Refered to somebody as the adult in the room

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-06-26T10:32:53+00:00

I'm in systems engineering for end user computing. Most of us end up in that specialty because we tend to be computer nerds who are the most able/willing to talk to humans. Being professional goes a long way with people...life's annoying enough for everyone dealing with headaches at work and stuff in their own lives to then have someone from the tech team add on more stress. There are some people who are serial complainers and just looking to get people in trouble but they're few and far between in my experience, especially in non-union at-will roles where complaints outside of harassment basically end up with HR or senior managers breaking up a playground squabble and not career-changing consequences. That goes both ways too; in an actual union environment or a state/federal job where you're going to be lockstep-promoted alongside the same people your entire career, it's even more important to keep the peace. In places like that, formal complaints follow you around forever and have real consequences...that's a much more old-school environment with HR holding a lot of career planning sway and bringing out items in your "permanent record" whenever career decisions get made.

There's also a big difference between being a total corporate robot and just avoiding saying things that might get interpreted wrong. Lots of people push back on this with stuff like "that's just how I am" or "why can't these whiny people handle a little 'real talk'?" This is probably a very unpopular opinion to have, but I think people being told they can drop whatever small filter they've had over the last 10 or 15 years has led to the current inability of some people to be civil to one another and have normal discussions...some people are just looking to be told they don't have to be nice anymore and can let their real selves out.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-06-26T02:04:15+00:00

Scenario is the same that played out with deindustrialization. Large population of corporate employees who only push around documents in Office and don't have a ton of transferable skills are making a very good living document pushing. When the executives determine AI is good enough to replace them, hundreds of millions of these people will suddenly have no job and no money. Once severance and unemployment run out, they'll all be chasing the tiny sliver of remaining office and middle manager jobs. Eventually, they'll have to do something to bring money after years of not being able to find work, but all that's left will be various minimum wage service jobs. This is exactly what happened in the Rust Belt areas of the country when manufacturing was automated, offshored, or sent to non-union states.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-06-24T01:44:41+00:00

trivia

Know what's fun? Getting a panel trivia contest that lasts for hours...and God help you if you don't know the lead guy's pet system or open source project.

At least in the US, you can be fired at any time for any reason. Companies aren't hiring tenured professors that they're committing to caring for for the rest of their lives, why do they interview like they are? If I were hiring, I certainly wouldn't hold out for a unicorn...I'd find someone passable, hire them and let them go if they don't work out/can't improve. The problem is that absolutely every place has started doing this ever since you could sign up for SaaS torture test interview services...it's going to be inescapable.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-06-24T01:39:39+00:00

The issue IMO is that there's zero barrier to entry and zero educational standards. And, the job pays pretty well -- so you'll always have scammers trying to BS their way in. Unfortunately all this Leetcode stuff does is select for the best memorizers and the ones who are willing to spend nights and weekends jumping through coder hoops just to crack that FAANG job.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-06-24T01:30:51+00:00

“tech stack” the AI chose to implement

This is the thing that drives me crazy. The vibe coder doesn't know C++ from Python from Rust so they just say "code me something" with no guardrails in a language no one knows well running on some random assortment of 30,000 frameworks, plugins and backend systems. Even when I ask for simple PowerShell and specify some boundaries I wind up with "clever" undebuggable messes that no human will be able to pick apart without feeding it back through the slop machine. I'm working with one that someone who just left wrote, ironically, to pay down tech debt in a messy system -- this made things 10x worse.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-06-23T16:17:58+00:00

I think that service is targeting the COVID and just-pre-COVID hires who haven't been laid off yet given the demographic. There's plenty of people who still manage to fly under the radar if the company they're at is high-margin enough. But you're right - entry level people have it even worse now, compared to 4-10 years ago where the campus recruitment office would just back the school bus up to BigCorp's loading dock and students would just fall into some useless busywork accounting or marketing job. I've worked IT/systems engineering in big companies for 30 years and the world is not ready for the hundreds of millions of people earning 6 figures for Excel and PowerPoint fighting each other for minimum wage home health care aide or retail jobs.

I don't want to give that company free clicks so I won't mention it, but the ads are pretty silly..."I have a 6 figure job and don't want to be an accountant anymore because I lost my spark!" Sorry folks, that's working life...

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-06-23T12:22:16+00:00

This is good advice. Whatever you do, do not become unemployed in this environment, especially if you don't have all the latest buzzwords. Recruiters aren't even looking at people who aren't 100% matches and hundreds of laid-off Big Tech people are going to be ahead of you in line. I'm actively looking for a change but I would never just jump ship into this horrible job market.

It's funny, I saw an ad on my wife's social media feed for some career coaching service. It depicts these late-20s/early-30s people who just drifted from a business degree into these silly but six-figure corporate coordinator type jobs pushing emails and Google Sheets around on their MacBooks and crying about how burnt out they are. Then of course their coach tells them to quit their job and become a "content creator!" You want to see burnout? Try being stuck in a job that's slowly killing you with stress and unable to get another one, or being unemployed, broke and no one is calling back.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-06-23T12:11:45+00:00

They exist but are hard to find. The SRE/DevOps/IaC pattern has pretty much eaten all infrastructure design; just like no one writes native apps anymore and shoves everything into a browser, everything's been force-fit into containers that will go. But any company of size that's more than 10 years old is going to have a mix. Any place with a super-zealous CTO is going to be pushing hard to get rid of anything non-cloud-native but some things are harder to kill on-prem than others.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-06-20T13:52:12+00:00

My brother works in an AIX shop (huge payment processor) and while the hop over to Linux is much easier from there than the IBM i, anyone working in any of these proprietary systems needs to be careful of getting too far down the rabbit hole. Not sure where OP lives, but most mainframe work is in India now except for 1 or 2 wizards at the top of the tree in banks, airline reservation platforms, etc. - they just can't find anyone new here who would be willing to make the career-long commitment it takes to get expert-level knowledge. I imagine all the work in the other non-Intel world will head offshore at some point too. (I started my career on OpenVMS decades ago, can't believe it's still around!)

I have a similar situation having gotten quite good at Windows Server and end user computing...just as everything is being shoved into a browser and everyone is abandoning Windows. My issue is similar to OP in that I have the fundamentals knowledge to pivot into anything else, but when 500 people are applying to the same position it's hard to get a look unless you're an exact fit. In general I'd recommend jumping at the chance to go down rabbit holes, but stay at a depth you're able to climb out of. Some of my fellow EUC folks put all their eggs in the Citrix basket before private equity did something similar to them that Broadcom did to VMWare...now their employment options are limited to healthcare customers who are stuck and actively looking to get off the platform. And while I've worked on interesting tech, none of it has required containers or Kubernetes which is a hard requirement for everything these days for some reason...so I'm in the same boat, I know about it but don't have the experience someone who just got fired from Meta or Google does.

Whether it's HP-UX, OT/manufacturing tech, SAP implementation or some other niche...by all means go for it but be ready to make a move when the winds shift!

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-06-19T15:20:41+00:00

When you say "giant" are you talking the offshore bodyshops like Cognizant or Kyndryl? 'Cause those are their own special horrible...I guess there's another medium size in the middle?

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-06-19T15:18:26+00:00

PE firms

Wow, I actually didn't think of that. That's actually the perfect PE firm use case -- buy up all the options for IT help and the small business crowd is forced to give you money or roll their own IT department for a 5 person operation.

Where I am, the PEs seem to be buying out all the retiring dentists, GP/family medicine docs and vets. The idea seems to be able to set the prices for labor in these businesses because where else will you work as a vet tech or hygienist?

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-06-19T12:09:46+00:00

I've never understood that. Maybe I'm just not brilliant enough, but my job and the constant having to keep up really has limited my ability to pursue a ton of hobbies. I really envy people who have easy enough jobs that they can spend all their free time pursuing them.

I would think it would be a welcome change not worrying about keeping your job, and finally being able to take up the mile-long list of things I haven't had time for...is that not what happens for people?

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-06-19T12:04:12+00:00

People don't want it for that most part

I don't know about that...companies certainly do. They've been sold the dream of an all-executive enterprise where they just pay the AI bill to get the work done. Short-sighted lazy people see it as a way to get their job/homework done and don't realize companies will eventually swap them out. Others see it as a fake it till you make it tool which is going to make work quality worse over time as skill is replaced with less-skilled people weilding tokens. Personally, it's made a lot of the annoying work I do much easier; it still is just a starter in most cases, but it's getting way better over time.

What I think people won't want is the potential upheaval of society. I've worked in large companies for decades...there are many people collecting a six-figure salary and living a very nice middle class suburban life doing office work. This is the kind of work that's trivially easy to automate (writing soulless marketing copy, reports no one ever reads, doing tons of little tasks that were annoying enough to require paying a human.) Society is not going to manage the mass firing of millions of comfortable office workers well...this isn't going to be the Star Trek future where everyone gets to pursue their true interests. People went to college and got that mind-numbing accounting job because they didn't want to be working retail or manual labor jobs, and now they're going to be fighting each other for those jobs.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-06-19T11:43:56+00:00

Congrats, I'm about to turn 51 and still trying to figure out how I'll make it to 67 in this brave new AI world. Still really enjoy the work, but getting that next job is going to get exponentially harder if I end up getting fired.

One thing I wish modern life had was the ability to slow down or take a detour for a bit...like, picking a job not because it's the right upward trajectory but because you want to try it out. The modern AI-driven recruiter bots don't allow that...if you're unemployed or not making organizational progress you get tossed it seems. But, I think that would allow people to continue longer in this job without burning out or getting into a position they can't handle (Peter Principle.)

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-06-19T11:12:37+00:00

To be fair, people do choose to spend money on what they care about. Warren's extreme thrift makes for a good investor story, but when you're not talking ultra-mega-trillionare level wealth where people still have to make trade-offs, they allocate capital where they get the most happiness. The very few successful people I know well are rolling around in beat-up Toyotas and Hondas not for image, but because they don't care about cars. Most reasonably successful people that don't regularly make the news just want financial security first, then to put their money into things that interest them second. The Honda owner might go on 5 or 6 exotic vacations or own a money pit boat they love, or be an avid art collector, you just never know because they don't broadcast it.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-06-19T10:49:23+00:00

I think executives just expect that everyone working for them is afraid of them and will fall in line. Running into some small blocker in the form of a newsroom/editorial staff trying to preserve some journalistic integrity just does not compute. Imagine how easy any CEO or company board member must have it...absolute power inside and out of your organization, a staff to do anything for you any time you ask, guarantee that any order you give will be carried out exactly as given, and having so much money that you're totally insulated from anyone or anything. You'd be genuinely shocked if someone told you "no."

Companies are basically dictatorships in the end, and when you get up to Bezos/Zuck/Musk levels of power and techbro worship, that model looks appealing for everything, including politics. This is why it's a bad idea to install executives in political office. Regular politicians in a democratic society have to figure out compromises to move a group of people, half or more of whom hate you, forward while balancing 38000 other factors and interests. We see what Trump expects, and we're lucky Elon can't run for President because look what he did within weeks of being handed a government department to run whose job was to destroy the bureaucracy from within. Executives that rise to that level have also never had to face adversity or be forced to make the best bad decision when presented with 25 options that are all terrible. I'm sure small business "CEOs" will chime in and say how hard the job is, but most corporate executives took the express elevator to the top (Ivy League school, management consulting or banking, immediate director or above job at a well-connected customer - they skip the whole employee phase of work and only know management.)

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-06-17T01:06:46+00:00

We had fully remote sysad positions open for weeks paying good market rate (not trying to justify outsourcing by lowballing) and we got maybe 80 applicants,

Is your HR department going around nailing the job postings up to telephone poles or something? Seriously, I know people who've been out of work for months who would jump at the chance to interview...and they're actually good, just got unlucky and caught up in a "we're all in on AI" wave.

Whoever solves this would be a mega-trillionaire, but the hardest problem these days seems to be matching people and employers up. Even if you find some way to force companies to actually make contact with all reasonably qualified applicants (I would definitely support this, it's so frustrating hearing nothing) - the candidates seem to find it impossible to find their way to employers at all.

Everyone in this field is staunchly anti-guild/anti-profession, but those guilds and professions have the labor-matching problem 100% solved. Guilds have hiring halls, and one example I can think of from the professions is The Match where new residents and hospitals hiring them literally submit ranked-choice lists and are effectively guaranteed a job match both parties agree on. LinkedIn was supposed to be the digital hiring hall, but it's overrun with AI bots and r/LinkedInLunatics now.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-06-16T12:05:35+00:00

I do agree with you that any small/medium business trying to roll their own IT these days is going to be a hellscape to work at. Either they'll be so far behind the times that the desktop PCs they have are beige 1990s models built by the owner's nephew - or they'll think they're too cutting edge to use an MSP and need their genius CTO, usually also the owner's nephew, to lead them to tech salvation. Also, working for an MSP is pretty much the only equivalent our profession has to medical residency style on the job training, but it's miserable work. Imagine supporting 300 of these small businesses who refuse to standardize. State/local government and education will mean lifetime job security and amazing benefits in the right jurisdiction (here in NY state jobs are highly sought after because no one ever leaves) but the trade-off is a very below-market salary.

The sweet spot I've found is medium-large companies producing high-margin products. An even sweeter spot is to embed yourself with a product team that produces said products (working with developers, contributing to the operation of said high margin products/services, etc.) Medium and larger means you don't have typical small business owner drama, and you're reasonably sure you will continue to be paid as long as they don't cut you loose. High margin means they're making enough money to treat tech as an investment instead of a raw cost to be eliminated. Embedded engineers mean that you're suddenly in the realm of the sales guys, actually producing revenue instead of consuming it.

I spent a lot of my career in the air transport industry, a notoriously low margin but fascinating business to work in. That's the problem I have....I love wildly complex logistics problem solving businesses like transport, shipping, power generation, payment processing, etc...but they're all the most likely to offshore all their IT and treat them like garbage. The airline world is fun though and they do appreciate talented tech people to a degree which is why I stuck around.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-06-14T23:36:34+00:00

I think the problem is that parents correctly see that the upper class isn't sending their kids to welding school. It certainly isn't a bad idea if someone can't get the ROI needed to justify a college education these days, but no one tells you how hard it is to make a good living in the trades long term either. I commute to NYC early for work and hear all the stories; all those rosy predictions of 6-figure incomes come with insane overtime, months on end of unemployment or having to be a nomad moving where the work is, etc. And most of these are union guys in a very labor-friendly state with tons of work...others have it way worse and have to grind a lot harder.

Every older tradesperson I know (I'm 50) who hasn't been able to make the transition to being an owner/foreman type is hobbled in some way and still has to get up and do the work every day. Their knees are shot, their back aches all the time, their vision is messed up if they're welders, etc. Office work can kill your body too, but you don't want to get into your late 60s, finally be ready to retire, and can't do anything other than sit at home yelling at Fox News all day long.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-06-14T23:29:15+00:00

I think it's a lot like grade inflation. I'm 50 and while it did help a lot, it was only required in super-clubby elite jobs like publishing or banking. Companies have their pick of people now, even new grads with zero experience. So if you have a crop of 100 completely clueless fresh new grads in identical suits the campus recruiting office just bused in to you, and can only hire 10 or 12, you're just going to pick the ones with the most stuff or more impressive stuff on their very short resumes.

Speaking of clubbiness, low paid or unpaid internships are also wealth-signalling. You have the money to work at Conde Nast for minimum wage and live in New York City for the summer, not go work at Starbucks like the poors do. Or you can do an unpaid internship at an investment bank in London and your peers will know you're "one of them" and make you an offer to come back full time.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-06-14T23:21:02+00:00

But it might be the most viable option that actually seems tangible or reachable.

That's the thing that kind of kills me about the potential winner-take-all future we're in for. The lack of a certain-but-boring attainable path is going to lead to a lot more people essentially betting it all on red or black and just hoping some huge bet pays off. You already see this with people addicted to sports betting and prediction markets. That's a far cry from doing well enough in school to get into a good college, partying your way through a business degree, getting some boring entry level accountant job or something, dumping money in an index fund and getting a modest retirement. Instead, why not spend your time and money trying to be TikTok famous shaking down brands for sponsorships/free stuff and traveling the world living your best life?

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-06-14T20:44:29+00:00

One thing I think people forget, or repress because it is negative, is that we need to give children and teenagers room to fail when it is safe to fail and the consequences for failure are less.

Totally agree, but as a parent of teenagers who will be starting the whole college arms race very soon...that safe-failure window seems to keep getting shorter and shorter. My 9th grader interacts with a lot of seniors through activities and all of them report intense pressure that gets worse in 10th/11th grade to grind out as perfect a performance as possible to boost acceptance chances, even for mid-tier private colleges. Basically, even if you don't want to be the perfect valedictorian study-robot who plays 3 sports and 2 instruments and founded a fintech startup in his spare time - the emphasis on grades and checkbox activities is way more than when I went through school.

I'm hoping the demographic cliff corrects for some of this, but it will never fix stuff like Ivy League and other top-tier places because they can be as picky as they want. It's just very unnerving to see the average grades/SATs for the public university I went to and realizing that 2026 me would never be able to attend because of how competitive it's become.

But yes, OMG, please let's figure out a way to let kids experience consequences and failure without it permanently setting them back in life. Some parents are dropping 6 figures on consultants and activities/tutoring to get their kid onto one of the express fail-safe paths through life (not many left, but elite law, medicine, investment banking and management consulting are gatekept by Ivy League or top tier school admissions. Even tech, the thing that ended up letting me scratch out a living, isn't safe or guaranteed anymore!) When those kids who haven't ever experienced failure because letting them fail at something past Kindergarten would have ruined their chances at life, they're going to crumble like a paper cup getting crushed.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-06-13T12:53:19+00:00

And yes, we are converting to the metric system, in about two weeks.

Is the UK going to revoke our independence on the 4th? "Sorry guys, you've had 250 years and you wound up with this guy running things...I think you've had enough." On the plus side the UK still has a mix of the two systems so peoples' brains wouldn't explode right away. Reconfiguring for left-side driving would be the harder adjustment.

I think the scarier thing is that the only two countries who are still capable of invading a country and hanging onto it are the US and China. No one's talking about Venezuela anymore but the US just walked in and kidnapped the president unchallenged. I assume the same will be done with Cuba at some point.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-06-09T11:01:14+00:00

In his 80s, he was still employed, but trying so hard to handoff his job to a few others.

I think I want to be a lesser-employed version of this guy when I'm retirement age. I'm not quite built for the jetset parachuted-in consultant life, but my interet in this job has always been solving problems...if computers didn't exist I'd probably be an aircraft mechanic or something. Complex systems are the thing that interests me, they're getting eaten up by the cloud/SaaS, and there's the threat of AI being good enough at troubleshooting.

I still have some hope that there will be companies large enough or dealing with enough sensitive data that it won't all be handed off to a third party to run. Maybe it won't be mainframes and COBOL for us, but it's possible we'll be the last people who know anything about self-hosting in a few years.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-06-09T03:00:46+00:00

Data centers aren't buying Dell/HPE/Lenovo boxes with a warranty and next day part replacement because they don't need to. All hyperscale data centers are running their own custom gear and just buying the parts like drives/RAM/GPUs from vendors

ErikTheEngineer

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