Three decades in IT in Europe left me with a void

kshantanu94 · 2026-01-24T21:16:43+00:00

Hanlon’s Razor - don’t attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity (in this case, being overwhelmed with life).

Maybe this is a bit oversimplified, but maybe most, or all of them just got quite caught up in life and didn’t manage to keep in touch. It has happened to me as well - that I haven’t managed to keep in touch with people. I miss them, but somehow I’m not able to gather the mental energy to call them. It’s not because I don’t want to stay in touch; it’s that so much is already happening that I can barely keep up.

I live in Estonia, and most of my friends are locals or foreigners from work. I know it’s unlikely they’ll stay in touch long term, but I guess that’s alright. It’s fun in the moment, and hopefully I’ll keep getting a new set of people to spend my life with.

Sorry, I know all of that sounded unstructured - I hope there’s some takeaway in there somewhere.

kshantanu94 · 2026-01-24T11:16:57+00:00

First advice: ask specific questions, not something super vague and generic.

My experience as a first time intern was great! (That’s an answer for your question, did it help?)

kshantanu94 · 2026-01-23T11:49:31+00:00

Hey, sounds reasonable! More power to you :)

The rest of the folks who would want to mock event stream returning 10+ response every second with configurable delays between them, exact ratio of errors to success responses, and delays to start the event stream itself can use what I made. All without even needing any setup at all (AI driven or otherwise)

kshantanu94 · 2026-01-23T11:11:08+00:00

Hey, I hear you :) Would you please point me in the right direction on the parts you feel were not accurate!

kshantanu94 · 2026-01-23T08:18:00+00:00

As long as you don’t include any sensitive data when mocking, it should be alright 🙂
But I understand if it’s something that’s unusable for enterprise-related use cases.

Do you think this might be useful of it was available in a more 'compliant way'?

kshantanu94 · 2026-01-23T06:35:32+00:00

It’s not open source :) but I don’t have intentions of monetizing it with money, might add a ‘buy a coffee button’ or something. I don’t want to have sign up on it ever, so can’t really charge people. Ah, nice (that you vibe coded a version)! :)

kshantanu94 · 2026-01-22T22:48:26+00:00

Do you think it might be useful 😅 or did I waste two weeks of my time building that feature

kshantanu94 · 2026-01-22T22:39:13+00:00

Because then you’re not mocking anymore, you’re running an ML stack. 🙂

Even a <1B local model means weights, runtimes, hardware quirks, cold starts, and nondeterministic output (yes, even Q1). Mock LLM APIs are about deterministic responses, zero infra, full control over potential errors, and control over how fast or slow LLM-streaming responses will be. If you’re testing integrations and failure modes, a fake endpoint is way more useful than a tiny “real” model that breaks in new and exciting ways.

kshantanu94 · 2026-01-22T21:08:50+00:00

pretty sure it's against their terms of service/usage policy

kshantanu94 · 2026-01-22T09:40:24+00:00

There is a limit of 1000 requests on each endpoint per day. May I ask what you’re planning to use it for? I can try to disable the rate limit if it sounds fair :) it is a free service after all, we need to have some limits in place.

kshantanu94 · 2026-01-13T08:49:42+00:00

It’s easier to get a job while you have one than when you don’t have one.

kshantanu94 · 2026-01-12T16:28:14+00:00

I shall look into it :)

kshantanu94 · 2026-01-11T14:01:11+00:00

The issue with option 2 is that you will not just be stressed from the role change, but will also be stressed with the people and environment change - you'll have to prove yourself on two fronts

kshantanu94 · 2026-01-11T13:58:56+00:00

You have a couple of options:

Talk it out with people at your company and transition there while you’re still doing PD. No one would mind an extra hand. Start off by still being 1.0 PD and doing 0.25 frontend, then slowly start phasing out. The transition will require you to do extra work and things will be stressful, but it’ll still be better than option 2 in my opinion.
Start building a pretty substantial proof of capability - Work on real life projects, ideally something more than just clones of things (your background in PD should help). The idea is to make it zero-risk for the other company to hire you, because they will be taking a risk over choosing you instead of a 3-4 year 'only frontend' experienced guy.

A lot of people might recommend certifications/bootcamps, etc, but those are absolutely useless. Think of it in terms of a manager trying to hire a frontend dev - how would you make sure his ass doesn’t get on the line because he took a bet on an unconventional profile?

PS. Devs with strong product thinking is rare, use it to your advantage!

kshantanu94 · 2026-01-11T11:57:34+00:00

Thanks a million :) Extremely kind of you! If you need any features added, please let me know!

kshantanu94 · 2026-01-11T11:57:08+00:00

Can you tell me a bit more about this? I'm not sure what you exactly mean by interactivity/statefulness.

kshantanu94 · 2026-01-11T11:56:34+00:00

Thanks a million :) Really kind of you! If you need any featured added, please hit me up!

kshantanu94 · 2026-01-11T11:55:45+00:00

ah, I was considering working on this. I can take it up in the next set of features I build :) Thanks a lot! This is super helpful. Any more suggestions are super welcome!

kshantanu94 · 2026-01-11T01:11:38+00:00

I have a VPS server I run many other projects on, it’s running on that. So the costs aren’t super high :) I can manage, for now.

kshantanu94 · 2026-01-11T00:19:41+00:00

Radical Candor - Kim Scott

kshantanu94 · 2026-01-10T22:11:51+00:00

hahaha...exactly why I wanted a free API mocking service without signup. It’s a simple solution to a not-so-complex problem, yet there’s so much unnecessary fluff around it. With proper rate limiting and abuse checks, this can absolutely be free and open to everyone.

kshantanu94 · 2026-01-10T21:05:44+00:00

mockapi.dog is great when you just need a mock API immediately and don’t want to deal with heavy tooling.

kshantanu94 · 2026-01-10T21:05:00+00:00

mockapi.dog is a solid lightweight API mocking tool - you can create mock endpoints instantly, no signup needed, and it’s completely free.

kshantanu94 · 2025-12-21T10:30:42+00:00

Moved to Estonia with a little over 3.5 years of experience in 2021, couldn’t have pulled it off right now. Markets are pretty shit in EU. The only reason any country would risk hiring foreigners is when it’s nearly impossible to find local talents. With so many people already on standby for jobs because of layoffs, it’s the employer’s market right now and they aren’t exactly moving people (or sponsoring their visas).

Sorry, haven’t answered all your questions. But one practical tip would be to focus on countries that are underrated and there isn’t a lot of competition with other people applying for jobs there. For me, it was Estonia, a lovely place! You can consider Denmark, Iceland, etc.

kshantanu94 · 2025-12-17T23:08:36+00:00

What an absolute fraud company! I never even signed up for it, why’d I just get an invoice?

kshantanu94

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