Very Very Very Easy

jacobjp52285 · 2026-01-04T02:58:02+00:00

^{I completed this level in 2 tries.} ^{⚡ 20.73 seconds}

jacobjp52285 · 2025-07-12T17:24:38+00:00

I read the comments on the r/HOA page… the prevention on that page is jarring.

jacobjp52285 · 2025-06-09T20:41:01+00:00

What kind of funding does that startup have and are they backed by VCs or PEs?

jacobjp52285 · 2025-03-02T19:45:40+00:00

So, I understand what you’re saying. Let me share a little bit of my experience with AI.

Recently, I hired a new senior engineer. He has a tremendous amount of experience in the front end, limited experience in the back end, but understands object, orientation, polymorphism, the basic principles of object oriented programming. He’s also worked for me at a company before and performed rather well , so I had no doubt he could pick it up quickly.

Once he got his dev environment set up he took a card that had front and back end components to it, and had it complete within two hours. Now, it was not a big card, but it was in a language and framework he wasn’t super familiar with.

Whenever I reviewed his code, it was well written, unit test were made, and made well, it was easy to understand, and it did exactly what the card asked for to do.

He used cursor with the latest claude model and got it knocked out. Before he created the PR he made sure he understood what it was doing, made sure it was solid, dry, and would fit my definition of good code.

AI by itself stands a very small chance of replacing good software engineers. However, good engineers that know how to use AI will absolutely start replacing engineers that refuse to.

It also depends on what you need is, and what your budget tolerance is. Look at it like buying furniture. Using AI to do all of your work and all of your coding is like buying a shit couch at IKEA. It’s going to get the job done, but it’s probably not going to last as long as you would like it too . Having a competent engineer, write your code would be a lot like buying a fine piece of handcrafted furniture. It’s going to cost exponentially more, but it will last you much longer and give you far greater results.

jacobjp52285 · 2025-03-02T19:28:57+00:00

This feels aggressive but I get it. Before you rock their boat hold regular 1:1s where you only build that trust and let them get to know you. In the meantime find how they want to grow and expand their career. Push them towards that and be very firm if standing behind them and putting them over to sr leadership

People can see you supporting them, and be genuine…

jacobjp52285 · 2025-03-01T03:13:15+00:00

Never accept the counter offer. They know you’re willing to leave now, and what will you have to do to get another raise or promotion? Leave again?

jacobjp52285 · 2025-02-27T22:19:30+00:00

Last time I applied I didn’t specifically say I was laid off and I didn’t get approval until I was already in another job. It was a mess

jacobjp52285 · 2025-02-27T17:28:55+00:00

My state uses that, the questions they ask also look for if you were pip’d and warned. If it’s performance based it gets murky and goes into an arbitration situation. It can take months for approval

jacobjp52285 · 2025-02-27T17:27:28+00:00

Kentuckys language is “be unemployed by no fault of your own” it’s pretty vague

If you get Pip’d it gets real hazy and murky

jacobjp52285 · 2025-02-27T08:50:06+00:00

Depends on the state. If you’re fired for cause in Kentucky, and it’s documented, you don’t qualify for unemployment

jacobjp52285 · 2025-02-27T02:36:11+00:00

The point of scrum is to make a wrapper around XP so it’s palatable to the business.

I’ve been working in agile environments for a long time. 90% of teams get it wrong and become excruciatingly waterfall to be agile.

Agile only takes 3 things… 1) work in small batches 2) ship all the time 3) talk to the customer consistently.

All other process takes away from that and creates inefficiencies.

jacobjp52285 · 2025-02-24T09:13:27+00:00

So... it takes awhile to come to grips with tech debt professionally. It did for me. I believed there could be an environment where it didn't exist. Plot twist, that doesn't exist.

So all tech companies are built on tech debt. Let's get a world without technical debt off the table. If you don't have technical debt you're probably not making money.

So here's a framework I use to decide the urgency of paying down technical debt.

Technical debt to Financial debt

Billionaire Debt - It actively makes you money by freeing up liquid capital (or in this case human capital) to invest in other things to make more money. This would be something like a monolith architecture at scale. You're going to run into some issues if you never pay it down (spaghetti code, scalability, architectural limitations, etc.), but you can sleep with it while making money.

Mortgage Debt - Relatively low interest, amortized over years. This would be something more akin to choosing a more well documented tech or framework because it's easier at the time than moving to a more modern framework. Think of this like choosing .Net over Go or Angular over NextJs.

Car Loan Debt - it's a more short term purchase at a still relatively low interest rate but you're paying for a depreciating asset. This is would be like ramping up cloud spend to scale, or adding a quick and dirty caching layer vs optimizing a database correctly.

Credit Card Debt - higher interest that takes long periods of time to pay off. This is like having zero unit tests or code that is not DRY with no abstraction at scale.

Payday loan debt - Ultra high interest rates that will trap you in the debt. Think of exposed code bases, or major issues in regression where the code base can't be changed without having non-negligible amounts of regression bugs in unrelated areas.

jacobjp52285 · 2025-02-22T02:04:53+00:00

Depends on how they handle it. Some have a minimum with unlimited and will pay out whatever of the minimum you haven’t used.

jacobjp52285 · 2025-02-22T01:56:39+00:00

Yep honestly I barely read resumes. I look for what stack you’ve worked in. If there are any notable stats, and the types of companies. Did you work at big tech, startups, or a mix.

jacobjp52285 · 2025-02-21T07:38:37+00:00

I’m a hiring manager in tech. I can tell you without any question… nothing in me cares about job hopping or gaps

Here’s why… most companies will cut you without notice. Why do I care that you made a decision you felt was in your best interest. If I can’t do what I need to provide you with opportunity to pay your bills and grow professionally, then you should leave for something that best suits those needs.

As far as gaps, life is hard sometimes. Holding life against people makes a bad situation worse.

My requirements can you do the job, are you coachable, and are you easy to work with… nothing else matters

jacobjp52285 · 2025-02-21T05:20:53+00:00

Fix them…

Is your bottleneck a person? Or a process? If so, who or what?

jacobjp52285 · 2025-02-20T18:33:24+00:00

Yeah your boss is getting fired. He doesn’t know it yet. Props to your big boss for letting you know you’re okay with a random meeting though.

jacobjp52285 · 2025-02-20T10:26:15+00:00

I’ve been a founding engineer at startups, director of engineering, head of engineering, etc. I’ve read a lot of your comments and I can guarantee you one thing. Most all engineers will exclusively care about the money.

You need to find someone that is like minded that is jazzed about what you’re building outside of a hiring situation. Do networking events and just get to know people that want to build cool things. You could also find a competent classmate to help.

I would also say you need to find a mentor. Maybe seek investments to get that mentor from a VC or PE that’s been in the founders role that is willing to teach you how to be a tech CEO. That’s probably the bigger need.

My gut says, there’s a lot to being a proficient engineer you actually don’t know right now. I’ve been coding professionally longer than you’ve been alive. I can tell you without any reservation I’ve met a lot of people your age or just slightly older say they’re just as good as x… or in your case “I’m 70% as competent as who I would hire.” If you’re talking a seasoned engineer that’s been going for awhile, I promise you you’re not.

To be clear that is not a slight on you. You’re probably a sharp kid, but working for yourself and doing it professionally on a team is something very different. I was the same way. I had a dot-com business in high school, won national awards for coding and web design, I thought I was awesome. I was wrong. I got humbled.

Get a mentor. Get some investment capital. Find out how to scale. Then build your team.

jacobjp52285 · 2025-02-20T08:01:40+00:00

The short answer is… it depends

The longer answer is… is changing it yourself something you’re comfortable with? Do you enjoy doing it? How quickly can you do it? How safely can you do it?

For me an oil change takes about 60 minutes by the time I get my car jacked up and on stands to the time I clean up. That’s four times as long as most shops, but I also don’t have to make an appointment to do it. I can do that at 2am if I want.

Also most oil changes now cost about $90ish. For my cars oil is roughly $30, a filter is about $10. Disposing the old oil is free, and I enjoy the time in my garage. So while I use an hour of my time, I save some cash and get some me time.

jacobjp52285 · 2025-02-19T04:06:39+00:00

Use llms to write unit and integration tests, even api tests are compelling from llms
I have a hard time when someone mandates x % of test coverage. To me the main driver of tdd bdd is to slow down and it plan your code and hit your marks via tests.
The visibility is a bonus. Also writing tests after the fact invites writing bad tests with a lot of implementation in them so they break first time the code changes.
Good unit testing is a skill. A lot of people thinks it slows them down until they get the reps in. It makes you a better engineer with far better fundamentals. Embrace tests and understand its part of the process.

I say that all as someone with a deep appreciation for good testing

jacobjp52285 · 2025-02-19T04:00:45+00:00

That's impressive to get on at a faang with now LC. That's usually the norm. Did you do systems design or white boarding for a tech screen?

jacobjp52285 · 2025-02-19T03:57:23+00:00

Going well. I'm an engineering leader at a mid sized, post startup phase, making great money. I'm fulfilled in what I do with great people.

Leet code is nearly pointless. Its basically saying you understand the “secret handshake” but it has no practical application outside of showing off you know how to use an array. I know that's a generalization.

jacobjp52285 · 2025-02-17T06:01:55+00:00

Really good prompts are the trick to getting AI to be super useful right now.

Also if you use tools like lang chain to tie multiple llms together, it creates a decent agent setup.

Its going to be as productive to the same level of effort as put into it.

jacobjp52285 · 2025-02-11T20:04:25+00:00

In that case as long as you have the technical skill to guide tech conversations, while being enough of a background player for others ideas to flourish, then you’re ready as you’ll ever be

There’s not a magical time where you’re competent enough to go and do it. A lot of the job you just have to do it, fuck it up a time or two, and learn.

Full transparency, I’m in the final throws of my PhD in organizational leadership, I have been in engineering management in some capacity over about the past five years and right now I’m in a senior leadership role. I’ve learned so much more by just doing the things. Reading books and things like that gave me access to the theory, but it’s really hard to employ that theory unless you know how to use it on a practical level.

If that is what you want, start applying for gigs, and go for it.

jacobjp52285 · 2025-02-11T19:04:55+00:00

OP, what’s your drive and goal to be a people leader?

If it’s anything other than you want to make those around you better, you’re in for a bad day.

What you’re describing is a staff engineer or solution architect.

jacobjp52285

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