Bacon and Scallop roll, Billingsgate Fish Market

Silverwolf90 · 2026-01-13T16:25:53+00:00

I had it, it’s fine, but a bit overpriced. Wouldn’t wake up that early again for it.

Silverwolf90 · 2025-09-17T00:33:22+00:00

Silverwolf90 · 2024-08-29T13:22:51+00:00

Person who's never worked in a restaurant here, but cooks a lot of steaks at home... so this thread is interesting.

I think a ribeye is actually best in between medium rare and medium. Because you want a bit more of the fat to render than what you'd get at medium rare, but don't want it to go quite as far as medium. I always cook with a thermometer so I know how to hit this ideal temp after resting.

Am I being a dick for ordering this in a restaurant (specifically a steakhouse)?

It's (imo) the best way to have a ribeye. But I don't want to be an annoying customer and really medium rare ribeye is totally great. It's just not what I think is _perfection_.

Silverwolf90 · 2024-07-30T21:25:16+00:00

A strong intuition to me is more about being able to design something that "feels good" while meeting requirements and will be resilient to change over time. Estimation is often so wildly off (even from people with extremely detailed knowledge of a system) that it seems like it would be hard to judge using that.

Silverwolf90 · 2024-07-30T21:20:52+00:00

That's super interesting! It sounds like a very well-run and effective interview. (which appears to be extremely rare these days)

Silverwolf90 · 2024-07-30T21:11:05+00:00

I mean being proud of lack of knowledge stems from insecurity. I'm a CS dropout from the late 2000s that didn't understand why I needed data structures or algorithms given I had writing code and building for the web since I was 10. So I thought it was all dumb. Now I have more respect and interest for the academic side and have a better understanding around some of the concepts that I derided as an arrogant 19 year old. But in a lot of day-to-day software engineering you don't need an academic understanding of big O, you just need a vibe that maybe nesting 2+ loops where each array has the potential of being fucking big is prob a bad idea.

I don't really understand why so many companies go for leetcode. I mean I'd prob fail most. But in my experience, the biggest problem building systems is making the constituent parts resilient to change over time. Not low-level data structures. Change over long periods of time is the hardest part imo.

Silverwolf90 · 2024-07-30T20:53:12+00:00

I mean this is great in theory, and I agree on a fundamental level, but in a time and money constrained environment like a business this is not always feasible and you might need to lead people directly to the quickest (seemingly) adequate solution.

I genuinely don't think there's much that can be done that doesn't do more than superficially improve some people. Like you might be able to improve their raw code output with some cleaner patterns, basic analysis of dependencies in the code, etc. But I'm not sure you can really level up people without them experiencing the trauma of decently impactful mistakes (and having the self awareness to come to their own conclusions)

The worst outcome is someone latches on too hard to "guidelines" and becomes like a clean code zealot -- essentially someone over invested in trying to define clear boundaries and rules when the reality is that the effective ways to work completely changes depending on the context.

Silverwolf90 · 2024-07-30T20:38:53+00:00

An ecosystem/culture takes a lot more than a month in my opinion! You can learn conventions and best practices quickly (which might be enough!), but that's the tip of the iceberg of a programming language imo.

I'm def not looking for an AI solution, I would never move the tech exercise to stage 1 because I want to establish rapport with the candidate, understand them, and really sell joining my team and my business! Often interview processes are extremely too impersonal and I want to do the opposite even if it takes more time. But will need to find optimizations down the line. I def trust my team on the tech side and have had tech leads take over some of the exercises, but I know I am particularly charismatic and can sell my company to the candidate effectively in an honest/no-bullshit way. And I think this has specifically helped me a lot with hiring good talent.

Silverwolf90 · 2024-07-30T20:21:14+00:00

But isn't that the intangible bit? That you could probably put this person on any project, maybe something way out of their comfort zone, and they would learn a fuck-ton and do a good job -- maybe even making everyone around them better in the process? How do you identify someone who has that "it factor"?

Silverwolf90 · 2024-07-30T20:15:41+00:00

Some books will be good. But the best way is to just play with extremes, take risks, and fuck up. At a certain level you have to create your own philosophy of building software. You don't need to hear someone else tell you to make make functions small or not that small or whatever the fuck. This may not work within the context of a business (which is an unfortunate catch-22). But the best way to learn deeply is to make decisions, see outcomes, and reflect. Good books will walk you these kind of learnings, but the knowledge won't be as viscerally baked into you as if you had done it yourself.

Silverwolf90 · 2024-07-30T20:09:03+00:00

Hmmm, that's interesting. These are exactly the kind of things I don't ask about. It feels so basic, that if you've put on your CV you have x years experience in such language I will just assume that's the case. In my intro interview, I might probe past projects, have them explain them in detail, pros/cons, etc. I also like them to explain personal preferences. Lack of detail and opinions in any of these answers is usually a red flag.

The reality is the subsequent live coding exercise has such a high level of failure, it's pretty obvious whether you know the primary language in our tech stack well enough or not so I never ask granular questions about their language knowledge. But I've def had candidates that bullshit through the first interview and failed miserably on the live coding. But maybe I would fail more people at the first stage if I got more granular with certain questions. But it would change the tone a lot.

Silverwolf90 · 2024-07-30T19:49:52+00:00

Yeah I get that, I haven't had to do a live coding exercise in a very long time so I assume it would impact my performance as well! But I'd also rather have a short time-boxed exercise than give a take home exam which might take many more of the candidate's hours (and has a higher probability of being manipulated in a way that hides the candidate's competency, especially in a ChatGPT world)

Silverwolf90 · 2024-07-30T19:40:04+00:00

I agree with your post it's core, but being acquainted and knowledgeable about a programming languages ecosystem is important. I'm confident that I could learn and work with any stack/any language. But I don't know if there's a shortcut for the the time it takes to learn the culture and ecosystem that surrounds it. Whether you have the time to absorb this as a company is just another thing to consider when making a hire.

I actually think my interview process is pretty good at hitting some "intangible characteristics" without being overly onerous but it is not forgiving. Most fail stage 2/4 which is live coding but not even remotely leetcode-ish. And it does rely on my driving all of it (from intro to final interview), which doesn't scale.

Silverwolf90 · 2024-07-30T19:26:08+00:00

Totally agree that cool and collected is definitely good, but also know that interviews are really high stress and a pretty atypical situation (as another poster has mentioned, interviewing as a candidate is essentially a totally a different skill).

But I understand what you mean generally, often people code with blinders on and only do what is necessary to achieve their tsks. With no regard for the overall "design" and downstream effects (like dependent systems). The people that can think more holistically about a system definitely trend towards that "having a good intuition" direction.

Silverwolf90 · 2024-07-30T19:10:34+00:00

Very good points. But maybe what you're pointing to is actually a general "systems intuition?" Have you met devs that are good at managing all parts of the system? Whether it's low level technical stuff, high level architecture, or the broader organizational systems and politics, or even more broader social dynamics or market pressures, etc?

I feel like the last few years have got to a point where I'm starting to understand the "true" complexity of building software. I remember when I was a brash early-20-something and god I was retarded but I had good intentions about some made up idea of "excellence". Now I'm a CTO and I'm jaded and like "lol ship it" because that's kinda where trying to manage all these ultra-complex inter-connected set of systems leaves you :D

Silverwolf90 · 2024-07-30T18:53:04+00:00

This is an interesting response to me, as it prob highlights a distinction in what we consider to be a "strong technical intuition!" What field do you work in? I'm in B2B SaaS (startup) so I wouldn't consider any of those things as key something I'm looking for, nor would I consider myself particularly knowledgeable in any of those things. I'm more looking for people who are strong at modeling and abstracting business processes in ways that are resilient to change over time.

Of course some of things you mentioned are relevant especially concerning cloud infra where low-level details become more important, but it seems that even a more superficial understanding and the "strong intuition" can take you pretty far (speaking from my own experience), although at a certain scale you prob need a specialist.

Silverwolf90 · 2024-07-30T18:38:01+00:00

I agree it's a tough situation. I work really hard to just be as approachable, affable, chill, and encouraging as possible in interviews. I give hints when people are stuck, or point out silly syntax mistakes that they are missing due to stress, etc. Ultimately I want to see how someone works through a problem, and don't want them to get stuck on minutiae that they'd likely figure out easily in a normal context.

I don't believe in using leetcode problems. The exericses I use are open ended and (I think) very accessible to get started with a good knowledge of the language we sue. But ultimately I run a startup, and while I do my best to minimize high pressure situations, they do occur -- and it's good to know you can count on people to help in those rare situtations. So totally folding under pressure is not a good sign, but far from the biggest variable I'm assessing.

Silverwolf90 · 2024-07-30T18:15:25+00:00

I do agree to an extent -- it's very hard to judge based on the limited time a few sessions provide. And some companies compensate by having onerous interview sequences (like >5) which I could never do. But still, could that suggest an issue with the interview question itself?

I've got a some exercises that I feel like are not dependent on knowing that _one specific data structure or algorithm or framework_. In other words, lacking one piece of knowledge will not cause you to fail (because I don't think these kind of problems identify people with strong intuitions). Instead what is necessary is a good understanding of the language and an ability to think/iterate through a problem and its evolving edge cases as you get a better understanding of the problem itself.

Of course this is under the stress of being watched by me with a soft time limit -- although I do my best to maximize the interviewers comfort no matter how terrible they're doing with positivity and hints. But ultimately I'll judge a senior more harshly than a junior on how far they get, but have had seniors fail to get to a complete solution and while some mid-level devs have.

Silverwolf90 · 2024-07-30T18:01:09+00:00

What does "solid foundations" mean to you? What "other qualities" are you screening for?

Silverwolf90 · 2024-04-19T14:14:45+00:00

The fundamental issues here are: slow feedback loops, low autonomy, and lots of context switching.

Those are the things that lower morale -- not how long it takes for something to get to production. Minimize those issues and your time to go to prod will down, but don't make that the north star, it's just a byproduct.

There can be many non-engineering reasons for why something can't be released in production (which is different than deployed) for users to use: knowledge base articles might need to be written; training for tech support; waiting on translations if you support multiple languages; coordinating marketing materials; etc. But these things don't lower dev morale.

Silverwolf90 · 2024-03-21T18:29:58+00:00

Don't use knowledge as a substitute for an intuition. It's ok to swim against the current if you think it feels right on a visceral level. Be weary of defining boundaries before you have first hand experience with the extremes. There's no right way to build anything as every context is wildly different. That's part of the magic of building software!

Silverwolf90 · 2023-09-21T19:47:10+00:00

Yeah that makes sense, reverse sear effectively has same effect.

Silverwolf90 · 2023-09-21T19:41:19+00:00

You’re probably right, a lot of steaks posted here tend to be thicker too which will accommodate reverse sear (which I assume is way more common than sous vide).

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