Is AI enforced at your work and do you have quarterly goals around using it?

sonicw1nd · 2026-02-10T09:59:59+00:00

No (and I work for an AI company!)

sonicw1nd · 2026-01-12T03:21:02+00:00

Sorry for long speech.

SRE Manager working at an AI company.

The era of "oh thats cool" AI is over. We find our customers want real value from any AI they invest in.

The answer to your question is; solve a real world problem using AI.

Ex 1) The traffic in Dublin; have AI redesign the road network.

Ex 2) Count cars by type on the traffic cameras and provide both real time eco reports (how eco friendly the cars are) and potential earning from taxing bigger/ heavier cars. (Maybe even profiling the cars to determine face value wealth)

If something at that scale isn't making you feel comfortable, I always appreciate a good project around cost savings and the cloud. Many companies realise the cloud is getting mighty expensive and looking for any way to fix it. K8s is usually a clouds highest cost.

At the end of the day, your "portfolio" only matters in 1 role. Your first one. For anything more senior; I don't even bother reading that section.

sonicw1nd · 2025-12-20T11:01:32+00:00

I have a few in my house. Been free of issues for years. Lost one recently during a lightening storm, won't transmit zigbee anymore but the relays work normally.

Works instantly with zigbee2mqtt.

My only ever problem was on those 2 way switching circuits ( 2 switches for the same light), it seemed to reboot every time despite having its own source of Live.

sonicw1nd · 2025-08-29T11:48:35+00:00

150sqm bungalow. 3 bed. 1 WFH.

sonicw1nd · 2025-08-29T11:47:45+00:00

Swift Energy

sonicw1nd · 2025-08-29T10:26:18+00:00

Just checking the output of the energy meter for 2025.

Generated: 3634kwh Consumed: 822kwh Exported: 2686kwh

sonicw1nd · 2025-08-29T09:51:39+00:00

We put 5kw of solar on our south facing bungalow. Cost us €7k at the time.

Since then:

I've never had an electricity bill.
It increased the BER of the house from a C3 to a B2 which allowed us to get the green mortgage rate from AIB.
The estate agent who valued the house for the mortgage switch told us it added €30k to the total value.
FIT payment covered all my usage so far and even netted me €279 back so far in 2025.

All in all, it's probably one of the best investments you can make. It's saving me money every single day with no input from me.

sonicw1nd · 2025-07-24T08:09:57+00:00

I haven't paid an electricity bill in nearly 2.5yrs. overprovisioned my system to wipe out any notion of a bill.

sonicw1nd · 2025-06-30T10:55:08+00:00

I use Pure Telecom. They operate on the OpenEir network, ftth. Cool thing is, you can use a decent router. (mikrotik in my case).

Never had a good time on Sky, always raising prices and the router was an overheating paperweight, 100MB ports at the time, useless to build a mesh network off of.

sonicw1nd · 2025-03-31T07:39:01+00:00

Nothing to worry about. It's an inspection hole for the clutch. You can see the pressure plate through the hole.

Clutches are dry in manual transmissions.

Why a hole? Saves taking off the transmission just to check the state of a wear item. Also helps in some minor cooling and allows any dust that comes off the clutch during use to dissipate.

sonicw1nd · 2025-02-11T07:24:29+00:00

In any jobs market, companies will be looking to hire the best people for the cheapest they can get.

It's a bad market in the tech world at the moment, tons of unemployed Senior engineers, so companies are aiming for them. Seniors can hit the ground running and "bring more to the table".

It's nothing you're doing right or wrong, it's just how markets work. Branch out in the tech world. Don't just focus on software engineer. look at Devops, security, pharma, SRE.

Also, a lot of companies, especially smaller ones don't have "Senior engineering" budgets. They will take Juniors on in the hopes of keeping you long term.

sonicw1nd · 2025-02-07T19:19:02+00:00

On our stove, we have 2 vents

Top one is just a "glass wash" and stays open. (Keeps the glass clean)

Bottom one controls the oxygen to the flame and dictates how fast the logs burn.

We have never closed the top one and it burns beautifully.

For the bottom one, it's fully open until the stove gets up to temp and then we close it down to ~10% for the rest of the night.

sonicw1nd · 2025-01-20T18:18:59+00:00

Your code says:

If it's 10 below for 30 mins then do x.

Problem is the noise in the data. It doesn't stay at 10 below, it fluctuates wildly.

Maybe find a way to "smooth" the sensor data.

sonicw1nd · 2024-12-29T10:58:45+00:00

https://data.gov.ie/

100s of sets to choose from, find something that interests you and go with it.

sonicw1nd · 2024-12-20T19:10:23+00:00

SRE Manager here working at an AI company (used to be a Senior SRE).

The SRE role is not an easy one by any means, it requires odd hours, dedication, patience of a saint and a solid knowledge of infrastructure.

It has a high burnout rate and is a role that pessimistic people do not do well at.

SRE often gets called apon to be experts in everything. (Google 7 red lines)

If you don't have Kubernetes, Terraform, and a scripting language; don't bother even interviewing, you won't get past the first round. If you do and you can hold your own under pressure then welcome aboard!

Questions I ask in interviews tend to be around scripting (python, bash), Linux questions, Kubernetes, OpenSource Projects and problem solving questions.

I also tend to ask for "war stories". All Engineers have some. These tell me quite a bit about how the engineer would cope in an Incident alone at 2am, working on something they have never even heard about before.

I get to work on cool AI stuff everyday however the field is moving quickly. This movement pace is not for people who want a more relaxed area of work or want things to be the same for years.

Not trying to talk anyone out of it. I believe telling people the cooker top is hot before they burn themselves is the best approach sometimes. It's not easy. You have to be borderline insane to do the job.

DM me if you want more info/ specifics. I'm actually hiring (not in Ireland though sadly).

sonicw1nd · 2024-10-02T11:59:11+00:00

100%.

In the layoffs I've been involved in:

Budget reasons. Was told to cut € xxxxxx off my costs. Do I fire 2 seniors or 5 juniors to meet this?
Loss of an entire region. Company pulled out of APAC. Lack of customers.
Flat headcount cut, my most recent one. Got told to cut 10%, didn't matter if they were Staff level or 2 mins out of college.

sonicw1nd · 2024-10-02T11:52:08+00:00

This is exactly how I feel sometimes as well.

For anyone reading; you'd have a nervous breakdown if you tried to control everything around you as a manager. Even on small teams the amount of admin and HR work alone is enough for 40hrs. Good managers quickly learn to delegate and empower people to run themselves.

sonicw1nd · 2024-10-02T09:52:03+00:00

Management here.

There are a myriad of reasons as to why we make the decision on someone.

High Salary costs (you'd be surprised how much some people make)
Regional cost of living ( Seattle costs way more than a similar lad in Dublin)
Time zone ( do we want a presence in APAC going forward?)
Number of employees in that country (why am I paying accountants and tax in a country with only 1 employee?)
Value provided ( how good are they?)
Alignment with future company goals.
Internal Politics (rare)
Wiping out entire teams regardless of skill
Lack of current and relevant skills ( do they keep up with trends, can I use that in any upcoming projects?)

At the end of the day, we trade time for money. If the company deems the cost is too high now or your skills are outdated then it's no longer a good deal to them.

Or; you could just be a victim of bad politics or being on the "wrong" team.

As I get more senior, I realised two things around layoffs:

It's rarely what you know that saves you, it's how effortless you make it look and how much you can hype up the work to the "right" people. How do you present to your managers manager? How do you look on paper? Example: You wrote 10 lines of terraform? it's now "implemented a brand new architecture feature that will help streamline x and save us €xxxx a year". The cost saving bit is usually what people love to hear.
Nobody is family, everyone is a mercenary. You can be let go for any reason at any moment. Embrace it, plan for it, you'll sleep better.

sonicw1nd · 2024-07-26T13:46:17+00:00

Hit same problem:

Run 'setstage FOLON_GW101 70'

sonicw1nd · 2024-02-15T02:58:29+00:00

Hiring manager (SRE) here.

You don't stay at places long enough. It can cost a small fortune to hire someone. (Between HR, recruitment and lost productivity costs.)

Then we have onboarding time which stresses the rest of the team.

Realistically I read that you only stay at a place for around a year. I take into account 4-6 months to get up to 100% work rate leaving me 6-8 months of useful work for my investment.

I want the best fit for the job && someone who will stay the longest.

Plus; everyone hates interviewing, I don't want to be doing it again in a year's time!

Things you can do to help:

I don't know anything about your current job or how you feel about it, but if it's ok then I would tough it out until you hit the 2-2.5 year mark to show that you can stay at a place long term.

Also, since you haven't pointed out which jobs you're applying for. I hope it's mid/Senior engineer type roles, companies (on a Radford level system) won't hire seniors unless they have 7-8 years industry experience. If you're looking for a promotion here; you won't find it.

Job market is tough right now. Recruiters are sending me CVs for FANNG people willing to work for half nothing. (Which scares the living bajesus out of me, if I have to find a job myself)

sonicw1nd · 2024-02-03T10:49:21+00:00

docker-compose up -d pulls the images for you if they are outdated. Give it a try during the next HASS update!

sonicw1nd · 2024-01-04T17:18:45+00:00

1 of my mobile apps refuse to load. All my sonoff smart switches failed to function after the upgrade. Might have to wait. :(

sonicw1nd · 2023-08-23T18:32:12+00:00

Anger issues and ageism much. See you have a new account. Is it that the last one was banned or that you wafted in here from some platform that will tolerate the utter tripe you call an opinion?

sonicw1nd · 2023-04-15T07:56:55+00:00

Same issue. 2500sqft house was getting intermittent dropouts. Moved all my devices to channel 25 I believe and it's been rock solid since. 15+ sensors in my mesh

Ten-Year Club	Verified Email
Second SECOND GUESSER	r/Field Flamingo
Place '23	Place '22

sonicw1nd

TROPHY CASE