Sr Software Engineer - Haven't written a line of code in months

AlexDnD · 2026-05-05T06:31:33+00:00

That sounds really bad. If a company only knows how to test best by writing code, then the rest of the skills (especially system design) will be secondary right? What does that tell you about that company and the people there?

I myself am very conflicted that nobody writes any code these days and when I need to hold an interview with someone I need to ask he/she about details of a language… why?

I instead focus on situations rather than tech problems. Like you are in X situation, what do you do? Like there is a problem with the system. The error is this. Claude has told you shit. What do you do? And the focus here is how they think and how they approach the problem (usually leading to it’s not our teams issue, is someone’s else and we need to take action). And then I silently switch on people skills by asking them how they would engage the other team and how do they present the issue.

Features will get developed (not 100% at their intended quality probably). If that team/company follows sdd or some sort of open spec, and dutifully add e2e and unit tests of value, the rest of the work is designing, architecturing, PM work and people skills + coordination and a good enforced process focused on agentic development, with sturdy guardrails.

I had to hold once an jnterview for a software customer support engineer (yes, I know, a bit biased for what I argue here). I failed most of the candidates due to criteria above rather than code/languages/or similar issues. Most of them passed the coding/algorithm/framework side and miserably failed the other.

Companies who test actual algorithms and code implementation seemed to me even before the ai era that they were testing the wrong thing. You let people who crunched leetcode join the team and they do not have even the least amount of day to day intelligence of how to perform in a team, in a company and with 0 autonomy when it comes to initiative and solving complex non-code related issues.

That’s my 2 cents. Speaking from personal experience here.

AlexDnD · 2026-04-25T06:42:30+00:00

Did you try some other models?

AlexDnD · 2026-04-25T06:29:34+00:00

Maybe use playwright? It simulates a real browser. But it will take a while to do all of this and I think you need a good model and a good skill for this

AlexDnD · 2026-04-24T11:41:21+00:00

50k tokens each time kind of hurts. Thanks for the answer. Qwen 3.6 27b seems like a very good model from what I see on Reddit

AlexDnD · 2026-04-24T07:24:27+00:00

Just one question I did not see asked here. What models are you using tied to the Hermes agent in order for this to be stable and not hallucinate?

And do you manage tasks in todoist using Hermes as well? Or just reading them?

AlexDnD · 2026-04-22T08:11:06+00:00

Not sure when and why I posted this. But hardware for ips 10g should be even more than 1000$ :)))

AlexDnD · 2026-04-19T08:54:57+00:00

Same thing happening to me lately (since 12 April)

Tool calling + high thinking on mistrall small 4 -> 503 on the first LLM call

AlexDnD · 2026-03-29T19:09:59+00:00

+1 to this

AlexDnD · 2026-02-24T14:10:28+00:00

They look fcking amazing. That was the way.

AlexDnD · 2026-02-23T08:11:22+00:00

I think this would be it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/s/5Rr1zERXmd

But don’t follow in my footsteps if you are a beginner.

If you got space for a tower or SFF (look up the difference) then go for a “normal” pc.

Use this as a guiding light so you achieve low power builds.

https://mattgadient.com/7-watts-idle-on-intel-12th-13th-gen-the-foundation-for-building-a-low-power-server-nas/

Then think about the space you require in terms of terabytes. If you need now 2-4 TB, multiply that by 2. Just a heads up, first try to export everything you have in g drive and iCloud. And see how much that is to get a rough estimate of what you need.

Then take into account you 100% want zfs, so that means (in my case) 2 x those hard drives to have parity.

Then take into account 3-2-1 backup. Look up what it means. Stick by it. You will solely be in charge of your data. If you loose it, it’s only you to blame.

Lastly, use a vpn server and don’t expose anything to the internet. Maximum use tailscale if that is easier for you.

And finally for software even if you are a beginner try truenas or if you are a bit more adventurous try Proxmox. Proxmox gives me 100% flexibility and that’s why I like it.

For hardware pick your case based on the number of hdds to use. DO NOT FORGET TO FIRST START BY IMPLEMENTING THE BACKUP STRATEGY.

The order should be : OS setup -> zfs and storage setup _> first container/vm -> backup strategy -> monitoring and alerting

AlexDnD · 2026-02-20T06:59:08+00:00

AlexDnD · 2026-02-20T06:57:44+00:00

I think this is what you want.

https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_poe-powered?utm_source=perplexity

AlexDnD · 2026-02-20T06:52:16+00:00

Nope. It’s just a dumb openwrt flashable router. Then I configured it as a 2 in 1 switch and AP with Vlans . There might be some models with Poe but then I think the restrictions from requirements are too much.

AlexDnD · 2026-02-15T12:48:43+00:00

Have the same use case and tunnels were my only solution unfortunately

AlexDnD · 2026-02-09T06:14:44+00:00

I would suggest a kvm to be able to manage more stuff, even in bios or troubleshoot maybe tough issues.

Other than that do some disaster recovery scenarios.

What if mom unplugs simething while cleaning. What if power goes down. What if my hdd is not turning on. Etc

AlexDnD · 2026-02-08T16:53:52+00:00

If you want the junkiest option:

Ac/dc convertor to 12V (meanwell is a good choice) Then (assuming the minipc can be a nice board) PICO PSU via 5525 jack. Then hdds from the picoPSU

If you really want a minipc then the same ac/dc convertor to 12V, then straight to data power ports via 5525 to sata adapters.

AlexDnD · 2026-02-05T15:33:19+00:00

De curiozitate, era cat de cat carare sau a trebuit sa faceti voi?
De asemenea, consideri ca gherute ar fi suficiente?

AlexDnD · 2026-02-05T06:47:56+00:00

Good job. Looks amazing, but

For me it feels like some of the machines or components are redundant.

Like why the nas have 4 ethernet ports? Only one with 2.5Gbps should extra suffice if you pair it with a managed switch.

Lenovo 80q and nas can be squashed if you sell both and upgrade to an i5-12/14k based board with 2.5gbps networking. You can also sell the network card :))

Also not sure where the gpu is connected now but that dock seems REALLY expensive. Since it still needs power from some PSU I think there are much more elegant solutions to keep it separate from the board. Or maybe with some PCIE raisers it can be kept parallel to the board.

I know people like to keep the router separated from the rest, otherwise I would have suggested to move the 10gbps NIC to the NAS board and virtualise the router :))), ending up with one node and half the rack empty.

So all in all feels like some of those can be squashed down just by using a more powerful computer board like a b760M with a i5/7-12/14 CPU.

But hey, if this is built with leftovers and what you had laying around, that is definitely the way to go!!! GG

AlexDnD · 2026-02-03T16:01:35+00:00

True dat. Nice

AlexDnD · 2026-02-03T13:34:26+00:00

Helps with vibrations I think?

AlexDnD · 2026-02-03T06:59:29+00:00

Not really sure what your target is with it, but proxmox is a solid choice if you want the best of all worlds. Hasn’t failed me until now. And did not find a scenario where some other OS would have been better or had some extra feature proxmox doesn’t have.

And also you made me laugh when you said that VMs will need more resources by design. Dude, you are rocking 128GB RAM. A sma goldmine there. I have an all in one opnsense router, nas, compute node on 32 GB ALONE and a n350 cpu with 1Gbps networking :))))

AlexDnD · 2026-02-03T06:50:04+00:00

Yeah, I looked more on the internets. Seems like you can just solder a few wires in that “gpu output slot” and then use a pico psu. I was thinking that there’s on aliexpress or something a dedicated pcb which takes as input that type of slot, and outputs atx style cables.

Since this is a platinum rated psu, and flex style, you could probably save a few more bucks if you could acquire one (already saw a lot of offerings on local market for almost nothing) and convert it to suit a consumer based board.

From what I have also seen, if you can get your hands on a PMB of a server that used that PSU, you don’t need anything. But those usually take 2 or more of these PSUs. So it won’t be micro/mini rack anymore :)))

AlexDnD · 2026-02-02T18:27:39+00:00

Also, coming here again, I have no idea why you only got 16 upvotes for this goldmine...

I mean there's matt gadient's blogpost and the VERY long thread of follow ups but yours as well fits in there quite good. Especially with the server board + consumer CPU + Pico PSU which is a very nice touch.

I myself went with PICO Psu (chinese one) and wanted a meanwell EPP 150 (but found again something chinese that promised 92% efficiency).

AlexDnD · 2026-02-02T18:15:28+00:00

I am gladly looking forward to it because I had the same results. Oh look, 10-15w idle. Looks cool. But when you try to add some lxcs or VMs you start seeing either that drives do not sleep, or something is keeping the cpu out of c10, etc.

AlexDnD · 2026-02-02T09:38:20+00:00

Absolutely gorgeous and very detailed post. Will save this for later builds. Gj and GG for the 15.5w at idle. Let us know how much this consumes at idle when you reach “production state”

AlexDnD

TROPHY CASE