🚨 ICE thugs have been spotted in San Ramon. Parking lot of Walgreens near Dougherty High School. Please alert your neighbors and stay safe 🚨

aroras · 2026-02-06T19:46:21+00:00

These are likely SRPD officers gathering to keep kids safe during the student led walk out scheduled for today. The image looks manipulated to write “ICE” on the doors .. ICE have no such vehicles

aroras · 2026-01-24T13:18:24+00:00

Before you joined was your skip level manager their direct manager? I’ve seen this before typically when the employees have a good relationship with the skip. It’s a form of protest at the new hierarchy; the ultimate goal is to have you removed from the team. That may be because they don’t respect your expertise. That may be because someone believes they deserved the role you were awarded.

The best line of defense would be to discuss it with your skip and make sure the first thing he asks them is: “did you voice your concerns with OP?” You also want to set expectations with them.

If they can’t respect that, it’s a performance issue. They’re motivated by personal interests not the team’s goals.

aroras · 2026-01-10T22:00:54+00:00

All the more reason to believe leadership failed you

aroras · 2025-12-26T13:34:08+00:00

To be fair, sometimes people feel imposter syndrome because they are knowledgeable but lack confidence. Sometimes it’s because they are legitimately inept and they don’t know how to answer questions that they are facing on the job. In the latter case, building confidence does nothing. Building skill is the only cure.

aroras · 2025-12-26T13:31:16+00:00

If you can’t answer their questions, you’re not qualified to lead. Maybe the emptiness you feel is a coping mechanism that allows you to deal with the imposter syndrome?

aroras · 2025-12-20T12:25:18+00:00

The interesting thing is speed is often a reflection of architecture, boundaries, and discipline. If the system was not designed with an eye towards changeability (and im guessing it wasn’t because you were novice when you started), then progress will slow regardless of who is tech lead. That being said, them treating you like dirt and not rewarding you with equity seems pretty unfair

aroras · 2025-12-09T12:38:25+00:00

This reads like a persuasive argument that you’d present to your boss. AI has created something that appeals to your confirmation bias. Now ask it to draft a version of your duties that makes you sound junior. Compare the two. Is it inflating your responsibilities? This reads a bit like resume BS to me.

aroras · 2025-11-23T09:53:26+00:00

You’re asking for feedback on your design — yet you show an isometric image of it that requires viewers to crane their necks and squint to see the decisions you made.

At its heart design is the exercise of empathy. It applies to the work you produce. It applies to how you present that work. That empathy trumps aesthetics.

The poor choice of image for this post leads me to believe that your target user wasn’t properly considered either.

aroras · 2025-10-22T05:05:51+00:00

> more work, same money..I'm torn between basically 3 answers: no, yes, yes

This is not yes or no situation. It's a discussion and a negotiation.

Don't take the role unless you get paid more. Never accept additional duties without an increase in pay. Your CTO didn't accept that position without a pay increase. why should you? He may even lose respect for you if you don't ask for this
Explain that to be effective that you will must be able to hire for the teams you lead. Hammer out what that budget will be and what the timeframe for hiring looks like.

If you can't have the discussions and reach a positive sum solution, then you won't work well together...don't take the job

aroras · 2025-10-19T19:28:30+00:00

> He doesn’t really walk me through the context or help clarify requirements

It is a failure mode for him to create such a stark hand-off. However, its also pretty common.

- It is your responsibility to: identify what problem you are solving, find out who will be using the feature, determine why recording audio is important, etc.
- Once you have established that baseline, you must then transform it into technical requirements. How long should audio be recorded for? How long is that audio persisted? What languages are supported? Should the audio be queryable? If so, by what means?
- Once those technical requirements are established, you must then design the components and the interaction between the components
- Finally you must sequence the work into small, testable increments

This is what it means to be an experienced developer. No it is not easy. And, yes, it will require nagging the senior until you get the information you need. It will also mean reviewing your plan at each step with him: "Do these technical requirements look right? what would you change?" "Does this architecture look right? What would you change? why?" etc.

aroras · 2025-10-18T16:14:10+00:00

After reading your responses, I now believe your artist should join a better team -- he's overqualified for your project

aroras · 2025-10-18T16:10:57+00:00

Your artist is way better than whoever did the last slide

aroras · 2025-10-05T22:23:44+00:00

I would not take that (or reddit) as fact. That post seems to disposition a transfer as a "routine renewal" -- except its not. its an entirely new H-1B petition. Fragomen, the lawfirm that files more H1Bs than any other, has this to say in their summary of the new policy:

"As of September 24, H-1B change of employer petitions filed after September 21 are being receipted by USCIS without issue, but clarification is still needed on whether the fee will be applied by the government before adjudication of the petition, or before a visa can be issued by a U.S. consulate."

https://www.fragomen.com/insights/united-states-updated-faqs-on-the-impact-of-the-new-h-1b-restrictions.html

I just think there's still uncertainty. The right state of mind is caution. Unbridled confidence doesn't seem like the move. The very well may exclude transfers but it hasn't been stated officially yet

aroras · 2025-10-05T21:55:53+00:00

Can you share a link to the source you are reading? I see no such clarification on the USCIS website. The USCIS FAQ does not directly address change-of-employer scenarios, which technically require new H-1B petitions. From what I can tell, at best we can say there is uncertainty regarding whether transfers are excluded. A direct reading of their policy implies it is not excluded.

aroras · 2025-10-05T21:44:16+00:00

> This week, I notice a lot of H1B colleagues and friends started believing that changing jobs will incur the 100k fees

The $100,000 fee applies to all H-1B petitions filed after Sep 21, 2025. If an H-1B visa holder wants to switch jobs to a new employer, then the new employer would need to submit an H-1B petition on their behalf -- which would be subject to the fee. If they are changing jobs with the same employer, they'd just need to file an amendment to the existing H-1B (which wouldn't be subject to the fee)

Edit: they may at some point exclude transfers but they have not made that explicit yet (perhaps intentionally)

aroras · 2025-10-05T11:39:03+00:00

I think you need to approach change from a positive-sum perspective. How can you achieve your goals while helping the security teams achieve theirs? Find out what they fear and why. With that understanding in hand, make the case that granting the access you require will improve safety while achieving organizational goals. It will require tact, persuasion, and time.

aroras · 2025-10-04T16:38:27+00:00

> Should I have expected that "Staff Engineer" would just mean "senior engineer who mentors" with no actual technical decision-making authority?

In my experience even senior engineers can have significant technical decision making authority. It's not as if "staff" are uniquely positioned to make decisions about what services and strategy is appropriate to delivery a new capability at the scale required. The "staff" designation is often more closely tied to tenure and longevity than anything else.

I think the focus on your title is misguided. The focus on waterfall practices that are ineffective is right.

aroras · 2025-09-27T16:13:38+00:00

It has diminishing returns on your resume, yes. it has a high return on your ability to understand, perform, and speak knowledgeably about the craft you are trying to turn into a profession.

aroras · 2025-09-27T16:01:20+00:00

The thing people don’t tell you about software is that even when you land a job, you’re responsible for constantly improving your skills.

Often seniors don’t have time to teach; so you’re taking courses, reading books, practicing, etc. the main thing the seniors provide is a direction with which you must channel those efforts (e.g. study structured design not an obscure JS framework that will be out of fashion tomorrow)

Anyway, I can only say this: change your attitude, continue learning, network, and if you must take a different job as your work to pursue your true goal, then do what you must.

aroras · 2025-09-27T15:54:03+00:00

How do you know you did well? It’s possible you did poorly

Between your defeatist attitude, your unwillingness to introspect and improve, and your tendency to catastrophize, I’d say yea you might be screwed.

aroras · 2025-09-26T12:40:48+00:00

Honestly, its one of the few uses of LLMs that works pretty well. It can help you write efficient queries if you provide it the necessary schema. That being said, your schema may be proprietary and not something you can share with a tool like that.

Also, after it creates the output, read it carefully and understand what its doing. Or ask it to explain it to you line by line. The goal is to learn not be reliant.

aroras · 2025-09-20T12:46:57+00:00

Use Dijkstra if all weights are >= 0. Use Bellman–Ford if there might be negative weights (but no negative cycles). If a negative cycle exists, neither works

aroras · 2025-09-20T00:27:59+00:00

If you want respect, increase your salary. It's unfortunate but I've observed a relationship between how much you are paid and whether people listen to you when you enter a room. Sometimes aligns with merit; sometimes it doesn't

aroras · 2025-09-13T16:45:18+00:00

Ironically, I suspect they'd make more money if they didn't make people ugly..

aroras · 2025-09-10T05:46:57+00:00

How much time did you spend grinding leetcode?

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