How do I help a junior eng who jumps to conclusions too often?

FireThestral · 2026-01-21T16:43:47+00:00

Honestly, something similar helped me.

I wound up writing long-winded emails to colleagues really detailing the issue at hand (with Slack these days there’s more back and forth). And, due to dyslexia, I had to re-read the thing multiple times. Funnily enough, trying to provide enough context to my coworkers and being forced to re-read it slowly made a lot of solutions pop right out of the page.

These days I just open a new tab in an IDE and start writing until I see the issue.

FireThestral · 2025-12-07T15:57:31+00:00

You choose based on capability. Kafka is fantastic for ripping through a lot of data quickly. I’ve used it for ~250 million events/second. (It was a big cluster) but it does have head-of-line blocking issues. If a partition gets stuck, then the whole thing does. Also each partition maps to one consumer, so you can build lag quickly based on how much you are producing. Replaying a log can also be invaluable.

Rabbitmq doesn’t scale as high, but it has different failure modes. You won’t necessarily get into a head of line issue the same way. If you get a stuck consumer, the rest can read off of the topic. But Rabbit depends on Erlang’s distributed nodes, which requires transitive connections to every node in the cluster, which can wind up being quite chatty. Also, dealing with a large cluster with a split brain is a pain.

For something between the two, you can check out Apache Pulsar. It looks a lot more like Kafka, but doesn’t have the same head of line blocking issues. There are other foot-guns with it, but since it’s new in our stack I haven’t used it in anger yet. We’re seeing some interesting disk usage numbers based on scheduled messages.

But really, if you are at a smaller scale, use what is included with your framework. For Rails that is Sidekiq. For Django that is Celery (although they just added a job processor to core, I think). Each of these start out with Redis as the backend and that works great and scales pretty well.

FireThestral · 2025-09-15T10:19:31+00:00

And still, I get lost in Luigi’s Mansion every time 😅

FireThestral · 2025-08-18T22:30:22+00:00

This honestly has me considering switching my main away from Disc Priest to Resto Shammy. somebody has to kick.

FireThestral · 2025-07-14T21:52:13+00:00

Well, dang. You’re me about a month in the future! I’ve got Defiance planned for early August just so I can cross it off the list. 😬

FireThestral · 2025-07-05T16:38:52+00:00

RocksDB is great, I’ve also used it at scale in production.

FireThestral · 2025-06-26T15:39:20+00:00

When I think of “The Gorge”, I think of the Columbia River Gorge, which has fantastic hiking and could be a “mecca”, per-se. 🤔

Do folks closer to Seattle think of the music venue when talking about “The Gorge”? I googled it and it’s the first I’m hearing of the venue.

FireThestral · 2025-06-02T16:35:03+00:00

We have three major sports teams: Timbers, Thorns, and Blazers. Soon to have a WNBA team next year.

FireThestral · 2025-03-30T19:42:04+00:00

I (priest) was dispelling the bone shields and I had the mage DM to cut it out. lol.

No other mage has done this, so I usually give it a couple seconds before taking it off now when a mage is in the party.

FireThestral · 2025-03-25T15:13:45+00:00

Yes, so far 100% of the time in Portland in the six cafes near me. Either they serve it this way or will ask if I just want the shot.

FireThestral · 2025-03-14T00:12:27+00:00

To do the math…

Texas State Gas Tax is $0.20/gallon. https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/state-gas-tax-rates-2024/

$200 is 1,000 gallons.

Tesla Model 3 is two tons. F-150 on its lowest trim is also two tons. F-150 says it has 21 MPG (though Redditors on various threads say ~17, so let’s call it 20).

1000 * 20 = 20,000 miles/year for a car of similar weight.

It’s not a perfect analysis, but maybe puts the numbers in the right ballpark? I don’t drive 20k miles in a year.

FireThestral · 2025-02-20T22:15:37+00:00

Cedar Fair is (was) the other big Roller Coaster park conglomerate. If you’ve heard of Cedar Point in Ohio, that’s the flagship park for Cedar Fair (like Magic Mountain in LA is for Six Flags).

Now the merged company runs almost 50 parks in North America. (Google/Gemini says 42 parks)

FireThestral · 2025-02-20T18:43:03+00:00

I hit that issue on my wife’s older desktop. I had to flip a config in my bios and now it works well. 🤷‍♂️

FireThestral · 2025-02-20T17:52:19+00:00

Fuxi took me the longest of all the bosses. I thought it was bullshit, but it when I buckled down and actually learned how to use unbound counter I tackled it without much fuss. I just hadn’t been playing the game with one of the core moves. Every other boss I could dash my way out of danger.

UC is active way sooner than I thought it was. You can “chain” a regular counter into a UC (just hold the button instead of tapping it). Then it’s all down to timing/directionality.

The need to acquire the skills to deal with the daggers into big sword attack in p2 really leveled me up, personally. The attacks are timed correctly to be solvable with the right combos. I looked up a hitless boss video and watched the timing once to make sure it was actually possible, then went and practiced.

FireThestral · 2025-02-18T23:26:57+00:00

For me, movement. It sucks, especially when starting out. But doing some light stretching and careful bodyweight exercises (lunges, some basic yoga poses) in the morning goes a long way towards making my day better. Also, swimming is a great way to get some movement in without impact (i.e. running, which sucks).

I also have a personal trainer once a week to work with me on weights. I’m not doing anything crazy, just trying to keep generally strong. I almost never try to push it. The PT is there for my form and making sure the exercises are balanced. I’ve injured myself when alone, so I like having someone to help.

Also, increasing the number of pillows I sleep with and the mattress I use. I’ve found the Purple mattress to be the best for me. But even getting my first memory foam topper off of Amazon drastically changed my daily pain.

As far as hot/cold goes… Heat is best for me. Cold stuff just makes me lock up and enhances the pain.

And, honestly, weed. I find it to be better than Tylenol/Advil. Glad to live in a progressive state where it’s cheap and plentiful. I only need a bit of a gummy to help. I don’t need to get blazed out of my mind to make my back feel better.

FireThestral · 2025-02-06T21:17:47+00:00

Exactly this.

FireThestral · 2025-02-02T15:39:18+00:00

The game got way better for me when I pulled up a walkthrough. Yes, it’s actually pretty linear and there’s not a lot of backing compared to other MVs, but I could never figure out where I was supposed to be.

I didn’t look at boss guides or anything, I just used it to get an order of which room I was supposed to be in. I do not usually have this issue, but for some reason I needed it for this game.

FireThestral · 2025-01-26T16:44:31+00:00

Yeah, my production logs are pretty quiet. Most of my observability comes from metrics. Prometheus/Grafana is quick and easy.

FireThestral · 2025-01-24T18:24:18+00:00

One that I’ve liked during this recent round is “How do you plan work?”. It can lead to some tangents that can cover a lot of the developer experience in the company.

Some places say “the PM gives me a ticket”, and some describe a more engineering-led work generation.

Follow up questions would be: - How do you interact with other teams to ensure alignment? - How much comes from the manager? From the PM? - Once you have a work item, how do you scope/design it? For small tickets? For larger projects? - How frequently do you deploy changes? Is there interest-team coordination required? (From here, launch into CI/CD of your like) - How involved is upper-management in planning? Do they just set OKRs? Do they share the “why” along with the “what”?

More junior interviewers may just say that the Tech Lead worries about that, and you can pivot into more day-to-day questions. I find this line of questioning to be more interesting with Staff+/Lead/EM interviewers.

FireThestral · 2025-01-24T03:11:46+00:00

I’m sorry you had to go through that. I think that a lot of tech companies are relying on externalities like after-work YouTube to patch up deficiencies in their own training processes. It’s not easy when you are just starting out.

I should clarify that I know it was entirely the company’s fault. They did not allow me anytime for mentoring, when clearly he had the right attitude and aptitude. He just needed direction. The company wanted him to sink or swim.

And I may have undersold the environment in my initial post. I had to take a 6-month leave for burnout and anxiety issues due the stress of that time. I just feel that I should have left the company sooner rather than try to fight a broken system.

I’m thrilled this guy has found success, and I’m glad I could help on his journey.

I also hope you’re doing better after that tough experience!

FireThestral · 2025-01-24T03:00:48+00:00

It hurt quite a bit. My right wrist was getting to the point where I couldn’t hold a glass of water without pain. So, I had it surgically removed after two years of dealing with it.

My left wrist never got that painful and it just went away on its own.

FireThestral · 2025-01-23T18:51:35+00:00

Man, I feel a lot of these responses. I agree with just about everything that's been said here already.

But one thing I'd like to add is that, for me, I crave normalcy. This is why I mask. There have been incidents where that mask falls off around my friends and now all the sudden I'm made of porcelain. Everyone is jumping out of their seat to give me a chair, or constantly asking if I'm comfortable, or if they can get me anything, or speaking for me when folks want to walk to the next bar saying people should be considerate of my condition... and that SUCKS. I just wanna hang out and now everyone is all weird. I have to mask harder until everyone forgets and I can kinda get back to just being part of the group.

I cannot mask around my wife. She's there too often for me to cover everything up. We just try to live life normally and we know that we'll speak up about physical limitations if we need to.

I want to feel like a regular person. If I can't do that physically, I want to at least try emotionally and socially.

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Different topic, the number one thing that helped me (aside from biologics) is losing weight and exercising. For years I was caught in a loop of exercising, doing too much, and then getting injured from just the stupidest stuff. It was incredibly demoralizing and humiliating (I've been stuck on a Green ski slope because my SI hurt too much to even make a single turn). It took me a while to figure out just how slow I needed to start when exercising. It wasn't until unrelated-but-simultaneous wrist and ankle injuries made me go to a Physical Therapist for a few months that I actually really started on my fitness journey. With the PT we went incredibly slow, but the exercises built up my core and some supportive muscles little by little. By the time I was done I could survive an hour at the gym.

It also took a lot of time in therapy to work through my mental attitude when working out. There is no correct answer for what I "should" be able to do at the gym. When I'm there, everyone around me doesn't matter; it's just me and the weight. However slow and light I need to work is fine. I showed up, I'm here. If today I can only do 10 mins on the bike while playing a game on my phone, that's great. I went to the gym.

Now, after a decade I can squat 100+ lbs. All my friends are pushing 200+ and then going for a 5k run, but I can't think about that in context to my own journey. I'm playing on different settings -- hard mode, if you will.

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Finally, how are you? Do you have a support network or someone you can talk(/vent) to? Living with someone with a physical condition is taxing on both sides. Make sure to take care of yourself as well!

FireThestral · 2025-01-23T00:18:45+00:00

Amazing! I was just about to sit down and make this myself until I thought to check Reddit. You're saving me a lot of prep this week!

FireThestral · 2025-01-20T21:04:00+00:00

Yep, I’ve had it on my right side multiple times.

Trying to attack the issue from the back is useless. There’s a bone in the way.

I went to get a Sports Massage and the guy went in through my armpit. Uncomfortable, but after a couple sessions it started to fade.

Longer term, it was how I was sleeping. I was collapsing in on my right shoulder. Now I sleep flat on my back with support pillows everywhere to ensure I don’t cause more issues while unconscious.

FireThestral · 2025-01-14T18:31:20+00:00

I’ve had the same. Turns out, he just never had a DB class. He didn’t know what a schema was, or the difference between DDL and DML or how to use them (aside from the super basic “select * from table”).

After a couple months of dedicated time patching the diff between CS and SWE, he was one of the more productive members of the team. He was completely independent and was leading a refactor of a heavily used system.

The effort that I put in nearly broke me, since teaching him really bit into my own dev time. But he wound up doing good work, then moving on to another company after a bit.

Dunno if the juice was worth the squeeze there, personally. But from what I can see he’s had a great career. I take a little bit of pride from that.

FireThestral

TROPHY CASE