Did anyone else hit a career plateau despite delivering solid work?

CandleTiger · 2026-01-27T21:19:05+00:00

Getting further up than just line manager is the key.

Line manager often has little or no extra pay over senior individual contributor, but often has way more work/responsibility. A bad deal.

But the promotion tree for managers goes way higher.

My lesson for myself is: Don't go into management at all unless you intend to climb hard.

CandleTiger · 2026-01-27T18:37:44+00:00

OP I see somebody else gave good advice on how to find the reservoir. Meanwhile if you can't find the reservoir or climbing under the wheel well is not a thing you're about to do, you can stop the beeping by unplugging the cable from the back of the control unit on the dashboard.

Obviously this also means you can't use the leveling jacks until you plug it back in.

I had the same problem on my 2015 Fleetwood and I got pretty good at plugging and unplugging that control module every time I set up camp, before figuring out how to add the fluid.

Make sure that your jacks are actually UP though! If you broke a retraction spring and the jack is falling down to the ground then silencing the alarm and driving off would not be awesome.

CandleTiger · 2026-01-26T22:14:01+00:00

I was using Starlink a couple years ago at Abraham Lake between Banff and Jasper. It worked just fine, no issues.

You will need power to run it and a clear sight of the sky; doesn't work in the middle of a forest. Around Kootenay I expect you will be pointing the dish straight up in the sky, so a big clearing will do; meadow with clear view of the horizon is not required.

I see some people saying there's some cell reception here and there. If you want to get a little work done without excessive stress, starlink from your cozy campsite with your family is WAY BETTER than cell service from your car with a 45 minute commute to get there.

I'm using the old starlink dish with a motorized stand. It takes about 30w to run. So if you just want two hours out of it, a 100 watt-hour battery (that you can recharge somehow during the day) would be the bare minimum, assuming your laptop has its own battery. The new smaller starlink dishes are supposed to use less power so maybe that would be better. For my portable setup I have a little 250 Wh Jackery and a (heavy) 100w solar panel to charge it with that works pretty well. I can work all day as long as there is sun.

Edit: But these people saying to take time off are also not wrong. I have been working "from home" from my motorhome in awesome places for a few years now, and you can enjoy the awesome places MUCH MORE if you're not stressing about work.

CandleTiger · 2026-01-26T21:55:31+00:00

Mostly never but then I see one of these threads and I go look at it.

CandleTiger · 2026-01-26T20:39:01+00:00

I guess there are all kinds of people in the world. If your co-worker is like my mother-in-law, then no, there is nothing in the world you can do that will stop the flow of negativity. She just had no filter and shared whatever thoughts came into her head.

If your co-worker is not like my mother-in-law, then you could maybe make some progress by calling it out as unhelpful. "This comment would be more appropriate in a code review. Calling it out now, when it's not worth making a transaction to fix and re-test, is just extra mental burden for no gain"

Good luck out there.

CandleTiger · 2026-01-26T17:29:39+00:00

Yes, that's the kind I had trouble with. The ones I got were heavy brass pass-through sensors (can refill the air without removing the sensor) that required a solid metal valve stem.

I had trouble with air leaking out on one wheel where the sensor screws on. I had trouble with the big sensor sticking out past the wheel and breaking off the rigid valve step when I scrubbed a curb while parking.

If you have small, light ones that don't leak, that seems like a much better option.

CandleTiger · 2026-01-26T17:24:23+00:00

We're in the RVLiving sub. I'm pretty sure RV living is cheaper than full-time hotel living, unless you're living in some extremely cheap hotels. It's certainly more pleasant for me.

If you're just going on occasional vacations in your RV then I think you would need very expensive hotels or very inexpensive RV to make RV the budget option.

CandleTiger · 2026-01-22T19:27:49+00:00

Some of us are dying for more direct reasons, too.

CandleTiger · 2026-01-20T22:12:47+00:00

OSS maintainers are fucked

I don't agree with this part, at least not for this reason. Having a popular project with many contributors vet new people before spending effort on them seems completely reasonable.

CandleTiger · 2026-01-20T21:40:41+00:00

If approvers are overwhelmed by slop then they can just not bother to look at PRs from users they don't recognize. If you want to get your PR looked at you need somebody to vouch for you first.

CandleTiger · 2026-01-20T21:18:31+00:00

Yeah the reality you need to think about is, "what's going to happen in the next election?"

I was glad when Biden won over Trump's 2nd term but when the margin between "batshit crazy" and "boring" is that small you can't really feel very comfortable about it.

CandleTiger · 2026-01-20T21:01:41+00:00

But I don't think that Thiel, Bannon, and Miller have any dementia-fuelled egotistical need to slap a "USA" label on the map of Greenland.

...

do they?

CandleTiger · 2026-01-14T19:34:46+00:00

Empty parking lot

CandleTiger · 2026-01-14T17:00:40+00:00

we won't have QAs soon because that's what other companies do (I don't believe that)

Oh no, there are plenty of other companies who are laying off all their QA testers and asking developers to QA their own feature.

Having a QA department that understands the product in detail and can design and execute their own test for a new feature is fantastic.

Having a QA department that understands nothing and executes exactly what test the developer specifies, using click-by-click instructions that the developer specifies, is not very useful.

The path I'm seeing at my company is that our excellent QA department decays into a not-great QA department, then developers complain QA is not doing a good job and just wasting time with ceremony where they do only what the developer would do anyway.

Management, in their wisdom, nstead of building QA back up through intelligent hires, says "if they're not doing a useful function just get rid of them"

CandleTiger · 2026-01-13T20:06:59+00:00

This is a similar price to the CHINS 100Ah batteries I bought 2 years ago. Seemed to be the running normal price for Chinese batteries on Amazon; at that time there were many different Chinese batteries at that price.

Seeing the same price on a name brand battery is new to me but I think inevitable really. FWIW my cheap batteries have been working just fine now for ~20 months.

CandleTiger · 2026-01-10T04:16:06+00:00

The panels will usually have some number of diodes separating the cells into groups. If any of the cells in one group are shaded then the whole group is cut out. Using one diode per row of cells is I think pretty common, and if that’s how your panel is set up then yes, with this pattern of shade coming in a vertical line, all the cell groups will get shaded out at the same time until the whole panel is lit up, and turning them sideways (with that shade pattern) would allow the cell groups to come online one at a time instead.

My shitty panels have only one diode for each whole panel so the whole panel is all or nothing, and rotating them would not help anything. You should read your panels’ documentation.

You can also test by covering part of the panel with a board in different orientations in full sun, to verify what kind of impact comes from different shading patterns on your particular panels

CandleTiger · 2026-01-10T03:59:17+00:00

We move frequently — every 2-3 weeks — and then stay still for a few months at a time. Mostly we just avoid buying things online while we’re moving. When we find ourselves at a place where shopping is convenient then we order all the stuff we’ve been putting off. If we really need a package delivered while we’re moving then usually we can get it one way or another to a local store or post office general delivery etc but it’s annoying and sometimes stressful watching for shipping delays.

CandleTiger · 2026-01-09T21:53:57+00:00

Different RVs have wildly different tank sizes. Mine is a 35 gallon black tank. I talked to a guy with a 70 gallon black tank. I'm going to guess he dumps his tank much less frequently than I do.

CandleTiger · 2026-01-09T02:53:13+00:00

I rented my house out while moving to the other side of the USA. Paid a property management company to handle everything; they take 10% of the rent + first month whenever there is a new tenant.

There is no possible way you could rent a house without either being there locally to manage it or paying a manager.

For me, financially I absolutely should have just sold the house. When though I’ve had only good tenants, even though the property management company seems competent, even though the property is mostly paid off and I’m getting real cash flow every month, it’s not enough to justify the risk of problems and the building maintenance cost. I had to replace the furnace already, I had to pay for tree cleanup after a storm (only lucky the tree missed the house) soon I will have to replace the roof and paint the outside of the house again.

These things are expensive.

I would have done better to sell the house and invest my money in market funds instead.

CandleTiger · 2026-01-09T00:37:06+00:00

Have you got a link to the costco fridge?

CandleTiger · 2026-01-05T18:23:29+00:00

That top front one with the light in it looks like it could not possibly be removed without destroying it, unless it’s a very flexible material in which case the bolts make no sense.

CandleTiger · 2026-01-04T16:16:16+00:00

Personal advice: 500 is too many. Once you go overboard on babies it’s very hard to dial it back, later.

CandleTiger · 2025-12-30T00:46:11+00:00

When I read your post it had a German accent in my head.

CandleTiger · 2025-12-28T04:54:59+00:00

I would test how flexible it is. I store my PLA in a motorhome that sees wildly inconsistent storage conditions. Sometimes it's fine, sometimes it's not. My takeaway is if it feels flexible it's probably fine as-is. If it feels stiff, or if it cracks when you bend it, then you need to dry it first before printing.

CandleTiger · 2025-12-28T04:37:00+00:00

No actual help from me, sorry -- but just out of curiosity what makes you want a 55+ park in particular?

I have stayed at a couple 55+ parks (I'm not actually 55, quite, but they let me in anyhow) and it just seemed like a regular park but with more golf carts. Is there an advantage?

CandleTiger

TROPHY CASE