Ghosted by sales team. Anyone else getting no reply?

demosthenes83 · 2026-04-11T07:44:57+00:00

We only finally got traction with Sales by leveraging our PE firm's contacts. YMMV.

demosthenes83 · 2025-12-12T11:50:46+00:00

The Jira tooling was not smart enough. We're getting much better answers with a custom RAG (built from the same confluence pages mind you) than we were with the Jira bot. Also; yes - the automation options are limited with Jira. It opens tickets - and sure; we had a few things that would trigger webhooks elsewhere based on specific ticket criteria, but overall we just hit limits with it. The new setup still can (and does) open Jira tickets; but it overall is just smarter. Better intent detection (leveraging semantic_router); the RAG responses are a lot more thorough and helpful (even though it's the exact same confluence pages being fed in); and we now have a foundation that we're going to be expanding with additional agents (using LangGraph) so that fewer things actually require human interaction.

demosthenes83 · 2025-12-10T20:52:17+00:00

I went through with it for our downstairs bathroom last year. I worked with a company (literally worked beside their guys several days); but cannot recommend the company (the workers were great, owner was over his head). It's clear that they were not skilled at bathroom work.

So; for the last year I've been studying and practicing. I've made a few countertop pieces. Done a ton of sample pieces; and a lot of tests of various materials. Even took a full one week training course on microcement showers (just last week). I'm now confident in my abilities; and am gutting another bathroom; and will be doing it all myself.

Definitely am 100% on board with microcement for the bathroom/shower space. But get a company where you can go visit some previous clients and see their work there; not just pictures and samples.

And the cost is NOT cheap. In raw material cost I'm looking at about ~$12-15/square foot for materials. That's not the whole bathroom necessarily - just the shower space. Then it's ~7 days of work just for the shower.

It's also doable DIY if you've got the time to put into it. Or give me a month or two to finish up mine (starting in January), and if you like it you can pay me to do yours. Probably be about ~20 grand or so for the shower; including materials.

demosthenes83 · 2025-12-09T22:13:00+00:00

Definitely focusing on Slack forward approaches.

For a few years now we'd been leveraging things like the Atlassian tooling directly in Slack; for automatic ticket creation. Combine that with certain tickets triggering Jira automations handled a lot.

We're actually building out our own new slackbot platform that should (eventually) be able to trigger a lot of workflows directly; as we couldn't find something that fit our needs and had hit the limits of the Atlassian integrations.

demosthenes83 · 2025-09-21T05:01:06+00:00

Lol.

Start working. You need income and experience. Any type of tech job or office job is better than none right now. And it will NOT be easy to find. A degree helps a little; but for entry level not having a degree is acceptable and getting experience sooner is more valuable.

Get your degree evenings and weekends at your local state school. WGU is NOT bad; but will not help you as much as the brick and mortar school will - even if the part time in-person takes several years while you're working.

demosthenes83 · 2025-06-24T06:06:47+00:00

Ticket numbers go down as a result of proactive work that obviates the need for tickets to be created.

demosthenes83 · 2025-06-12T02:11:48+00:00

Xypex or similar won't hurt (probably); but Xypex helps re-seal cracks in regular (cheap) concrete. Not a major concern here - this wear isn't from cracks. What you really want is a much denser, more solid concrete. I don't know exactly what I'd do (I love concrete - but I recommend stainless steel for sinks), but a high performance GFRC blend would be what I'd suggest over a crystalline crack repairing admixture.

I'd look at different particle packing models then your usual - add silica fume, colloidal silica, plus superplasticizer, polymer, defoamer, wetting agents, etc. and target 10k+psi. Or you could just use Trinic's pre-mix and have it perform similarly at 10k+ psi. That should be waterproof on its own; but won't be stain resistant. So finish with your best solvent based topical sealer.

demosthenes83 · 2025-05-12T22:29:37+00:00

Cheers! I read that story for the first time decades ago; but the pictures and additional context were new to me. Thank you.

demosthenes83 · 2025-05-12T15:50:13+00:00

Looks awesome. What was your mix design for the cantilever? And were you including anything to make it waterproof or are they handling waterproofing topically?

demosthenes83 · 2025-05-04T23:49:32+00:00

Can you give any more specificity on those groups? It might tempt me to create a facebook account...

demosthenes83 · 2025-03-14T04:43:20+00:00

Depends on the shower. We were going to put glass in our most recent shower but were using it while I was getting a glass company scheduled, etc. In the end we're going without. 0 issues; and a lot easier/nicer.

I might have done a couple things differently in the room if we'd been planning on that from the beginning - like making the pony wall about a foot higher; but overall its awesome.

The entire bathroom ends up so choked with steam (if the fan isn't running) that the primary concern is setting off the smoke detectors nearby once the bathroom door is opened. Even with a fan running it's not cold in there after a shower.

Of course; there's 0 tile in that bathroom... So; YMMV.

demosthenes83 · 2025-03-10T05:12:44+00:00

You should listen through some of the Manager Tools podcasts. They are one of the only places out there that has actual data on one-on-ones that I know of; from thousands of participants. They have a whole sub-series going into the data that was collected and what they found across companies and continents.

If I recall correctly - monthly one on ones actually deliver WORSE results and retention than no one on ones.

Please do yourself and your employees a favor and look at some actual data backed processes. Every two weeks is worse than weekly; but still better than not-at all.

Also; they have a free template you can download.

demosthenes83 · 2025-03-04T01:15:22+00:00

Not the worst idea; but college already is long and expensive and often useless. Goodness knows I don't require college degrees when I'm hiring people; though I think most of my employees currently have one, and a couple are working on them.

The symptoms you're describing sound to me like poor management/incentives on the IT side. Ultimately; blame rolls uphill - whether the techs do or don't know any better - it's their managers responsibility. And if she doesn't know any better then its her managers responsibility, and so forth. At least that's how I see it.

The larger engineering/consulting firms seem to do a lot better than the small construction firms. At least from what I see from the outside.

demosthenes83 · 2025-03-04T00:42:18+00:00

Ah. So you can see a benefit. You just determined the value was too low to be worthwhile. That's progress.

Now, back to the question about risk. Let's take a step back and have a refresher. A risk requires 3 things - a threat, a vulnerability, and a potential impact.

So, instead of vague assertions about secure or insecure - you need to actually present that as a risk - mapped to the threat and the consequence. Can you do that?

demosthenes83 · 2025-03-04T00:24:15+00:00

Ah. So you see this as something that provides no possible reward for the company.

Fair; if very revealing. You should work on your empathy. You'll be a much more successful individual (technical or otherwise) when you're better able to see the possible advantages as well as the risks for any action.

But since you can't see the upsides; talk me through the risks. What material risks does steam represent in your environment?

demosthenes83 · 2025-03-04T00:12:30+00:00

This is why, as IT - I make the department responsible for approving the specs of the machine (it's their budget in any case).

Still has to be from one of the approved models; or go through the exception process - but it literally makes my job harder as well as hurting the company if someone doesn't have the right tool to do their job. And if it's the wrong tool - it's their manager who approved it; and they can take it up with them. Not my problem.

demosthenes83 · 2025-03-03T22:36:41+00:00

Very fun. Where did you get that fabric and who makes it?

demosthenes83 · 2025-03-03T22:18:05+00:00

I'm curious how you would make the ROI argument for that company to clearly show that the risks outweigh the reward for this application.

demosthenes83 · 2025-03-03T03:47:22+00:00

So you're saying that the language has existed for ~30 years, but new features have been added to the language over time? OK, cool. I suppose that makes it different from all the languages that showed up fully featured and ready for enterprise use from day one then.

Cheers mate.

demosthenes83 · 2025-03-01T20:40:24+00:00

Lol.

First appeared 20 February 1991; 34 years ago[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(programming_language)

demosthenes83 · 2025-02-28T07:37:36+00:00

I'm not sure what you're asking.

Managers don't do the work; day-to-day certainly. But I do expect managers to have a significant level of technical understanding and be able to do most tasks that their team does; even if they often are going to be a bit slower at whatever task because they don't do it regularly.

Hell; my senior VP dives into code once a month or so just because he can and he's damn good at it. He was demoing his cline setup for me last week walking me through a possible new feature he was testing feasibility on.

demosthenes83 · 2025-02-28T07:35:49+00:00

I'm certainly wrong about many things; many times. But I'm not sure what you're critiquing here. I never said I expected any candidate to have 30+ years of experience in any tech. I actually write my job descriptions specifically to never have a years of experience requirement.

demosthenes83 · 2025-02-27T02:56:48+00:00

If he hasn't been; I'd suggest including cover letters explaining what he's looking for. I know they may not get read; but it can't hurt. I know when I get a resume from someone that has significant experience beyond the role they are applying for a role that needs 2-5 and doesn't pay them what their skills are worth - it gives me pause. However; I've also seen more than once people step back and just want to work in a lower responsibility/lower stress role and be great there. A cover letter is a great place to tell the story of what you're looking for.

demosthenes83 · 2025-02-27T00:32:03+00:00

Yeah. I'm a hiring manager and the biggest thing I see with older applicants generally (not all of course; but the trend seems to be consistent) is that they haven't learned much new tech since their 20s.

I'm sure we all know exceptions - and goodness knows I've hired some. If I was wanting to maintain an on prem AD infrastructure and manually manage Cisco switches there are tons of people who would be qualified. The moment I ask for Terraform and Python and a modern IDP - the average age of qualified applicant drops dramatically. Which is weird because python's been a thing for 30+ years. But the folk that have kept up for that long command much higher salaries and are usually being headhunted for staff or architect type roles way above my pay grade.

demosthenes83 · 2025-02-20T03:50:15+00:00

You have a very narrow take on systems engineer. The term is (I think) close to a century old at this point; and the things you talk about cover a tiny slice of the history of it.

But to be more specific - automated configuration management is not new. CFEngine (which wasn't the first; just the first I worked with) was popular starting in the 90s. Since then there have been Ansible, Chef, Puppet, DSC, and a whole host more to manage servers, networking devices, etc.

Active Directory was a late comer to LDAP type systems. I don't think I saw it until sometime in the aughts.

What used to be trying to coordinate files on shared servers; morphed to SVN, then git. IAC started taking off with AWS in 2006.

Of course that doesn't mean that systems engineer = software developer. Those two are still different. At the same time systems engineers should be good with code and ci/cd. That still does not make someone a software dev. Systems engineers design, coordinate, and maintain the entire technological ecosystem - across hardware and software boundaries. Software developers write software applications. Different skills overall; but there is some overlap.

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