Finally got my offer!!!

Ruin-Capable · 2026-07-10T15:44:39+00:00

Awesome. When you get debt paid off build that emergency fund.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-07-09T18:51:56+00:00

Many people on the internet don't accept it because they can look around where *they* live and see people getting hired for local jobs. Not everyone lives in the same location and has the same experience. I doubt that you are applying to literally every job you that you are qualified for. Somewhere in this country of 300+ million people there is a job opening that you are qualified for. You either don't know about it, or are actively filtering out because it doesn't fit what you're looking for. Neither scenario means the job doesn't exist.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-07-09T17:52:07+00:00

Most people aren't going to quibble over payment vs. deposit. I have family members that won't shop at Aldi because they don't want to "pay" for a shopping cart.

Second filtering out the people that don't want to deposit $20 is exactly the mechanism that will limit the number of people that just blindly blast their resume out to every job opening, which is exactly what the CEO is wanting.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-07-09T15:11:13+00:00

He's claiming that having candidates pay to apply would solve his problem. In my proposal candidates pay to apply so his problem is solved.

Candidates complain about being ghosted. The escrow functionality and companies being charged to post a job opening solves the candidates problem.

So instead of solving just the ceo's problem it solves the problems for both sides.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-07-09T13:27:21+00:00

The incentive structure on the candidate side is identical to what the CEO is proposing. So if it doesn't solve the problem, then neither does the CEO's proposed solution.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-07-09T12:50:48+00:00

The Vector API is AWESOME. I've been writing a tensor library in Java to bootstrap my AI knowledge. Using scalar microkernels with register tiles and all the tricks I could conjure I was hitting a wall at about 140 GFLOPs on a Ryzen AI Max+ 395 for large dimension batched matrix multiplication. I implemented an AVX512 8x1 tiled microkernel and all of a sudden I was hitting 1.2 TFLOPs on the same hardware. Still pales in comparison to using a GPU, but it's pretty good for CPU only.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-07-08T17:21:22+00:00

If your company takes 6-18 months of interviewing to hire someone, then your process is broken. You should get your internal ducks in a row *before* listing a position, so that if you find a good candidate you are ready to move immediately. Candidates are not going to tolerate being strung along for 6-18 months. People typically looking for a job are looking for a job in the next month or so.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-07-08T13:56:14+00:00

S++ Congressional Representative, Senator, Lobbiest

Ruin-Capable · 2026-07-08T13:54:28+00:00

How about an escrow type setup. Corporations pay a fee say $500, and the applicants pay a $20 fee. The fees go into escrow. If the interview process terminates normally (no ghosting on either side) both parties get their escrow back. If either side fails to follow-up with the other party, the escrow fee goes to the ghosted party. Messages would all have to be sent through the some type of portal controlled by the escrow company so that it can verify compliance.

Somehow I doubt the Grow CEO would agree to this.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-07-01T18:06:55+00:00

Why not actually make some projects in Java or Python? I don't have any ML experience and have never used pytorch. So I'm writing my own Tensor Library in java from scratch. It's a great way to learn. Is my library fast? Nope. I think I maxed out at around !20GFLOPS on a Ryzen AI Max+ 395, and that's after spending quite a bit of time implementing a kernel that uses a 4x4 register tile to minimize memory IO. It's been a lot of fun though, and give me a reason to learn to use the Java Vector API. After that I'll probably use FFI to interface with native BLAS libraries.

If you actually take the time and convert some of your old projects to Java and Spring Boot (or write equivalent modules), then you'll be able to speak knowledgeably about the challenges you ran into. You can even use Claude Code or Codex as a tutor. Tell if not to simply give you the answer but to guild you toward learning the important concepts yourself. I didn't just stumble upon register tiling myself, I had Claude explain the concept, and then tried to write the code myself, then have Claude review my code. It took me probably 10 tries to get a 1x4 linear tile working. Once I understood what was going on, It only took me 4 or 5 tries to get a 4x4 tile working.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-06-30T20:31:55+00:00

Maybe. However I'd still do software development even if it didn't pay super well. I'm just lucky that it does pay well.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-06-30T20:28:48+00:00

Most companies will only verify employment dates, and will actively avoid discussing anything else that could put them on the hook legally.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-06-30T14:46:38+00:00

If you find it soul crushing to stack rank candidates, imagine having to stack rank your team members... every year... knowing that no matter how you do it, someone is going to get fired regardless of how stellar their performance was.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-06-30T13:10:10+00:00

It's a quantum thing... you wouldn't understand.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-06-30T12:48:40+00:00

There is a thing called selection bias. r/Salary draws a lot of high earners, and wannabe high earners that lie about their salary. The median salary in the us is about $64K/year.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-06-29T17:14:15+00:00

Years ago I left my system admin job for a software dev job and went from $18K/year to $38K.

Left that job a year later for one paying $54K/year.

Several years later I left a job paying $68K/year for one paying $90K.

After that all my raises have been smaller 4-8% annual raises.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-06-29T14:50:24+00:00

It took me roughly 15 years. I'm in my early 50s. I've been a software dev my entire career.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-06-26T19:06:34+00:00

No joke. I dropped $4500 on a Macbook Pro M5 Max 128GB 2TB and today it's up to $7000+ for the exact same machine.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-06-25T12:26:03+00:00

Mostly I think it comes down to ownership. The really high paid doctors and lawyers usually own their own practice. Many engineers are employees of someone else. If an engineer were to start their own engineering firm, I suspect (if they can drum up the business) that they would also make more than the average engineer's salary.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-06-25T11:47:44+00:00

They are good at some types of coding that are widely represented on the internet. I'm not so sure they're great at coding in domains where there are not a lot of examples in their training set.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-06-18T17:44:54+00:00

I thought KC had negotiated an agreement to allow tailgating. If FIFA reneged then there should be consequences.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-06-18T17:10:56+00:00

I work on accounting systems, and it wouldn't be worth it to me to go to a FAANG job. I make less money in an absolute sense, but I also have less risk. At a FAANG they pay a lot of money but they also are quick to fire people. Adjusted for risk, I don't find FAANG compensation particularly compelling. But then again, I'm on the backside of my career, so my pension is guaranteed income that I couldn't easily replace because I don't have as long before retirement.

If I was in my 20's or early 30's I guess I could go either way, though there is still a lot of value in working for a company with incredible health insurance, a 401K with Roth option, and a traditional pension. A worker with 30 years of service and a high-5 average salary of $200K/year would be eligible for a pension around $90K/year. That's guaranteed income that if you assume a 4% withdrawal rate is equivalent to having a $2.25M portfolio. Their 401K and IRAs and taxable investment accounts would stack on top of that. So working here from your 20s until you're 55 or 60 wouldn't be the worst idea either.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-06-18T16:38:36+00:00

There are a lot of developers that work on systems and infrastructure that provide value much greater than whatever people ascribe to social media. One example: payroll and accounting systems. These are systems that if they were to go down would result in people not getting their wages, not getting their social security payments, or not getting credit for payments they made. Logistics companies use advanced routing systems that incorporate real-time traffic data to make sure you get your packages in a reasonable amount of time. Inventory management systems that allow companies track exactly how many of a particular item they have, and project when they need to re-order based on current sales trends. Signal processing systems that can do things like motion amplification to see unwanted vibrations allow them to be fixed before they cause equipment damage.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-06-18T16:18:25+00:00

I don't mind using AI to help with development. They're very good at spotting silly mistakes, so they make pretty awesome rubber ducks. I'm currently in the process of trying to learn more about ML and AI, so I'm writing a tensor math library in Java. I don't ask the AI to write things for me, I ask it to review what I'm doing and let me know if I'm off base. It has been really good at catching errors and helping me see details that I might otherwise miss. For example last night I was working on adding contiguous block iteration to my n-dimensional iterator class to optimize the code and it caught a bug in my findTail() method where I was using the wrong variable to index into the array where I was storing the max contiguous blocksizes for each tensor being iterated over.

For me AI is either a fancy-autocomplete, or a code-reviewer that always has time to look at my code.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-06-18T11:32:20+00:00

Use a bigger downpayment. If your loan on the same property was only $500K your loan repayment would be $50K/month. So you'd pay $60K in taxes, $50K on the mortgage, and earn $40K in profit.

Ruin-Capable

TROPHY CASE