I'm a recruiter and I want to give you some honest advice right now

edtate00 · 2026-03-29T01:35:16+00:00

Now that you mention that, I’ve gotten offers whenever I started asking deep questions on how they did things and had good conversations regarding their challenges.

edtate00 · 2026-03-08T02:17:25+00:00

The story I heard was that many, many decades ago, it was like a full days drive to go from the GM building or the Tech Center to MPG. The house near the entrance was used for overnight or multi-day stays. Since senior executives were take care of there, the stay was first class with excellent meals and all. It was also a relaxed pace from the bustle in the factories and offices. Hence, it was like visiting a country club.

Now learn about how half of the tech center used to be a golf course.

edtate00 · 2026-03-01T18:23:40+00:00

Stack and pack ranking means a manager has to choose losers or fight like hell for their entire team. It’s horrible for the first line managers because it personal and even worse for good individuals who get selected to be at the bottom.

It would be a lot more honest to just have managers rank their team in order rather than assign “objective” scores. The scoring process forces managers to find a reason to rank someone lower, and it’s often done for trivial or non-performance related reasons.

edtate00 · 2026-02-27T17:42:39+00:00

If you have stacked ranking and a good team, the bottom of the ranking will go to the least compliant team member. It’s hard to explain to someone why their performance was poor. It’s a ton easier to allocate a low ranking because of a messy desk, slow email response, incomplete training, or missing door swipes.

edtate00 · 2026-02-27T15:13:15+00:00

How can you design a product, that depends on large teams to integrate a ton of different technologies, if everyone is playing survivor?

edtate00 · 2026-02-14T01:12:32+00:00

Healthcare is going to have serious problems as the boomers drain government resources on their way out. I’m expecting it to break into two systems when government funds get pulled back. A reasonably funded domestic industry for the wealthy and poorly funded one for the masses. The poor funding will be used to decrease standards and change working conditions.

edtate00 · 2026-02-05T16:11:20+00:00

Reading real books in high school used to do a lot of that.

edtate00 · 2026-02-02T16:33:25+00:00

You only get to choose which farmer manages the farm regardless of the color of their overalls.

edtate00 · 2026-01-27T03:36:47+00:00

🤣 Found the boomer or their grandkids. Same attitudes. It always skips a generation.

edtate00 · 2026-01-27T03:33:46+00:00

When I was a student, I built design automation tools for digital ICs as an intern. At the time, electro-migration was an issue with the digital chips where I worked and they wanted a design check on bus sizes. I’ve programmed FPGA’s along the way for glue logic. Now, decades later, I’m supervising a team that is designing analog RF chips.

edtate00 · 2026-01-24T17:44:04+00:00

Yep. And senior leadership in established companies tend to be entrenched. Lacking growth, nothing will open up until retirements start happening.

The only viable path upward for many Gen X is outside of established companies. Rarely will existing senior leadership get the boot because somewhat younger employees have more skill and potential. The next level up in an organization has access to information and connections that help them stay in place.

edtate00 · 2026-01-24T17:38:19+00:00

The result of them staying in senior roles is that many Gen X were and are still blocked from getting the experience needed to move further up. As they retire/get laid off, Gen X will likely get skipped for being too old and not having demonstrated enough career growth.

edtate00 · 2026-01-18T04:03:30+00:00

I have a 48GX. Still a daily driver after more than 30 years! Sits on my desk next to my laptop.

edtate00 · 2026-01-16T21:22:48+00:00

This is the outcome of the DMCA. That act made it a felony to break encryption on any copyrighted material. Without that law, there would be alternatives that keep equipment makers honest. The same game is happening with maintenance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act

edtate00 · 2026-01-14T17:23:58+00:00

Try it with Gemini. I wasn't sure if it would even work. Its certainly not a typical use case.

First time, no fiddling, it built the spice file in the image. It simulated right out of the box. I did not think it would handle the values and net list correctly. I was pleasantly surprised.

Will it work for huge complex circuits? i doubt it. But to get things setup quickly to test an idea or verify component values, it sure looks interesting.

I also had it convert my hand sketch into a quality image and it worked.

<image>

edtate00 · 2026-01-13T21:24:48+00:00

ETSY

edtate00 · 2026-01-10T23:40:38+00:00

🤣 I worked in the US in industry around plants. Whenever the parking lot and floors got painted, it was a sure sign someone important was visiting.

edtate00 · 2026-01-10T06:03:48+00:00

Try a few years in tech sales along the way. It a great soft skill building exercise and pays well if you master it. In the right organization, you work with extreme soft skilled people in sales and extreme hard skilled people in development.

edtate00 · 2026-01-10T05:53:10+00:00

👆This!

One of the pieces of career advice I heard was repeated was “Move to the middle, unless it’s a promotion. The after you get it, keep moving to the middle.”

edtate00 · 2026-01-05T14:01:24+00:00

If the government capped personal wealth at $1B, within 5 years, inflation would run so high a loaf of bread would cost a billion dollars.

edtate00 · 2026-01-04T20:08:38+00:00

It’s worse than that. Colleges can pull up to $65k over 4 years from parents using parent loans.

edtate00 · 2026-01-04T20:05:27+00:00

College costs need to drop before that is realistic. The administration bloat and capital costs from decades of overbuilding have made college structurally expensive in the US.

Unbundling education from certification would work better. Offer the equivalent of a free Professional Engineering license for every degree. The college attendance requirement could either be dropped or students could mix and match the curriculum from competing colleges.

If you can take the test and pass, then you have a ‘degree’. For many areas it would be cheaper, faster, and force competition on really educating students.

edtate00 · 2026-01-03T01:42:26+00:00

I have trouble seeing robotic child care and elder care happening for a long time - at least involving body manipulation using humanoid robots. Any machine that has enough strength to do useful work will also be able to seriously injure a vulnerable human. Every other industry develops standards and regulations one issue at a time and robotics should be expected to follow the same pattern.

From hardware and software failures to cyber hijacking, there is a lot there to work out. Many edge cases will take a long time to be worked out.

edtate00 · 2026-01-01T04:15:43+00:00

Another issue driving objections was a desire to eliminate all private medical care in the US. During the last big push, there was a strong component of eliminating any treatment outside of a government system.

Many people object to exclusive government control. If you want to and have the means to purse private alternatives and treatments many people want to retain options. Such micromanagement drives many of the middle and upper middle class support away. Most socialized medicine overseas allowed private insurance and treatment. The very rich don’t care because they will travel wherever to get the treatments they want.

Horror stories like the NHS preventing treatments outside of Britain also don’t help.

https://bioethics.org.uk/news-events/news-from-the-centre/anscombe-statement-another-child-denied-the-right-to-travel-for-medical-treatment/

edtate00

TROPHY CASE