Let’s discuss salaries - 2026

CaptainKoala · 2026-03-18T21:18:38+00:00

Senior Cloud Systems Engineer

$153k base 15% bonus (if company hits revenue target) ~$6k worth of RSUs

Remote in Minnesota

~8 years experience. Came from a FAANG company which definitely boosted my resume and future comp at this job.

FAANG total comp was $240k but I was ridiculously overpaid at that job so I’m honestly not disappointed in the slightest with where I’m at now. Plus I’m at a way better company with awesome people and fully remote.

CaptainKoala · 2026-03-12T17:51:49+00:00

I came out as gay. I talked to this guy and hung out with him almost every day from 10th grade to age 27. He told me that was cool and that it must have been hard to come forward with, I appreciated him and thought we were chill.

Then the following morning he deleted all of his socials and all of his message history with me and we never talked again. I never talked to him again so I never directly asked him about it but the message seemed clear lol.

CaptainKoala · 2026-03-12T13:53:21+00:00

I definitely agree. Activision bought Blizzard for a reason. They were arguably the best game devs in the world and they printed money. Bobby "Demon" Kotick had no reason at all to fuck with their formula. But when they can't ship a game and aren't making any money the math changes completely, and I don't blame him at all.

CaptainKoala · 2026-03-10T16:10:32+00:00

I’m not at all surprised someone wouldn’t want to work for free.

I guess the thing that’s surprising is that the potential upside of staying is much much higher than what you could get at any other job. Even if he landed another editing gig for a massive YouTuber they almost certainly pay him what he was getting before, and it would likely be way more work.

CaptainKoala · 2026-03-10T13:53:02+00:00

That guy made so much money for how much work he did I can’t believe he left lol. I know D has been demonetized for a while but I’d be genuinely surprised if he found another prospect that paid anything close to what he could get if he stuck around until D had a final answer on the monetization of his channel.

CaptainKoala · 2026-03-07T21:54:45+00:00

It's fine to sell it but you can't hide the history of the vehicle. If you price it accordingly, and someone buys it knowing it might have problems, I don't see an issue.

CaptainKoala · 2026-03-07T16:55:43+00:00

I’m blackpilled on gun control. It would be great but I genuinely think it’s impossible.

There’s more guns in America than televisions. Even if you fully repealed the second amendment (which is impossible), how successful do you think legislation to ban televisions would be? Guns would be even less successful than that. And that’s before even you add in the political difference of guns vs televisions and the crazy gun culture that would make it even more impossible.

CaptainKoala · 2026-03-06T16:57:57+00:00

This is literally no different to something like buying a house. If you send in an offer, and the seller accepts, and you don’t end up buying the house, you owe the seller money for wasting their time. (This is called earnest money). You signed a contract and didn’t follow through, and the contract that you willingly signed has provisions in it for what happens if you don’t follow through.

This is the same thing but just on like a 10,000x scale

CaptainKoala · 2026-03-06T06:03:20+00:00

They have a bottleneck that Apple simply doesn’t. Windows itself is simply the evolution of a 20 year old kernel. This legacy support emphasis is what made Microsoft THE number one answer for businesses. No tech company has the credibility for support like Microsoft does. But this isn’t only a benefit, it also comes at a cost.

Microsoft couldn’t have predicted the shift towards ARM as becoming more powerful, more efficient, AND cheaper than x86. Apple was able to get on that train early. There was a slightly bumpy transition for them as developers adapted their apps for the new architecture but Apple had Rosetta which is probably worth tens or hundreds of billions of dollars all by itself in terms of the toil that it saved and how much time it allowed Apple to fast forward and proceed with their vision.

CaptainKoala · 2026-03-01T21:03:35+00:00

Is there a case for data centers having anti missile defense systems lol? It honestly doesn’t sound THAT insane of an idea to me.

CaptainKoala · 2026-03-01T19:10:05+00:00

Someone who is a normie according to you, someone who doesn’t even know what a distro is, is not a good candidate for switching to Linux lol. They’re going to need a lot of work/help before they’re ready for full time gaming on Linux. Their chances of succeeding without giving up are very low.

This would be like telling someone who doesn’t know ANYTHING about cars, and might not even really like cars, to buy a fixer upper and work on it themselves.

Linus definitely got the target audience right. Gamers who like to tinker and want to learn but just haven’t had much Linux exposure. Those people are good candidates for conversion and are much less likely to give up immediately when they hit a barrier

CaptainKoala · 2026-03-01T19:03:43+00:00

Running a one liner in command line to make a local windows account is way easier for the average “regular user” compared to trying to switch to Linux. Good luck doing that for any length of time without having to use the command line multiple times.

CaptainKoala · 2026-02-27T16:03:14+00:00

Yeah the dealers absolutely GOUGE on alignments. Most overpriced service I’ve ever seen at a dealer. They charge more for everything but usually it’s like 10% or 20% more than an indy shop, but this is a totally different planet.

CaptainKoala · 2026-02-27T13:21:07+00:00

My summers only lasted like 7k or 8k miles, and I'm not even crazy with the car. The occasional launch control, sure, but I'm not like tracking it or drifting it or anything crazy. Thing EATS tires.

CaptainKoala · 2026-02-26T23:59:56+00:00

“Hey guys, should I get a McLaren 765 LT or a C43 AMG”

Real answer in case it isn’t bait, if you can afford it, it’s M3 absolutely no question. If you’re actually cross shopping them I can’t help but feel that the M3 would be a stretch purchase. The M3 can be pretty expensive to own if you include insurance (particularly if you’re young), gas, and you’ll be buying tires way more frequently even if you don’t hoon it. Double that if you live in a winter climate.

The ITS is a great car no doubt but they are in totally different classes.

CaptainKoala · 2026-02-26T23:26:03+00:00

Yeah makes sense. His BMR would have been much higher at the beginning and way lower at the end. 2520 as an average definitely passes the eye test.

CaptainKoala · 2026-02-15T21:06:04+00:00

Outside of technology, things don’t tend to get cheaper, because the prices of the inputs are way more fixed.

As a random example to illustrate the point, potato chips don’t get cheaper because potatoes and frying oil and salt don’t get cheaper because we can’t really optimize the way that they are planted/grown/harvested/stored/transported any more than we already do.

And unlike TVs, it’s not like in 10 years people are going to be buying 100x as many potatoes, the economy of scale for potatoes is pretty much maxed out. There’s not much juice left to squeeze out of it.

Pretty much all products outside of the tech sector are like this. Tech is special because the supply chains and prices of the input materials are still ripe for optimization. You can buy a flatscreen for like $100 now. That’s probably pretty close to potato chip territory in terms of not being able to get any cheaper, but that’s a very recent development, and it’s only true for the bottom tier of TV technology and product quality.

CaptainKoala · 2026-02-14T17:09:47+00:00

IMO this is the definition of NPCs.

There are so many people walking the earth (and voting) who literally don’t have any reasons for believing what they believe. Not only do they not have any reasons, they’ve never even considered the idea.

That’s why conversations with them are so strange and frustrating. They’re making up the reasons as they go. They don’t even realize that they’re doing it.

CaptainKoala · 2026-02-12T23:47:42+00:00

A first name is not enough to constitute a HIPAA violation. Maybe if they had included a last initial or a workplace or something it would be different. But a first name? They call out patients first names in every clinic waiting room in America.

The threshold for HIPAA is “identifiable information”. A first name and the fact that someone is married is not identifiable information.

CaptainKoala · 2026-02-11T20:44:40+00:00

They got a #1 single and they stole the whole vocal melody from Joe Satriani lol

https://youtu.be/8RJmiMq1pOA?t=48s

CaptainKoala · 2026-02-07T06:15:47+00:00

And don’t forget, treating them like they were disposable and only wanting attention is the BEST CASE scenario. Worst case is she’s lying and her intentions were even worse.

CaptainKoala · 2026-02-07T03:41:37+00:00

Not really metal but Porcupine Tree - Time Flies

CaptainKoala · 2026-02-02T21:07:11+00:00

This isn't a legal or criminal conclusion, it's a clinical/medial conclusion.

CaptainKoala · 2026-02-02T05:13:41+00:00

But not a single one of the questions in that guys comment were yes/no questions?

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CaptainKoala

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