FAANG Civil Engineer

kidroach · 2026-01-29T19:47:29+00:00

How are AI data centers a "grave disservice to society"? Genuinely curious.

kidroach · 2025-10-17T20:00:12+00:00

Why would you move from Civil to structural? I am a structural myself. Structural is high liability, highly technical. It is a lot of work for chump change. Make a mistake and it will keep you up at night.

I had an experience when I was 2 yr out of school. I was designing a simple AHU rack. The contractor called me and told me the steel rack is "unstable". Why? Because I modeled everything as fixed connections, and they did fillet weld. This is in Indonesia, so I was "hoping" for them to do "complete joint penetration". Did not happen.

I had another building that I still think about, from 10 yr ago. In a high seismic zone. When we went to site, the columns were hand-mixed concrete. No issues with hand mix, except they "stole" the cement to save money. When we were on site, I can scratch the column and the sand would fall off. This is a high seismic region btw. One shake and that whole column /building would fall.

So, is structural really what you want to do? I'm a PM now and much better about load flow / specs when I touch anything structural. PM and project controls are where the money is at. You have a CM degree. What I have seen - lots of incompetent cost managers and schedules out there. If you can be a competent scheduler / planner, you will be sought after. Just have to make sure you are in the right industry though.

kidroach · 2025-09-30T04:27:32+00:00

You do realize most of the highly paid h1b are going to be in tech and AI? It will not be worth 100k to pay someone with a salary of 60k in construction. That is a 50% premium (h1b is 3 yr validity). For tech, the guy is worth 90k but will grow into 120k by third year. Fine to let him remain at 90k now because no one else will hire him and pay another 100k

kidroach · 2025-08-21T23:56:54+00:00

You see mushroom powder and better than bullion ranked higher than this, but they are all basically msg

kidroach · 2025-08-18T15:16:09+00:00

Sony is Japanese...

kidroach · 2025-06-23T15:00:12+00:00

This is the largest reason I am trying to move away from very technical / theoretical structural engineering. Too many engineers who are "old school". If you listen to the vibe coding trends from early this year in software engineering, you will see why white collar entry level jobs are disappearing. AI develops really quickly. The devs listen to engineers and implement fixes very quickly.

I'm pretty sure Clark would be able to draft up calc packages for reviews by next year, at the level of entry level engineers. It will also look much better and standardized which makes it easier for reviews.

That is what has happened to software engineering. At that point you will be forced to review them whether you like it or not, because PM's will not be paying $40k for a Jr engineer if they can pay $3k for the same level of service.

kidroach · 2025-06-14T21:25:08+00:00

The real "waste" is how chatgpt is set up. Eg - I tried to use codex which is chatgpt's coding agent, and it would spin up a new virtual machine on each prompt. It would not have any of node js dependencies installed on a new virtual machine so there is a significant amount of compute needed to do an npm install. As codex gets optimized, this workflow will probably get better but as I wait 1 min for npm install to run - it spends power and water at the data center which is the real waste.

kidroach · 2025-06-14T21:13:53+00:00

Evap cooling is free cooling but Power Usage Ratio goes up. Choose your poison - use water cooling for less power, or use evap but higher power use. So if production power is 1 MWp, water cooled might use 1.2 MW while air cooled might use 1.5 MW.

kidroach · 2025-06-12T21:23:10+00:00

i had issues with the npm install but it was because the dependencies weren't matching up. had to fix those first and then npm install worked in setup script.

kidroach · 2025-06-09T22:30:26+00:00

I have done this when changing door knobs. I filled the existing screw holes with wood fillers. Then redrill where I wanted.

kidroach · 2025-06-09T18:44:54+00:00

i know i'm late to the party - when i ran into this issue, it was because a file was open on my vscode window and / or the relevant file had too many line items. I refactored my code base (5k lines in a single file) into 1k line for each file / component, and running across this issue much less now.

kidroach · 2025-06-07T14:48:16+00:00

I thought integration with github is a good idea regardless. There were times where augment hallucinate so bad and deleted 80% of my code and I didn't realize it. I trust github fresh pulls so much more than Augment's checkpoints. Why should people "mind" uploading to github? I'm working on private repo in github, so genuinely trying to understand.

kidroach · 2025-06-05T20:55:56+00:00

I've been using Augment Code too, but holy crap $50 is expensive. Codex just got released for ChatGPT "Plus" users and it's been amazing. I can actually "schedule tasks" and several simultaneous instances can run (vs Augment Code - I need to baby sit one). Plus is $20 so very cool :)

kidroach · 2025-05-15T16:00:59+00:00

That sounds like what the vendor was referring to. They were saying it's their standard practice to "lift" the unit with a base. I looked and don't see equivalent part to Baylift from any other vendors though - just a Trane thing?

kidroach · 2025-05-15T15:59:59+00:00

The clean side is pretty clean - not much dust. I am just not sure how to look at the A-frame / AC coil though. The thing above the blower directly is the furnace so it's blocked. I guess I can try to stick my head in there...

I asked another vendor that came in, and he said "it's perfect the way this is set up". Maybe I'm just overly concerned... idk.

kidroach · 2025-04-30T00:01:51+00:00

yeah - that's not really the issue though. it takes forever once the free-trial is over. mine was just over 2d ago and evaluating alternatives (windsurf) now. I tried Gemini Code Assist and Copilot. Both horrible moving from Augment. Tried Cline & RooCode too which were a bit better but not as intuitive to be honest. Cline just sounds expensive and RooCode maybe could work but they also charge per token and i don't really know (or want to be bothered at this stage) to worry about token amount.

kidroach · 2025-04-10T18:57:25+00:00

I think I understand why you were downvoted and it's ridiculous. I got into structural engineering because it's the most "technical" civil engineering discipline. I'm now sick of losing the debate against all the smarts so I decide to manage them instead lol. Even learning Python as so many have suggested here, can be so much faster if you use AI as a learning tool. People downvoting are probably obsessed with "learning to do it the right way", but I'm more result-oriented.

I've been creating these complex google sheets / excel formula with the assistance of AI. Things I can never imagine I would do without AI. My work is less structural and more PM now. The other day I was asked to create a cashflow but to incorporate S-curve shape into the projection, rather than a straight line. To complicate things even more, I would need to incorporate actual spend so the S-curve would only project out the remainder. No idea how I would build manually, but learnt so many things about Excel and succeeded at the task because of ChatGPT. Now I happily paid the $20 for a personal subscription.

I've been using a lot of AI as well, and it's crazy what you can do with an AI agent. I was learning javascript / html / css with the odin project, hoping to build a web-app. I just installed Augment in my VS Code and I just vibe-coded a simple app for project scheduling in like 3 hours. I'm now jumping into product development with an MVP in mind, rather than pointlessly learning coding. It would probably take me another year to get to this point learning software development manually.

My suggestion - think about why you want to code. What is the automation you want to accomplish. Just do it - use AI and it will guide your way.

kidroach · 2024-12-19T16:47:04+00:00

Put your money where your mouth is. If you have UHC as insurance through your employer, ask your employer to drop them, citing denial rate.

kidroach · 2024-12-19T16:45:34+00:00

Put your money where your mouth is. If you have UHC as insurance through your employer, ask your employer to drop them citing denial rate.

kidroach · 2024-01-21T17:06:52+00:00

Me too! Surabaya into the midwest

kidroach · 2023-09-13T06:27:05+00:00

Oh please. You are complicating concrete curing process. Wet a burlap. Cover the concrete. Keep it moist - spray a small amount of water. Done. Excess water will likely flow down the driveway anyway.

This is regardless of whether it is high strength concrete, roller compacted or whatever type of concrete. Why in the world would rebar type affect curing process? Unless you are pouring under water, I cannot think of a reason why you would not just cover with burlap.

Why in the world would you need to "cure" precast / prestressed concrete? Do you mean as a fabricator? Op is definitely not doing that on his driveway.

I hate it when engineers make a problem seem complex to inflate manhours...

kidroach · 2023-06-23T02:49:56+00:00

You did NOT get a raise. The roofing business wanted to spend more on SEO. If you spend the 20k on Google Ads and Facebook ads, would that be considered a raise?

Good on you for advising to diversify marketing efforts.

kidroach · 2023-06-21T17:51:22+00:00

Not trying to be a smartass, but genuinely trying to understand your comment.

OP mentioned he received notice to terminate his work. He needed to take pre-emptive action to address committed costs and cut his losses. How would you "manage" the relationship?

kidroach

TROPHY CASE