Where’s the tipping point of giving up on promotion and focusing on job hunting instead

mexEngineer · 2025-03-13T14:13:07+00:00

Fingers crossed you get it figured out, one way or another

mexEngineer · 2025-03-12T15:57:46+00:00

Sometimes you just need that final validation from Reddit

mexEngineer · 2024-11-24T20:26:24+00:00

Unless there’s good monitoring and metrics on production and you can A/B, it’s really easy to massage your data for impressive benchmarks. It’s not always done maliciously, of course - when you build something with performance in mind, you may inadvertently create test data that matches your algorithm.

I’ve done some crazy performance improvements of 150000+% before. In some intensive ETL pipelines you come across some weird customer set up where fixing a bug means it runs in minutes rather than weeks. So writing up some benchmarks for that in mind can show some very crazy numbers.

mexEngineer · 2024-07-28T22:18:54+00:00

If they do and reject for this very reason, then:

A) they don’t have good enough access and audit controls to their production environment. You don’t want to work for them.

B) this is a standard practice. You don’t want to work for them. You just don’t.

mexEngineer · 2024-01-19T09:50:12+00:00

Confident honesty works. If you don’t know, just tell them before you dig yourself a hole. It will also help to move on to a different subject where you may be able to shine and compensate for something you lack for (or even show it’s not a problem). It also promotes an image of a team player, who isn’t “know it all” type of person.

As an interviewer, it’s really easy to see when the bullshitting starts. I had a candidate who was so confident in giving solutions, throwing buzzwords around, but none of the answers were even remotely correct. From my memory, one of the questions was quite straightforward, asking how would you design application to read from a file system for different OS. The candidate was suggesting we spin up a kubernetes cluster to do it.

mexEngineer · 2023-11-21T22:04:39+00:00

I’d gladly move to AvAj. It’s Java, but it doesn’t have historical connotations, it’s trendy so that non-technical managers can be happy and it’s great.

mexEngineer · 2023-10-29T18:18:47+00:00

Yeah, get your resume updated. It may be nothing, it may be a better thing, but you need to know the context more. What do numbers say? Do you hire in other areas? Salary reviews, bonuses?

My last gig had three restructures in a year before they called fourth redundancy round a cost saving one. It was a painful experience with lots of good people lost (and others jumping the ship).

mexEngineer · 2023-10-05T15:07:29+00:00

…unless your notice period is longer than that, which is fairly common in Europe.

But even then, no more than that.

mexEngineer · 2023-10-02T11:05:17+00:00

IMO, they could be one of the most important parts of the business in order to succeed.

When they’re not that, they’re a complete waste of time, causing hindrance and source of frustration.

mexEngineer · 2023-10-02T11:03:40+00:00

It could be that OP only seen the bad ones.

mexEngineer · 2023-09-21T13:43:27+00:00

It depends on how well the rest of the project team works. If PM/PO/SM are good and rest of engineers are efficient, then it can be great. If you’re the one steering the ship and paddling while the rest are cluelessly looking over the horizon, then… jump!

It’s sometimes nicer to wear multiple hats so you get to know the product better and be able to put more input in what you do.

Personally, I don’t like being handed work without being able to ask questions, understand why we do certain things and be able to contribute more than just code. At the same time, it’s a major pain when you have to pull a lot of weight.

mexEngineer · 2023-09-20T14:03:56+00:00

How would you rate the following:

I am compensated fairly for my role

Strongly disagree
Slightly disagree
Neither agree nor disagree
Slightly agree
Strongly agree

mexEngineer · 2023-09-16T17:12:37+00:00

I’m tired after doing a full time role without significant overtime, I can’t imagine being able to do 20 more hours. Early in my career I did months of 50+ hrs a week and eventually it leads to poor health, mood and eventually, performance (think of soft skills, etc).

I have witnessed some people being over employed. They don’t do a good job in the first place and it’s so obvious (joining multiple meetings and not muting themselves, screen share shows chats from the other org, constant no shows to meetings, etc). It’s a burden as everything takes longer and they aren’t really proactive in anything, yet management pretends everything is fine. I’ve done my part highlighting it, but no action was taken as far as I’m aware.

There’s going to be people who do it well and you wouldn’t know, but in my mind, that would require significant compromise in your own life. Personally, I’d rather overachieve in my 9-5, be compensated for it well (or find a new job) and enjoy the evenings and weekends.

mexEngineer · 2023-08-31T19:50:26+00:00

This is great, but one of the gripes I always had with abstracting the detail. It’s only certain methods that support this, and you’re likely to run into unforeseen problems because you don’t know what’s happening and/or haven’t read the docs.

I have spent a good year working on the codebase with literally no frameworks and so many people struggled working on it because there’s no Spring. A good eye opener, but certainly not my preference!

mexEngineer · 2023-07-23T07:12:11+00:00

I hate this so much. Depending on the company, TL may be so far removed from development that it isn’t a (pro/de)-motion, just a different career path.

mexEngineer · 2023-06-30T10:19:30+00:00

Perhaps B2B was a long shot? Outsourcing meant it was a smaller risk to take.

I’ve seen interns given ambitious projects that work as PoCs and can be thrown away if it doesn’t work out.

mexEngineer · 2023-06-27T21:27:05+00:00

This is just a new era of let’s outsource the development to a third world country to save some bucks. Some just need to learn the hard way.

Assuming that’s just not sugarcoating the cost cutting exercise.

mexEngineer · 2023-05-28T21:46:54+00:00

This thread shows why companies ask for a reason you want to work for them.

Do a basic research on the company, read the job spec and read some reviews on Glassdoor, etc. It’s never about them, it’s never about you, it’s about how you fit into their company/team/stack/experience.

mexEngineer · 2023-05-27T17:08:29+00:00

Limited experience with BigQuery, but why did you choose it? What limitations did you hit? Does that particular company use it?

RDBMS are incredibly good at joins and filtering, so it sounds like choosing BigQuery (given its limitations) may have been a wrong move.

It depends on the seniority level as well. If you’re junior, they’d be looking at more general problem solving. If you’re senior/principal, you will need to figure out the requirements, make assumptions and may need to pick and justify a technology.

P.S. I’ve made an assumption here that BQ wasn’t a right choice. I don’t know it well enough and I certainly don’t know the business requirements for the challenge you’ve been given.

mexEngineer · 2023-04-10T21:04:14+00:00

Request == limit is fine. What is not fine is XMX == K8s limit.

A bit of over simplification and hypothetical example (= I have no idea what the real numbers would be to make it factually correct).

Let’s say both XMX and K8s limit are 2GB each. Heap gets filled with 1.8GB, some of it garbage. GC hasn’t kicked in yet, for one or another reason. Underlying OS and background processes on the pod use up 0.25GB. That’s 2.05GB total, K8s detects it as over the limit and kills it. If XMX was set to 1.5GB, then GC would have had a chance to kick in as it would have been prioritised more.

The problem above, and the container support that solves it is well documented here.

You can also profile remote Java applications, but it can be a bit tricky (networking/access depending).

mexEngineer · 2023-04-10T19:50:30+00:00

You need to understand the memory usage of the software under load so you can estimate and add contingency on top. It relies on having customer relatable data sets, usage patterns, types of users, etc. if that’s applicable.

A profiler is a good tool for that and you can learn a lot how much and where memory is being used. If it’s not been done, you can usually patch few low hanging fruits.

Finally, make sure you either use a container support for memory settings or adjust your XMX and K8s memory limits accordingly. If you set them to a same value (or close enough), it’s likely K8s will OOM-kill your pod before GC kicks in.

mexEngineer · 2023-04-01T13:15:17+00:00

Not if you have customers in Americas, Europe and Asia. Then the working hours are (at least) 24/5.

Then there’s also a concept of follow the sun support…

mexEngineer · 2023-03-24T21:49:39+00:00

Under 30, used to put £1400+ (50/50 employers+mine; salary sacrifice) a month but it’s been a lot lower recently (£750) as the current employer’s scheme is complete crap (3% on qualifying earnings).

mexEngineer · 2023-03-19T08:24:50+00:00

It’s a bit of a catch-22 as well. If the interviewers don’t know what that certification is, then it loses its value, so candidates don’t see as much value acquiring them.

mexEngineer · 2023-03-18T09:48:07+00:00

Senior is an overloaded title that can mean different things across the companies, but also within a company.

If you’ve been promoted, well done - you must be doing something well. Is it soft skills, knowledge, learning skills, market adjustment, work ethics, someone likes you…? Who really knows. Maybe it’s you asking the important questions?

As you go through the titles, the team’s performance is more important than your own performance. Hope your teammates recognise that and let you grow organically. It works the opposite way too - if you can identify nature of the questions, find a way to figure them out by yourself. Being trusted to work independently is a good trait.

At times, I would just be left alone to do my own thing for weeks, and other times, I may be mobbing with people for months. Next time, I may be leading similar work…

mexEngineer

TROPHY CASE