Oldie Programming: Career Advice, Questions, Change of Directions

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Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

AskYourself posted:

I've worked at place where they don't ask to write code on whiteboard, but rather ask design and technical questions, and some of these place were great.

Yeah, that was my interview at my current place. I think at a certain point you stop getting the gotcha programming challenges because the assumption is that you've amassed enough of a body of knowledge and work that you can ramp yourself up on whatever language the company uses.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2016 15:40

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 09:54

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

necrobobsledder posted:

Ruby is going to be the new Java but still cooler than Java for a good long

hah

# ¿ May 17, 2016 02:16

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

The real answer is not to be a hipster and do C# and/or Java.

# ¿ May 17, 2016 13:58

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

Eggnogium posted:

Don't use ==

# ¿ Jun 29, 2016 23:04

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:

The thing to realize about depression is that cause and depth of someone else's depression can't really be correlated with the cause and depth of your own. Tons of workers have it hard. but in my career I've been through a couple of things, including but not limited to (and most of these didn't happen at Reddit):

Boss repeatedly shaming me in front of others within the company for an unattainable deadline they set, me suggesting five new projects of strategic value to switch off something I really hated doing - and denied the opportunity to switch off as each was built, hired-for, and proven successful by others, accidental firing (yes, really), narcissistic coworker(s), someone who didn't like me writing humiliating lies about me to a couple thousand people, and a possible case of gender discrimination (which is loving bizarre given that I'm a cis half-white/half-asian male privileged with a good education).

gently caress man, "a job as nice as working at Reddit." I love Reddit, I truly do, and met several of the best people I know there (nearly all fired/left by now), but at some point there's more dignity in drinking sewage. Any job that asks you to give so much of yourself had better reward you handsomely for it. If you have a cushy high-paying programming job that makes you feel like poo poo, you deserve to tell yourself you're not happy and find something better.

The worst thing you can do in that situation is to deny your sadness with "but other people have it worse and aren't as sad as I am".

imo these sound like the trappings of a sensitive man-boy which is kind of appropriate given reddit's involvement in the story

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ¿ Jul 22, 2016 11:44

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:

One of the nice things about having worked at reddit: I've seen worse for longer from people more coherent than you. Good try. Hah!

Truthfully, I wasn't trying to make you feel bad or insult you. My point was that your list of grievances are things that happen as a consequence of living and working in the world. It's ok that your experiences have made you feel depressed and I'm not trying to minimize your feelings, but there's something to be said for trying to be less sensitive at work.

Case in point, a boss shaming you over a deadline can happen. It's not a huge deal, you just take them aside after and talk to them. Having to work on something you don't like is part of a job and the reason you get paid.

The accidental firing and being harassed at work I'll give you, but burning out over this sort of thing is pretty childish and if you're still in your 20s, the rest of your working life is going to be pretty awful.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2016 17:40

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

If you've never blown a deadline, rightly or wrongly, and been chastised by your boss for it you should be posting in the Newbie Programmer thread.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2016 18:40

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

On the one hand, you can have the boss that says "hey BlinkzOrz, we need to have a little chat in my office" and then figuring out a) what happened, b) why it happened, and c) how to keep it happening again. On the other hand, you can have the boss that, at the weekly team meeting, goes "BlinkzOrz, what the gently caress, you hosed up and let the entire team down. I don't want to see anyone else doing what this shitheel is doing."

Clearly one is an example of poor management but I'm sorry, unless that's the straw that broke the camel's back, it's not something to get worked up over and certainly not a reason to get burned out at work.

I've noticed that in software there's a lot of really thin-skinned people and it makes me sad.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2016 19:09

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

JawnV6 posted:

I've noticed there's a lot of people thrust into management positions without proper training and are happy to perpetuate lovely ineffective processes while hiding behind similar language. To each their own.

Can't it be both?

# ¿ Jul 22, 2016 19:14

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

Of course but at the end of the day is it worth it to take massive offense and burn out of a job because your manager was a dick? I submit: "no it is not."

# ¿ Jul 22, 2016 19:20

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

Seriously dude. Why would you ever talk about this:

Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:

I went to him and consulted him about feeling suicidal on some really bad days

with your boss. Jesus Christ man, I was wrong, you definitely should take a break and get your mind right.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2016 20:20

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

AskYourself posted:

All of my past and current bosses in the last decade I've had been comfortable talking to them about why I'm not feeling well and most would have empathized and helped me out of it.

It is in their best interest to have happy and productive workers after all.

The style of management Blinkz0rz seem to be talking about I would consider normal in the army or at the fastfood chain, but absolutely weird and unacceptable in the software industry, where you pay people for what's in their head rather than how they move their muscle.

There are plenty of other industries that pay people for what's in their head rather than how they move their muscle. Software is the only one I've ever seen that coddles its employees to such a degree. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the perks, but I've noticed that there's a soft of a cult of the man-boy that's pervasive that I really detest.

Pollyanna posted:

Attitude like these are why programmers have such a bad social reputation.

I would absolutely agree that over-sharing, over-sensitive, emotionally stunted man-boys and their whining gives programmers a bad social reputation.

# ¿ Jul 23, 2016 10:51

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

Follow up to Pollyanna's question. My salary is in line with my expectations, but my TC feels lacking. I have a 10% bonus and 1000 options but they're not RSUs so even though the company is fairly well established and went public last summer, I feel like the options aren't going to be worth much and I'm not sure I'll be here through the entire vesting schedule. Thoughts?

I have 7 years of professional experience but most of it has been at an enterprise company that isn't strictly software focused and I transitioned to a more ops and tooling-oriented role last year.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2016 14:45

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

PSA for Massachusetts goons: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/business/dealbook/wage-gap-massachusetts-law-salary-history.html

Not sure if this will apply to recruiters, but this law gives us massive leverage over prospective employers. Plus it's awesome for reducing the wage gap.

e: not until 7/1/18 tho

Blinkz0rz fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Aug 2, 2016

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 21:27

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

kitten smoothie posted:

I don't know about 90 but I've worked at a place that do a 180 day probationary period for new hires.

I can think of several instances where people completely failed to account for any meaningful contribution and were let go at their six month review. We're talking not even checking in a simple bug fix here.

90 days in software seems a little too short to be able to fully get your head into a decent sized code base. I feel like in my history that 75-90 days was where I really started to get a handle on everything I was working with.

This seems like more of an indictment of the code base than anything else. Imo a new employee should make commits on their first day and be able to track down a reasonably complex bug within two weeks or so.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2016 14:46

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

leper khan posted:

I legitimately do not understand how you could be capable of mentoring junior and mid level engineers, but congrats I guess. Or maybe your org is relatively small and doesn't to the I-II-III-IV-Senior I-Senior II-... thing?

I wish I understood title inflation so I could use it to my advantage.

It's entirely arbitrary.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2016 15:15

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:

Not knowing anything about you, this terrifies me, because I expect a senior developer to be very broad and very deep, and that's hard to do in that period of time.

I was once interviewing a prospective intern or junior dev with one of my past coworkers (not at my current company), the other iOS team member (who thought they were lead on the project). They'd been self-taught for four or five years. During this interview, they say something along the lines of "Oh, you don't need to understand Big-O stuff. It's not important, I never learned it."

Well, it turns out this developer was a nightmare to work with, and regressed performance, thread safety, product quality, and code quality. But hey, the got features done on time! Oh, and I spent a ton of time constantly fixing stuff because the features would be broken.

So I guess what I'm saying is don't be a hated developer because you had the time and the chops to grow into a role but rose to your level of incompetence instead.

If you have a hated developer and you're a senior or lead then you're failing at your job. You should be improving the quality of code that your juniors produce and developing them.

Also, I never learned Big-O but can still understand algorithmic performance implications. It's just the notation that never made it in.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2016 18:47

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

MeruFM posted:

I know you're trying to invoke the "no bad child" idea, but at age 23-25 and being in a professional environment, they should at least meet the rest of the team in the middle and realize when their code is just causing trouble for everyone else. Or should college professors be blamed for every failing student?

If you can't see the value in pointing out to a junior developer why their code is causing trouble then I'm not sure what to say. Your job as a senior or lead is most likely to make big, architectural decisions and to develop junior staff. So do your job and develop them.

The alternative is to have a reputation around the office as someone that no one wants to work for because you demand that your underlings work a certain way and then blame them for things without telling them. You don't want to be that guy.

I'm not suggesting that means that there isn't a bar for performance that employees have to hit. All I'm saying is that if your junior dev is completing features but is missing a piece of understanding that's causing trouble for others, teach them what they're doing wrong.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2016 20:24

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:

Well, if this is what you meant to get at, I appreciate the importance of asymptotic complexity.

It's probably worth an hour or two to learn the notation if you already understand the idea.

In more than 10 years of professional software development I've never come across a situation where I've needed it.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2016 12:58

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

necrobobsledder posted:

And tangentially related for those who don't do anything on LinkedIn anymore, look at dis Marissa Mayer resume:

Forgetting the completely fluffy BS that anyone not a celebrity can put down and still be taken seriously, the layout is interesting. Makes me wonder if I should go back to the 2-column resume layout I used for papers in LaTeX because the whitespace use seems more interesting than the usual boring resume.
I absolutely do better than the bottom 50% programmers and I've turned down places where I would be working daily with incompetent programmers, I'm not demoaning my personal situation at all. In fact, I'm probably closer to your attitude than you realize. I'm complaining about wage compression being a trend both in the presence of unions and even with one of the strongest capital policies in the world - this is a bit contrary to the political messaging that it's what unions will do. What software engineer jobs have in common is that they are all individual contributor jobs while managers (thanks to Taylorism institutionalizing managerial worship) have a huge range of compensation oftentimes without any reliable measures resulting in lost returns for investors.
Yeah, being antagonistic about other workers and disciplines is not a step towards a fulfilling career let alone one that's remotely happy (ok, if you're an emotionally stunted twat that likes to abuse people, maybe, but you probably have other issues that keep you from being happy whatever you do). The truth is that there are bad and mediocre people across different fields and it is not fair to judge people in those disciplines based upon... average samples. The average manager is incompetent technically btw (literally no training standards, zero correlation of KPIs to company performance, no measured skills, etc.) so it's not like engineers are exempt from crappy hiring processes and rubrics either. It's easier to evaluate a programmer in skills than it is to determine whether someone would be a good HR manager for a small company.

I would never want to work with you based on your writing. I bet you're insufferable.

# ¿ Aug 23, 2016 22:21

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:

So while we're talking about stocks and stuff my company is privately held and I've started getting stock option grants. How is this supposed to work? Should I go whole-hog and buy a bunch? Buy some? Not buy any? How do you decide? The heady world of for-profits is pretty new to me.

It depends on how the private stock is organized. If you work at an ESOP company you should buy as many shares as possible because they're effectively the same as publicly traded stocks that only change value once a year.

# ¿ Aug 27, 2016 09:02

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

Stinky_Pete posted:

Adding a button isn't a job

So you say, but a lot of people get paid a lot of money to do exactly that.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2016 00:02

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

The March Hare posted:

https://github.com/nodejs/node-v0.x-archive/issues/6960

This was fixed in npm v3.0 which was released over a year ago.

# ¿ Sep 29, 2016 12:53

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

The March Hare posted:

Yeah I should have been more clear, it was more a demonstration of node people saying this behavior was a bug in Windows and accusing people of playing word games when they pointed out that npm probably shouldn't claim it was windows compatible.

I mean, to be fair, path length in Windows is a legacy issue that likely stems from DOS days. MAX_PATH is stupid and should have been removed with Windows NT.

# ¿ Sep 29, 2016 14:15

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

mrmcd posted:

To be fair, node has been a trainwreck in terms of stability since... forever. It even forked for a year because half the community got fed up with poo poo being broken all the time.

Sure, but name a language and ecosystem that wasn't true about at some point in its history. I'm not a huge fan of Node but it's nowhere near the dumpster fire that it was a few years ago.

# ¿ Oct 2, 2016 14:39

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

Thermopyle posted:

You would think this would work fine but js modules are changing all the time. Also, Python is batteries-included, js is not, so you usually have a lot more modules being used.

I mean you could have a policy to just ignore updates, but there are genuinely useful improvements and fixes constantly.

So, whether the same policy works for a python app as for a js app depends on how much importance your organization gives to various factors.

Just be smart and be as restrictive as possible with your dependencies, audit package updates, and have a reliable rollback plan. Also npm shrinkwrap is your friend.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2016 14:31

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

Yeah I'm surprised you're upset by 360-degree reviews. They tend to unearth favoritism and communication issues way better than your standard top-down review process.

# ¿ Oct 29, 2016 15:41

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

Yeah post the repo.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2016 23:20

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

rt4 posted:

Alcohol at work just seems like a disaster waiting to happen. How does it work in a social sense?

We have booze club on Friday afternoon and it's great. My office is pretty social but I feel like I've gotten to know my coworkers a lot better.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2017 03:24

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

rt4 posted:

We can't quite match that salary, but we DO have a ping pong table that cost us a whole $400! What a great place to work

There is a sweet spot, though. I found a place that pays me well, has interesting problems to solve, has a ping pong table, and has fun events and drinking.

It exists, I promise. It just took me almost 10 years to find it.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2017 23:41

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

baquerd posted:

Give it a few more months or a year or two at most. Good culture never seems to endure, or maybe I'm just terribly unlucky.

tbh I've been waiting for it to fade but I've been here for almost a year and a half and it's still going strong.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2017 01:34

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

I was a senior at my old job because I was the first engineer hired into the department.

Current job I'm an SE 2 and it's working out for me pretty great, albeit I'm going to have to work here a little longer before I end up in a leadership position.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2017 20:34

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:

This needs qualification because E2 at some companies is one level lower than the entry-level engineering position

Sorry, our hierarchy goes: SE1 (software engineer), SE2, Senior software engineer, and then Principal software engineer. SE2 is mid-level individual contributor.

e:

2nd Rate Poster posted:

To me focusing on the technical knowledge of a senior is missing the point. That knowledge is just a side effect of having delivered business value for a little while.

I'd liken the impact at each level to something like this (note none of these have any technical checkboxes associated). And I'd argue being able to display the below is more important for career progression than specific technical skills.

Junior -- cant deliver features without oversight

Regular -- delivers features with no guidance

Senior -- delivers projects with little guidance. Output aligns with team goals

Lead -- delivers a team with little guidance.

Architect -- delivers cohesive technical output from eng teams.

VP -- Deliver a cohesive organizational structure

This is very accurate.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2017 22:14

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

I'm sure he's talking about total comp. Salary is probably closer to what you're thinking.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2017 05:48

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

Again, a lot of the numbers being thrown around are total comp and not salary. They make a lot of assumptions about the amount of RSUs being distributed in a given year and the continued value of said stock.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2017 16:16

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

Anyone have a salary range for a SE2 doing devops in Boston?

I consider myself pretty well paid but I got my raise today and my manager had a weird look on his face when he asked if I had any problems with the updated comp so I figured I'd ask.

If you don't want to share your salary that's fine. All I'm looking for is a range that's more reliable than Payscale or Glassdoor.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2017 00:12

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

Yeah

# ¿ Mar 8, 2017 00:23

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

Mniot posted:

When I interviewed there last year, they said the Boston office had a lot of Facebook's version of SRE, security people, and some of the group that make the Hack compiler.

Weird, I had a recruiter contact me about a SRE position that was in NYC, Seattle, or Menlo Park, but specifically not Boston even though I asked.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2017 19:38

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:

Facebook doesn't have SREs, the equivalent is probably PEs (Production Engineer)?

Yeah that was the department/org/group/whatev but it's basically the same thing so I didn't want to split hairs.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2017 03:36

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 09:54

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

minato posted:

I was a SRE at Facebook (they call them Production Engineers over there).

No, you haven't worked on ~global scale systems~ but not many people have, and they recognize that. They'll train you up.

It's kinda hard to characterize what a SRE does, but basically since you're dealing with cattle and not pets, you'll be building the robots that take care of the cattle. Examples of things SREs did:
- build a system to automatically upgrade host kernels as fast as possible, but in such a way that production capacity is not affected.
- Add some monitoring and alarming to a service that uses week-on-week metric comparisons to judge health.
- Write a system that uses shadow production traffic to exercise candidate binaries and does statistical comparisons of various metrics to detect bugs and perf wins (this is an alternative to using explicit tests).
- Rework the compile/link phases to ensure "hot functions" are grouped together so they don't ever stomp on each other's I-cache lines.

At scale, aggregate statistics become more important than individual data points: e.g. not "why is traffic to this machine so slow" but "why is the 95th percentile of request latency to my 50,000 machines so high? Is this problem regional, specific to a certain type of hardware, kernel version, etc?" SREs tend to have broad knowledge about many different things, but not really that deep into any specific thing. c.f. Software Engineers who tend to have deep knowledge in a couple of areas.

I do SRE work for a much smaller company and it's super interesting with lots of cool problems to solve but gently caress me this is cool as hell.

Any Facebook goons know if there's a Production Engineering presence in the Boston office? The recruiter I spoke to was recruiting for NYC, SF, and Seattle but I'm not looking to relocate.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2017 05:08

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Oldie Programming: Career Advice, Questions, Change of Directions

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