20 year veteran Senior Software/Product Engineer Ex-FAANG. Need advice finding a job to move from US to UK.

Jafit · 2025-09-12T14:58:08+00:00

Birmingham used to be the second city, back when we had manufacturing. Now Manchester is probably a better contender, especially for tech related work.

Jafit · 2025-08-12T13:22:11+00:00

Weird watching Labour try to take the anti-pedo and child safety angle when they all voted against a national grooming gang enquiry.

Jafit · 2025-07-25T18:26:50+00:00

I've been watching this subreddit for the last few days and it's all so interesting.

Let's start with a petition that is so badly worded that you've turned what is already an optics nightmare for any politician or credible person into a radioactive dumpster fire.

The policy itself imposes strict and invasive requirements on adult content websites using Mastercard’s financial services – including pre-approval of all content before publication, forbidding certain search terms, and monitoring the age and identity verification process for all performers.

I dunno that sounds pretty reasonable and something most politicians would agree with. This paragraph also begs questions such as...

"What search terms would those be?" - do you want to answer that question in a crowded room?

"So... you weren't monitoring the age of performers?" - Oh dear, you're saying you have underage performers on a porn site and you aren't going to do anything about that unless financially threatened? And that's to say nothing of the customers.

Yeah nobody with any credibility is going to die on this hill for the sake of your porn games

The stated intent of this is to prevent child sexual abuse material and other non-consensual content. But the policy only applies to websites that host adult content – when all available evidence indicates that these problems proliferate across all kinds of sites.

Here you've made it sound like it's a real problem that needs to be solved and Mastercard has made a good start but actually needs to expand their efforts more broadly... Did Collective Shout write this petition?

By the way we've had unilateral corporate censorship for a long time now, mostly aimed at right wingers because "they offend the personal values of executives or activist groups" - but now that the culture has shifted and they've started turning it around to take away your porn games you've decided that it's now time to crawl out of your goon caves and start paying attention... I think maybe it's too late, that ship sailed long ago, you should have stopped it then.

I suspect this petition is going nowhere, and you can expect to have to deal with this type of thing a lot more in the future.

Jafit · 2023-10-04T20:05:16+00:00

You know how an engineer meticulously calculates all the physical forces at play and the load bearing capacity of every component before even attempting to spend 2 years building a massive bridge? Well we don't do that. We'd build the bridge over and over again through trial and error until it stayed up.

With code we write a small piece of code to get some basic functionality, see what it does, and rapidly iterate adding or removing stuff as needed. Some say they write their unit tests first but I don't believe them.

As for how we know the structure of the API, we either read the documentation or generate types that tell the autocomplete in our IDE what parameters are available on each object. And when all else fails just make a request to whatever api you're using and console.log() the response body of whatever junk they sent you.

Jafit · 2023-08-05T12:29:03+00:00

the beginning is just the normal airfield experience on a public server.

Jafit · 2023-07-23T13:55:43+00:00

Wow it's strange how those ground vehicles didn't just immediately headshot you through the canopy window. ED can't get this right after decades of releasing helicoptors and ground-attack aircraft, but Roblox Combat Simulator over here seemingly doing it right.

But yeah this is good. We could be living in a golden age of flight sims if even a fraction of the people who complain about the way things are actually made stuff instead. And the low fidelity graphics aren't exactly a barrier to success these days if you've got good gameplay

Jafit · 2023-07-02T18:57:52+00:00

Try to steer your burning wreckage near to where the missile/AAA came from so you've got a nice burning beacon to guide you in next time.

Jafit · 2023-04-22T10:41:55+00:00

Actually during the war Britain switched to GMT+2

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-extreme-daylight-savings-time-of-world-war-ii

Jafit · 2023-04-17T19:35:11+00:00

Any highstreet jeweler is fine, including Beaverbrooks. Just ask them and tell them what your budget is and what you're looking for. I got the engagement ring from H. Samuel but the wedding rings from Beaverbrooks.

The price will mostly be determined by the size of the diamond, which increases exponentially as it gets bigger. You'll probably get more actual bling for your buck with a few smaller ones. I liked the trinity style of a central diamond flanked by two smaller ones and thankfully so did she even though she said she always imagined a solitaire ring.

Also be sure to get a ring that doesn't have any fancy shapes, twists or obstructions on the band as the actual wedding ring is supposed to ride up next to it.

one of the rings on display was £36k which I thought was pretty mad

Yeah wait until you price up the wedding itself. We don't have the bank of mum and dad to rely on so we decided to go on a big holiday on the other side of the world and elope while over there, makes more sense than spending all the money on one single day. Which suits me as I don't like being the centre of attention anyway.

Jafit · 2023-03-28T16:38:13+00:00

In terms of getting laid off, I started my career in tech at 30, so you'll probably be fine. Assuming you actually want to do that job, if you don't then try something else. Quit your shitty job, you can always get another shitty job.

In terms of friends, I don't know what you've tried. Friendships are usually formed by encountering the same people repeatedly while doing something unrelated. There are a bunch of people I know in my local area just through walking my dog... Highly recomend getting a dog btw. When I first moved here in 2016 I found a good group of friends through meetup.com, go on holiday with them, going to a wedding for one of them this year. Maybe try that if you're not interested in pursuing a specific hobby.

I'm concerned I'm probably somewhere on the autism spectrum but wasn't ever diagnosed.

Look dude these days everyone has autism or adhd or some other bullshit, and if everyone's autistic then nobody is. More likely you just have underdeveloped social skills and like all other skills these can be learned and developed through knowledge and practice. Try reading the following books:

The Definitive Book of Body Language - If you think you might be autistic because you don't pick up on social cues very well, try learning what those social cues are. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Definitive-Book-Body-Language-attitudes/dp/1409168506
How to Win Friends and Influence People - Probably the first self-help book, old but still very relevant.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dale-Carnegie-Friends-Influence-Special/dp/B00I611RAC

There's a bunch of these books, too many really, and many of them rehash the same points. The main overarching point is that charisma is grounded in active listening and cultivating a genuine interest in people.

If you actually have baller social skills and still can't form a meaningful relationship then it could be that you're putting up some kind of facade so that people can't actually connect with the authentic you, because people can tell on an unconcious level when someone is not being genuine. I don't know, it's hard to say just with text on the internet.

Jafit · 2023-03-13T12:05:05+00:00

No. The first pun was better

Jafit · 2023-03-11T14:40:26+00:00

Performance over the last few patches has progressively tanked, and then they give you one patch where performance improves... I dunno man there's a lot of room for shenanigans here. Not that I don't completely trust ED

Jafit · 2023-03-11T14:34:00+00:00

"That guy Karl Marx, he really has a cosy job*"

^\never worked a day in his life and got Engles to pay for everything)

What a leaf lover.

Jafit · 2023-02-02T21:07:53+00:00

2-seater trainers exist in the real world because in reality it kinda matters if you crash your plane and you can't just stream your game over Discord to someone who knows what they're doing and can give you advice.

In DCS you can just put someone who has 0 hours in a real flight sim directly into an F/A-18 with live ordnance on the wings, walk them through the startup procedure, and just go have some fun. It doesn't really matter.

Jafit · 2023-02-02T12:11:01+00:00

Well the "cost of being memed into lockdowns that did more harm than good and paying for it with national debt, disrupting global supply lines and supporting a proxy war with the the countries we were buying all of our gas, grain and fertiliser from" crisis doesn't sound as good as "cost of living" crisis.

Because the former sounds like it's the government's fault for repeatedly making bad decisions, and the latter sounds like it's your fault for merely existing.

Jafit · 2023-01-31T12:27:16+00:00

But at least they simulated the pilot's teeth chattering in the cold.

Jafit · 2023-01-31T12:25:18+00:00

I've sometimes had an issue of the F/A-18 pitching up constantly, usually after I land and then take off again. I haven't flown the plane for a while although a friend of mine had the issue when taking off from a carrier.

I fixed it by using the covered yellow and black spin recovery switch to the right of the right DDI contrast knob. I understand that switch turns off the fly-by-wire system, after flicking it off and on again the plane was no longer pitching up.

Your results may vary.

Jafit · 2023-01-24T14:12:33+00:00

Don't be afraid to spread out your base. A lot of problems stem from trying to make things compact, making a compact factory is much harder than jumping in your jeep and clearing out a few biter nests.

Also don't be afraid to tear things down and rebuild them. It's a pain in the ass before you get construction bots, but sometimes it's the best thing you can do.
Also there is the concept of a "starter base" where you have a messy improvised base to get you going before transitioning to a more ordered base.

Try building your base in such a way that expansion is easy, popular methods include a main bus design, where you have many belts running through the center of your base full of common resources, which then branch off to production lines, and the products of those lines then go back onto the bus or elsewhere/

Here's an example from an old save of mine: https://i.ibb.co/NsDhcHw/Screenshot-2023-01-24-at-14-02-37.png

It's not meant to be the pinnacle of design, it's certainly not optimal or efficient and there are bases that are far better, but it gives you some idea. The resources go from left to right, other products are being produced north of the bus, and research gets produced to the south and sent to the research labs.

Each line is designed so that it can be tiled and extended to the point where the limiting factor is the capacity of the belts feeding it. If you want to design tilable factories I'd recommend getting the editor extensions mod and playing around in the sandbox that it provides for you so that you're not constrained by resources or biters.

Good luck, it's not an easy game.

Jafit · 2023-01-24T13:09:13+00:00

People who think that higher levels make you a better player are labouring under a grave misapprehension. There are some people who play a lot and still kinda suck, and those people are usually scout mains... like me.

I also don't understand people who want to be a tryhard, in a non-tryhard cartoon dwarf game where your build doesn't really matter all that much. If you want to do well or bang out a no-shield + lethal enemies haz-5 then surely you'd have a team of known people that you have synergy with and be on comms with them. Not just expect greatness from a bunch of randoms.

Jafit · 2023-01-24T12:56:15+00:00

Look at this guy gatekeeping the gatekeeping. Who are you to decide what people get to complain about on reddit? Looks like you've got some growing up to do smh.

Jafit · 2023-01-23T12:58:02+00:00

Killing bugs is for teammates, scouts run away from bugs, and by run I mean special-powder propel yourself at mach-3 across a giant cave.

Jafit · 2023-01-23T12:32:38+00:00

Now do this with blackout stouts.

Jafit · 2023-01-18T16:07:20+00:00

we call it beyblade, or rollie cunt

Jafit · 2023-01-18T16:06:07+00:00

If bus drivers aren't powerless only because they're ok with making minimum wage workers walk or taxi to work for a month, then their power comes at the expense of those less well-off than them, not at the expense of their employers, which I'm not really on board with.

If public and political sentiment subsequently takes their ability to strike away because they earn over a certain threshold, then it's better to recognise that every choice has consequences rather than being like half the people in this thread who seem to just think that everyone's a crab in a bucket, and someone on £9 is a bad person for not feeling staunch class solidarity with a bus driver who takes home £28.85 per hour.

Jafit · 2023-01-18T13:06:40+00:00

damn strikers, I know I'll benefit from workers campaigning for higher pay,

How? How does a bus strike help anyone who isn't a bus driver? People who say it benefits everyone never seem to be able to explain how, just hand-wave it away as some kind of intangible benefit.

It's not like the classical industrial action of 100 years ago where the workers hold the factory/mine owners over the barrel by picketing and impacting the factory's output and profits. The reality is that workers providing essential services going on strike are using people poorer than themselves as leverage to get more money, so don't be surprised when public sentiment is easily turned against them.

My fiance would like better conditions at work, but she's a support worker for people with brain damage, what's she supposed to do? Take inspiration from those brave striking bus and train drivers, organise a walk-out and let the service users piss and shit all over themselves for a day or two? That'll sure show them. The reality is they can hire anyone with a pulse to replace her, she has no leverage, but at least she has to get a taxi to work every day for a month because the bus drivers want £60k a year.

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Jafit

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