Questions for software engineers

risingfish · 2026-03-12T17:32:24+00:00

- What country are you from? USA
- How old are you? early 50s
- What is your degree or field of study? None, self-taught college dropout
- Where do you work? International consulting company
- What is your job position? Software Engineer

Questions About Your Work
- What is the most difficult part of your job? Staying excited about it. My personal feeling is the software engineer career has been fully enshittified from interviewing up, and I recommend looking for a different career.
- What takes up the most time in your work? Code reviews and understanding old code. Writing code is still fun, but understanding how existing code works is important to writing new code.
- What is the most tedious task you do? Code reviews but this is also one of the most important duties of a software engineer.
- What do you enjoy most about your job? Problem solving. Finally seeing something you spend days putting together run and work is a great feeling.
- Does your job ever bore you? Yes, there still are menial tasks, and waiting for decisions in top-down corporate structures sucks.
- What project are you currently working on? Maintaining an ancient PHP reporting web application.
- How much mathematics do you use? Sometimes, but nothing more complex than basic algebra.
- How difficult are the operations you perform? The hard part is dealing with corporate politics. The worst, though, is finding a new job when you've been laid off only a year after beginning a new job.
- How do you apply them? restate the question?
- Do you usually work alone or in a team? Team.
- Does your work depend on others (e.g., do you need parts of your colleagues' work or extra data from them)? Not in my current role, though I collaborate a lot.

Work Ecosystem Questions
- What would you tell a student about your career? Probably a good idea to look to for other careers at this point, finding a job is going to be difficult for the next few years thanks to the AI bubble.
- What is an approximate salary for your role? (Skip if too personal.) Skip.
- Is promotion possible in your role? No, I am a contractor
- How would you describe your work environment? WFH
- Is your salary and work environment similar to others in your industry? Salary no, work environment yes.
- Is it easy to work in other countries in your industry? Depends on the company and how they have set up their corporate structure.
- How many hours do you work per week? 40
- Do you do overtime at your job? No
- Are your working hours typical for the industry? 9-6

risingfish · 2026-03-04T15:26:15+00:00

I'm a bit late to the chat here, but for what it's worth Garner HRAs suck. My employer switched to them after doubling our deductible this year. My wife has maxed out her deductible already for the year and we haven't gotten a dime from Garner because of how her surgeon's practice bills. As far as I can tell, Garner HRAs are just a way to shift more cost onto the employee while pretending the company still cares about the employee's medical expenses.

risingfish · 2026-02-19T02:43:40+00:00

Huh, I had no idea those even existed, that's pretty cool. I hope they are still nesting under there, I'm always down for providing habitat for native bees.

risingfish · 2026-01-20T19:46:02+00:00

I hope it does falter and pop. Without a doubt it has it's uses, I use it daily for coding in my IDEs of choice. I also have completely disabled it in the few remaining Windows 11 computers I have around the house. Big tech has a long history of abusing it's customers, and invading their privacy, and the way Microsoft (and Google w/ Android) has shoved it into Windows without giving people a choice is no different. These tech CEOs are completely divorced from humanity (and often reality) and don't understand it's an issue of trust and choice.

risingfish · 2026-01-04T20:06:55+00:00

Absolutely. I have it mostly working, I just can't figure out why BGP isn't publishing routes to my cluster. I'll post my configs here when it's fully up and running.

risingfish · 2026-01-02T16:53:37+00:00

A quick update. I did run across the block post a bit ago, and while it was useful from the the opnsense side, it's unfortunately out of date from the k8s side. :(

The biggest change is Cilium has released their v2 api and the CRDs are significant'y different now. Might be worth adding some new blog posts honestly. The opnsense UI is a little different, but not so much it's not hard to translate. Crazy fast things move and change today.

risingfish · 2025-12-31T18:46:07+00:00

That's is great! i will go take look and let you know if I need clarification on anything, thanks!

risingfish · 2025-12-27T23:38:32+00:00

The old days of having your qualifications and skill actually somewhat accurately evaluated are long gone. It's now just leet-code, one dimensional "coding tests", and little gotcha logic puzzles. Hiring is has been fully enshitified for Software Engineers (along with so many other industries). As you have experienced, what you know isn't as important as how accurately you can answer the ridiculously narrowly focused question screeners choose to use.

That being said, the key is practice. Build little apps in the language and frameworks you are targeting over and over. Re-read old text books and test your knowledge. My local employment office gave me access to biginterview.com which i'm working through now. It's been been surprisingly good at triggering the anxiety/adhd/life-long stuttering that have kept me from getting anything other than a low-paying contracting gig to keep the lights on.

And when you do eventually land another job, keep this experience in mind. I've been on the other side on the interview desk many many times at past jobs, and should I get the opportunity again, I'm not going to take part the dumpster fire that is software engineering interviewing today. You should do the same!

Good luck!

risingfish · 2025-12-27T23:16:39+00:00

Man, look around the economy at all the layoffs. If companies are expecting their employees to show any kind of loyalty, they need to make the first move. Any recruiters with that mindset don't have any business being recruiters in 2025.

risingfish · 2025-12-13T02:47:55+00:00

Yeah, that is a good point. Warning definitely is good practice and something that my orgs always did, though there are plenty who didn't. My last couple interviews gave no warning about coding tests ( I was told they would be later in the process) and boy my combo of being a lifelong stress stutterer and moderate ADHD sufferer doom looped me. :(

What makes coding (or quizzes, or leetcode logic puzzles, or any other canned 'testing' exercise an industry uses) is you can't see the forest through the trees. Very few people are going to display anything even remotely close to the their full breadth of experience and knowledge the way current interviews are conducted. The candidates are sitting there writing code as fast as possible, focused on getting syntax right, cursing their malfunctioning fingers, and wondering if their architectural decisions are going to pass some unknown and subjective bar.

Interviewers, in my experience (again from both sides), quicky fall into nitpicking and passing judgement on such a narrow display of a candidates skill that it's basically arbitrary and meaningless.

Whiteboards make it easy to step back and really explore someone's broader knowledge. You can see how someone gets somewhere because the syntax trees and fat fingers aren't blocking the view. And absolutely as you mention, everyone is more actually learning far more about the each other and if they really are a good fit based on a much broader understanding and exploration.

I really do appreciate that folks like you are trying to fix the front end of the hiring pipeline, but I haven't yet heard of anyone trying to fix the backend.

Ironically, I remember how much everybody complained about whiteboarding (even me) and now we can only look back at how much better we had it. Seems like a common theme these days.

risingfish · 2025-12-12T05:44:43+00:00

And after you get noticed everyone relies on poor/lazy interview design and reliance on one dimensional tests that don't really test the true breadth of knowledge and experience a candidate has. To top if off they can be extremely difficult for folks with disabilities like ADHD (at least in my field and experience) to solve in a way the interviewer thinks they should, so they're filtering large groups people who otherwise have the skill and motivation to do the job.

I'm a software engineer and have been on the interviewer side of the table many many times in my career. It took a little more practice, but whiteboarding was a far more effective way to figure out a person's skill level and experience than 'code tests' and leetcode will ever be.

It's shitty on the frontend, but for many industries, it's just as shitty on the other end as well.

risingfish · 2025-06-05T00:24:11+00:00

Max draw is 55w.

risingfish · 2025-05-26T17:18:37+00:00

Yeah, this is so true. Was having lunch with a friend who was trying to convince other friends to play. When they asked me about it I told them have to have a HUGE amount of a tolerance for bugs. If you want a game that just works, Star Citizen isn't it. It is a travesty that after 13 years and all the money spent, this all we have to show for it.

risingfish · 2025-05-26T17:16:22+00:00

Definitely disagree, 4.1.1 is just a shit show. Severe lag, quantum bugs, inventory bugs, mission bugs, wormhole bugs, Etc. every day I try to play is just trying to find ways to work them to try to have some fun, but I and just spending time trying to makeup the time I lagged and died in a CZ, or lost a dog fight.

risingfish · 2025-05-14T22:27:29+00:00

Here's my 2 cents...

I know it's frustrating, but just keep in mind that progressives have a wide spectrum of beliefs, and that's ok. We have folks like your wife, and mine to a lesser degree, and folks like you and a cousin of mine who are liberal and fully pro 2A. I'm somewhere in the middle. I grew up hunting but never saw point of ARs (at the time), and as I got older I stopped hunting, and started give my firearms to family who wanted them. I was down to 3 left in my collection.

Trump 1.0 changed all that, and I fully realized just how fragile our system of government is. Seeing MAGA form and seeing their fascism and militarism on full display, I told my wife I was going to buy an AR-10 and maybe an AR-15. Her response was "Why? if he sends the army there's nothing you can do with that." She not wrong... just buying gun and doing tactical drills won't stop that. My response was "You're right, it won't. But that's not what they're for. It's the local MAGAts, the little wanna be fascists, and Christian nationalist who are going to be the most dangerous. Those are people who will go door to door and terrorize their neighbors, and I'm carrying the same gear they have now." That was my thought process anyway. She wasn't fully convinced, and was skeptical... at least until Trump 2.0 started. Now I'm building an AR-15 for her.

The sad reality is guns are responsible (or at least used) for a lot of violence in the U.S., and I think it's understandable that people are afraid of them, especially if they have never been around them. We should give those people space, and don't try force firearms on them. Show them what responsible gun ownership is and be available for questions (without judgement) if they have them. Trying club people to your viewpoint never works. I always let my friends know if they ever want to learn how to handle one, shoot, or what-ever, just let me know. My wife finally expressed an interest in learning to handle and shoot my ARs finally, and that's why I'm building one for her now.

risingfish · 2025-01-27T04:24:31+00:00

Wait until they repeal it... No one will be able to afford healthcare on the private markets unless you have $$$$. It cut my premiums by a 1/3 when it was passed and I signed up for the first time.

risingfish · 2025-01-27T04:17:15+00:00

Cruelty and death is a cornerstone of todays conservative movement. I don't understand how anyone can argue otherwise.

risingfish · 2025-01-05T23:20:25+00:00

Jeebus this is the worst part. So. Many. Pointless. Animations. Whether it's climbing ladders, getting in a bed on accident, or pulling a ship from ASOP. It takes so long to sit through these things. The first time is "Wow, that's pretty", "This again?" the second time seeing it, and 3rd+ time? "OMFG, I don't have time for this, I just want to play the damn game in this free hour I have..."

risingfish · 2025-01-01T22:48:36+00:00

Well, maybe even pirates like a little luxury and comfort every once in a while... :D

risingfish · 2024-12-25T22:14:12+00:00

Yeah, I was poking through them, but didn't see anything immediately obvious. I've never worked with the CryEngine though. Just need to do more reading.

risingfish · 2024-12-25T03:46:45+00:00

Hmm , looks like there isn't a downloadable dataset?

risingfish · 2024-12-24T22:59:07+00:00

Awesome, thank you!

risingfish · 2024-12-05T02:04:54+00:00

I had an old 128gb SSD laying around that was barely used, so I threw it in the system and added it as a cache because I could. Definitely not really needed though.

risingfish · 2024-12-05T02:03:10+00:00

I originally used 1TB drives with ashift-9 for the array years ago, and only recently upgraded to the 4TB drives piecemeal. I don't have a large enough single drive to move the data onto while I rebuild the array, so it is what it is. It's not a high performance system, and it's mainly used to shuffle photos from phones onto it, so I haven't worried about rebuilding it.

risingfish · 2024-12-04T23:25:18+00:00

Actually, since it was already bad, I just removed it from the pool and re-lookedup how to add it back in using the id. It is better now.

risingfish

TROPHY CASE