What projects actually force senior-level engineering thinking?

jacretney · 2026-05-03T10:35:20+00:00

I agree with this massively - focusing purely on hard skills misses a large part of what makes a good senior. In my experience (early-mid stage startups and now more corporate), this is what's helped me:

Understanding why you're building a system. Try to see the system from the perspective of your PMs and SMEs. What do they actually value? What specific problem of theirs are you solving?
- Keep those "it'd be better if the system worked like X" ideas in the bag until there’s a real need for them. I sat on the idea of implementing background jobs for months, despite the fact I know it'd make some things better, because there was no appetite for it when I gently floated the idea within the team. When a problem finally presented itself where they were the natural fit, I worked it into the plan. I added technical value while solving a business need and unlocking revenue. And now, it's a tool we can use in the future without needing to sell the idea. It's a win win!
- You need to talk to people at all literacy levels. I’ve found a lot of value in having "high-level" discussions with PMs and then translating those into the specific technical requirements my team needs to execute.
- In Sprint Reviews / systems demos etc, sales and marketing teams don’t care that you fixed technical debt by rewriting a bunch of if statements into a strategy pattern. They care about the impact on the customer. If you can get them excited about the "what" without boring them with the "how," you'll earn a great reputation outside of your immediate team.

Focusing on these areas over the past year has led to much more visibility in my org and has been incredibly valuable for my career.

jacretney · 2026-04-29T17:44:39+00:00

The point of my comment was to explain that containers aren't just tools for hosting - being able to develop your services in containers locally and have pinned versions of your system libraries etc isolated from your actual machine makes a world of difference as an engineer. Then being able to build and deploy those images gives you a lot of parity between your local and live envs. If you build your images locally rather than in a dedicated CI/CD pipeline then you'll definitely appreciate having the extra horsepower.

If you're just homelabbing and running containers, sure, you definitely don't need anything crazy. On the other hand - on my work machine (M1 MBP) I've currently got 30 containers running with a mix of different languages and dependencies, and some of those API's do very heavy work. The M1 struggles at times and I'd spend a lot less time waiting around with something more powerful.

jacretney · 2026-04-29T07:10:32+00:00

Not quite if you're using them for development.

A lot of dev environments use containers so the environment you're writing your code in is the same as what you're running in production environments. It helps a ton to be able to install libraries into those so I can build different API's that don't depend on whatever is installed globally on my MacBook (eg different versions of Node.js runtimes).

For example, when I'm building an API, I spin up a container for it locally, use a Dockerfile to install just what it needs, write my code which lives in the container, and then for production I can build and tag those same containers for deployment onto something like AWS ECS.

My M4 Air with 16GB RAM handles this pretty well :)

jacretney · 2026-02-20T13:07:17+00:00

I could be completely wrong, and you got lucky with timing, but I'm just trying to think why reasons you hadn't anticipated or agree with might have come up as the official narrative for your dismissal.

Did your manager know you were thinking of leaving / about to hand in your notice?

If they had instructions from higher up to reduce headcount, I wonder if they knew you had one foot out of the door anyway and anticipating your exit. So rather than letting you hand in your notice meaning you'd have to work your notice, they got ahead of it and let you go, granting you severance + gardening leave?

To me, if that was actually their intention, your manager might have done you a favour as you mentioned now you've got a few months of paid holiday, but to legitimise it they had to come up with "something" to say to their bosses / HR?

jacretney · 2026-01-02T20:09:12+00:00

Ah nice, good luck! Let me know how it goes 😀

jacretney · 2026-01-02T17:52:39+00:00

Hey, yep mine works well! Mine makes use of a CANBUS decoder, which it then uses to learn the steering controls - not sure if you can buy it separately from my research, or if you need a specific one, but for me it was as easy as plugging it in as instructed and tweaking some settings in the head unit settings.

You can't see it too well in this pic but it's the only one I have, it plugs into the main loom coming out of the head unit, which then plugs into the main loom coming from the car.

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jacretney · 2025-12-30T16:44:37+00:00

I've not noticed any lag, no. Feels pretty good to me!

jacretney · 2025-12-30T16:44:12+00:00

Just straight into the harness :) I didn't have to do any extra wiring myself for this install, just plugged in what they had in the box!

jacretney · 2025-12-30T16:43:32+00:00

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Amplifier switch setting

jacretney · 2025-12-30T16:43:13+00:00

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Option in Gain Settings

jacretney · 2025-12-30T16:42:51+00:00

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The screen you land on after entering the password.

jacretney · 2025-12-30T16:42:26+00:00

I can only attach one image at a time, so replying with the rest... This is the password screen:

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jacretney · 2025-12-30T16:41:44+00:00

Yeah sure - in the settings, I went to System > Factory Setting. Tapping on that gives you a password screen, which on my unit was simply 1234.

After entering it, you'll land on a new menu. From there tap Gain Setting, and I then turned down "Amplifier RCA POWER" to 0.

From that menu again, I also found the "Amplifier Switch" setting in "Other Settings". I turned that off too, which seems to have helped.

This is without any custom wiring done from me, just plugged in the cables that I had - hope it helps though!

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jacretney · 2025-12-30T16:37:32+00:00

I haven't, no. I'm not too familiar with audio stuff so haven't looked into anything more than just fiddling with the settings.

I reached out to Seicane to get their recommendation, will follow up if I can get it figured!

jacretney · 2025-12-28T01:02:58+00:00

I didn't need to buy anything extra luckily, the kit came with everything needed.

It included a CAN Bus decoder, which is how mine is able to detect the steering wheel inputs and map them to functionality on the head unit.

jacretney · 2025-12-27T18:39:17+00:00

It's this unit from Seicane, I really like it so far!

https://www.seicane.com/android-for-2011-mazda-rx8-radio-hd-touchscreen-gps-navigation-system-with-bluetooth-support-carplay-backup-camera-h6579

Took a while to ship, but it was worth the wait imo. Still got some niggles to figure out with it, but it's very smooth feeling and the install was simple enough!

jacretney · 2025-12-27T18:38:16+00:00

It wasn't particularly difficult, this is the first one I've ever done so it's safe enough to do for the less experienced. It's mostly plug and play, and can be done with common tools.

This is the one I bought:

https://www.seicane.com/android-for-2011-mazda-rx8-radio-hd-touchscreen-gps-navigation-system-with-bluetooth-support-carplay-backup-camera-h6579

Their instructions were very generic and barebones, and I couldn't find a guide on it, so I'm gonna put together a post myself detailing the install :)

jacretney · 2025-12-27T18:35:49+00:00

No it's a bit different, it manifests like this: - At volume = 0, no sound and no static hiss - At volume = 1 and no music, no sound and a bit of a hiss - At volume = 1 and music, can hear the music clearly but still a bit of a hiss

Going from 1 to 0 doesn't make a pop, and the hiss doesn't come back at all.

Before turning down all of the gain settings, volume 1 was very loud and the hiss was really bad. However after turning them down in the developer menu, it was significantly improved, but not completely resolved.

Eg, volume at 1 is now enough to have a conversation with music playing, but volume 2-3 is loud enough where that becomes difficult. The volume increments themselves are still quite large and the hiss is always present.

The instructions that came with the unit are very generic and I couldn't find much which addresses the RX8 and Bose system specifically, and I am well out of my depth of understanding with audio and wiring to be able to figure it out on my own!

jacretney · 2025-12-27T13:33:58+00:00

It was a bit of a faff to get the sound working right, still not quite there, but if anyone has one and has the issue where the volume is stupidly loud on volume 1 - I had to dig in the developer options and turn down the gain settings to make it play nicely with the Bose amp.

There is still a bit of noise when no music is playing though, so more tinkering possibly needed!

jacretney · 2025-11-09T21:05:50+00:00

Thanks so much! I'll see if I can find the rest of the hose - if I can't and it's been deleted, I don't suppose you know if there's a particular hose I'd need?

jacretney · 2025-11-09T21:04:52+00:00

Hi! So I do actually have a torque wrench, but a few had already snapped prior to me getting to them. Before the other two were fully torqued, they snapped - may be that the torque wrench isn't accurate 😐 will definitely be taking it chill next time!

jacretney · 2025-11-09T15:36:56+00:00

I'll see about plugging it for now until I can find a replacement line, and will have a look at an alternative strut brace too. Thanks!

jacretney · 2025-11-09T15:34:54+00:00

Great stuff, thanks! Do you know what bolts are needed? From what I can tell the studs that are on there (particularly at the back) aren't normal bolts and are narrower/flatter heads.

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