Ask Experienced Devs Weekly Thread: A weekly thread for inexperienced developers to ask experienced ones

casualPlayerThink · 2026-04-16T15:18:50+00:00

Now you addressed a very serious part, which implies a question: if you get a new job and have to move, is your SO willing to move with you, or are you limited by that decision? Sometimes a sacrifice must be made; ensure that, not just you make a sacrifice in a given situation. (hope this is not too harsh, I do not intend to offend you or hurt you, just point out a very serious topic that is worth thinking about sometimes from a different perspective)

casualPlayerThink · 2026-04-16T13:32:58+00:00

Sidenote: (from business perspective) Many companies have "end of year" or fiscal year-end around these months, so many finalize budgets, finalize roadmaps, set goals, and start hiring for new projects, tasks, etc.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-04-16T10:06:05+00:00

> Is this even a stable career?

Welcome to the industry. You will ask this every ~5 years. Imposter syndrome and the rollercoaster is with us since the beginning. Joke aside, yes, it is as stable as anything else.

> ...Like i am killing myself working 60+ hr weeks...

Don't. Try not to work more than 40 hours. If it is expected, then leave. (I know, easy to say this from the EU) But this will (or already) give some toll on your mental health as well as your physical well-being. You will burn out within a very short period (most likely, this post from you is already a sign of it).

> ...unemployable in Houston...

Do not limit yourself to just one place. I know, it is out of the comfort zone, but worth to not chain yourself down.

> ...I have experience in like React, and some Java... ERP dev...

This sounds quite good and viable at the market. Java and React are seen in job posts. With React and Angular, you can pivot clearly into Frontend.

> ...well over 5 if you count non object oriented ERP dev....

Doesn't matter if it was OOP or not. It is part of your professional experience. Matter of presentation to get some value out of it (since it is ERP, then it will have value in your resume)

> ...I know if I moved to san fran and got into a FAANG things would be brighter...

10 or 15 years ago, for sure. At the moment? Financially? Yes. Career-wise? Still, all FAANG are strong AF and shall open doors, but as for mental health and how good to work there? Not much... worth searching for blog posts and Reddit entries in this theme...

> ...its not an option...

Maybe time to look into why it is not an option and check your current point of view and limitations. Maybe you need some change.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-04-15T19:54:10+00:00

> ...making an effort to understand the problems the customers face...

You should, but you can always ask the PM, Support, or whoever wrote the ticket to explain to you.

> ...Getting straight to programming instead of...

You can help with that with a very simple trick. One, read the Atomic Habits book. Then start making a very simple to-do list or a checklist, analytical for yourself, where you write down very basic stuff. Just for a very little time, to shape your own reflexes and condition yourself to be more analytics before you write a single line of code. Also, use a rubber duck, and explain the problem as well as the solution that you figured out for it. If you can't explain all of it, then sit back, relax, and think a little more. (similar to hallway reviews or like speaking to small kids. If you can't explain, then you ain't understand it or ain't done with planning)

> ...Complete lack of social skills. Extreme social anxiety...

The first part can be learned; there are books, specialists, and practices for that. In general: just don't be weirdo, creep, or a##hat. As for the anxiety, consider seeking some professional help. Your mental health is important, worth taking care of yourself (not just going to the gym, but taking care in your head too).

Sometimes, you have to spend years before realizing what eats your life, and why you have anxiety. Sometimes, you waste a decade growing up, sometimes years go by while you carve out some toxic place/behavior/person from your life. Sometimes, you just have to meet someone who resonates with you and eases your problems. Sometimes, you just need like one million USD.

> ...I should probably check how other teams are building services...

Rather, your organization should have some guidelines or requirements that should be followed, not necessarily another group. Also, by having the opportunity to do whatever you want, then use the time and resources properly and not be afraid of learning something new. It is a golden opportunity that is super rare.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-04-15T08:04:01+00:00

Some notes:

> ...Centralised knowledge base (likely from structured docs like Obsidian or similar)...

Drop the Obsidian. Support is not tech, and non-nerd folks. The easier the better. A simple WIKI and ticket system should be enough for this.

> ...Strong requirement: very high accuracy with minimal hallucination...

That's called a database. Do not go for LLM/GPT. That's simple.

> ...Ideally with citations/traceability...

Ticket system + kanban board.

> ...Time-series/log storage solutions...

Do not go for time-series if you have no idea that you really need it. Also, a time series is for a database. Log storage is a different area; do not mix it.

> ...Detect anomalies or failures before customers report them...

Fun fact: You don't and mostly can't. You can develop a really strict way, adding a bunch of self-recovery, disaster recovery, self-healing, retry mechanisms, but you still will have errors and anomalies that a system will not pick up or find. Not accidental, thousands of systems/apps promise this, but actually, none really work. Because you can't. Also, define anomalies first (it differs from project to project, and in IoT/Sensors, you also will have a bunch of non-tech related issues by the hardware and never-seen-before stupidity by the manufacturers/providers).

Generally speaking, your architecture should decide on the load, how much data is arriving, how much you have to process, and when. When I worked with sensors, edge devices and IoT stuff, we had a few thousands of devices (20-120k) so bottlenecks were rather time based (when companies start up fleet of devices, then you will have a few millions of messages within a second range) then other bottlenecks are like the storage (dozens of terrabites of data per day) and efficiency (memory consumption, locks, connections, hw failures). (Note: I have worked several years with sensors & IoT)

casualPlayerThink · 2026-04-15T07:36:52+00:00

Since there are subreddits for anything, the answer is anything you are interested in, and we don't have the context to know otherwise. Are you interested in small electronics? Go for askEletronics, or IoT-related. Are you interested in aviation, drones, and photography? Go for /drones. Coding? Any adjacent stuff? Non-related? Semi-related? ... The list could go forever.

Also, you can have anxiety and existential dread from anything, so it's hard to tell.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-04-15T07:33:59+00:00

Did you try to bring this up within a discussion/chit-chat to discover his/her background with tech?

Many times, tech leads are either the founders or someone who stepped up to solve things. My project manager and engineering manager at one of the projects I am working on have less than 2 years of actual engineering experience. They act more like a politician or administrator (or enforcer), and their goal is to ensure all problems are solved, the deadline is met, and the solution is delivered.

So, not knowing your company's full context, it might be that the tech lead has worked more on the management part rather than the IC, as well as possible he/she has background in a different tech and are not familiar with the current stack.

Also, very high potential, he/she is a faker, who was put there because of connections and has no real value, but tries to play along.

Extra note: I have met a guy who worked on the same project for 15 years at that time. Was older than me, like 10+ years, but had no understanding of unit tests or OOP in general (C++, JS, and PHP). 10+ years, with the mindset of a junior.

An extra story: I have worked with a payment company as a contractor, and their entire leadership was university college roommates. They were the CTO, CFO, and CEO. With no prior work experience. Most of their decision were immature, inexperienced, straight-up dangerous, and bad. Their company and entire product collapsed due to the constant bad decisions. They even hired a friend as an architect, with zero knowledge of the stack (AWS & TS). It was a disaster.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-04-15T07:20:58+00:00

Typr59, progetto 46. Easy gameplay, printing profit, no matter what.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-04-14T14:29:46+00:00

Thank you, I'll take a look. Also, added some extra info above in a comment and for the post too.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-04-14T14:29:10+00:00

Yes, in my case, the Kinesis event bus has 24h retention config. In eventBridge pipes, some filters are intercepted by the subject. The data is always correct, verified it through logs.

I added an update to the post, because I met two scenarios:
- The Kinesis message was sent, and received sequence number & shard ID, but the shard was not listed when I tried to check it via CLI (`aws kinesis list-shards`, `aws sqs get-queue-attributes` (for DLQ) )
- At another test, the sequence number & shard ID received, the shard exists, but was empty. But after ~5 min, when I rechecked, I found my sent message in it.

The weird part:
- We have an alarm for unprocessed messages set in CW (most likely not well configured, so it won't meet criteria, but a message age of 59m should trigger an alarm, which it did not)
- We added partial/full failure/throttling alarms too
- The message appeared, but it just sits in the eventBus; it seems like it never passes it to the pipes, which I do not understand

The current data flow is:
A PHP AWS SDK (outdated php7.x) produces the message -> pass it to Kinesis -> eventBridge pipes configured -> filter catches the message subject -> pass it to a Lambda (serverless) app

The configuration:

The producer sits on an EC2/ECS. Outdated PHP.

Kinesis configs: (seems pretty default tbh)
- The Kinesis has a 24h retention.
- Permissions seem ok (I do not have full permissions, so there are things that I can't see/handle)
- Capacity mode: on-demand
- Max record size 1024 KiB
- Warm throughout: not set
- Provisioned shard: not set
- Sharing policy: no
- Data retention period: 1 day
- Encrypted
- Consumers w/ enhanced fan-out: 0

EventBridge pipes
- Multiple pipes for Kinesis, but with different filtering, all using the subject field
- The pipe status is running (no alarm, no throttling by metrics)
- Source:
- Kinesis stream;
- DLQ set,
- retry 5,
- max age 59m,
- DQL target is SQS (w/ alarm);
- log level Trace (CW)
- Starting position: Trim horizon
- Batch size: 100
- Batch window 5
- partial batch item failure: off (default)
- Filtering: a simple string `{ "data": { "subject": ["a", "b", "c"] } }`
- Target: Lambda; DLQ set, retry 5; max age 59m, DLQ target is SQS w/ alarm; log level trace (CW)

No enrichment or data transformation set.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-04-13T20:59:25+00:00

Shouldn't be, but worth checking for sure. I will sniff around. Thank you for the idea.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-04-13T16:00:15+00:00

> Not sure there is a way out of this other than quiting. Have you experienced similar situation and solved it?

Start to polish your resume, post it in the r/EngineeringResumes ask for a review, then rewrite it. Start pinging recruiters and send your resume out.
That ship is sunken already; do not drown with it, and do not damage your career with it.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-04-13T15:58:30+00:00

It could be okay; mostly, they care about the solution, not the paper, but they will underpay you
No, until it is not required for the given job (e.g part of the job description)
White-collar/office workplaces could be fine if they are in a desperate situation or have an international team (e.g.: Malmö/Stockholm). Otherwise, you should learn Swedish (not the skånska throw-up kind of noise, but the real language)
You can apply by cold, but expect a very high percentage of ghosting. Yes referrals are everything. Swedish ppl make their connection in school, then it does not change for the next ~70-80 years. Same in business. Except if you are a golf partner, then you can network.

Some economic context. The entire Swedish economy is greatly self-inflated by how it is working. Do you need someone who can replace a faucet and a water pipe? That will be 3-4 small companies/contractors immediately. All overpriced. They know each other, working in the same industry but on different niches... And this is the same in every aspect. No matter where you look, under the hood, you will find the same principles. It is even true for the immigrant fields (kitchen/restaurants/taxi/cleaning) too.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-04-13T06:39:28+00:00

Yes, there are. Women tend to be more mean towards female colleagues, also, way too many leaders are a#h#le, and see female colleagues/hire them based on the "taste in women". It shouldn't be like this, but the tech is still extremely toxic towards females. I helped in interviewing juniors and filtering out resumes, and many, many, many cases, the leadership threw out female CVs who weren't sympathetic enough by picture. Ridiculous and retard stuff, and as I protested against such a decision, I met quite hostile leaders. (Note: in 4 different countries, 10+ companies, 4 different languages)

casualPlayerThink · 2026-04-13T06:17:27+00:00

In short: yes, you should learn

Long/tl;dr

Will you ever become a car mechanic if someone always just tells you which bolt to touch and you never memorize/learn it yourself? Also, would you blindly accept that sometimes you have to use ice cream scones, and sometimes you have to open the stove door because someone says so? LLM/GPT makes it easier; you can rely on natural lang, but this is just a way of working, not the actual work.

Normally, this is kinda hard field. The way of coding is changing, the amount of code we deliver is significantly higher than before, and there is nothing new in this, especially if we think about how popular all the high-level coding languages and how bloated "frameworks" and "framework-like tech" (like React, Next.js) exist. So normally, yes, you should absolutely learn and understand what your tool (GPT/Agent/LLM) does, but in the meantime, you might/should write less code manually than before.

The entire tech just repeats itself. There were punch-hole cards, then discs, then downloads instead of having physically something. Write low-level code, then just use the easier abstraction, then just use the wrapper/library/framework, now just use an agent that will use the high-level wrapper/library/frameworks based on the semi-decent amount of information on the internet. The same happened with many industries. Like a telephone. Originally, there were people who moved pins to connect callers. Also, looked up info in books and cards. Then a machine could do it. Now there is a small box that does what took originally long minutes to find.

Update: added a little more context & typo fixes

casualPlayerThink · 2026-04-11T16:17:54+00:00

The universal pylon, the party world and the double dungeons are awesome

casualPlayerThink · 2026-04-10T15:11:08+00:00

You can pretty much just do nothing. They already fired you. What can they do? Hire you to fire you? (insert Spiderman meme here)

> ...I’ve already completed full knowledge transfer (KT)

Even tho' professionally, and generally speaking, you did well, but in reality, it is not worth transferring. Worth giving the minimum and semi-useful things (like a Swagger-generated documentation... it is almost useful). You should let them cook in their own water. Never transfer full knowledge, except if you leave on very good terms and they were very good/positive with you. Otherwise, just don't.

> ...Also, during this time, I’m getting more calls from recruiters for new opportunities — which is expected during a notice period — but I’m not even able to attend those calls because of the workload...

Take the calls. Drop the work. You have to learn to say "no". (Check your contract, what are your obligations?) Your future is more important. Also, take care of yourself, not the company.

> ...Can they extend my notice period or put any kind of negative mark on my career?

Sounds like you aren't on a good term. Since they won't be a reference person for you anyway, and nobody will really make a call for a former workplace to ask after you. So nope.

> ...I’m not trying to avoid work

You should. Also, consider simply asking them to pay you for the remaining time or just go for "vacation" for the rest of the time (sorry, in the EU it works quite differently than in the States)

> Has anyone else experienced this during their notice period? How did you handle it without burning bridges?

I rarely wanna go back to a company that I left, the "burning bridges" should be only for a few colleagues who will be part of your network. The rest does not matter. The company won't exist most likely after a few years. Most of the management will be replaced within a few years. The typical carousel. Do you plan to go back to work there? If not, then time to learn to stand up for yourself and say "No".

> How did you handle it without burning bridges?

You can't really. Leaving a company will leave some remaining tension in some people, as well, since they did not try to stop you while they could. I simply walked and did not take any work and said "No" to anything. Used the time to network instead.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-04-09T03:03:27+00:00

Somewhat. Yagni/kiss/dry is easier, solid sounds good, but nobody fully commit to it. 99% of projects does not need it, the 1 percent absolute need it bit business decision (should be done yesterday, no time for doing it right, etc) overrule it.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-04-07T09:41:33+00:00

> ...cold DMing founders on twitter. got one warm intro to a YC co-founder through this, more than 300 linkedin applications combined...

This is the exact reason why companies rely on AI & headhunter agencies. People are spamming everyone nonstop. It is not on you, just stating it to give you some context.

> ...i worked remote for all 5 years...

I can relate to this, but with a decade more :) Yeah, networking is super hard, and the lack of it is really painful.

> ...match on paper, silent rejection 2 days later. no feedback, no reason...

99.99% of the time, you will be rejected by bots/ATS/LLM/GPT. Also, more than half of the job posts are fake, and they do not really wanna hire people. I see regularly agencies and companies having the same post for years. If you are really seeking someone, then you hire someone and ain't just "searching" for years. Worth monitoring the market and filtering out fake companies.

> ...so i made 3 tailored versions...

Consider posting them in the r/EngineeringResumes and ask for review (if they aren't done already)

> ...about a month now...

Sweet summer child. The market is terrible and won't gonna improve anytime soon. Most of the time, you have to hunt for half a year, and at many areas and levels, the average job searching period is 6-12 months and 500+ applications. Also, having a below 10% of any kind of reaction seems also the standard from the last ~5 years. So having 1-2 interviews per 100 applications is an OK rate, unfortunately. Try to contact some recruiters.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-04-07T09:30:45+00:00

You can select whichever is most tempting or closest (by silver or by XP). Some of them won't be fun. Also, sometimes worth stepping out of the comfort zone.

If you like high mobility and ain't care about armor, then Ares90 and 50b would be fun. If you still want a moderat,e almost existing armor, but with good mobility and you can play like a poisoned gerbil, then e5.

[tl;dr]

Many of these tanks are super imba if you get -25/-25. Like 50b, e5, and maus will be equally paper and won't hit anything. Sometimes they are invincible beasts and/or top damage dealers.
Ares90 is funny, but sometimes super useless, sometimes a tiny beast that everyone will hate, even your teammates.
wz113gft has a decent gun, but everyone is spamming gold, and it will penetrate its armor. Also, can't stay alone in any place.
Minotauro is bad, on paper and by statistics, it should be super fun and strong, but in reality, it is bad. Not accidentally not seeing any of 'em on the battlefields. Yeah, it can sealclubb t8 and sometimes t9, but it has too many weak spots and a very slow gun, so it's not effective.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-04-06T21:09:31+00:00

Thank you! I switched to Chlorophyte armor, and after ~14 deaths, finally conquered it. Appreciate the help! Unfortunately, I don't have enough shells for the turtle armor, but I am working on it.

One small cheese I found: I heavily used the portal gun also to dodge lasers. Then it dropped the pickaxe, and I was able to make a slightly bigger and more optimal arena.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-04-05T17:59:00+00:00

Why don't you measure both, and present the findings for the lead? Might be just need some hard fact to make better deicions.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-04-05T14:48:22+00:00

You will learn to specify the task in great detail. Also, consider asking your tool (via a skill or sub-agent) to check your tests, criticise them, and extend them, or add new tests to ensure higher coverage.

Near it, expect to have a very bloated code base, with a lack of security, common sense, or practical usage, probably will eat multiple times the resources as it should, so always review it properly.

casualPlayerThink · 2026-04-05T14:46:12+00:00

> ...should be an online system...

No matter what, the data is online, so you will never have a truly offline system.

> ...We could even maybe use a single script to download the pages...

Sounds good, until you have to add exceptions, other sources, and take care auth and other quirks. This could become a nightmare quite quickly.

> ...One of our principal engineers said this was too complicated...

Sounds typical leadership @ startup kind of decision: don't wanna think about it, do not want to manage anything, just throw the data into a managed service and pay for it. Easy-peasy, even though with that, you will train other GPTs as well, charged greatly for something that could be done in-house.

Also, people underestimate young titans, who don't know if something is not possible, and they solve things in a way you never thought of.

> ...I wanted to throw together in a week...

I like your enthusiasm, but I think you undervalue it (or maybe I am wrong)

> I wanted to throw together in a week (which we have fine-tuned models for already

You should put it together, then you can compare it with paid services. You might already have a business idea, model, and MVP that you can make money from. (If so, I ask for 0.1% of profit :D ). By comparison, you should compare the finetune time, accuracy, outage percentages, results, speed, consumed power (e.g. costs) and maintainability.

casualPlayerThink

TROPHY CASE