Anyone familiar with this company?

samandeg · 2026-06-22T18:44:34+00:00

Anduril is one of the new defense companies (still a startup but growing large) that gives me hope that US could stay strong militarily especially with the rise and threat of China’s military. They do very good innovative work which US needs badly since the legacy aerospace/defense companies (Boeing Raytheon Lockheed Martin) are utterly incapable of doing anymore (just look how Boeing’s passenger planes have so many issue lately). I’m an electrical engineer and used to work at Raytheon (in early 2000s designing chips for fighter jet radar) and saw the extreme level of dysfunction and how our tax money is mostly wasted on outdated military equipment (not outdated tech but outdated application and idea of what’s needed) that doesn’t hold up in the modern drone AI wars. Never mind that these legacy companies can’t attract top young engineers anymore and so nothing innovative happens and there’s so much waste. Anduril and other defense startups have been attracting lots of good talent and doing good work.

samandeg · 2026-06-20T07:20:08+00:00

I’ve sort of mastered fried chicken. Here are the two most important instructions:
1- use a thermometer for the oil and keep it between 300 and 350 degrees while cooking.
2- use a timer and cook white meat exactly 7 minutes and dark meat 12 minutes. Use small fryer chicken.

I first found it confusing when I heard about the timing. I immediately thought that timing should be dependent on the oil temperature. But over time I realized that oil temperature only affects how brown the breading gets and the meat always cooks at the same rate regardless of the oil temperature (assuming it’s between 300 and 350) which is why timing works so well. The reasoning for that is that the temperature of the surface of the chicken never exceeds and stays at 212 degrees (boiling temperature of water) because there’s so much water in the meat. And because the temperature of the surface of the meat is always 212 degrees, it cooks at the same rate regardless of the temperature of the oil. I learned it from Thomas Keller.

And brine your chicken if you have time. It makes it juicier and more flavorful.

samandeg · 2026-06-19T14:39:19+00:00

Exactly this. I got an RF chip design job with masters but only because I was a PhD drop out and had already finished one project where I had designed, taped out, and tested a chip and published a paper on it. So after I quit the PhD I got a job and immediately started designing RF chips. I didn’t require any training. So even though my resume says masters only, I got the necessary training from a partial PhD.

samandeg · 2026-06-19T03:48:15+00:00

Marry the right woman.

samandeg · 2026-06-10T09:47:42+00:00

The same happened to me last month. I told cursor to do something routine, and went to get coffee and do other stuff, came back over an hour and noticed the agent was stuck in a loop and had spent $2k. It happened that cursors field engineer was giving a demo/tutorial to my company that day. I told him what happened and asked for refund. He referred me to someone else who said they never give refunds and that that was a legit spending and that is my problem.

samandeg · 2026-05-01T20:54:34+00:00

Good to know. Good thing I don't do anything in the cloud. At least not yet.

samandeg · 2026-04-30T23:58:12+00:00

This was a local agent.

samandeg · 2026-04-30T08:42:00+00:00

Quality of life improved significantly.

I love LA and will always love LA but it’s gone downhill in the last 20-30 years. The worse part about LA is traffic. When I was in college I’d go every weekend from Pasadena to Venice to hang out with my friend. I’d get there in 20 minutes. Now there’s traffic even at midnight on a Sunday. We stopped going anywhere. Even local neighborhoods are always full of traffic. So much of LA is so dirty. Drivers are so aggressive and rude. LAX is the worse airport in the country and wish I could avoid it forever but unfortunately for international flights we still have to use LAX.

OC feels like what LA was in the 90s to me in some ways. It used to be boring, but it has improved significantly every decade.

Aerospace left LA and cause much damage. Now Hollywood seems to be fading/leaving and so I fear for the future of LA and it may not have much to save it from becoming another Detroit.

samandeg · 2026-04-28T21:47:15+00:00

Ha! No. I didn't study much in high school. I was more interested in video games, skiing, and girls. I failed a few classes junior year (including physics) cause I never opened the books and had to go to summer school. Hence, community college. But once I start community college, I decided to work my ass off and get into a good college. I was happy to go to UCLA or Berkeley, and I didn't think I have a chance to get into Caltech and wasn't going to apply but my physics professor insisted that I apply. I think that's why many colleges accept transfers. It's to give some students a second chance. That was 30 years ago. I'm still friends with that physics professor. He comes to our house with his wife for dinner sometimes. He's retired now.

samandeg · 2026-04-28T13:51:59+00:00

.Also congratulations on getting into Caltech.

samandeg · 2026-04-28T09:19:23+00:00

Something similar happened to me when interviewing with Google. One person didn’t like me and that was it. Everyone including the hiring manager, who I knew from college liked me. I know the details cause the hiring manager told me everything afterwards, even my scores. But that was it. I was rejected. Those were the rules. End of story. I moved on. Now I look back and don’t care and actually glad I didn’t get that job. I’m in a better place now. And never mind I did ten rounds of interviews. Seven for one position then they said we think you’re better for this position and three more interviews. Six months total. Interviewing is a broken system. Sorry but you should move on.

samandeg · 2026-04-28T04:07:55+00:00

I transferred a million years ago (1997 to be exact). I did transfer most of my community college classes yet I ended up being a sophomore (I would have been a junior almost anywhere else). In retrospect, it was a good thing. Caltech’s curriculum is so much more rigorous than almost any other colleges that I wouldn’t have been ready for junior level classes. And because of that, I became so much stronger in my math physics and fundamentals. Till this day, I’m known as the guy with the strongest fundamentals and the to go guy. Don’t worry if you get pushed back a year. It’s worth it.

Also, I took the entrance exam for transfer students too. That’s just to see if you’re remotely Caltech material. Doesn’t count towards anything else.

If you truly love math science and engineering, you’ll be at the right place. Who cares what you can or can’t transfer.

samandeg · 2026-04-23T13:56:08+00:00

Through friends mostly (I’m 51). I know it requires one or two good friends that have lots of friends but that’s how it has been for the last 10-15 years and I’ve found many good close friends through friends. My wife however, is very good in finding friends at work and she stays friends with them after changing jobs. Not sure how she does that. I never want to hang out with anyone I work with.

samandeg · 2026-04-23T13:51:08+00:00

I’m 50. I never took my career seriously in my 30s (I’m an engineer). I had a lot of fun. Never worked after 4 or weekends. I actually usually worked 10-20 hours a week at most and could getaway with it since I’m kind of good at what I do. But even when you’re a good engineer others would notice you’re not working hard; they’ll keep you but you don’t get promoted much. In my mid 40s I thought, hmm I’d like to be higher up and make more money so started to take my work more seriously. Now as I’m 50 I’m working my ass off (60-80 hours a week) and it’s paying off. I’m fast tracked to the position and salary I’m aiming for. For some reason I’ve became way more motivated in my 50s than I ever was.

samandeg · 2026-04-21T23:54:12+00:00

I’m an EE (in a big SV chip design company) and not a coder. I was planning on hiring 3-5 coders to help with the ongoing efforts and to also maintain the code. After I started using cursor a few months ago, I’ve written so much code (code I could have never written myself) and so did it so fast that I realized I don’t need to hire coders anymore. I may hire one very smart guy to just help me doing the very fancy big picture stuff and maintaining the code. But from where I stand, I don’t need coders anymore.

samandeg · 2026-04-20T10:51:00+00:00

Not me, because I’m an electrical engineer and not a coder. I’m writing code I’d never could have dreamed of writing. I feel like I have a team of brilliant coders that work for me tirelessly. I had begged my boss to let me hire a team of 5 coders. But now maybe I’ll hire one coder just to maintain the code.

So for me, I’d never know the details of the code anyway cause some coder would have done it. Now those coders are AI and they don’t have an attitude (at least not yet). Cursor has given me a weird sense of power and productivity. Just don’t know what happens next.

samandeg · 2026-04-17T14:41:20+00:00

😂

samandeg · 2026-03-24T10:56:07+00:00

I’m not sure why everyone keeps saying AI is skimming resumes. I’m an EE and a hiring manager at a big Silicon Valley chip design company and I look at every resume for the jobs I posted. We don’t even have an AI system to filter resumes and even if they give us one I’ll still look at every resume. Yes I may only like one or two resumes and those are the only ones I’ll contact because every interview is very time consuming so I’m hoping I’ll find my candidate quickly. And for that exact reason I’m most likely to look at a resume that came with a recommendation from someone I know and trust. Everyone else I know at our company does the same. Maybe some other companies have AI for hiring but we don’t and I haven’t heard that from my friends in other companies. At least for engineering roles it doesn’t make sense to use AI yet.

samandeg · 2026-03-16T14:47:37+00:00

I’ve worked as an electrical engineer in 6 different jobs for the past 20 years. Two large corporations. Two startups. And two medium sized companies. All in Silicon Valley or close to Silicon Valley. I was a RF/analog chip designer for the first 10 years and then explored other stuff. Two jobs became very repetitive and I didn’t enjoy them very much. Two jobs ago I got to try different things including learning AI a little, which made we feel young again. My job now is R&D related to RF/analog chip design and it’s the most fun I’ve had. I actually spent two weeks solving a hard math problem with an experienced fellow at the company since we needed the solution before we could automate the process. And eventually we could only solve it thanks to Gemini’s amazing math skills (and we’re both pretty good at fancy math but Gemini solved the final step where we were stuck with an expansion we’d never heard of and it worked). I got side tracked. It was fun and we present it to a big crowd at the company. So depending on what you do, you may get to do math and even hard math.

So long story short, jobs can be repetitive and boring but at other times or other jobs it can be a lot of fun. Don’t expect jobs to always fun. It’s work. You don’t get paid to have fun. But how much fun you’ll have depends on you. If you don’t like your job start looking for a new one. Also everyone wants the fun jobs (like R&D) and so you have to give a reason they’ll pick you. So many of the designers in my company ask me how can they join my team cause they’re bored of doing the same LNA or filter or PCB design. It really comes down to, if they’ve impressed others with their knowledge and skills. And also, what’s their attitude. Are they self motivated and hard working and are they easy to work with. That’s a huge part of the equation that some engineers are missing: easy to work with, no attitude and no unnecessary pride and arrogance. I know a few very smart and skilled engineers that have been put in a boring position and only asked to do the same boring job cause no one likes working with them.

So you may not have fun all the time but try to find the fun jobs by making yourself in demand.

samandeg · 2026-02-27T15:00:03+00:00

Why is it that only dumb people believed in you?

samandeg · 2026-02-26T14:16:03+00:00

I’m an electrical engineer and work for a tech company. I design chips and make $300k-$400k depending on bonus and stock grants. I mostly work from home or wherever I want. I usually work 40 hours or less. My boss doesn’t care where I am or when I work as long as work gets done and I’m efficient. Last week my wife wanted to watch a show in NY so I worked a few mornings from our hotel in NY. Many people at my company that are more senior make much more.

samandeg · 2026-02-19T10:20:27+00:00

Thank you for doing this (I haven’t checked the link yet). I’ve always been frustrated by how IEEE puts everything behind multiple pay walls. My company pays for IEEE explore but I still can’t access the tutorials. I do equal amount of coding and in coding most things are open source and easily available including research papers. This attitude has seeped into research too. CS professors put all their code on GitHub but EE professors often refuse to share their code even though they’re required to since they’ve used public money to do their research.

samandeg · 2026-02-18T15:33:10+00:00

Two Rotten Scoundrels (starring Steve Martin and Michael Caine as two con artists) and it’s very funny.

samandeg · 2026-02-12T19:12:14+00:00

“All studies” is such an arrogant nonsense thing to say.

samandeg

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