regularmother's recent activity

  1. Comment on Understanding the Odin Programming Language in ~comp

    regularmother
    Link Parent
    A bit off topic but could you talk about what you like about go? I've tried a few times in my life (2019, 2022, 2024) and every time I've despised it. What makes it tick for you? What makes you...

    A bit off topic but could you talk about what you like about go? I've tried a few times in my life (2019, 2022, 2024) and every time I've despised it. What makes it tick for you? What makes you reach for it and what are you doing with it?

    My languages are Java, Python, C, Kotlin, C#, Scala, and Clojure in decreasing order of comfort, if that helps with discussion.

    1 vote

  2. Comment on Anyone interested in trying out Kagi? in ~tech

  3. Comment on Cities: Skylines II is free to play until December 9 in ~games

    regularmother
    Link Parent
    I bought No Man's Sky 3 years after release and if that makes me a bad person, then I don't want to be good. I think a realistic question to ask is "how do people and organizations find...

    does that make me a bad gamer? Supporting companies that release unfinished products?

    I bought No Man's Sky 3 years after release and if that makes me a bad person, then I don't want to be good.

    I think a realistic question to ask is "how do people and organizations find redemption?" and "if they fail The Purity Test, are they an outcast forever?"

    It's been a year, Collosal Order released a shitty game (probably at the pressure of the publisher, not the developer, realistically), CO apologized, said they'd fix it, and then they put their words into action. I think that's worth celebrating in these days of ever lower standards and disappointment.

    If redemption can never be achieved, then the only penalty can be the death penalty. Watch out for 25mph speed limits. If it can, you can choose to buy or not buy this game if you think you'd get however much value or more it costs in your local region on its merits today and your expectations of its perceived merits in the future.

    8 votes

  4. Comment on Cities: Skylines II is free to play until December 9 in ~games

    regularmother
    Link Parent
    I started playing it after pre-ordering. It's really fun now, with the popular mods. I have criticisms here and there but on the whole, I do prefer this game to CS1 by a significant margin now. If...

    I started playing it after pre-ordering. It's really fun now, with the popular mods. I have criticisms here and there but on the whole, I do prefer this game to CS1 by a significant margin now.

    If you're on the fence, I urge you to try it.

    5 votes

  5. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~comp

    regularmother
    Link Parent
    For sure - nothing beats zed.dev there- and their AI Assistant is awful in comparison to cursor.ai, but for core development experience, I think Jetbrains still has it. Most code work is...

    For sure - nothing beats zed.dev there- and their AI Assistant is awful in comparison to cursor.ai, but for core development experience, I think Jetbrains still has it. Most code work is maintenance except at the very start of a company and I think optimizing for the 80% over the 20% is right in general.

    That said, if Jetbrains doesn't step up their AI game by leveraging their static linking and tree analysis into improving their automatic context window input to LLMs, they'll fall behind to Cursor and Zed (the latter of which Anthropic is contributing to directly). This is my biggest pain point but they've made good progress quarter on quarter so I'm bullish here.

    2 votes

  6. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~comp

    regularmother
    Link
    Man, I love JetBrains products and am happy that more languages get to be trialed by new users. My experience with JVM language IDEs have been universally excellent, PyCharm has the best static...

    Man, I love JetBrains products and am happy that more languages get to be trialed by new users. My experience with JVM language IDEs have been universally excellent, PyCharm has the best static linking of any Python IDE I'm aware of, DataGrip is chef's kiss, and RustRover is delightful. Their navigation capability really shines in strongly typed languages or languages with type hints on and available. Excited to see some more uptake in the community for my personal favorite group of IDEs.

    5 votes

  7. Comment on The massive US port strike has begun: 'We are prepared to fight as long as necessary' in ~transport

    regularmother
    Link Parent
    This happened with computers in industry generally and especially with programming. In the 70s, software engineers lamented that the invention of compiled languages would mean fewer engineers...

    This happened with computers in industry generally and especially with programming.

    In the 70s, software engineers lamented that the invention of compiled languages would mean fewer engineers would be needed to write a program. Instead, the opposite happened. Lower costs of production massively increased the value of what software could bring to people and led to a surging demand in the software industry.

    I'm not convinced this will happen here, however, because I don't think there's this huge unmet demand for shipping.

    12 votes

  8. Comment on Has anyone worked at <20 person startup before? How was it? in ~tech

    regularmother
    Link Parent
    I've also joined two startups, one as pre-seed employee 4 (murdered by COVID at 7 employees) and another as seed-round employee 8 (current role; 14 employees @ A). I also joined two "startups" of...

    I've also joined two startups, one as pre-seed employee 4 (murdered by COVID at 7 employees) and another as seed-round employee 8 (current role; 14 employees @ A). I also joined two "startups" of 30-50 people (series C and B, respectively). I think @teaearlygraycold has the most nuanced take in this discussion but I wanted to add a few things.

    Fundamentally, startups are about asking the question "do people want to buy this thing?" Sometimes, the answer is no and they fail. Rarely, the answer is yes and everyone is happy. Most often, the answer is sort of, but not the exact thing we built and we have to change some fundamental aspect of our business. It's this last part that most startups struggle with and it's called product market fit or PMF.

    Every time a company doubles in size up to about 150 people, it's a completely different company. At 5 employees, everyone is everything. The likelihood that one of the founders is committing code before a sales call is very high. The lone engineer is working hand-in-hand with the first customer and the CFO soliciting feedback on designs. Day 1 at work is "get a code repository and a CI pipeline set up." At 10 people, the founders are probably focusing on sales and the 2-4 engineers in engineering are maybe making their first major iteration on the first minimum viable product. At 20 people, there's an org chart and maybe a filled out C-Suite of people. You might have a product manager. The engineering team is struggling to break down silos and even talk to each other. It is likely that the company has still not found PMF. In the 40-80 range, you're probably doing great! There's a lot of traction but you maybe haven't figured out how to cross the chasm. At 160 employees, congratulations, you probably aren't a startup anymore! There may be a funding around but the mission isn't "does anyone want this thing" but rather "how do we sell a LOT more of this?"

    Every person at a startup has an outsized impact in a startup because there are too many hats and too few people. This leads to the learning that @teaearlgraycold discusses. My first stint at a pre-seed company fundamentally changed me and launched my career. I initially joined the company with a 1% stake and a salary of $120k in 2018. In 2021, I was making $45k and had a 3.5% stake of a now-worthless company. It was the most heartwrenching, stressful, fulfilling, engaging, technically and emotionally challenging, time of my life and I learned so much. When applying for the next job, in late 2021, my experience let me increase my base salary to $175k (and some other stuff). Fundamentally, every company pays you twice: there's the paycheck you get to put food on the table today and the skills you get to put food on the table tomorrow.

    It also means that the interview is really, really, really important. That guy who's an asshole? You can't not work with him- he's the person who does those 5 things and has no real manager to speak of! Interpersonal skills- the management of humans and relationships, plus setting expectations and communication- plays an even more outsized role in a startup. How do you get people to listen to your insight and integrate into their insights? How do you get their insights? Are these roadmaps even remotely viable or are we throwing everything away in a month or two on the next pivot? How do I get John to not be a raging piece of shit? Startups do not fail because technology didn't work. They fail because of mismanagement and poor communication.

    12 votes

  9. Comment on Are you a hiring manager/recruiter in tech? In this Circus Funhouse Mirror tech economy, how do candidates even get an interview? in ~tech

    regularmother
    Link Parent
    Also look at Wellfound for startups.

    Also look at Wellfound for startups.

    4 votes

  10. Comment on Are you a hiring manager/recruiter in tech? In this Circus Funhouse Mirror tech economy, how do candidates even get an interview? in ~tech

    regularmother
    Link
    I run the AI team/department at an early stage startup. I've hired 2 employees in the last 5 months and am looking to hire a platform engineer/MLOps/DevOps/Data Engineer type person next month....

    I run the AI team/department at an early stage startup. I've hired 2 employees in the last 5 months and am looking to hire a platform engineer/MLOps/DevOps/Data Engineer type person next month. I'll talk more about that below.

    Are your recruiters now pre-filtering resumes before you see them?

    Absolutely. I've stopped bothering with actually reading any applications from LinkedIn jobs but I do use LinkedIn to get colleagues of colleagues to reach out to me. I get 600+ applicants with 5+ page resumes and maybe 2-3% of them are even a remotely good fit. I have better things to do with my time than sift through that morass.

    What is being used to determine whether a candidate gets an interview now?

    I'm a first time manager at an early stage company doing some extremely specialized work. I care about breadth of experience rather than depth. An ideal candidate has done at least 1 or 2 career pivots, has 10+ years of experience, and at least tangential experience in any of the several hyper-specialized fields we're operating in. They're definitely not a jerk- I hope to be working with them until our equity is good enough to retire on. An ideal candidate also has some metrics to back up their success- things like "increased X by Y%" rather than "did X."

    1. The more experienced a candidate is, the more likely they are to successfully manage me. Management is about disappointing people around you to a level they are comfortable with. Experienced candidates can stem off disappointment in ways that more junior candidates can't.
    2. The more experienced a candidate is, the less I have to manage them.
    3. The more experienced a candidate is, the more likely they are to be less wrong. No one is ever perfect- so aiming for less wrong seems like a good spot to be.

    My first ML Engineer, for example, was definitely not the strongest at ML nor at Software but their Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and 2 years of digital hardware design meant they could work closely with the hardware team and do data capture experiments on their own when needed rather than tie up the only other person who was previously capable of doing that. This was recently validated because these skills are now critical to de-risking the next generation of our hardware design. Their 5 years of experience in industry, their graduate degree, and their postdoc meant they've probably had at least one awful manager and know how to manage up.

    This next candidate will be somewhere on a continuum between Platform Engineer and Data Engineer and MLOps Engineer. Where is anyone's guess- I'm flexible- but these early round startup roles always need people comfortable with wearing a lot of hats.

    14 votes

  11. Comment on Most reliable privacy-conscious notes app? in ~tech

    regularmother
    Link
    Surprised no one has suggested Logseq with sync. Should have end to end encryption and it's way better than Obsidian.

    Surprised no one has suggested Logseq with sync. Should have end to end encryption and it's way better than Obsidian.

    2 votes

  12. Comment on Norwegian and or European salary expectations? in ~life

    regularmother
    Link Parent
    Thank you! That is super helpful! No. I or, more likely a lawyer, would be setting that up. Is LinkedIn as prevalent in Norway as it is in the US for tech jobs/roles? Likewise, are there...

    Thank you! That is super helpful!

    Does the company you work for already have a legal entity that can hire you in the EEA?

    No. I or, more likely a lawyer, would be setting that up.

    it might be good to already have some feelers in the local job market.

    Is LinkedIn as prevalent in Norway as it is in the US for tech jobs/roles? Likewise, are there recruiting agencies you or friends have used before- either as a client or as a prospective employee?

    7 votes

  13. Norwegian and or European salary expectations?

    ~life Ask (advice)
    Short version: is there a levels.fyi or equivalent for employees in the European Economic Area (EEA)? How do I figure out what an equivalent employee in Norway makes vs one in the US? Long...

    Short version: is there a levels.fyi or equivalent for employees in the European Economic Area (EEA)? How do I figure out what an equivalent employee in Norway makes vs one in the US?

    Long version: I just found out my partner got the offer for a job that'll force relocation to Norway from the US for a new role. My current role, schedule, and responsibilities will likely work just fine in Norway and I expect that I can keep my job if I pitch it correctly to the executive team. I need to figure out what:

    • I should be making
    • What potential hires from Norway or the EEA would need to make

    I work as the Head of AI running a team of 4 technical (ML Engineers) and non-technical (Data Capture technicians) people in a Series A startup. I am the Engineering Manager, the Team Lead, the Tech Lead, an IC, and periodically do pre-sales and technical customer support/onboarding. My team is all new, basically, having been hired in the last 90 days or less, and I am excited to delegate after finishing their onboarding! Currently, I have 1% equity and make $200,000. My role is remote and requires 20-30% travel. Where I live now is actually more expensive for flying across the US than from Oslo and about the same time factoring layovers, so travel costs will decrease. Due to how meeting schedules work out, no meetings will have to be moved to accommodate me at all. Is advocating for maintaining the same salary correct or should it decrease given the higher worker protections and benefits required by Norwegian employment law? Separately, what would hiring Norwegian employees look like from a comp perspective? I'd really like to keep this job and make a strong case for why it won't be a huge net-negative for the company.

    10 votes

  14. Comment on NHL Board of Directors approves "relocation" of Arizona Coyotes in ~sports.hockey

    regularmother
    Link
    I am totally out of the loop on this. What happened to the Arizona Coyotes that caused them to be bought out beyond the normal buy/sell stuff?

    I am totally out of the loop on this. What happened to the Arizona Coyotes that caused them to be bought out beyond the normal buy/sell stuff?

    3 votes

  15. Comment on What AI tools are you actually using? in ~tech

    regularmother
    Link Parent
    Phind is phenomenal for code. Figuring out stack traces or how to do something is great. The more popular something is, the better these models are, for better or worse, even with RAG. K8s? Great....

    Phind is phenomenal for code. Figuring out stack traces or how to do something is great.

    The more popular something is, the better these models are, for better or worse, even with RAG. K8s? Great. DCOS? Go fuck yourself. AWS? Amazing. GCP? Noticeably worse.

    The real life saver has been plotting. Matplotlib has an interface that can kindly be described as esoteric. I frequently copy and paste my schema, some sample data, and what I want my graph to look like and bam. Works 60% of the time every time. When it fails, it gets close the remaining 35-ish%.

    Again, as another user said, because I'm a domain subject expert, I know what to ask and how to ask. I also know when I'm getting answers that are probably wrong.

    2 votes

  16. Comment on US Federal Trade Commission head Lina Khan is fighting for an anti-monopoly America. Some say Khan – who’s gone after Kroger, Amazon, and Nvidia – has redefined the US antitrust landscape. in ~finance

  17. Comment on Cities: Skylines II | Official release trailer in ~games

    regularmother
    Link
    There's a lot of negativity in the comments so let me be the positive one: this game is really, really fun. I am loving the road tools and terraforming. The zoning breaks can be a bit frustrating...

    There's a lot of negativity in the comments so let me be the positive one: this game is really, really fun. I am loving the road tools and terraforming. The zoning breaks can be a bit frustrating sometimes but wow, I just love the freedom and creativity afforded to me by this game. It's, like, nearly perfect.

    The performance woes are overblown mostly by people expecting that games are only playable at max graphics settings. With a few simple graphics tweaks, I'm playing the game at a smooth 50 fps@2k on my 6750XT at mostly low and medium settings and the game looks great!

    5 votes

  18. Comment on Office chair recommendations? in ~health

    regularmother
    Link Parent
    Another vote in favor of it with the addendum that the HM Aeron will survive any moves you do. By and large, it's not flimsy plastic- it's basically cast aluminum. I've moved at least once a year...

    Another vote in favor of it with the addendum that the HM Aeron will survive any moves you do. By and large, it's not flimsy plastic- it's basically cast aluminum. I've moved at least once a year for 6-7 years and it's the only thing I've got that hasn't been appreciably damaged in that entire time.

    3 votes

  19. Comment on Smart home automation - tip, tricks, advice? in ~life.home_improvement

    regularmother
    Link Parent
    Do you have your home assistant tied to central station monitoring? If so, what provider do you use?

    Do you have your home assistant tied to central station monitoring? If so, what provider do you use?

  20. Comment on Surviving vegetarianism as a non-vegetarian chef in ~food

    regularmother
    Link Parent
    I used to get my MSG directly from meat. The additional flavors, textures, and fats also add a lot of depth to the meal. Literally 1 slice of pork belly and you have pork fried rice! A startling...

    I used to get my MSG directly from meat. The additional flavors, textures, and fats also add a lot of depth to the meal. Literally 1 slice of pork belly and you have pork fried rice! A startling number of transitioning vegetarians talk about throwing in some MSG as that works as a replacement.

    As you said, I talked a lot about alternatives to pure MSG but I do use MSG in addition. I just want to highlight how a lot of that can be maintained. The crispy, crusty, smokey meat flavor and texture? Toasted rapeseed oil or butter and mushroom of some cut size suitable for your dish at medium heat is a great substitute. Add MSG if it's not enough!

    6 votes