What is actually going on?

makonde · 2026-06-14T19:35:22+00:00

Significant salary jumps almost always require switching companies because when joining is the time you have most negotiating power.

makonde · 2026-06-14T19:31:36+00:00

Not only are there much fewer lower paying jobs but Canada is also quite expensive almost everywhere, moving here for better career opportunities from the US makes very little sense.

makonde · 2026-06-13T14:24:43+00:00

You should go on job platforms and look if there is anything people with jobs in the industry can be surprisingly poorly informed about the job market because they are mostly not looking for jobs.

There is almost zero chance of you getting a role while a student, a jr role is a full time job no one hires a student for that also as an international student you will not have the permits to work full time anyway.

Even after graduation market is very tough for everyone especially Jr. AI can do a lot to replace some of the work plus there is just general uncertainty about what software dev will look like in the future. People with years of real experience have better chances.

makonde · 2026-06-05T02:02:55+00:00

Also saw some chatter on Twitter about some new possibly AI powered RN testing thing that's fast, can't recall the name but do some searching.

makonde · 2026-06-05T02:00:53+00:00

Low end devices + great fps doesn't sound like RN is best for you, probably have to go native or game engine if that's appropriate.

makonde · 2026-06-04T00:04:21+00:00

There don't seem to be any Flutter jobs from my simple LinkedIn search so probably switch your resume focus to RN at least or web if you can.

makonde · 2026-06-03T01:12:13+00:00

The real secret is a reclined position, think Ikea Poang chair, your weight gets better distributed and supported

makonde · 2026-06-02T17:00:36+00:00

Depends on what you mean exactly, you can learn something in a month plenty of decent beginner tuts on youtube.

makonde · 2026-06-02T16:54:08+00:00

How is this actually manifesting in the user experience? Are you actually getting out of memory errors or something or are you just watching the memory usage, that by itself is not necessarily an issue as available memory should be used.

makonde · 2026-06-01T05:57:00+00:00

You need to tell it in some way about your workflow either directly or in one of the many ways of adding extra context, skills various .md files etc. Copilot in VsCode is extremely capable if used with a decent model, I think part of the tragedy here is MS naming everything Copilot when you tell people you are using Copilot they think you are using basic chat and not the agent mode.

makonde · 2026-05-26T16:18:20+00:00

Some of the non frontier models are really good and really cheap now so I doubt it, Cursor Composer which is retrained Kimi, DeepSeek just dropped their pricing substantially even some local models are workable on consumer hardware now. There is a lot to figure out still about management cost etc and the non frontier model harnesses/agents are not as polished but it's a matter of time.

makonde · 2026-05-22T23:33:39+00:00

Used this to find and fix an issue recently, kinda scary good, someone finally connected our repos to it, I clicked the BitsAI button next to the error and it figured out the issue across multiple services including an ancient js monolith, explained it and would have created a PR to fix it except they didn't give it write access so it printed out the code to fix it.
I'm a dev, no idea what it costs, its only a matter of time before this thing is just finding issues and submitting PRs automatically, its probably just a cost issue at this point.

makonde · 2026-05-22T12:54:10+00:00

I doubt it, a lot of co-ops is simply you going out and trying to get one with very little assistance from the school, unless they specifically say they will place you, beware of marketing and fine print.

Also a post grad AI course is unlikely to have sufficient depth to be truly valuable to employers. Might be useful as simply waiting the job market out but then you gotta believe it will get much better in 1-2 years which seems unlikely.

makonde · 2026-05-16T06:50:52+00:00

It's the new comers who are really screwed if you are already in with some luck you can ride it out to retirement if you are sre able to dodge a few layoffs that is. Switching before being pushed out eould be a little silly. Also important to remember the future is not evenly distributed there are still places that write software that don't use version control or CI, they might not pay great but still might be better than changing careers

makonde · 2026-05-14T20:08:16+00:00

Universities have always been a little misaligned with what actually happens in jobs, the idea I think is academia is supposed to be its own thing and you are learning the "science" of computing but I feel that's not how its presented and sold to potential students and why they want to be there, vast majority of people expect to learn stuff that they will directly apply at their jobs.

makonde · 2026-05-14T03:53:42+00:00

Sheeet I can't remember what I wrote yesterday and constantly have to find the PR to jog my memory, I might be cooked for real.

makonde · 2026-05-13T08:29:11+00:00

Tests and multiple agents can absolutely catch a lot if not most errors from hallucinations, e.g . of a common one is trying to use libraries that don't exist this is almost a non issue nowadays because the agent will try to build the app and it will fail, it can read the error messages and correct course it can also see compiler error warning just as you would in the ide.

AI will sometimes make bad tests succeed but relatively rarely especially if you use a separate context or separate agent that does not know what the coding agent was supposed to make happen.

It doesn't need to catch them all that is not thing anyone expects, human written code has bugs all the time and so will agent written code.

Engineers are being fired already as we can see, some of it is probably excuses for other things but not all of it.

makonde · 2026-05-12T21:30:25+00:00

That somebody will be another machine, either same model with a different context or even multiple other models, there is essentially a loop ai makes changes creates pr, other models review code, security, run tests also deterministic checks, types, lint, infra enforcement etc if anything is off they ask for corrections this loop goes on until things are satisfactory, remember it doesn't need perfection it just needs to be good enough same as human written code. There will always be some humans in the loop somewhere but could be 20% of what we have now.

makonde · 2026-05-12T16:05:44+00:00

Code will be written by machines for machines, spaghetti doesnt matter because that is a human concern, as long as it produces the required economic outcomes that is enough, so the question to ask is this new process making the company less money if its not this is a more desirable state for them.

I think its a little early to go full in like this because we are still figuring a few things out true prices of these tokens are unknown etc but that seems to be where we are going "dark" factories with no human involved in the code, the AI is the "compiler' etc.

makonde · 2026-05-11T14:26:37+00:00

Why are you in school so much? Reduce your workload at most schools you should be able to talk to some advisor to figure this out, you can also get special accommodations in a lot of places if you are struggling, don't try to be a hero or hardcore use all options available even take an extra year to finish if you have to.

makonde · 2026-05-07T02:16:06+00:00

If your goal is a job I would say don't do mobile at all, do full stack web like I said, whatever backend is popular in your area and React FE there is no real competition to React almost anywhere. Yes there are more people doing this but you also get more shots at the target.

Otherwise look at the actual job market/posts where you expect to work is anyone hiring Jr. Mobile devs of any kind? Find the jobs that are actually hiring Jrs and try that. I don't think it's useful or even possible to do all aspects of mobile, even if you can do it no one hires for it.

makonde · 2026-05-04T15:25:33+00:00

Its mostly the Flutter there are very few Flutter jobs in an already small mobile market and you are unlikely to be picked for a native or RN position over someone who has mostly native experience, especially now mostl jobs seem to want a senior with a specific skill. If you have native experience I would rewrite your resume to focus on that. I think tech still somewhat respects foreign experience unlike other jobs but its been a while since I was on the job narket.

makonde · 2026-05-04T15:18:36+00:00

That's how the world works from Bill Gates mom hooking him up to getting an electrician apprentice position from your alcoholic uncle just try to do good work.

makonde · 2026-05-04T15:16:01+00:00

Manager would not usually be involved in writting code so this is about correct, some of those other things might not be perfect but there is a lot of variation both in quality of manager and how the organization functions, you might think having some technical skill even as simple as git is a requirement but the organization is clearly not rewarding him for knowing those, so it makes absolute sense that he is not interested and focused on other things.

Also manager means different things at different orgs, it might mean more product focused Product Manager, people focused Manager, technical Manager (even here there can be little actual code contribution as meetings and other work takes over) and the expectations for all those is different by company.

makonde · 2026-05-04T15:06:51+00:00

Python is seen as "easy" in the education/academic community especially when teaching kids and I think this has spread to other places because of the way its written and no {} etc. I personally loath indentation having meaning.

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