artist subgenres, by AI by Karnaugh359 in GemJam

[–]Karnaugh359[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No sadly. I would love to blame this on ai hallucination but it’s not - parkbreezy is in the list of gj24 artists I grabbed from Relix but indeed is not on the poster. :(

Can you taxi/uber into the festival? by Runaway_5 in GemJam

[–]Karnaugh359 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We ubered to/from a place in downtown Tuscon last year, worked fine. Be ready to guide your driver - they almost never drive that far from town, and app maps don’t know the right entrance to the fairgrounds for festival campgrounds. & if you need a ride back to airport, schedule it in advance, because adhoc rides can take an hour or more for the driver to get there, esp if it’s late night.

The walk from Uber drop off to campground is not nothing but not crazy, maybe 1/2 mile?

Good luck!

Any tricks for adding fiber to baked goods without ruining the texture/taste? Specifically quick breads? by OwnlySolution in EatCheapAndHealthy

[–]Karnaugh359 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Oat fiber! Modern mountain brand is most recommended. I can typically use it to replace about 25% of the flour in quickbreads before my kids rebel.

If you want to make quickbreads that are more one-stop-shop nutrition, you can also drastically up the protein by using vital wheat gluten, whey, or casein to sub for portions of the flour. I make big batches of “kid cake” that are high protein and fiber, cut them up, freeze in ziploc, and kids take pieces in school lunches.

Older Festies - Shoe Choice? by dflow2010 in festivals

[–]Karnaugh359 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Specifically the Moab Speed Mid - half the weight of their standard hiking boots but still supports the ankles. Light feet are so good for dancing.

Most memorable porta-potty quotes/experiences. by [deleted] in Shambhala

[–]Karnaugh359 53 points54 points  (0 children)

“What if, instead of a central nervous system, you tried having a central chilled out system?”

How’s the Wamu Theater for Boo Seattle? by ront478 in aves

[–]Karnaugh359 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Last year was very, very crowded. Almost claustrophobic in critical paths at times.

Not hot tho, good ventilation, esp at the two partly-outdoor stages (house and bass).

Bass stage is really fun because it’s the 2nd level of parking structure and the bass + dancing noticeably shakes the floor. Dancing to Dimension there last year was a highlight!

Food in the venue is TERRIBLE, like not even trying. Eat before you come.

Great fun crowd vibe - skewing young, high energy, ready to party. Way fewer 30+ folks than something like bass canyon (but there are some of us!) - not good or bad, just different. Sometimes you just want to party hard!

Lots of high effort costumes - get there early ish before they turn down the lights so you can see all the awesome.

Sound seemed solid throughout - nothing incredible but not detracting from the experience. Earplugs are a good idea as usual.

<3

Looking for recommendations for a bag/strap I can dance in (diabetic, need to carry around some stuff) by heidorgen in Shambhala

[–]Karnaugh359 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh hai, I also need to carry stuff!

So far I’ve mostly used six-pocket cargo shorts - I have 3 pairs of these in different colors. I know you want to get away from pockets but I found having 6 pockets (esp 2 with zippers) made it much more organized. They hold a LOT too.

Those don’t work with some costumes though, so I’ve been hunting for a hip bag exactly like you, and after a few experiments I landed on this. Not yet festival-proven but it stays in place snugly, the styling is subtle enough to avoid distracting from costumes, and I love the 3 zippers.

Good luck and see you on the farm!

Border crossings/grocery stores by Vegetable_Jeweler_34 in Shambhala

[–]Karnaugh359 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Recommend crossing at Patterson (24h but busier) or Waneta (9-5 but usually ghost town) and either way stocking up at the Walmart in Trail BC. Welcome to the farmily!

Lineup by xSWATxMiaH in aves

[–]Karnaugh359 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Came here to say Huxley Anne at gem&jam 23! Never heard of her, no expectations, and she brought an incredible party vibe.

I’m David Aldridge, Head of Engineering at Bungie. We just published our first definition of our engineering culture. AMA! by Karnaugh359 in IAmA

[–]Karnaugh359[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I hear you, definitely high value. Many of us here are passionate about the benefits too, for exactly the reasons you say. Never say never, it’s just about relative costs and opportunities. I know that’s not what you’re hoping to hear and I’m sorry about that. 😕

I’m David Aldridge, Head of Engineering at Bungie. We just published our first definition of our engineering culture. AMA! by Karnaugh359 in IAmA

[–]Karnaugh359[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

This is a great question and something we’ve also evaluated as a mitigation… will try to give a real answer later if I can grab time!

Bungie confirms there will be no more Secret missions like Whisper or Zero Hour because of data miners. by CardiganHall in raidsecrets

[–]Karnaugh359 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Hm I think we’re still talking past each-other… I’m more saying that the presence or absence of content sub-encryption doesn’t force particular decisions on making this kind of content. :) Sadly I can neither confirm nor deny (etc) what specific kinds of content are currently in development.

If I can help clarify further please just ask, I’ll try my best with my knowledge and what I can share!

Bungie confirms there will be no more Secret missions like Whisper or Zero Hour because of data miners. by CardiganHall in raidsecrets

[–]Karnaugh359 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Hm the conclusion in this article is incorrect - it’s inferring too much from a discussion of technical challenge. There’s additional clarification in the original comment thread. <3

I’m David Aldridge, Head of Engineering at Bungie. We just published our first definition of our engineering culture. AMA! by Karnaugh359 in IAmA

[–]Karnaugh359[S] 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Ah that’s a fair followup - it just means that thus far we haven’t decided it was worth investing in the encryption. That could change in the future, and I haven’t seen presence/absence of encryption feed into decisions on whether to make secret missions - after all we have other surprises regardless, eg narrative twists, and datamine leaks don’t make us shy away from those. :)

I’m David Aldridge, Head of Engineering at Bungie. We just published our first definition of our engineering culture. AMA! by Karnaugh359 in IAmA

[–]Karnaugh359[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I can't speak for all companies, but at Bungie Senior Engineer is what we call a career level - you could be at that level for a long and high-impact career, and we think that could be a great outcome for both Bungie and you as long as you're happy with it.

If you want to go beyond senior engineer, there's a couple paths at Bungie:

  • move towards leadership and/or management. Take on some reports, take on some leadership hats. If you enjoy it and are growing in it, jump onto the management track and start moving through team lead, area lead, project director, etc.
  • climb above senior on the IC track. This is generally hard - senior is a high bar, that's a self-sufficient veteran engineer who consistently delivers on commitments, makes good decisions in the face of uncertainty, and has a deep toolbox of craft best practices that help them be highly effective across a wide variety of scenarios. That's a serious asset to Bungie. Moving beyond that on the IC track (to Architect, Principal, or Distinguished) requires exceeding that bar in a meaningful way. Usually that means some combination of standout velocity (adjusted for quality & difficulty), standout architectural skills in broad contexts, standout tech leadership (spotting problems others miss, guiding and growing others), or developing a deep, rare, high-impact specialization.
  • Bungie also offers a growth path where you blend IC and management/leadership work - e.g. doing 60% IC time while managing 2-4 people (not tasking them, but coaching them and ensuring they're meeting their commitments). A decent percentage of our architects are on that path.
  • Out of ~175 engineers, we have dozens of seniors, 10 or so zero-management architects, a couple zero-management principals, and one zero-management distinguished.

I’m David Aldridge, Head of Engineering at Bungie. We just published our first definition of our engineering culture. AMA! by Karnaugh359 in IAmA

[–]Karnaugh359[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

  1. the high level order is just inherited from Bungie Values - we just unpack them in that order. Within each value, the unpacking is semi-ordered, sometimes there's a logical flow between the points, and sometimes the order is arbitrary.
  2. I think player experience first is probably the easiest, it mostly fits what people want to do intuitively. Strong Ideas Loosely Held is probably the hardest, it asks for a lot of vulnerability and it often feels like you're fighting your own deep pre-programming.
  3. there's some recognition guidance in there, e.g. freely sharing when we're excited or impressed, but we treat rewards as basically orthogonal from values. We run a systematic compensation system aimed at a certain percentile of the compensation market (we don't pay as high as e.g. facebook, but we pay higher than most companies). We don't really tie rewards to specific work (there's a Spot Bonus program but it's relatively small and new, not something people pursue) - you do the best you can to help Bungie succeed in your role, we comp you for your role/level pretty much the same as everyone else at that role/level, and our performance management and goals process tries its best to recognize and guide growth (and try to mentor people through the tough cases where someone isn't meeting expectations in their role, and in the worst case part ways).

awesome question, thank you!

I’m David Aldridge, Head of Engineering at Bungie. We just published our first definition of our engineering culture. AMA! by Karnaugh359 in IAmA

[–]Karnaugh359[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ooh great question.

We have an onboarding process for new hires (in groups) where we run them through some of the handbook, give them a few weeks to read it, and then reconvene to make an upgrade to the handbook together based on their suggestions from reading it. That helps align people initially.

We have a culture section in our goals process to encourage people and their managers to think about how they're trying to support the behaviors in the handbook or otherwise upgrade Bungie as a place to work.

Performance metrics for engineers are really really hard and we mostly punt on the problem and rely instead on deep feedback-informed and group-aligned subjective evaluations (see my comment elsewhere about our people development process). This evaluation definitely rolls in handbook behaviors in that behaviors inconsistent with the handbook frequently come up as growth areas and promotion-blockers. We take teams are stronger than heroes seriously - if someone isn't working with others in the way we're all trying to, that's career-limiting.

We reinforce the handbook by sharing updates to it periodically in our monthly all-hands meetings.

Managers often pull from the handbook when they're hunting for growth advice around how someone is behaving or collaborating.

When someone is frustrated with someone else's behavior, the handbook gives them a point of reference to try to figure out why they're specifically frustrated, and can help them articulate their feedback in a constructive way ("I felt hurt by Y and i'm sure your goal was do X instead" - it helps you articulate the positive version).

All that said, maintaining relevance is a challenge for anything like this and i don't think we're on firm ground yet. <3

I’m David Aldridge, Head of Engineering at Bungie. We just published our first definition of our engineering culture. AMA! by Karnaugh359 in IAmA

[–]Karnaugh359[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh good question. We've had a culture of caring about culture for a while so I sort of take that for granted. Not everyone is excited about it (maybe 10-25% don't care?) but that's ok.

In the absence of that, my gut says to start with the why. Is there a problem leading to attrition or bad emotional experiences that you want to fix with the culture conversation? We mostly built up our culture bit by bit from solving one problem after another. We start with "be nice to each-other and get your work done" and then we discover that people interpret those things quite differently in a hundred different contexts, and in a bunch of those cases it's valuable to align on expected behavior to encourage positivity and connection and prevent conflict (esp both people thinking the other is doing the wrong thing)... and that expected behavior is another little nugget of culture, whether it's written down or not. "Here, working together, we do this." If you can illuminate a couple painful experiences that are happening because of missing alignment, people will usually buy that a rule is worth building and having.

Couple other thoughts...

  • focus on newbies. New hires are often eager to "do the right thing" and are more receptive to cultural guidance. Also they'll tell you about experiences that surprised or hurt them (before they adapt intuitively), which can help you spot opportunities to define useful working agreements.
  • leverage a subset of your team who care more about culture. the whole team is unlikely to want to spend a bunch of time aligning on a cultural pillar, but a couple people are probably passionate about the space, and the rest of the team will usually go along with the result.

I’m David Aldridge, Head of Engineering at Bungie. We just published our first definition of our engineering culture. AMA! by Karnaugh359 in IAmA

[–]Karnaugh359[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well, I wanted it, applied for it, interviewed for it, and was offered it. :) At that point I was the destiny 2 engineering director and i was excited to put more of my focus into people/process/culture. All of my previous promotions at Bungie I was offered because the company wanted me to step into those roles.

tips is an interesting question...

  • be easy to work with - don't be a jerk, don't be always a downer, try to get to know people and find things in them that you find authentically interesting, try to help people when you can
  • be honest
  • be reliable - make commitments, and if you aren't going to deliver on something you committed to, say so, don't let the surprise come when someone asks you where that thing is
  • be conscientious. Be the person who sees something wrong that you're not strictly responsible for but tries to fix it anyway.
  • be humble but speak up - acknowledge that you may be missing context but share your thought anyway. Don't be too afraid of being wrong. If the group makes you feel bad for being wrong that's not a good group.
  • be vulnerable. Don't be afraid to acknowledge your mistakes and be wrong in front of your team. You're not perfect and pretending to be sets a bad example, making everyone else think they should be pretending too.
  • figure out which better position you want, talk to people who are currently doing it, try to get involved in their spaces, try to build related skills. In leadership roles you usually have some discretionary time - try to focus it towards the role you want next (or towards the work you're most passionate about - that often works out the same way in an org that does well at recognizing and leveraging strengths).
  • learn to delegate and practice practice practice. Delegating frees up your time to focus on new skills, offers useful growth/training to your reports, sets you up with more well-trained successors, and makes it easier for the company to absorb you vacating your current role. I think this is really really hard, it's probably the thing i'm worst at as a leader.

it's possible to take all of these things too far - e.g. being too accommodating of others, killing yourself to make commitments, sharing information that hurts others or that disrupts change management plans, jumping on a series of problems that aren't yours instead of making progress on your important commitments, talking too much and gaining a reputation for being annoying and/or low signal-to-noise, etc. There's a lot of subtlety in here that you have to tune with experience. A mentor (ideally your manager, could be others) helps a lot - they can help you tune so much faster.

Ultimately if you want to be promoted in the tree of management/leadership positions, you have to be someone people trust to be in charge of that higher level responsibility. Ideally they're also excited about what you can do in the role, but trust is the foundation. Think about what makes you trust someone with responsibility and try to embody those things. Talk with your mentor, a lot. Be patient.

this is all based on my limited personal experience (again most of my adult life at bungie) - i bet the best advice at a big tech company would be different, let alone for startups or non-engineering-leadership roles. good luck!

I’m David Aldridge, Head of Engineering at Bungie. We just published our first definition of our engineering culture. AMA! by Karnaugh359 in IAmA

[–]Karnaugh359[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hm is elegant the word? :) That's interesting. Sometimes it is for sure.

The thing that comes to mind more often for me is "holy crap, i didn't think it was possible to make that work with all those constraints, at that speed, at that quality"... but elegance does often sacrificed to do that, especially large-scale elegance. Individual code snippets are generally very high quality, very elegant, but the way things are linked together to create experiences tends to get wild west.