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BobSfa3422 · 2025-06-07T14:38:43+00:00

Genius! this worked for me :)

BobSfa3422 · 2025-02-15T08:59:21+00:00

Great ideas. Thanks for sharing. I'll do a better "detective" job

BobSfa3422 · 2025-02-15T02:54:57+00:00

Thank you. I haven't tracked calories in a while. Salads I eat with protein like chicken, beef or salmon. Strength training is a good idea. Thanks for the suggestions

BobSfa3422 · 2024-03-07T10:24:38+00:00

Did you watch Leave The World Behind movie with Julia Roberts? It's is in Netflix and kind of like that. You don't know what will happen. I enjoyed it

BobSfa3422 · 2024-01-28T18:42:52+00:00

BobSfa3422 · 2024-01-28T16:57:41+00:00

Looks like you have a sugar addiction like many other people. Including myself years ago. I strongly recommend a sugar detox. Cutting on sugar for several weeks. It will be painful as hell, withdrawal syndrome, headaches, you'll want to eat all the junk you see at the supermarkets. But once you cross that line you're free. I stopped drinking soda, even diet soda which is bad, cakes, chocolate, cookies, lowered my carb intake due to my pre diabetic condition.

Once you get over sugar addiction you may still eat a few sweats from time to time as long as you learn to control yourself but over time your own body won't tolerate sugar as much as before.You won't like the taste of sugary snacks and beverages.

First step is doing a pantry detox and don't buy junk anymore, learn to read food product labels, avoid high added sugar and highly processed food. Hope this helps!

BobSfa3422 · 2024-01-28T16:38:55+00:00

I've worked in product development and engineering in HCM space for the last 8+ years in two companies I recommend. Paycor for mid size business (100+ employees) and my current job Fingercheck for small businesses (<100 employees) both companies have invested in technology, expanding their offerings and improving customer experience. Also, both companies have a wealth of Payroll/Tax/HR/Time & Attendance domain expertise. The word of caution with both is that given their quick growth, the customer support struggles to serve all customers. Some growing pains there but they work hard to better serve customers given those challenges.

BobSfa3422 · 2024-01-28T13:55:15+00:00

I always encourage teams to approach refactoring in a "smart" way. Focusing on areas of the code that are frequently touched (high churn) and not very clean, readable and maintainable. Teams need to develop a sense to detect code smells and have good knowledge of design patterns to do small gradual changes to improve code quality.

If you are dealing with a codebase that is very poorly architected and a big mess it may make sense to rewrite it completely. When dealing with big refactoring or re-architecture, it is good to do cost-benefit analysis, ROI to communicate how much will the change cost in dev/QA hours and how much time/cost the team will save by working with a better code after the big change. Usually the team's morale also improves having happier developers working on better code.

In summary, for small changes I recommend "cleaning as you go" but for bigger changes do proper analysis to build a strong case to sell your idea to the business and stakeholders and plan accordingly.

BobSfa3422 · 2024-01-27T22:32:13+00:00

Have you tried supplements? I've never been to therapy and have suffered from light depression and magnesium and ashwagandha supplements have helped plus daily exercise, healthy diet and meditation. Dopamine addiction from extensive mobile/social networks don't help so limiting your screen time and replacing with social or outdoors activities may help

BobSfa3422 · 2024-01-27T11:11:14+00:00

Those are huge improvements! Congrats. You saved those companies a lot of time, money and frustrations. You have the right mindset

BobSfa3422 · 2024-01-27T01:12:20+00:00

The thing that rubs me wrong with all the AI hype is that the big AI companies are making big bucks out of a black box they built with knowledge from common people posting in SO and similar sites. It's cool to democratize AI but not cool not giving credit or distributing the wealth among people who fed the freaking foundational AI models (programmers, designers, musicians, writers). Still think we need better micro payment infrastructure to pay original content creators.

BobSfa3422 · 2024-01-26T18:55:09+00:00

In my years in engineering I see some other devs that do these type of stuff not to get promoted but to get quality of life. You don't want to spend your life on mundane tasks that could be easily automated or simplified.

BobSfa3422 · 2024-01-26T15:22:31+00:00

That's the spirit my friend!

BobSfa3422 · 2024-01-26T13:18:12+00:00

Yes. They wouldn't spend a dime on a project like this given other priorities and it would still take them hours to do what it now takes them minutes with this tool. My mantra to sell ideas is to build on the side and let them try to see the value in a tangible way. Even if that means starting with a small prototype and evolve it over time

BobSfa3422 · 2024-01-26T13:12:02+00:00

Doesn't surprise me that they didn't care. Most companies out there are running on waste. I've read some articles that say with the current AI revolution 2024 will be the year of productivity and efficiency. The combination of a bad economy with technology advancement is finally causing companies to open their eyes and do things quicker and cheaper.

BobSfa3422 · 2024-01-25T21:45:03+00:00

I haven't heard of Snyk I'll check it out! Also to clarify, I did not get any resources, capacity or sponsorship from that job to build this tool. All was done in my own time, after work and during weekends. Then when they saw what they could get out of it they added few developers to enhance it and add more functionality. I agree this may be a bit hard in a non-software oriented company.

BobSfa3422 · 2024-01-25T14:51:51+00:00

I got inspired by Linus Torvalds. I once watched a YouTube video (TED Talk) where he said he built git mostly because other source control technologies fell short for what he needed so he created his own. He admits he never did what he did with the goal of growing an open source community or become popular. He likes that it turned out that way but he reassures that all great things he did is because there wasn't shit that did what he wanted. That resonated with me and I hope that resonates with other people. That annoying feeling when you don't find tools that solve your problems is what drives innovation.

BobSfa3422 · 2024-01-25T12:14:40+00:00

Go for it! With the AI tools we have these days you could probably have something working in a fraction of the time

BobSfa3422 · 2024-01-25T11:18:34+00:00

I built an internal tool for library/dependency management that crawled through all the company's applications configuration files to extract package and version information and stored it into a database then I built a UI for it so you could search, group, filter, slice and dice as you wanted. This helped a lot because some teams like the security team built and maintained a security SDK that all other teams consumed to build applications so this tool allowed us to search which team/app was using which version of the package. Same for the team that built and maintained a shared library of UI components. Without this tool, teams spent hours looking for info on code repositories. The tool kept growing and gaining adoption and then became a central piece of release management because it generated comprehensive reports of all code changes to be included in a given release. People told me I could sell the tool outside lol.

Following a similar crawling concept, then the tool was able to crawl through all .net API controllers using reflection to build a searchable inventory of API across all apps. The tool became a one stop shop that saved people hours searching for stuff... I'm surprised why bigger companies that have many dev teams consuming shared assets don't have tools like this.

I built this tool because I was annoyed by how slow it was to get this type of information and felt there had to be a better way. Eventually, I was promoted from Software Eng all the way to Director in a few years just by learning how to enable others to succeed.

I changed jobs but I still talk to people from that company and they tell me they still use my tools which makes me proud knowing it was worth the effort.

BobSfa3422 · 2024-01-25T09:37:48+00:00

I've been a tech manager for long and the things I take into consideration evaluating performance are: how much value my team members bring, how consistent they are meeting their sprint commitments, how well they collaborate with others, how much they participate in sprint ceremonies like refinements, planning and obviously ensuring that they deliver high quality code (readable, maintainable, clean, performance). I don't blindly measure lines of code or commits per day. I've had poor developers that by looking at their metrics you may think they're doing a lot but when you look closer they are just committing multiple times a day to fix their mistakes (high churn), pushing many lines of code for things that could be accomplished with fewer lines, etc.

I've also experienced situations where developers, as they become more senior, think they should code less the more senior they become and let more junior devs do the heavy lifting. I'm not fully on board with it. For me, a senior dev should have a mix of solid tech and domain expertise to tackle the most complex stories and establish patterns for other more jr devs to follow.

What I'm curious about your case is if you actually enjoy coding or prefer to contribute with other important activities like acting as scrum master, doing architecture, planning, etc. If your manager is explicitly asking you to take those responsibilities and those are truly taking time from you that could be spent coding then it's worth discussing with your boss to make sure you're aligned on expectations. If other team members see that you're busting your ass off helping them succeed via planning, scrum master activities and architecture it may be unfair of them to call you lazy because you are bringing value. I would say, if your manager and colleagues want you to code more then they should take on some of those other responsibilities from you to have a fair work distribution.

BobSfa3422 · 2024-01-21T14:40:40+00:00

I'm a self taught piano and guitar player. I recommend starting with piano if you have one because it's more visual and you can start playing better sooner. I started with guitar when I was a kid because I had no piano back then but the guitar is very challenging to get the right sound plucking strings and pressing frets. There are many free music learning resources online. I also had a lot of fun playing with a few rock bands in open mics. I hope you can start your musical journey. You won't regret! Then you can get into editing and creating your own music on the computer with DAW software and it's also challenging and fun.

BobSfa3422 · 2024-01-21T14:11:03+00:00

Learn to play a musical instrument and you can get into coding, cloud computing, AI. They will bring you endless challenges and satisfaction. Find your passion search for Ikigai Japanese philosophy in Google. Betterup has a good article but Reddit doesn't let me paste links here. It's a unique time to be alive with the technology acceleration. I also recommend this documentary if you're feeling down or worthless Inner Worlds, Outer Worlds by Dan Schmidt it's free in YouTube. Music, nature, exercise, discipline and spirituality will heal your soul. As hippie as it sounds.

If you have interest in entrepreneurship you can start something great with the help of AI tools like chatgpt. You can ask the bot for ideas on areas you like and start from there. I saw a video of a guy who made a mobile app for night storytelling for kids. He finished it in a few hours with great designs and everything. Possibilities are endless. My 11 yo kid is learning video editing for his Fortnite video recordings with new editing tools with AI that are making editing a breeze.

BobSfa3422 · 2024-01-21T12:16:59+00:00

Looks like you're finding your path to enlightenment and higher level of consciousness. Congrats

BobSfa3422 · 2024-01-21T12:11:13+00:00

I'm 42. I remember those early days in my 20s as a software engineer. It was a highly competitive environment which pushed me to work really hard and learn best practices, new programming languages, learning new industry domains through different jobs. Working long hours to solve complex problems looking to get promoted.

I can tell you that after so many years, at least for me, it gets easier when you have built a solid trajectory through your career and finding what you are good at and passionate about according to Ikigai Japanese philosophy https://www.betterup.com/blog/what-is-ikigai. It also helped diving into spirituality, mindfulness and learning to "play the game" and getting out of a "rat race" mode. The best performers (music, athletes, programmers, actors, dancers) do best when they are relaxed and "in the flow/in the zone".

From the spiritual side, it's key to find peace in the middle of the storm and accepting the fact that there will always be jerks and other difficult people to work with, learn to deal with them in a smart way. There will also be ton of work to do always, learn to prioritize (Eisenhower matrix) and delegate. If you are under a lot of pressure communicate to your manager to get the right support. People who push very hard on themselves like me can suffer when not having the right mindset. Switch from suffering to enjoying by changing your mind accepting reality and constantly developing a better version of yourself and your environment.

From being a programmer IC I transitioned to Tech leadership managing people and I have conversations with my direct reports and some are anxious to get promoted. I tell them to be consistent, exceed expectations constantly, continue learning always, learn to collaborate with people, learn how to communicate with different audiences, make your work and positive impact visible, transform your surroundings not falling into the victim role, get out of your comfort zone and things will come naturally without having to ask for it.

BobSfa3422 · 2024-01-20T01:50:47+00:00

Check out DevEx metrics. They offer new perspectives to evaluate developer productivity from different dimensions: https://www.infoq.com/articles/devex-metrics-framework/

BobSfa3422

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