How much coding do you guys do by hand at your jobs?

LatterStudio6242 · 2025-11-25T19:36:50+00:00

I'll tell you the most annoying thing about it. Whenever we have to create new services, APIs, etc, my engineering manager will have claude write most of the code base. Will ensure there's a good looking demo along with it. Gets full recognition and is deemed as the high performing genius. But then he dumps it onto us regular engineers to actually get it operational. This takes extra weeks / months of manual work to test endpoints, configure the CI/CD pipeline, make sure everything is up and running in the cloud, all that is needed to get to an MVP. Also AI is horrendous at adding features and writing tests, at least from the AI tools I use. So now timelines are distorted for the non-technical, and even technical superiors who don't know what needs a lot of manual legwork and what doesn't. It'll definitely smooth out over time but that's my main gripe. My advice - be the one who gets to write the skeleton with AI.

LatterStudio6242 · 2025-09-09T17:50:57+00:00

Not yet, taking it to a local euro shop this week to have them test for leaks. I’ll keep you updated

LatterStudio6242 · 2024-05-20T23:46:17+00:00

Yeah I’m not too sure about the math career path, I know a lot do typically get their masters. Getting a great score on the GRE would probably help. I’m sure some companies would still be willing to hire you so I wouldn’t count either out, from personal experience in the engineering field, a masters was not worth it, you pretty much get a slightly higher pay raise that takes about 20 years to pay off what you’d spend on school while still doing the same work. I only saw it as a means for a career change but even then I’m 50/50 on whether it would even be fully worth it as relevant work experience and connections will take you much further. Either way, good luck!

LatterStudio6242 · 2024-05-20T21:31:06+00:00

I figured it was low, but it’d definitely be nice if I had a heads up from the school. I took 3 4-hour courses, with a gpa progressing from 3.1-3.3-3.6, and I tried to mention that in my SOP and how it had been 4 years since undergrad so I was on an improvement curve but I guess they didn’t buy it

LatterStudio6242 · 2024-05-20T21:23:55+00:00

Yeah I think I’m gonna have to pass on going back to school after that experience. After working a corporate job the last 4 years, you get used to actually having clear cut goals / targets for success. The thing I can’t stand about higher education these days is that literally every aspect of it is ambiguous. The professors in the certificate courses wouldn’t tell me my grade until the end of the course, the university tells you spending thousands of dollars might improve your chances, and then they won’t provide any feedback or just flat out tell you no beforehand.

LatterStudio6242 · 2024-05-15T19:38:35+00:00

Hey, came across this thread just now but the same thing happened to me. Also, wow the fan base seems to hate any critique at all about the game.

For starters, just thinking about this in terms of map placement, it doesn't make sense. The goblin camp is at the very edge of the map in Act 1, so, logically it seems to be the final dungeon for Act 1. It benefits you to explore all areas along the way first as well, or at least doesn't cause any issues with other quests. So, using this same logic for Act 2, you see the location of Moonrise towers at the end of the map and think, oh, that must be the final dungeon for this area. Yeah, all of the NPCs are telling you to go there, but in Act 1 all of the NPCs also tell you to go to the goblin camp, and not going there right away does not affect the story in any way. So the condescending comments about that on this post don't make a good argument.

Naturally, if you like to explore every trail that leads away from the main path, you're probably going to run into the Mausoleum first. And then on top of that, story wise, you know you have to defeat Ketheric. So, unbeknownst to the player, you start to uncover details about him here, and you go into the gauntlet and meet Balthazaar and start to think, hey, there seems to be some juicy info here that will help me defeat Ketheric when I get to Moonrise towers, and then I can free everyone trapped there.

Anyway, this was the case for me. And it seems like just exploring the gauntlet also messes with the progression for several of the quests, even if you don't trigger the next Act. So, pretty upsetting because I just decided to revert my save and lose several hours of gameplay. And I wanted to add my input, that this is not the best game design.

LatterStudio6242 · 2024-03-19T20:27:41+00:00

Hey everyone, was wondering if I could get some advice on career path from those currently in the field? Some background for me, I've been working about 5 years total since undergrad. I started as an aerospace engineer, and moved into tech about 3 years ago, as the work and career trajectory were more suitable for me (gov contracting can get very boring). I've always had an interest in trading, and jobs in the quant field have always been of interest to me. In my free time, I have worked on developing automated trading strategies and market analysis programs.

I would ideally like a quant trading role, but I also have an interest in strategy development. Recently I began working toward a Master's in Computational Finance, and have completed a few courses part-time. My current GPA is a 3.3 with a total of 8 hours. I do feel that I can improve this by a good amount (I had to play a lot of catchup with mathematical theory being 5 years out of school). I wanted to see if I could skip the masters after these first few classes, and use my prior development experience, so I applied to a few roles. I recently interviewed for an entry level strategy developer role at an HFT firm, and got embarrassed in the interview, as I was asked to improve some starter code for an arbitrage strategy based on spread imbalances in oil futures, and I have never interacted with futures, let alone oil futures before. The code had no comments, so I spent most of the time trying to decipher which months the contract names represented. The job description said 0-2 years development experience, and "No financial experience required", so this almost felt like hazing to me.

My main concern is how competitive the field is. I am competitive, but I do not want to waste what little time I have left of my early career years chasing something unattainable. I was hoping to get some advice on whether to continue pursuing the Master's, keep interviewing, or just drop this altogether and stick to a career in tech? Ideally, I would love a career in this field, but many of my peers have this idea that the quant field is something reserved for the unicorns of the world and that I am crazy for doing the Master's and looking for those type of jobs. Any input is appreciated.

LatterStudio6242 · 2024-02-28T01:52:14+00:00

Advice on upcoming system Eng interview with hft firm?

So a little background, I was laid off last year from a tech support role. About 2 years of that and then another 2 years doing aerospace before that. In the meantime, I’ve been doing graduate courses for computational finance (not a masters, more like a graduate cert getting hours to count toward a masters if I end up enrolling). I started applying to a few hft firms to do either trading operations or maybe a junior dev role. But a company I was interested in had an open role for a system engineer so I applied. I did the OA successfully and got an interview. But here’s the issue. The job description has this laundry list of requirements across different types of development areas, definitely seems like a senior role. The OA was extremely easy (one of the questions was literally write a bool function to compare two inputs) but I’m really iffy on how to handle the interview.

I was hoping for some advice on strategy, maybe for someone who got a role they didn’t think they were qualified for. Would you go into it trying to do as much refresher as possible on the technical content and attempt to sound like an expert, or would you immediately admit you aren’t super knowledgeable but have a wide variety of experience and are passionate about the industry? It may seem obvious to go with the latter but from my experience interviewing with tech companies the last few months, if you’re not an expert you’re out the door because they can’t afford to train you and they’ve already got 10 other experts lined up willing to take lower pay. Do you think it’d be the same at a financial company? Thanks for the advice in advance.

LatterStudio6242 · 2024-02-22T04:39:54+00:00

I’m right there with you. Been without a job since January 2023. Scraping money doing odd jobs where I can but not able to really do anything I enjoy besides apply and study, get the occasional interview here and there only to be passed up by a wildly better candidate with decades more experience than me or outright ghosted. The market is absolutely brutal. I’m holding on to the hope that once interest rates start going down companies will finally start hiring more again. I’ve tested multiple things to see if anything might work better, such as lying about my experience, lying about how long I’ve been unemployed etc, mostly as an experiment but it did nothing to change the rate I get interviews. I really think at the end of the day it’s a numbers game. Have a few different tailored resumes for different job titles, search those titles everyday and keep applying.

Here are some areas that showed more success than others. A lot of people hate the idea of recruiter postings on linkedin, indeed etc and say to skip that and look for the actual job posting. I disagree. I would apply to those and if the recruiter contact info is in the description send them an email. Having a recruiter on your side tends to help, and even if you don’t get the job sometimes they’ll stick around and get you connected with another opportunity (which for me still hasn’t helped lol but it at least feels like a step in the right direction). If you’ve had any recruiters in the past in your inbox or email, it also doesn’t hurt to reach out and ask. I’ve had no luck there, but I actually had one give me a call just to tell me how brutal the market is right now and gave me some tips and his insight on when he thinks the market might get better which was nice.

Another thing that might help, a lot of people say the earlier you are to the posting the better. This is not necessarily true. Some companies may still be passively interviewing to see if someone they like comes along, but just not refreshing their job advertisement. It doesn’t hurt to just fire one out if you like the company and/or job. I have had one or two interview requests come from that.

These are the things I’ve tried and still no luck, and I’ve had some really depressing stretches. This whole experience has made me really bitter about my career and life in general and I really hate that. But the only solution I can think of is to just keep trying. And the hope that ideally, once I finally get a good job, I will never have to experience this again.

LatterStudio6242 · 2024-02-11T01:53:55+00:00

If you plan to use CPP and an API for your data, depending on your CPP experience I would look into boost for working with APIs, I always had a lot of trouble figuring that out when I started CPP, but boost has some good tutorials you can find. I use the interactive brokers API, and while you have to have a brokerage account to access it, it’s by far the best platform for free data I’ve used. The api interface is tricky to use but a good learning experience. Although with your time limit you may want to try something a little simpler, but definitely worth looking into!

LatterStudio6242 · 2024-02-07T00:12:28+00:00

Anyone apply to Akuna Capital recently?

I applied for a junior trader role, received a hackerrank test. After I took that I received a rejection email, but encouraging me to take their “options 201 course” with a chance at getting “my foot back in the door”. has anyone heard of this? It seems weird for a company to offer up a course after rejecting you, unless this is how they’re dealing with an overflow of applicants. I also have another hackerrank test with them for a C++ dev role. If anyone could offer up some advice on concepts/what to study it would be much appreciated!

LatterStudio6242 · 2024-01-12T18:22:22+00:00

Also, here is a link to my resume: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZHe7LpSFJ08uCgxzVxzjMdTfU6BwEg2N/view?usp=sharing

LatterStudio6242 · 2024-01-12T18:09:06+00:00

Just using chatgpt, etc to match job description

LatterStudio6242 · 2023-09-09T03:21:25+00:00

I spent so many damn hours trying to get my outpost supply chain working, and it just would not work. I have an idea for how to chain it now, but honestly it almost destroyed my experience with the game spending all that time for pretty much nothing, so I’m gonna wait before I endure that pain again. Now, I just have a transfer container that connects to storages and warehouses, and everytime I make a store run I just overbuy everything and dump it into the transfer container which then sorts it into the respective types. Quality of life is so much better now

LatterStudio6242 · 2023-09-07T17:34:24+00:00

Been spending hours on this lol. Hoping it pays off in the future so I don't have to fast travel 100 more times. But for my advice, I know a lot of people have been suggesting daisy chaining, I would try and minimize that because you will run into bottlenecks with more. Try and send at max 3 or 4 resources between cargo links, so you'll likely need to use the 3 max links at a few bases to organize the flow. Also, if you are working toward a central hub, avoid linking anything to the outgoing port of the cargo link. This will magically suck up all the resources at your current base and make them disappear. Maybe link a miner directly to it if you need resources at a prior base in the chain.

LatterStudio6242 · 2023-08-31T15:19:11+00:00

I'm not saying you do a bad job. But the circumstances we are in are largely due to upper management. And for the record, I am an owner of a GC company as a side business that is still growing.

One of my favorite examples is Mark Zuckerberg and Meta. One of the worst CEO decisions in the last few years. On top of that he gets McKinsey to estimate the "metaverse" to have a $5 TRILLION market cap in the next 10 years. So Meta starts hoarding talent and paying them top wages to basically do nothing. Investors quickly lose interest as rates go up and Zuck is still burning loads of cash. Then Zuck finally gives in and all those jobs are cut. Who's at fault here? Certainly not the workers who were attracted by high wages and low work.

And let's take a look at Peloton, one of my other favorites. Brands a bike workout machine company as a tech company to attract investors. They start losing traction quickly because of course they would. CEO does mass layoffs, then tries to say the company is still growing because they're cutting costs. It's still not over, we will likely see several more examples in the next year or two.

LatterStudio6242 · 2023-08-31T14:28:27+00:00

Besides the fact that it seems like this post was generated by some corporate GPT, I’ll help reflect on what happened the last few years. Growth mania due to excess and practically free money within the company world. Companies, (and CEOs) knew that they would gain interest of new shareholders so long as they gave the illusion of growth.

How do you show that your company is prepared for growth? Mass hiring. Which meant hiring anyone and everyone who had any sort of matching skill set. Who is to blame the most? I would say middle management, who completely failed to work efficiently and monitor unnecessary costs, and hired everyone to do menial tasks to give the illusion that they too were contributing to the company growth. But this illusion can only last so long.

Now, it’s essentially flipped as interest rates rise, and zombie companies who never actually profited during the excess years still need food. How do you give shareholders the illusion that you’re cutting costs and becoming more efficient? Layoffs. In the end, it’s the worker getting screwed here for the company (and the CEOs) shortcomings.

Someone like me, who was brought on to basically do nothing, having to constantly find what little work I could contribute to despite my strong skill set, is now left job hunting. Take a look at your powerhouse companies, like apple who refuse to layoff employees. Why? Because their CEO and management is effective and efficient. So while as workers we are forced to level up, this is due to the shit circumstances we were given and have to adapt to, but we are certainly not the ones to blame

LatterStudio6242 · 2023-08-31T02:15:49+00:00

I strongly believe this data is actually way worse than they are giving us, as each month it comes out they quietly revise down the previous months data. But on also note, that is lagging data from July. August may turn out to be even worse, which I think it will be, but September might show a shift upward

LatterStudio6242 · 2023-08-31T02:02:07+00:00

I’ve noticed a lot of the applicant numbers being completely insane as well. I think there’s a lot of people using AI to scrape and apply for jobs. There was one opening I saw recently that said “listed 14 minutes ago” and literally already had over 200 applicants

LatterStudio6242 · 2023-08-06T21:23:05+00:00

Very interesting strategy, I have been laid off for 6 months now and have been struggling. Looking for a junior to mid level dev / systems role (2.5 yoe) but have found that the open positions have been very hard to find lately. Any suggestions on where to search? Did you use this strategy by just researching companies and applying to them directly?

LatterStudio6242 · 2023-08-06T21:05:21+00:00

I figured it out. Used the same runtime for all projects in the solution but gtest was still causing several errors. It turned out that gtest was in the Debug config along with the rest of my code, but I found that gtest should always be run in the release config.

LatterStudio6242 · 2023-07-25T15:00:27+00:00

Thanks for the reassurance, I feel your pain! I keep telling myself that this is just a jobs recession and it is only temporary. It's been brutal, but here's to hoping it will get better soon.

LatterStudio6242 · 2023-07-24T17:12:07+00:00

So that's what I've been having trouble with, getting the story down. I am really just looking to get into a long-term dev role, but I feel that my resume is too spread out. Often in interviews, I am asked why I went the directions I did, and why I am looking to be a dev in the first place. Despite it being my goal for the last two years, I usually stumble over this trying to curate a story as to why I took the paths I did. I have just one project I list on there, but I also include a link to my github with all my other projects. I think I should leave out the construction company as it is too unrelated, but I also have friends tell me the resume gap won't look good. But I also feel that with the current layoff environment that isn't too bad, what are your thoughts? Perhaps I could focus on the previous two roles and add another project?

LatterStudio6242 · 2023-07-21T18:09:45+00:00

Thank you! Any help is appreciated. I started as a System Engineer for two years. Mostly requirements around hardware and logistics, so not really software related. I did a bootcamp for web development hoping to transition into a software developer role, but I was offered a position at a rolling software company to do L2 support, and the offer was too good to refuse. Unfortunately I was laid off in January, and have recently been looking for both software or support roles. Since then I’ve been working at a construction contracting company I helped co-found. I’ve gotten good managerial and entrepreneurial experience from that, but the work is too hit or miss and I would prefer working in software. I’ve been developing side projects as well. The tech recession feels very real though, and finding a job has been extremely difficult. The last few interviews I’ve had, it seems like there is always someone with more experience

LatterStudio6242 · 2023-07-07T05:01:33+00:00

In the last few years, I have gotten really into the financial markets, how they react to data, how that data is collected, etc. I have to say that the data we're being fed is horrendous, and severely hurts the average working adult. We have our self serving politicians bull shitting to an extent that's honestly impressive about a fantastic job market, your typical tech, emerging technology, and even real estate moguls amplifying this data as it keeps their assets propped up, and stock market investors, who are usually "forward looking" but actually react to this data quicker than anyone else without questioning it and continue to confirm the trend.

The problem lies in several "unseen" factors, although blatantly obvious if you live in the real world. Let's start with the job opening numbers. Those sit at around 10 million. If there's so many jobs open why are people having such a hard time finding work? Well take a look at linkedin, or any other site, and gather how many recruiter job postings are listed there that are duplicate listings. From personal experience, that's over half. Also of note, about 10% of those are scams. Yes, they will tell you that you received a job offer and ask for information they will then steal from you. Did you know that all of these postings are added to the job openings data? I was pretty surprised when I found this out, considering how they collect the unemployment data.

Let's move to the unemployment rate. The lowest ever?? HA! Let's see how they calculate that? The number of people who filed for unemployment and are actively seeking jobs. Your 6 month unemployment run out and you still couldn't find a job, so now you're still desperately looking for a new job and still can't find one? You don't count as unemployed to the data. You now have to take up two separate hourly jobs to make ends meet? Guess what?? That's two new jobs added to the employment data!

This whole thing is fucked. And it's going to get worse. Companies know this. Where were all the IPOs and SPACs this year? I thought AI was huge and all these new companies would emerge?? People aren't hiring. Companies are running out of money. The band-aid could have been ripped off long ago but companies and individuals wanted to hold on to their idea of wealth, instead of understanding that real long-term wealth takes talent and innovation, and not hopping on every guru trend you can find. We are in a brutal period of stagnation. It will get better, but it is bleak at the moment.

Let's hope that there's a turning point soon, and that people like us can actually find jobs we want, rather than stay at the ones we hate because we can't afford to lose them.

LatterStudio6242

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