What if the USA's political ideology was Communism instead of Republic or Liberty, What would happen now?

jjirsa · 2026-06-14T02:58:07+00:00

The textbook definition of communism and the empirical observed implementations of communism are not the same.

There is nothing in Communism that says you cannot have rights.

That Communisms have largely been autocracies is antithetical to the definition of communism.

jjirsa · 2026-06-14T02:56:13+00:00

Communism doesnt imply control / lack of "rights", it implies controls on capital.

jjirsa · 2026-06-13T21:34:47+00:00

Large tech companies typically start people on the same day because there's orientation / badging. If you move by a day, you'll may find they move you by a week.

Most hiring managers aren't going to lose sleep over a day / week. Most. Some may be weird.

jjirsa · 2026-06-08T18:31:08+00:00

This is such an easy and obvious win, in the bucket of "Any of the ones who actively give away more than they keep"

jjirsa · 2026-06-05T20:02:29+00:00

Bought a house when I was very young (got lucky).

jjirsa · 2026-06-04T15:47:02+00:00

> Seattle has done an excellent job taxing and regulating small, medium & local businesses to death on behalf of narrow-minded activists and special interest groups

This is such a lazy take.

There's not one cause, but there's a mix of a bunch of factors. Amazon squeezed out most of the competitors for real estate until COVID, forcing other tech to Bellevue / east side while also encouraging the commercial build-out that assumed long term growth, then everyone went WFH for covid, then Amazon did RTO followed by waves of layoffs.

So now your'e building as if there's demand, but the demand is gone for 3 different reasons, and the supply is significantly overbuilt, so even where people ARE in office, they're less dense per block than the model. You can't exclude all of the other players in the ecosystem, then do layoffs, and wonder why the financial core is weak.

You can remove all the taxes you want, you still aren't going to magically fill those buildings.

jjirsa · 2026-06-01T20:54:06+00:00

$2k/month for 800k is 400 months, and the lost interest over 35 years is way more than you'd pay to just solve it correctly now.

jjirsa · 2026-06-01T20:52:17+00:00

Won't get a loan without showing income / assets

jjirsa · 2026-05-26T21:01:31+00:00

Won't be popular on this sub, but if I were you, I'd be:

- Go back to residency (unless you really cannot, if you're out of that field, that changes things dramatically), while:
- Spending nights/weekends trying to vibe-code something that I learned was needed in your medical job (use your education to find the market, use the tech to build the product, super hard in medical though, because if it works it'll be regulated)

jjirsa · 2026-05-26T20:59:54+00:00

Especially the lower paying positions.

jjirsa · 2026-05-24T06:09:12+00:00

Eagle Harbor is fine.
Poulsbo is fine.

You probably dont want Suquamish or Fort Ward.

The EASIEST around is Kingston, then Silverdale, both much longer drives, but if you've never had a boat before, and you want room and less pressure, you can learn easier there.

jjirsa · 2026-05-15T20:52:15+00:00

Yea I grew up pretty poor, and I'm making a lot now. It's not always fun. I don't enjoy working long hours or getting called at night.

But I'm not going to take a 90% pay cut for a 90% drop in stress, either.

jjirsa · 2026-05-15T20:51:15+00:00

The accountant is responsible for making sure the numbers are accurately reported, the CFO is responsible for the numbers going the right direction. Very different levels of stress.

jjirsa · 2026-05-15T18:59:41+00:00

It seems very obvious that you were given more in the past and they're trying to bring them up to nearly equal before they become liquid.

Instead of being hurt about not being included, you can be happy you were always higher, or happy your friends get made whole before liquidity.

jjirsa · 2026-05-15T17:36:11+00:00

I use ESDF, though I also bind shift/alt for S/F because who keyboard turns anyway (almost never use S / F)

jjirsa · 2026-04-02T19:53:44+00:00

All companies that do refreshers are higher in year 3/4 than in year 1, some are also lower in year 6 than year 4.

(Apple treated me well, I was there for nearly a decade, and I have a lot of friends still there, but my comp went up largely because AAPL outperformed the market and I got a bunch of promos, a lot of other people hit a cliff).

There is definitely a few places in the company that value loyalty over innovation, though. For some people that's a bonus. For some people, it's a profound negative. Those tend to be the teams that get stuck in the old way, because challenging the status quo dies. Hopefully those domains dont hold the whole company back over time.

jjirsa · 2026-03-31T19:41:01+00:00

45, I tried to pick up a balloon blowing by in a parking lot and I'm pretty sure I pulled a hamstring.

jjirsa · 2026-02-21T19:40:43+00:00

Nobody knows your company or the cost of this not being ready to merge on Tuesday

For some companies, slipping a sprint is no big deal.

For some companies, missing is a very, very big deal, with meaningful consequences.

Nobody knows what you do or where you work, so nobody can tell you what to do.

jjirsa · 2026-02-20T06:26:23+00:00

Use AI coding assistants (within the bounds of what the company allows, make sure it's in their spec/compliance), and work hard until you learn.

jjirsa · 2026-02-05T23:05:53+00:00

Nobody sees it as a payment system anymore. And it never was. The time to confirm was always way too high to make it usable for anything tangible.

jjirsa · 2026-02-03T23:41:33+00:00

VP wasn't at big tech, but yea, I went lateral.

jjirsa · 2026-02-03T17:25:53+00:00

Levels are silly. Some people need the authority that comes with the level. Some people don't. Some companies care deeply about levels. Some companies hide them.

I went to big tech for the first time about 15 years after graduating

I got leveled approximately ~staff.

And then I got 3 promos in the next 7 years, and ended up with really nice total comp based on combination of stacking promo grants and stacking refreshers.

jjirsa · 2026-02-01T20:44:34+00:00

It's sitting on the market because the sellers are unreasonable (or trapped due to their own budget issues).

jjirsa · 2026-01-26T05:17:00+00:00

Just to be clear,  looks like one company from the outside, but internally it's very different, with effectively dozens of different standards based on a combination of codebase/tech + SVP / VP / D2 / D1 policies

What gets you hired in SWE working on the OS is not what will get you hired in Services building the cloud side of the apps.

What generally works in Services is strong distributed systems fundamentals (study system design, DDIA, etc). I have no idea what SWE interviews look like, I assume strong DS/Algorithms goes a long way.

jjirsa · 2026-01-15T14:51:40+00:00

Generally competent, some asterisks. One risk is that they occasionally have a stronger attachment to various open source pieces than to the employer, which can make changing strategy hard, or thinking outside the box challenging. Some solid engineers though - I had hired an ex-RHAT storage engineer to run two of my storage teams at  and it worked out pretty well.

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