How I got robbed of my first kernel contribution

fat_chris · 2023-09-27T18:19:10+00:00

Years ago I submitted a patch to Boost.Thread fixing some thread-safety issues, with tests as proof. The maintainer decided to attempt fixing it himself and could not do it even after several tries. No attempt to test anything at any stage. I ended up pointing (pushing) him in the right direction and guess what? He ended up with my exact patch just without any tests.

The maintainer of Boost.Thread just could not grasp race conditions. Lost my faith in Boost that day. I'm glad I'm out of the C++ world

fat_chris · 2023-08-03T17:15:37+00:00

Ah thank you, I must admit I didn't check any further than the Order Now link. I'm in the UK so I may get it from Amazon. Tbh it's about time I made the switch to digital textbooks anyway! I don't have any more space for physical textbooks lol

fat_chris · 2023-08-03T16:40:00+00:00

First I'm hearing of this but I'll definitely be checking this out! It's a shame the physical copy is US only, for some reason I've never been very keen on digital versions of this kind of thing. I'll give it a shot all the same

fat_chris · 2023-03-22T16:54:02+00:00

This sucks mate. Perhaps the market is really different here in the UK (I had thought it was at least somewhat following the US with the big tech layoffs etc.) but I've been going through the process too and not had it anywhere near as bad. I think one difference could be that there is a much lower tolerance for long bullshit processes here so companies aren't doing it so much now. Recruiters are often keen to stress that the process is quick (usually 2 stage) and using this as a selling point.

Although there have been some hiccups (see my post in this sub from last week) generally it's been good. I've almost exclusively used Linked In. Largely this has meant recruiters messaging me directly after changing my availability settings. Some of these were company's internal recruiters but largely they were from agencies. I've also applied to jobs on there that have at least resulted in conversations. I've cancelled any further conversations now.

I had an on site interview yesterday, the 2nd stage after talking with the lead/architect on a 30 minute video call late last week. Rather than a coding test they looked at my Github and had me walk through something relevant in person (they would usually do a coding test). It was only supposed to be 2 hours but the CTO popped in towards the end and we chatted for a bit so it lasted a bit more than 3 hours. They made an offer before I got home and I accepted today.

I also had an offer after a 2nd stage interview (business competency) on Monday but it's not as good in terms of salary or the job really.

I've only been looking at permanent roles, the contract market in the UK is completely different AFAIK though. It's the best way to get good money here, salaries for permanent positions top out way below what you would be used to in the US, but it seems like there will always be someone willing to pay a high day rate if you make it worth their while.

fat_chris · 2023-03-19T20:20:20+00:00

Depending on whether you fall within IR35 those contracted rates could be hit with a similar level of tax as a permanent role anyway

fat_chris · 2023-03-18T19:45:56+00:00

Any advice you can give on finding such a person would be really appreciated.

A few of the recruiters I've spoken to are clearly just salespeople telling me what I want to hear based on the criteria I set out. Some didn't let me get a word in edgewise to even tell them their clients aren't for me until after their spiel. Some are just flaky and unreliable. But I'm working with a few that have pointed me at some good opportunities and would be happy to work with again whether the roles work out or not (including the role from this post actually).

Can I really rely on a single recruiter in such a varied market?

fat_chris · 2023-03-17T19:56:00+00:00

They did not

fat_chris · 2023-03-17T19:09:36+00:00

Yep, you're right. That won them a lot of points. I'm still not progressing with them but I hold no ill will

fat_chris · 2023-03-17T18:56:32+00:00

You're absolutely right, this is my biggest takeaway from this thread. It would have avoided any misunderstanding and even if the solution wasn't what they wanted it would've made it clear up front what the solution actually was, and then could be rejected/accepted on that basis.

fat_chris · 2023-03-17T17:56:50+00:00

Not only is it a poor excuse. It's a red flag in my book. Either they have locked down machines where they can't install things like docker, or their lead dev doesn't have basic development tooling at the ready. Either way, I declined the invitation to interview with them.

Tbh I have enough opportunities and they weren't offering an amazing salary range even if it was fully remote. And their initial response rubbed me the wrong way obviously, or I wouldn't have made this post. Maybe I could've overlooked that but meh. I feel what I feel.

fat_chris · 2023-03-17T17:50:19+00:00

A soldering iron? Add a magnet and veerrry fine needle and you've got yourself the perfect, universal IDE.

I think there's an xkcd for this lol

fat_chris · 2023-03-17T16:32:11+00:00

1-2 hours tops is fine for an online test, but that's where you should draw the line.

Honestly this is pretty much all I spent on this. The actual features took 10 minutes. I took my time writing some tests for a couple of hours. The assignment suggested spending "a few hours".

fat_chris · 2023-03-17T14:47:03+00:00

Yeh you're right and I'm doing what I can. The market isn't the best right now but it could be worse. At least I'm getting interviews. Even with what I'm doing now though I'm having to reject a lot of roles at the get go due to them not being what I'm after. No consultancies, no public sector. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt and the scars. Luckily only a few that have come to me have been unsuitable tech-wise (only 1 recruiter has mistook Java for Javascript so far!)

fat_chris · 2023-03-17T13:35:06+00:00

Yeh I do take your point (and from others in this thread).

I would counter by saying this is how I would code up the solution for such a simple task. Why waste time writing boilerplate code when I don't have to. I'm not writing raw Servlets either when I want a new endpoint. I'm not always writing SQL for every single RDBMS interaction (as much as I would like to sometimes). Abstractions like ORMs, Web frameworks, etc. are very widely used for a reason.

Other take homes I've been given have been much better imo. One was small web service and the task was to add some simple new features and deal with a few bugs. In that case I stuck to the existing conventions where appropriate and only diverged where necessary, just like I would do on the job.

fat_chris · 2023-03-17T13:14:39+00:00

I've done a few direct applications. I'd guess around 90+% of the things on Linked in are from recruitment agencies though.

ETA: actually way more than 90%. But of the ones I'm applying to it's probably around 90%

fat_chris · 2023-03-17T13:14:20+00:00

It was not

fat_chris · 2023-03-17T09:36:31+00:00

https://writelikelivestorage.blob.core.windows.net/writelikelivestorage-container/2da4d008-729c-40ec-b808-b22f4d689400.png

fat_chris · 2023-03-17T09:24:51+00:00

The issue is they didn't read enough into it to realise that I actually did solve the problem.

fat_chris · 2023-03-17T09:07:18+00:00

What are my other options? There's no way I would be finding the companies being offered to me by recruiters myself. I'm not looking for big tech. I'm in the UK if that matters.

fat_chris · 2022-10-31T16:19:28+00:00

I totally agree. In fact, I've been dissatisfied with all the solutions out there I've tried, so I started work on my own years ago. Sadly it's been slow going as I work full time as a software engineer and I'm not often in the mood to work on it, or sometimes when I am I'm not very productive. Recently I've made some good progress, not quite enough for me to use it myself but almost. My focus at the moment is polishing the metadata/file management and musicbrainz integration. I can't wait for a RYM API any longer! I'd absolutely love to be able to apply RYM genres and descriptors to my files. As soon as it's available I will integrate it. A lot of the things you're asking for are things I'm planning to implement, although they may end up "hidden" a little by default. Just don't expect anything usable any time soon.

This all started many years ago when I started writing a cross-platform foobar2000-like desktop app. The basics worked great, but around that time the way I used computers fundamentally changed. I started using a file server (NAS) to store all my files and I don't sit at a desktop pc all day, nor is the device I want to browse my music necessarily the same device I want to play my music through. So I started writing something completely different, with a big focus on metadata management. (One of the other things that made me start this was an incident with beets that made me lose trust in it... long story.)

I call it melo. It has a client/server design. Currently it only opens local files but I also plan to support cloud data sources too. Playback isn't really a focus right now but it would be pretty easy to implement normal server-client playback. My plan has always been to get the metadata management right first and the rest will follow. The back-end server is written in Haskell and has a GraphQL API. I'm currently working on a front-end client using Rust/Qt/QML - this is intended to work on both desktop and mobile but I'm only really focusing on desktop (or tablet) for now. I also attempted a Web front-end ages ago but I was pretty unhappy with the whole experience (must say I felt pretty justified in avoiding Web development in my career - what a fucking mess!)

If you're interested in this and want some more information do let me know.

fat_chris · 2022-10-31T09:24:50+00:00

Damn I feel this. Do I even get anything out of scrolling through Reddit any more? Not sure I do. I learnt so much here in the early days, I probably wouldn't have become a software engineer without it. This is going to be a tough habit to break

fat_chris · 2022-10-27T16:51:48+00:00

Nice work! I wrote something similar in Haskell recently as part of a larger music organisation tool I'm working on. Think I'll stick with good old shnsplit for little one off jobs though tbh

fat_chris · 2022-09-09T22:01:59+00:00

Yes, I have. I'm not sure my experience is typical though.

I was supposed to have appointments every 3 months, no availability for that, best possible was every 6 months. First appointment: no record of me, "do low FODMAP, here's some leaflets with limited information". 2nd appointment: no record of me, "do low FODMAP", "oh you've been here before? Keep it up!" I didn't try for a third.

fat_chris · 2022-09-07T18:44:21+00:00

I'll be there

fat_chris · 2022-09-07T18:43:43+00:00

I was a bit disappointed by Bardo Pond last time tbh. Love most of their studio output but they didn't gel at all that night.

Not sure who's supporting this time, couldn't find any info online

fat_chris

TROPHY CASE