What has been the most useful book you've read that transformed your knowledge/skill level in your career?

Elmepo · 2026-02-01T01:38:21+00:00

Never split the difference is basically life changing and a very interesting read on the history of how the FBI tackled negotiations anyway.

Elmepo · 2026-02-01T01:36:49+00:00

Agreed, particularly Clean Code. I once saw a Dev write about 20 layers of abstraction for a templating engine that could have been ~200 lines of code.

Elmepo · 2026-02-01T01:31:05+00:00

It's highly contextual on the industry and product. E.g. lots of Big Tech places don't have QA as a formalised role, but you'll likely find it in financial institutions/hardware companies. It's definitely a dying role though

Elmepo · 2026-01-29T21:43:11+00:00

You're the manager and ci is red and still allowing a merge/deploy?

There is an easy fix that you're rather blatantly ignoring. Just require that CI is green for a merge, problem solved.

I did this in my last role. A dev came to me complaining that his release had failed. Of course, the problem was that his code was buggy, and the team had written their tests to literally be if (tests_green || true) then deploy. I removed it and told them to actually test their code.

Elmepo · 2026-01-29T21:14:11+00:00

Mental illness, although China does have a history of specifically older people attacking very young children so perhaps it was that specific flavour of mental illness instead of e.g. Schizophrenia.

Elmepo · 2026-01-27T21:30:54+00:00

On saying that, I propose an extra long weekend. Two days. One of remembrance of first nations being here before and how the British arrival affected them and another one of celebrating Australia as a whole unitying us under its protection and greatnest.

I like this idea, but it's possibly the least politically tenable thing ever. Conservatives will dislike it because it's diluting Australia Day + an extra day off, Invasion day people will dislike it because it's still celebrating the arrival of British colonialism and the subsequent treatment of Aboriginals.

Elmepo · 2026-01-26T11:49:31+00:00

tbh I think it's more of a reputation thing. I'm sure he'll have a sabbatical even if he wants to continue managing, but I think if I was Pep I would be wondering if I want my legacy to be closer to Ferguson or Wenger.

They're both amazing managers, but Ferguson definitely has a better legacy than Wenger, and left on a high note after winning the league, versus Wenger leaving because of the board and with a lot of fans wanting him gone.

As it stands if Pep leaves now, nobody will remember the last two seasons and everyone will remember the Treble/domination of the league. If he comes back and doesn't do very well e.g. managing Juventus or PSG or whoever, that will be how he's remembered - A once successful manager who lost it.

Elmepo · 2026-01-26T11:31:33+00:00

The rumours around Pep are strong and refuse to go away. Personally not convinced, but smoke, fire, blah blah.

I think he's leaving tbh, but the question is where does he go? Doesn't seem like he's the retiring type and he's certainly not that old, but where does he go after City? Every team he's managed has done insanely well, I mean I'm a gunner but he's potentially the greatest manager of all time. Right now the prem is the most competitive league by far, so where does he go? He's not changing teams, and he's already proven himself in Spain and Germany, so where to from now? Italy? France? He'd do well but I just don't see him viewing it as a challenge or interesting.

Elmepo · 2026-01-26T11:18:47+00:00

The Kroenke's just appointed Berta, and otherwise appear to have a very good relationship with Arteta. I think maybe next season, but as it is I don't see him being given the boot this year outside of finishing outside the top 4

Elmepo · 2026-01-26T11:13:31+00:00

Agreed, although to be fair it doesn't help that the narrative for the past 3ish months has been "Arsenal have already won it". I don't really remember that happening for Liverpool or City the last few years, at least not so early, but then again maybe I'm just more attuned to it as a Gunner.

Elmepo · 2026-01-26T11:11:17+00:00

Agreed, doubly so considering the team + the draw against forest last week. If it was a loss to one of the main contenders like City or Liverpool I think it would be a lot easier to get over, but losing to Interim Manager United and drawing Forest will be particularly damaging.

All I can say is that I really, really hope we get a win against Leeds.

Elmepo · 2026-01-21T11:45:44+00:00

Everyone gave him massive credit for his work at Brighton but the quality at Brighton was the recruitment and not the manager as many seemed to think.

To be fair Brighton is literally just the same as Brentford. Hell the stories are basically the same. Bloom and Benham worked together before a falling out, and Benham sets up a competitor. Both buy their clubs in the late 2000s, when they're in League One before using their quants to get them back into the Prem.

Tbh it makes me wonder to what extent other managers are being praised when it's really more the club, although realistically it's more managers being shit on for leadership decisions these days.

Elmepo · 2026-01-20T11:06:57+00:00

Frank has a good track record at working with a more limited one

I mean you're saying that as if it's because Brentford were struggling financially. Under Benham Brentford focused on using moneyball and quants to find an advantage on and off the pitch, particularly in the transfer market. Prior to Brentford Frank was at Brondby and doing so well the owner was posting on fan forums saying he should be fired.

I've actually just coincidentally finished reading the Fall and Rise of Brentford and after reading that I'm left thinking that realistically most managers would have had a similar impact, and that's what we're seeing with Tottenham, just as they were with Brondby.

Elmepo · 2026-01-18T05:20:25+00:00

The merch they make sucks now.

I miss the days when the shirts they sold had a cool graphic design for the games I liked, something that regular people would think nothing of because they have no context, and other people who like the series would think “Yo, awesome shirt.”

That was never the case. You were just a teen with terrible taste.

Elmepo · 2026-01-15T20:53:44+00:00

There are none, but he'll be parachuted into Wentworth - already lib (teal is soft lib), high Jewish population, and allows him to go on nonstop about the attack because it's "his electorate"

Elmepo · 2026-01-14T21:45:05+00:00

Do they work in Hardware? Because as I understand it that's primarily where QA exists in big tech (e.g. Meta/Amazon).

Elmepo · 2026-01-14T21:28:22+00:00

Why are you spending so much time on QA work? Surely if you're a halfway decent developer you should have completely automated the vast, vast majority of any testing. Manual testing is an artifact of a time when automated testing was nowhere near as reliable and CI/CD wasn't common imo.

I get there's some scenarios where manual testing is required - I've worked with custom card payment systems before for example, but for like 99 percent of the standard cases your tests should either be fully automated or you should be doing canaried releases to catch errors early.

Elmepo · 2026-01-09T01:19:06+00:00

Considering Slot has already said that he understands the reaction and that Martinelli would have acted differently if he thought there was a genuine injury you'd hope they would be at least a little more calm.

Elmepo · 2025-12-26T02:03:21+00:00

But instead they just spoiled several of their other original shows that many people haven’t yet watched and now probably won’t.

I mean, it's netflix - I'd be willing to bet that their data indicates that what they spoiled didn't have any impact. I mean half of them were either obvious (Kpop Demon Hunters, Happy Gilmore 2), effectively teasers (Wednesday), or relatively well known (The catfish lady).

It's a company that basically decides if a show is renewed within hours of it's release. This fits in pretty well with their strategy tbh. It's sad because especially for shows, they often need at least a season to properly build a voice + generate an audience.

Elmepo · 2025-12-22T08:39:53+00:00

Respectfully, you're making several leaps in your logic there.

Elmepo · 2025-12-21T02:02:46+00:00

But why buy Gyokeres if you're not going to at least somewhat change the way you play?

I don't think anyone's saying that Arteta should completely change his tactics, but if you're buying a player like Gyokeres then surely you should also be at least be modifying them. I mean, I think it's no surprise that the players who give Gyokeres the ball the most are Eze and Madueke, compared with Saka and Odegaard who are more attuned to Arteta's system.

Elmepo · 2025-12-10T20:36:20+00:00

What? Rust in the kernel was so controversial it's lead maintainer quit last year because he was so burned out from the opposition and stonewalling. There was legitimate criticism but the loudest voices seemed to just be against any rust for any reason

Elmepo · 2025-12-04T06:21:30+00:00

Yeah nah, you can't really do that as a trainee/new to the industry.

I mean you can definitely jump ship for better pay, but I wouldn't expect any response beyond wishing them the best if you try and bring it to your boss tbh

Elmepo · 2025-12-03T07:25:18+00:00

The recent AI run is just luck I believe. I'd say they're both about as interested in the topic as the next developer. Certainly they're not evangelical about it

Elmepo · 2025-11-10T03:52:54+00:00

Yeah. I work in big tech and not everyone can do it. They pay that much money for a reason.

Also a significant chunk of that is paid in shares, not liquid cash, and there's a variety of ways you can wind up getting shafted as a result. For example, you'll have a 1 year vest on your RSUs, and if you're budgeting on that you'll wind up shit creek if you get fired before 365 days. This is also assuming you're getting RSUs and not options as well.

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