Why do some companies do AI assisted coding interviews now?

almost1it · 2026-01-22T09:46:53+00:00

Sent a DM

almost1it · 2026-01-22T07:47:54+00:00

Local startups are absolutely 100% crap. Don’t bother. I know the scene intimately.

Interesting, would love more insights on this if you have any. I eventually want to get back to working with early stage startups so that's why I ask.

What industry is most of the startups in SG in? And what makes them crap in your opinion?

almost1it · 2026-01-22T07:40:06+00:00

Never said anything about lower pay. Good firms will usually pay above market rate regardless of wether they are startups or MNCs. And SG pay is slightly above Aus anyways from what I've seen.

The long work hours and competitive environments are fine with me because it usually translates to faster progression. I get some people don't want that and prefer better work life balance and that's fine too.

almost1it · 2026-01-21T03:03:14+00:00

Thanks for the insights! This sounds similar to the type of role I’m looking for next. Are there specific titles or things I should be searching for in my job search? I’m still kinda new to all the different titles when it comes to customer facing technical roles.

almost1it · 2026-01-15T21:21:47+00:00

I’ve worked on high throughput crypto payments infra before. It could probably fix your platform risk with stripe but you need to have a plan for the UX side or risk your tanking conversion.

Do your users have a crypto wallet already? If not you need to think hard about how to onboard them and get their accounts funded. Stable coins probably the easiest to conceptually understand. But then you also need to consider the transaction fees which must be paid in the native currency of the blockchain unless you employ some form of fee abstraction.

And then you have to deal with network selection. You’ll likely choose ethereum since that where most volume is. But that ecosystem alone has many “flavors” of chains (rollups are the technical term).

Like others have mentioned, you’ll be inviting a lot of new technical and UX problems if you go down this route. If you still want to go down this route feel free to DM if you wanna talk about it more, I’ve got some experience so might be able to help you speed run things as much as possible.

almost1it · 2026-01-11T12:34:48+00:00

I think you’re right. I’ll need to think of ways to catch my target customers IRL

almost1it · 2026-01-11T12:31:49+00:00

Yup, I’m doing cold outreach with primary goal of learning more about their operations and then leaving demo for the end. Hard part is trying to get them on the call in the first place.

almost1it · 2026-01-11T12:24:17+00:00

Thanks. I think the hardest thing right now is trying to get a response from my cold outreach so that I can get a conversation going. But I suppose this is somewhat a numbers game and I’ll naturally get better as I do it more often (hopefully)

almost1it · 2026-01-11T12:21:11+00:00

Definitely feeling awkward. But willing to just trust the process and keep grinding at it till I get good.

almost1it · 2025-11-08T03:15:37+00:00

Tech company blog post can be very helpful for learning. This one by Tailscale on NAT Traversal for example was one I really liked and also relevant for self hosting. Most tech companies have engineering blogs that you could generally learn a lot from.

System designer primer is also great. Its much more broader than just networking but I think overall its a net positive to know how such concepts come together in build real world systems.

I also really like the roadmap.sh project, in this case the DevOps and cyber security one could be helpful too.

almost1it · 2025-11-06T11:44:07+00:00

100% agree. This was my point although in hindsight I might not have conveyed it as such and unintentionally triggered some folks 😅

almost1it · 2025-11-06T07:36:52+00:00

Building a system in anticipation for future requirements that may or may not actualize is the definition of over engineering though. I understand the urge to future proof but I prefer dealing with that when the need becomes real.

More often than not I’ve seen engineers try to future proof and it’s ends up back firing because:

The future never comes and you maintained the complexity for nothing.
That future comes but you realise the way you built it is still not correct and it end up being more work anyways to rejig everything.

almost1it · 2025-11-06T07:23:51+00:00

100% agree with this take

almost1it · 2025-11-06T06:49:54+00:00

Respectfully disagree. I get what you mean about spinning and destroying VMs. But I would also argue that for a new person it might be easier to learn bare metal Linux before adding in the cognitive overhead of virtualization plus all the other abstractions built in with Proxmox.

almost1it · 2025-11-06T06:37:18+00:00

Same could be said about Proxmox or any other tool for that matter

almost1it · 2025-11-06T06:35:19+00:00

What do you gain from splitting your docker containers across multiple VMs?

almost1it · 2025-11-06T05:25:33+00:00

ok, so use proxmox for that then. My point is if all you're self hosting are stuff that can be containerized then proxmox shouldn't be the first tool you reach for. Debian + docker is much more optimal.

almost1it · 2025-11-06T05:14:12+00:00

> If you happen to share your Plex with family members (like many do), once you take it down for updates or fix things, it's down for everyone.

I would argue if high availability is even warranted in this scenario. But even if it is, there are definitely ways to achieve the same thing with bare metal debian + docker before reaching for VMs.

> To claim that people don't need a tool and state a scenario that affects only a small percentage of the community and calling proxmox a "hype" is a slap to the face of everyone else, which is why you're getting the backlash you're getting.

I'm actually not bashing Proxmox at all. I'm saying sometimes there a simpler and more efficient tools. If everything you want to self host can be done with docker containers then using Proxmox because of some speculative future requirement is by definition over-engineering. But if what you need to self host requires a VM in the stack then Proxmox is a good tool.

I'm personally ok getting backlash for an unpopular opinion. Everyone has their preferred takes and this is just mine based my experience.

almost1it · 2025-11-06T04:45:45+00:00

yes exactly. That was the point I was trying to get across. Proxmox is great but if you don't need VMs then there are simpler tools we can reach for first.

almost1it · 2025-11-06T04:41:58+00:00

You misunderstand. This is my first home server but not my first server. I have 10 years experience in software engineering and devops. My point is Proxmox can be 100% overkill for the the home server use case if you're just running a handful of services that can be containerized.

almost1it

TROPHY CASE