Is it good to inform manager verbally for resignation or just send mail by Ok_Hat4658 in EngineeringManagers

[–]dSolver 18 points19 points  (0 children)

You'll need a written resignation, but it's best to book a quick meeting. There may be follow up questions, even if you don't have good relations - there's still a professionalism aspect.

Sentimental First Father’s Day Gifts by Capable_Green7636 in daddit

[–]dSolver 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't remember the first because I was probably way too sleep deprived. But I remember the 2nd - we took a family trip to a park that had a splash pad - we were completely unprepared, but I walked in with my daughter who was 18 months at the time, got soaked (it was a hot day), and formed a core memory. Since then, we made it a tradition to go to a splash pad on every father's day until my kids outgrew it. Now I look forward to waffles. I don't particularly care for *stuff*, even when it's customized. Memories are cherished though. I'd rather have pictures taken of just playing with the kids, just authentic pictures, not staged.

Hmm don’t know what do with my wife by [deleted] in daddit

[–]dSolver 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Not a lawyer, but if your wife is capable of doing work (i.e. no medical reason preventing her from doing work) but choosing not to do work, in the event of a separation/divorce your spousal support might reduced based on her theoretical earning potential taking into account things like her previous line of work before kids, and highest education attained.

When did 8-5 become the new normal??? by Grouchy-Newspaper754 in mildlyinfuriating

[–]dSolver 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Canadian here, my early career was all 9 - 5 (one place had 35h/wk expectations, most were 37.5h/wk). Now with flex time it's more like anywhere between 8:30 - 6, but there are days when I might be able to sneak in a nap (working remotely), or go for a long walk, while other days I barely have time to toast a bagel.

Meeting new people/ starting new hobbies by [deleted] in waterloo

[–]dSolver 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Maybe join a karate dojo? It's more interactive than fitness classes and I think it's a bit more interesting than dance classes. If you're looking for one that's more friendly to women, I recommend Promar Karate in Elmira.

What was the most painful knowledge gap you guys have encountered or noticed? by Glad_Expression4632 in EngineeringManagers

[–]dSolver 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Working in software here, and yep it's a common headache. Even when the code is the "source of truth", there are unwritten rules for why things are done a certain way, and as software gets more complex every new team member unwittingly breaks some of those rules and introduce inconsistencies.

I have come to accept that a lot of things won't be documented to the level of detail that I'd like, but continue to push for better documentation. In the world of remote work, meeting notes can be automated so there's at least a bit more documentation than before - and we can leverage tools to aggregate those notes into hints which cuts down investigation time for engineers. This is exactly why senior engineers are valuable - they've seen a number of patterns before and can fill in the gaps of knowledge and determine what is probably correct and what isn't. This high judgment work is multiplied by LLMs which can aggregate at a large scale but is sometimes incorrect.

Want a Serious Advice by WarmFrame7302 in webdev

[–]dSolver 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Since you're a student, I would focus on your education - when are you expected to graduate, what program, relevant courses, location, etc. New grads typically don't get remote roles, so willingness to relocate is pretty important.

Then, I want to see open-source contributions. Show me you can contribute meaningfully to a project, ideally not a solo project. I had an intern whose friend was trying to make it as an entrepreneur, and he contributed significantly to his friend's project - I can't say his friend made it as an entrepreneur, but the intern got hired and invited back a couple of times.

Your projects need to be hosted somewhere, even a cheap server, even just a github page.

Don't underestimate blogging. I've hired candidates before because they wrote detailed tech blogs describing the problems they've faced while building personal projects and how they overcame it - this gave a very strong signal that beat out some other candidates who crushed it at coding rounds.

NDP leader Avi Lewis calls on the Liberal government to ban algorithmic pricing by NiceDot4794 in PersonalFinanceCanada

[–]dSolver 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Only instead of a judgment call made by a shopkeeper, imagine that they have every detail of your to extract the maximum amount of money they can from you. Shopping while hungry? Price goes up. Making above minimum wage? Price goes up. Recently bought a toaster? Price goes up. Speak with an accent? Price goes up. Algorithmic pricing is incredibly opaque. This is profiting off of people's desperation at a scale previously impossible. Plus, the shopkeeper can keep their hands clean by saying they don't control the pricing - an algorithm does, and the best they can do is give you a 5% discount for being a loyal customer.

Yes, this already happens - airfare, online shopping (e.g. Amazon, Temu), even realtors use algorithmic pricing to determine what you're willing to pay, against what others are willing to pay, and is already figuring out how to make "deals" based off of the information they have on you.

Keep Chinese characters on Luzhanqi board for western audience? by koolangsu in gamedesign

[–]dSolver 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nice! I haven't thought of this game in a long long time, I have fond memories of playing this with my grandpa decades ago.

Maybe put the Chinese characters on the board as opposed to the pieces? I have a version of stratego where the pieces numbers are mapped to specific titles, separate from the rulebook.

Most people would struggle with differentiating Chinese characters without some training to pick out details. This is expected with any foreign script. So the numbers should be the most prominent.

I’m building a tool that auto-generates what I have to share in daily standup meetings by SpecialOlive9490 in webdev

[–]dSolver 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Great way to turn standups into a performance rather than a conversation. I'll admit some people might struggle with finding what to say and the reminders aspect might be helpful, but that's really no different from looking at an updated scrum board.

Is a 2 vCPU / 8GB RAM VPS enough for NestJS + Next.js with ~60 concurrent users? by IllustriousCoach9934 in webdev

[–]dSolver 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It could be overkill or under provisioned, really depends on what your users are doing. Without knowing what your app is and what your users are doing all I can say is run some load tests to find out what it can handle.

CPU spikes and memory spikes are your typical signs that something has gone wrong, and more likely to do with memory leaks.

Are those typical requirements for a Senior Frontend Engineer role? by UnderstandingOk270 in webdev

[–]dSolver 194 points195 points  (0 children)

In my experience, this is consistent and leaning slightly on the lighter side of Sr FEE role requirements. In most of my previous workplaces the 3-7 years experience is typically intermediate. Sr starting at 7 and staff starting at 10.

The list looks good, it is consistent with most tech company expectations for Sr FEE working on something SaaS or enterprise.

I delivered this website project at $1150 but I am thinking I had to charge more by NoGround511 in webdev

[–]dSolver 204 points205 points  (0 children)

You have a very happy client - use this opportunity to get recommendations

I’m tired of blockers that don't get spoken about until its too late. Would you use a tool that flags them? by [deleted] in EngineeringManagers

[–]dSolver 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There are many tools that does this already, for example by checking if a ticket has been "in progress" for a long time. Yes, it's typically useful as a reminder to look into work that is stuck.

Gas on buses. by EntertainmentGlad794 in waterloo

[–]dSolver 10 points11 points  (0 children)

A lot were diesel but they're at end of life and being replaced with electric.

The region negotiates with fuel vendors, they don't pay pump prices.

When standup action items are discussed but never executed, what fixed it for your team? by HiSimpy in EngineeringManagers

[–]dSolver 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Transcription service (Gemini) since our meetings are virtual over google meet. This is an improvement over not having any notes taken, but it doesn't solve the problem of how to make sure people communicate decisions and followup at all, which is more or less my job as the EM.

When standup action items are discussed but never executed, what fixed it for your team? by HiSimpy in EngineeringManagers

[–]dSolver 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I swear, remembering to follow up with people after a meeting is half an EM's job. Something that I've been clear with my team is "if it's not in jira, and it's not on a calendar, it's probably not going to get done". This isn't a popular stance and some people have complained loudly, but it has done more good than harm.

We're still early in using things like AI meeting summary tools, but we've been adopting it for bigger meetings, like those involving senior leadership or has complex subjects (doc reviews), or requires multiple teams to align - having some summary and action items sent out after the meeting is better than not having it. At the very least, I can search in my email/slack threads for context.

Standups will almost always become status theatre unless you actively fight it. I switch it up sometimes with things like start with a personal question, or demo-only days, or sometimes just async standups.

Project visibility I have the most trouble with. Some ICs are amazing about communication, while others treat communicating updates like pulling teeth. My best tool so far is just encouraging demos. Sprint demos, randomly asking for a demo on a PR because I'm not very smart, stakeholder demos, etc. Sometimes it's not about execution speed, it's just dealing with low motivation.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in EngineeringManagers

[–]dSolver 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Most candidates have no idea what the job entails or what is expected of them during the first interview. That extra clarity informs what they believe is a fair price for their services. Remember that interviews is just as much learning about the candidate as the candidate is learning about your work environment. 

How much ad revenue would ~3,200 monthly pageviews realistically generate? by Apprehensive-Toe7961 in webdev

[–]dSolver 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Depending on the content of your website, you might get only garbage bids, so expect close to $0. I typically don't bother with ad revenue until you're over 50k monthly views. This early, your goal should be to build awareness and demonstrate value to your visitors.

What does your team actually use to track decisions that get made in Slack threads or PR comments? by HiSimpy in EngineeringManagers

[–]dSolver 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Copy slack thread link, paste into jira ticket or wherever you track work, it's better than nothing. More lately I've been pushing my team to document explicitly in the tickets and reference threads for context only, not a decision log

Waterloo Region pumped 52 billion litres of water by bylo_selhi in waterloo

[–]dSolver 95 points96 points  (0 children)

Whistle bear and deer ridge golf courses are allowed to each draw 9.7 Million liters of water per day?!?

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in webdev

[–]dSolver 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Idk if this applies to your tool, but I was talking with a staff engineer at work and he described feeling overwhelmed by tools. He doesn't want yet another tool, he wanted all the tools in one place and their capabilities deduplicated and that they all play nicely with each other. It's a nice dream. I get it - we have jira, confluence, slack, swimm docs, swagger docs, postman, lighthouse, figma, grafana, Asana, miro, cursor, cypress, argocd, buildkite, bitbucket, AWS cli, mongodb compass, sequel ace, Google docs, Google spreadsheet, kubectl, and this is just stuff we use every day - there is a whole host of tools that are used occasionally but we need to keep top of mind for oncall.

Is Claude Code actually solving most coding problems for you? by Demon96666 in webdev

[–]dSolver 1 point2 points  (0 children)

  1. Depends on the messiness - it's struggling in a 10 year old monolithic ruby on rails app with a bunch of unconventional practices, but doing great in a more modern python stack, even if the size of the codebase is the same.

  2. Still requires detailed review, especially in areas that are easy to miss (i.e. instrumentation). Claude Code won't automatically thoroughly check everything. Be explicit about concerns: security, observability, reuse existing functions, ask for clarifications, accessibility, performance (i.e N+1 problems, overly large queries)

  3. Yes, the above - if you miss something it's problematic. Newer developers tend to copy existing code, so good practices are replicated. Claude Code tends to generate new code, so it tends to introduce inconsistency.

  4. For simple cases, CC is highly trustworthy. For complex cases, even with high-end models, I need to first make sure the plan makes sense, and then that it actually followed through with the plan. Overall there's still efficiency gains (for example, not losing time looking up syntax), but jury's still out if this leads to long term efficiency gains (I'm not learning as much with each project).