially coming from a background in product development, where everything revolves around ship dates, KPIs, roadmaps, and making your manager look good to his manager's manager :eyeroll:.

Here, there are no product managers, barely any formal management, and a remarkably flat structure. Most of the day-to-day work revolves around filing patents, writing papers, speaking at conferences, and building rapid prototypes that push the boundaries of what's technically possible, often years ahead of commercialization. In some ways, it feels like stepping into a time capsule of what R&D used to be: curiosity-driven, deeply technical, and untethered from the usual metrics, as opposed to today's modern R&D miasma aimed only at sand-bagging products/results to nab VC funding and then cash out.

But the catch: our funding rises and falls with the cable industry. When times are good, we explore bleeding-edge ideas in areas like low-latency transport, advanced Wi-Fi features like Wi-Fi sensing, quantum-key distribution over fiber, and next-gen access networks. When times are tight (like now), there’s a sharper focus on short-term, directly applicable work — sometimes even jumping in to help operators troubleshoot real-world deployment issues. It creates this strange duality where one week you're working on a speculative 10-year-out idea, and the next you're neck-deep in production firmware because a partner needs help _today_.

It's a fascinating place to work, but it does raise an interesting question: can long-term innovation really thrive when it's so tightly coupled to a volatile and risk-averse industry? Bell Labs had Ma Bell’s monopoly cash to float moonshots. We’ve got a much leaner model, and the priorities shift accordingly. Sure, we've got Comcast in our pockets, but our R&D charter states that no one member can dominate our funding or priorities: we're split among hundreds of members and vendors, and they all seem coupled to one another economically, so if the industry takes a dip, so do we. I’d be curious how others in applied R&D spaces manage that tension between visionary research and near-term deliverables.

The canonical life vectors people used to align themselves to, largely school -> university -> job -> marriage -> house in the suburbs, are long dead. They don’t work anymore. They don’t even exist for most people. And the worst part is that for a huge swath of the population, life outcomes are no longer a function of personal agency. Not entirely.

I grew up poor. Trailer park, unemployed father, chronically ill mother. I did the "right" things, got degrees, worked my ass off in tech, climbed the ladder. And now, at 30, with a high household income, I still can’t afford a single-family home near my job. The American Dream has been geographically priced out of existence. It's a tautology: you need to be near economic opportunity, but that proximity makes the spoils of that opportunity unattainable.

And let’s say I could buy a house without draining my savings and becoming house-poor, what would I be buying? New builds are laughably bad. Developers optimize for speed and cost-cutting, not longevity or quality. Even the “luxury” apartment I rent, which was built in 2018 in a fairly affluent area, is $3k/month for water leaks, a cracked foundation, bargain-bin appliances, and slanted floors. It’s a high-cost, low-trust ecosystem. Everywhere.

What’s replaced those dead pathways is a schizophrenically fragmented collective ethos. A thousand micro-cultures screaming past each other about what actually matters. For some, it’s hustle and the entrepreneurial grindset. For others, political purity. Or aesthetic curation. Or spiritual awakening. Or personal brand optimization. Some chase passive income, others clout, others raw dopamine. One group preaches family values and self-reliance; another insists that simply surviving is oppression unless all conditions are ideal.

There’s no coherent worldview to plug into anymore. Just a buffet of ideologies, all half-digested and shilled beyond recognition. Each individual has to construct their own belief system out of whatever cultural detritus they happen to trip over. And the result is a populace with no shared reference point, just competing, incompatible theories of meaning, each as brittle and anxious as the next. A non-stop race to the bottom.

And when nobody can agree on what matters, nobody bothers to care. A Boeing tech doesn’t torque the bolt on a 787 properly because, why would he? No one else seems to care. Drivers treat public roads like a demolition derby because enforcement is a joke. People skip car insurance entirely because the odds of meaningful consequences are laughably low. If you're in a fender bender, just drive away! Nothing will happen to you. Steal stuff from the supermarket, nothing will happen. Why pay taxes for your small business? You're never getting audited! See an old lady getting mugged in an alley? Meh, not my problem. Nothing compels people to act in the collective interest anymore... not law, not shame, not pride.

The U.S. increasingly feels less like a country and more like a clown-show economic zone designed not to nurture citizens, but to extract from them, manufacturing wealth from thin air for a rentier class while selling everyone else the illusion of mobility. Unless you were born into money, got absurdly lucky with crypto, or won a scam lawsuit, the system is rigged to keep you running in place, and spare me the cope about “the best time in history,” when modern medicine is a privatized racket pushing pills over care and our “peacetime” economy is bankrolled by an endless carousel of proxy wars and every tech "innovation" in the last 15 years is just a new medium to drill ads into people's lives.

As Jon Blow once said, we live in a profoundly unserious country. And the logical endpoint of that unseriousness is a culture of nihilism, malaise, and quiet surrender. How do you fix it, or is it simply too far gone?

Exponential back-off while zooming in is nice, but maybe reset if scrolling back out.

Warning: unsolicited advice incoming. DFS, at least in the context of big-tech interviews, basically just means searching a 2D matrix, or a graph. It's not some esoteric 160 IQ PhD CS concept. You probably've implemented DFS in your day job without even realizing. I used to think algorithmic interviews were beneath me, too, but then I realized that attitude and insecurity was just getting in my own way.

I begrudgingly started treating LeetCode and CodeForces like a game, and it turned out to be more engaging than I expected. I'm also 30 with a family, so I get the time constraints, but just 30 minutes a day for a few months made a huge difference.

Put it this way: If someone told you, 'I'll give you $500k, top-tier career opportunities, and a resume that opens doors, but you have to spend 30 minutes a day for six months solving toy programming problems,' would your sincere reply be "no thanks"?

  Location: Denver, Colorado (CO)
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: Only within Colorado, or to the one of the following: NY (upstate), VT, NH, ME, MA, RI, MT, ID
  Technologies: C++, C, Python, (Java|Type)Script, assembly (ARM, MIPS, SHARC), Linux (userspace), Linux (kernel), embedded Linux (buildroot, Yocto, OpenWRT, uboot, grub), networking (802.11n,ac,ax,be,k,v,r,s, hostapd, wpa_supplicant, nl80211), FPGA (VHDL, Verilog, Xilinx, Intel), Windows (kernel, C runtime, MFC, WPF, C++, C#), Docker
  Résumé/CV: https://tuckerpo.me/
  Résumé Short (JSON): curl https://tuckerpo.me/short-resume | jq
  Email: tuckerpolomik[@]gmail.com

I'm Tucker, an industrious senior software engineer with 7+ years of experience as both an individual contributor and technical lead across non-profits, for-profit product development companies, and research labs.

I am a generalist with a very broad set of experience, with expertise in system's programming using strongly typed languages. I've done everything from bare-metal assembly code, to FPGA gateware, to Linux kernel modules, to Windows GUI work, to front-end web development. Very "T shaped".

I'm also a seasoned public speaker, having given talks at various conferences including NetworkX, prpl Summit, and SCTE Expo. Quite happy giving customer-facing demos, too.

My ideal role is where software is the product, and I can leverage my expertise in high-performance, resource-critical environments that value deep systems knowledge.

If you're looking for an industrious engineer who adapts quickly and delivers reliably, please reach out. :^)

  Location: Denver, Colorado (CO)
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No
  Technologies: C++, C, Python, (Java|Type)Script, assembly (ARM, MIPS, SHARC), Linux (userspace), Linux (kernel), embedded Linux (buildroot, Yocto, OpenWRT, uboot, grub), networking (802.11n,ac,ax,be,k,v,r,s, hostapd, wpa_supplicant, nl80211), FPGA (VHDL, Xilinx, Intel), Windows (kernel, C runtime, MFC, WPF, C++, C#), Docker
  Résumé/CV: https://tuckerpo.me/
  Email: tuckerpolomik[@]gmail.com

I'm Tucker, an industrious senior software engineer with 7+ years of experience as both an individual contributor and technical lead across non-profits, for-profit product development companies, and research labs.

I am a generalist with a very broad set of experience, with expertise in system's programming using strongly typed languages. I've done everything from bare-metal assembly code, to FPGA gateware, to Linux kernel modules, to Windows GUI work, to front-end web development. Very "T shaped".

I'm also a seasoned public speaker, having given talks at various conferences including NetworkX, prpl Summit, and SCTE Expo. Quite happy giving customer-facing demos, too.

My ideal role is where software is the product, and I can leverage my expertise in high-performance, resource-critical environments that value deep systems knowledge.

If you're looking for an industrious engineer who adapts quickly and delivers reliably, please reach out. :^)

  Location: Denver, Colorado (CO)
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No
  Technologies: C++, C, Python, (Java|Type)Script, assembly (ARM, MIPS, SHARC), Linux (userspace), Linux (kernel), embedded Linux (buildroot, Yocto, OpenWRT, uboot, grub), networking (802.11n,ac,ax,be,k,v,r,s, hostapd, wpa_supplicant, nl80211), FPGA (VHDL, Xilinx, Intel), Windows (kernel, C runtime, MFC, WPF, C++, C#), Docker
  Résumé/CV: https://tuckerpo.me/
  Email: tuckerpolomik[@]gmail.com

I'm Tucker, an industrious senior software engineer with 7+ years of experience as both an individual contributor and technical lead across non-profits, for-profit product development companies, and research labs.

I am a generalist with a very broad set of experience, with expertise in system's programming using strongly typed languages. I've done everything from bare-metal assembly code, to FPGA gateware, to Linux kernel modules, to Windows GUI work, to front-end web development. Very "T shaped".

I'm also a seasoned public speaker, having given talks at various conferences including NetworkX, prpl Summit, and SCTE Expo. Quite happy giving customer-facing demos, too.

My ideal role is where software is the product, and I can leverage my expertise in high-performance, resource-critical environments that value deep systems knowledge.

If you're looking for an industrious engineer who adapts quickly and delivers reliably, please reach out. :^)

CDOT also encourages people to use more than 6 neurons while driving by posting "CAMP IN THE MOUNTAINS NOT THE LEFT LANE" on most interstates. Driving in CO is a _nightmare_.

  Location: Denver, Colorado (CO)
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No
  Technologies: C++, C, Python, (Java|Type)Script, assembly (ARM, MIPS, SHARC), Linux (userspace), Linux (kernel), embedded Linux (buildroot, Yocto, OpenWRT, uboot, grub), networking (802.11n,ac,ax,be,k,v,r,s, hostapd, wpa_supplicant, nl80211), FPGA (VHDL, Xilinx, Intel), Windows (kernel, C runtime, MFC, WPF, C++, C#), Docker
  Résumé/CV: https://tuckerpo.me/
  Email: tuckerpolomik[@]gmail.com

I'm Tucker, an industrious senior software engineer with 7+ years of experience as both an individual contributor and technical lead across non-profits, for-profit product development companies, and research labs.

I am a generalist with a very broad set of experience, with expertise in system's programming using strongly typed languages. I've done everything from bare-metal assembly code, to FPGA gateware, to Linux kernel modules, to Windows GUI work, to front-end web development. Very "T shaped".

I'm also a seasoned public speaker, having given talks at various conferences including NetworkX, prpl Summit, and SCTE Expo. Quite happy giving customer-facing demos, too.

My ideal role is where software is the product, and I can leverage my expertise in high-performance, resource-critical environments that value deep systems knowledge.

If you're looking for an industrious engineer who adapts quickly and delivers reliably, please reach out. :^)

Shame! Jack Ganssle is a gem for anyone wanting to get into embedded systems.

> All the while where some really smart interns or junior engineers come out of prestigious institutions (Oxford, Cambridge, MIT, Stanford, Harvard, etc), with a stunning body of work and can absolutely run rings around engineers that are called 'senior' in title only and don't have a body of work to show when they leave.

I've hired interns and juniors at my past three positions, from various educational backgrounds including ivy leagues and ivy-adjacent schools (UCLA, CMU, for instance) over the course of the last ~5 years, and I'll give an opposing anecdote.

A lot of people who attend elite institutions are able to do so because they've been groomed from a very young age to have a given trajectory in life. Their entire existence and sense of self-worth seem to be predicted by "prestige" and being better than someone else.

This typically translates into someone who is very difficult to work with, especially when it comes to interns.

The "I'm clearly better than you because I attend $school" attitude, typically coupled with real-world industry naiveté leads to a real "I'm gonna change the world because I'm so special" Spongebob-esque archetype of person. Insufferable to work with, impossible to manage, always off spinning their wheels on something not at all aligned to what the business really needs. Ignore direction, ignore technical architecture, because they assume they know better.

I've also found that they don't really care all that much about their internships, because in their mind's eye, they're the "main character" and they're surely going to move on to something great because they'll be a $school alumnus.

They also tend to not be particularly well-rounded individuals. No hobbies, varying degrees of social ineptitude, anti-social competitive behaviors due to where they attend school.

I really could not care less about a "body of work", I care that you have some aptitude, passion, and are bearable to be around for >= 40 hours/week.

I get your point about senior engineers, a lot of people tend to mentally clock out and settle into their ways, no longer wanting to go above and beyond, typically because they have families, friends, hobbies, and no longer want to participate in a game where there are no winners.

But a clocked-out senior engineer who does the bare minimum, but understands how the business works will still be an order of magnitude more valuable than some $school intern.

> Of course, everyone is different, but I don't get the obsession with not giving very bright and talented juniors a chance even though they are more likely to be cheaper than seniors.

Unless you're working at some cutting-edge startup, businesses don't value merit, really, they care that you understand process, business needs, and the quickest path to execution to ensure continuous revenue.

Interns can be great, or horrendous, and I've personally found there to be an inverse correlation to how good the school they attended is to how useful they actually are in real industry terms. It's simply a trial period for both parties with the ideal outcome being they become a full-time hire once they finish their degree.

When money is tight, as it is now, there's simply no point in taking on individuals who will effectively be a burden for potentially months before delivering any real value.

Regarding your bus factor comment, businesses hedge that senior+ engineers will not be willing to shoulder the risk of job hopping in a shoddy economy, so there's really no concern from that angle of needing to "backfill" with junior engineers who will grow.

This will all get better when money begins flowing more freely again. Just a function of time.

I did roughly the same thing many moons ago as the final "exam" for my undergraduate embedded systems course. We made Space Invaders, though :^) https://github.com/tuckerpo/MicroSpaceInvaders

We targetted a real SoC, though, so a lot of my implementation can be thought of as a "board support package" or HAL, twiddling LEDs, taking in input, TTY in/out, i2c, timers, IRQ/FIQ handlers, etc...

Assembly programming in general is more or less just getting a feel for any given ISA's most important instructions, mnemonics ordering and data/code separation. The rest is a walk in the park if you're comfortable with boring old procedural programming.

For very long local builds, like a full bitbake, I do `&& bell` so I know when to tab back to my build terminal.

i.e. `bitbake bsp-vendor-full-image || beep && beep` so I get a sound when things finish, whether it failed or succeeded.

Looks like the author really wants `rebase -i`

  Location: Denver, Colorado (CO)
  Remote: Preferred
  Willing to relocate: Within the Colorado front-range
  Technologies: C++, C, Python, JavaScript, embedded Linux (Yocto, OpenWRT), networking, embedded systems (ARM SoCs, x86 SoCs), FPGA work (VHDL on Xilinx and Intel)
  Résumé/CV: https://tuckerpo.me/
  Email: tuckerpolomik[@]gmail.com

I'm a senior software engineer with 7+ YoE.

I've acted as both an IC and a team lead. Very comfortable in almost any language or business domain -- from front-end web UI work to DSP assembly and FPGA gateware.

I hold a couple patents with even more pending (non-provisionally filed) in a variety of domains, mostly WiFi.

I like math a lot.

Sorely want to do good work on a team of fun, industrious people.

Just point me in a direction.

You could ship a sample out to get a liquid chromatography mass spectrometry analysis done.

Like most sticky internet slang terms, "slop" stems from 4chan's "sloppa", initially used to describe gross looking food, i.e. "slop of shit" shortened to "sloppa"

Now used to describe anything that looks half-assed, poorly put together, etc.

There may be some MSRs that you can poke to read about the state of pipelining but I highly doubt it can be disabled on x86 (or any superscalar architecture, really).

You pay your friends or a third party to LARP as a company/manager/whoever. An LLC is cheap to open and sliding your buddy a $20 for a 15 minute phone call is a no-brainer. I am not condoning this nor am I speaking from personal experience, but this is absolutely a real thing that happens a lot more than you might like to believe.

You'd be flabbergasted to learn how many candidates just blatantly lie on their resume. I don't mean pretending to know Scala, I'm talking _years_ of vapor-experience at fake companies. And these people get hired all the time.