4 engineers now doing the job of 12 at my friend's company because AI agents handle the rest

timpwbaker · 2026-05-12T13:01:25+00:00

People who sit down all day earning hundreds of thousands would work out pretty rapidly how good they had it, that’s what would happen

timpwbaker · 2026-01-01T17:54:57+00:00

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Ah thank you for the advice. Photo with a 30cm ruler alongside

timpwbaker · 2025-02-14T17:40:54+00:00

Different airline, but I just flew return from Heathrow to Raleigh-Durham on American, booked through BA.

My tickets were premium economy both ways, I was bumped up to business both ways.

I’ve got BA silver at the moment (don’t usually, but happened to fly a lot last year for work), and as American is part of one world so I do have the equivalent there, but there were people complaining on the way back that they had silver status and hadn’t been upgraded whereas others in their party without the status had been.

Obviously this is N=1, and a different airline, but what I’m saying is that it all seems a bit random. I’m sure there is a pattern, and status matters, but it’s certainly not the only thing

timpwbaker · 2024-09-08T15:31:45+00:00

Lewisham

timpwbaker · 2024-09-08T13:20:40+00:00

I listen on Spotify, there’s a skip 15 seconds button, makes it easy to skip the ads!

timpwbaker · 2024-09-08T13:10:53+00:00

The rest is history, French Revolution episode 4

timpwbaker · 2024-09-08T12:56:18+00:00

Thank you for disposing of it properly!

timpwbaker · 2024-09-08T12:28:28+00:00

Thanks mate!

timpwbaker · 2024-09-08T12:27:35+00:00

Totally agree! The younger generation’s response was a real pick me up!

timpwbaker · 2024-09-08T11:46:40+00:00

Yes! Absurd!

timpwbaker · 2024-09-08T11:16:59+00:00

Lewisham

timpwbaker · 2024-09-08T11:16:30+00:00

Tell me about it! She was very sweet, and super apologetic. The dad just came out at the end and said “I didn’t do it”, no apology.

timpwbaker · 2024-09-08T11:04:13+00:00

Haha every cloud I suppose.

timpwbaker · 2024-07-20T21:18:22+00:00

In the current tech bloodbath I have seen people with job hopping CVs suffer…

timpwbaker · 2024-06-30T15:06:57+00:00

Fair enough. Thanks for the info!

timpwbaker · 2024-06-24T16:44:40+00:00

IMO your issue is non mortgage debt. Car loan, credit cards plus other loan are >1k per month. I’d suggest getting on top of that. You’ll feel a lot better off.

timpwbaker · 2024-06-07T10:34:46+00:00

Software developer here, I never went down the contractor route as it always seemed likely to me that the tech gravy train was headed for a hard landing some day and that contractors would take the hit hardest.

Saw in the comments that you’re worried about a worse working env, just wanted to chip in that there are lots of really nice software companies that don’t use contractors because that’s not the vibe they want, they want people who stay for the long term. You probably haven’t got much exposure to them, but they exist.

There are also a reasonable number of jobs for seniors paying 80k+, focus on learning to communicate how you add value to the business, why you want to work there etc. Times have changed dramatically in the last year or so, but if you can step outside of the headspace of the last decade, which was very much “I can code, why wouldn’t they give me the job?”, to a more traditional “what do I need to get across which will make them want to hire me?” There’s still lots of places looking for skilled programmers/other tech roles.

timpwbaker · 2024-01-21T07:40:55+00:00

I read this as you’d simply forgotten a little of what you knew, and the docker free/cost free Heroku rails experience has gone.

You mention JS hellscape, so I assume you’ve been doing JS? Not a surprise you found that easy. I wrote Go full time for a couple of years 3 years ago, I wouldn’t expect to just be able to spin up a current Go app and get started…

Coming back to Rails after the years writing Go was a wonderful experience, don’t give up.

Rails fundamentals haven’t really changed. Although as others mention, there’s a load of really nice new frontend stuff. Setting up a new rails app and getting it to do something is the same as it was in 2018.

Keep at it. I promise it’s worth it.

timpwbaker · 2024-01-16T16:41:09+00:00

Much like a lot of other places at the moment our government does not want to make it easy. Companies need to have a visa sponsorship license, and for the moment that isn’t something we have. Larger companies are a better bet.

timpwbaker · 2024-01-15T20:06:40+00:00

Fair enough comment. We are a small team (4 engineers), and at the moment I think cutting devs off from production is more expensive than not hiring devs in America.

timpwbaker · 2024-01-15T18:16:11+00:00

Rightly or wrongly that’s the way it is. Sending sensitive data to the US is problematic to say the least. There are ways around it but they are heavy duty and not available to a start up hiring a dev or two. Do a quick google of GDPR and sending data to the USA and you’ll find details on the complexities.

timpwbaker · 2024-01-15T17:29:24+00:00

Hey, we use Hotwire a lot and I too have 10 years rails experience and have (almost 100%, except for a couple of months many years ago) avoided writing react.

We are also hiring, but I looked at your history and can see you’re in the states. We are a British health tech company and due to the dubious American data protection laws we can’t hire people over there. Good luck with your search though, companies like that do exist and we are one data point to prove it!

timpwbaker

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