I’m an 8 year data center network engineer who recently broke 100k for the first time. When I got asked my salary requirements I actually only asked for 90k as my highest previous salary was 80k with lots of travel, then I found out they gave me 100k because it was the minimum they could pay someone in my position. I’ve read...
That’s great, can you elaborate what you mean by ops>devops? Do you support infrastructure or applications? I know devops is kind of a catch-all term now for automation, did you work on understanding cloud deployments from the POV of the servers/application or from infra?
I only ask because some of what I do is considered “devops” in the sense that I’m working on network automation, but a lot of times when I hear people discuss devops they’re talking about supporting applications
I’ve heard from some friends/family that are trying to break into entry level cybersecurity or programming roles and it’s extremely difficult right now, why do you think there seems to be such a high demand for skilled workers but seemingly no demand for entry level?
yes, I’ve seen how mangled python code can be, some of the code that our automation team uses barely makes use of functions or classes, which has made working on other people’s python code a nightmare. There’s one application that is thousands of lines long that I’m pretty sure I could condense into a few hundred lines.
Perhaps that’s a drawback of people who use python, they are not typically focused on the scalability of their code until it is actually used in prod. I believe for this reason, I would prefer a language that is compiled.
Last question, is using Rust on Windows as difficult as it seems at face value? It looked like to me that for using rust, it’s preferable to use linux or mac, as they don’t require you to install a compiler. For some reason, my org requires me to submit an exception for being able to install rust on my work computer. Is there anything that is inherently risky about using Rust, or is it because once the code is compiled, it cannot be reverse engineered?
Thank you, great response. Based on your opinion and another, I believe I will focus on learning Go. I mostly need the benefits of compiled languages in order to easily distribute, as well as easier parallelism, as I’ve always found that to be a pain in the ass with Python. Not sure if Threading, Concurrency, or Asyncio are the “best” way to handle threading of non CPU intensive tasks, such as sending a request and waiting for a response. But I know that it seems since Python has taken so long to attempt to allow easier bypassing of the GIL, you get a lot of decent ways of doing something, but no great ways.
I think you’re right. Despite my bandwagon fandom, I Believe Go is more appropriate for my needs. I think a compiled language with more intuitive parallelism is what I need
I work in networking, a job that traditionally has been managed by a terminal and vendor-specific syntax. I used to hate the thought of automation when I was younger, why would something as important as networking be automated? I’ve made my career on being the clutch guy, troubleshooting complex problems, I love the art of understanding every cog in the machine and being able to visualize it. Then I started learning Python, and learning it was extremely difficult for me. It felt like an eternity between the time I poured myself into learning Python until the time I could actually make things people would want to use.
I was a supervisor working in a NOC. A NOC that had many beaurocratic requirements which got in the way of break/fix operational support, such as having to manually write an email to every customer that had an alarm, and calling every point of contact for that customer, as well as notifying the field techs of outages in their areas, and managing real operational issues. So many times I had to let real work slip through my hands because there were so many calls, so many cases, so many things to do.
Like most NOCs, we viewed alarms from SNMP. When something failed to ping, it would generate a loss of comms alarm. I had this idea to automatically notify the field tech for the specified area when a customer site was downed for more than 30 minutes, and that was a very complex thing to do, it required that I clean a lot of data… I spent days converting things like date strings into proper formatting. Once I presented it, I was told that we couldn’t do this, because some political agreement made it to where the NOC was required to provide “positive contact” to other groups. I wrote it, tested it as proof of concept, specd out costs(MRC for the API I was using to send text messages was extremely cheap, it would cost the company about 6 dollars per month). Just like that, it was dead.
My director then wanted me to do something similar for our phone systems. Since our queue depended on user agent availability(your presence status), my boss wanted me to write a program to notify him if someone was unavailable for too long and the reason why. Yes, he wanted to know if someone took more than a few minutes to take a shit or get coffee.
That’s when I learned, boomers only care about micro management, not efficiency.
Look, I can’t advise you to do one thing or another, but I’ll give you some career advice that has worked well for me: don’t ask permission. Most of the time, the documentation is out there on how to get what you want and you can do it yourself. I won’t have my work be wasted by someone else’s laziness. And if your direct report doesn’t like the idea, tell him you want to discuss it with his boss. Make your case to someone who cares. You have every right to make use of whatever tools will help you do a better job.
What does making your case look like? It looks like making PowerPoint presentations, detailing a cost(man hours, oversight responsibilities, etc), detailing desired results, showing what impact this will have on the team, showing how long it will take to train your average joe on using these scripts, showing how much time can be saved.
Your boss might be chilling because he’s waiting out the clock on his career. You’re not. Stand by your ideas, people will stand by you. But you will have to fight for your ideas, and you need to be comfortable doing that. I’m not saying it’s not hard, it is soul crushing to get your ideas shot down. But you can push through.
I know I am just a random nobody to you, but I’m not satisfied with this response. If you have exhausted all options, then you need to be working on updating your resume. Your boss might not have enough juice to push this through for you, and in that case, it’s probably better that you find a new job. I don’t think you’ve exhausted all options, I think you came face to face with the reality of the corporate workforce, the reality is that most people are trying to get by with “good enough.” They are afraid of the implications of you outworking them and making them look worthless, or you automating something so much that it cuts the departmental budget. If what you’re saying is true, and you can reduce hundreds of man hours, then you should fight for your ideas. Know that fighting for your ideas doesn’t mean that you will be praised from day one. People will poke and prod, criticize, kick the tires, make excuses, etc. Stand by your work and always come back to the table.
"Okay, I heard your proposal on how to validate data integrity in the event that we become a multi-vendor environment. I understand that parsing/wrangling data can be challenging. However, in the event that our environment adopts XYZ infrastructure, I am using tried and tested industry standard modeled languages. All major vendors support this language model, so it would not require a complete re-engineering.
life is too short to work for shitty bosses man. But don’t spend time feeling sorry for yourself.
To be fair, most of the work that you have to do in a NOC is total bullshit. About 30% of the time you will be working on technical issues, and for most other people in the NOC, that would mean escalating the technical issues to me. Unfortunately, I had to earn the stripes, which means I had to work harder than everyone else, which meant doing their work as well as handling all escalations. Eventually, I was promoted to a supervisor for my efforts, but I did not want to be in a managerial role.
The real bulk of NOC work that is tiresome is the amount of alarms that are unnecessary. Managing SNMP is a nightmare, and configuring it properly involves a deep level of engineering knowledge. You can either tune the alarm board to only show certain alarms(which means parsing through many alarms to find out what is necessary and what isn’t), or you make sure that devices that are onboarded are configured locally for what SNMP traps they will alert for. Typically, the devices’ SNMP settings are not configured, so all alarms get sent to the SNMP server, and the SNMP server was never tuned to know which alarms it should show or it shouldn’t, so there are alarms which don’t really “mean anything” and alarms that “could potentially mean something if it’s correlated with this other alarm,” but most of the work is sifting through so much shit, to then have to troubleshoot a network issue for a network that was never documented in the first place.
An Italian holiday may be a priceless experience for those who have enjoyed all this country has to offer. But the summer of 2023 will go down as one of the priciest in history after a slew of price gouging scandals at cafes and restaurants that have affected foreign tourists and Italians alike.
Hi. My school just started issuing devices last year, and they have this Lightspeed spyware on them. Last year I was able to remove it by booting into Linux from a flash drive and moving the files to a separate drive and then back at the end of the year. This year I have heard from sources that they have ways of detecting...
Something tells me your intentions aren’t innocent(you want to be able to act maliciously at school or on the school network), or you have an overinflated sense of ego, the head of IT likely didn’t give two shits about explaining anything to some brat. You’re going to have to face some harsh realities pretty soon. Expecting digital privacy on a school issued device on the school network is asinine thinking.
Is this a school owned device? Goofy 4 line script that uses tons of resources, so that script that unnecessarily and intentionally taxes the laptops hardware, purely innocent right? Any chance why they might not want you to do that?
That’s pretty standard across any respectable industry. You’re given suitable alternatives, if everyone could use whatever applications they wanted then it would be a nightmare.
I’m guessing he’s saying companies are still using the same human written code, but since AI is sexy right now and is being used to describe even simple programming logic, everything is “powered by AI”
I owned one, had horrible freezing issues and screens going unavailable randomly, making folded use a horrible game of flipping the phone to get the other screen, but now it switched to the other screen. Sent it for repairs under warranty for one screen having flickering issues, they sent me a new one. The new one was still bad, but at least both screens worked.
Battery life was pretty bad. Had like a 2500mah battery which with two screens drains very quickly. I used it for a few months as a primary phone and put it in a drawer. It was several versions of android behind. Took it out one year later, it worked fine, used it for a while… But these phones are made of glass, and there wasn’t a proper case for it because of the hinge, so Microsoft sends you these rubber bumpers you glue onto the phone which come off easily over time, official replacement “case” which was just rubber cost like $40 bucks, which made me buy double sided adhesive to keep using the original.
Anyways some people like to have multiple phones and it’s good as a second phone if you spend all day near a charger. For anything else it’s impractical.
Reading on it was great, though. Haven’t tried a folding or hinge phone since
Made my first fork, push and pull request today. Been learning Python and a bit of rust for 3 years now(self taught, job is network engineer) and I can’t wait until it gets merged 😄 just corrected some errors in a yaml file
Businesses are in it for the money, employees tend to be one of the larger expenses, so maintaining some bullshit positions that would cost them money doesn’t make fiscal sense, so what’s up?
I’ll say this, as an engineer who’s worked closely with the brass tacks, a lot of the time when new directors or c level people are brought in, they want to own a space. There was a solution existing prior to them, because the company already existed before they joined. But no one wants to be the guy who supports the previous ideas (maintenance on an engine isn’t as sexy as designing it) because the idea doesn’t have their branding. They want to be seen as bold/innovative, etc. So they make some calls and they find a solution that promises everything they have and more. If the new solution is a success, their position is cemented, they are now a stakeholder in the company. Sales guy is going to sell his ass off, maybe the workforce has to be repurposed (need more expertise in new fields), etc. All this creates unnecessary work for people with real jobs just because a boss wants it. In the end, the new director/c level can say, “wow, this was great, look at how our metrics have improved, all thanks to me!” Despite the fact that they weren’t given all the features they were promised, or they didn’t hire/train specialized engineers to truly own the new solution. Or maybe the solution isn’t very effective. A lot of the time it’s mostly politics. People are trying to get headlines just like politicians so they can keep climbing the ladder.
The way you’re describing “bullshit” jobs doesn’t exist, there are no jobs that are inherently, always bullshit. There’s just bullshit work, and a lot of people who’s job it is to do bullshit work
I know you’re mostly joking, but Google does sell your data/browsing habits for advertising, being able to show car dealership ads to someone who’s browsing history indicates they’re in the market is extremely valuable. It’s not just about things “about you” like demographics/location, but an active, rolling profile about where you’re most likely to spend your money.
Same here. Infrastructure engineer of 10 years now, recently got my first fortune 500 job and most companies now are super bloated with middle management. They honestly think their job is to schedule meetings and manage the progress of their team instead of providing support and guidance. A good manager will leave you alone if your job is getting done, but being a good manager implies you have valuable skills that would transfer to other companies, or that you know the job well enough to know how it should be done. I don’t see engineers turned management have this problem so much as business people turned managers.
In the US at least, I know quite a few people that are working multiple jobs at once and putting out shit performance on every job. They are also living in locations they are not allowed to live in (company has a policy you have to live within a certain distance of a branch office), so I think some of this RTO stuff is justified, so long as the company stays flexible enough for me to decide which days I want to be in office
This really depends. You would think that a company would know who it’s top performers are, but if you are engineer who is more than two managers away from C suite, chances are the person who decides to end your job doesn’t know or give a shit who you are, they just know that your salary is among the higher end. If a company wants to attract top talent they can always do so later
I don’t think zoom has ever pretended to be a proponent of remote work, they just cashed in on the opportunity. I might be wrong though. But this is definitely just to reduce headcount.
I don’t know if this will change your mind, but I think people exaggerate how difficult it is to have a kid. It’s pretty hard for the first year, but it gets easier. I had my son when I was 19. I haven’t thought about having another until recently, my son is 9 now, so it’s been 10 years or so. It’s a pretty big sacrifice at first but it does get easier with time… Then they got school and after school activities. I spend a lot of time with my son and enjoy spending time with him, so it’s not like it’s a drain. I also managed to get a solid career without a college degree by wit and effort. People who weren’t going to accomplish anything with their lives love to blame their children for their own shortcomings. I’m not saying it wasn’t without sacrifice, but don’t listen to naysayers. A child is not the end of the world.
I don’t think that people having children in their 30s is a bad thing. In fact, there’s a lot of misconceptions about when a woman should have a child, and it’s safe to have children even into your 40s. I think young women don’t want to start birthing kids in early adulthood when there isn’t a strong family support system in their life. Also, to be honest, most people are still trying to figure out so much about who they are and what they want in their 20s, I’d rather see more people waiting to have kids than people having kids without a thought of how they’re going to provide
Unemployment numbers are always disingenuous because they only count people who are looking for employment. People who leave the voluntarily leave the workforce aren’t included.
You should learn a bit about how they intentionally figure these numbers in their favor… Kind of how they change how inflation is calculated ever so often to make it look like inflation isn’t as bad as it is. There are jobs but there are more people permanently exiting the workforce and that doesn’t get factored into unemployment. It’s not a matter of opinion, it’s a matter of fact. statista.com/…/us-civilian-labor-force-participat….
Since 2000, the rate of eligible workers in the workforce has decreased from 67% to current 62%.
Acquired implies that they purchased infogami, when in reality they were merged into a new company by ycombinator, which made Aaron a founding partner… When reddit was bought by conde nast, his ownership was paid, and he became an employee, but he didn’t like working for conde nast, so he basically got himself fired.
Aaron referred to himself as a founding partner, and in a reddit AMA, he was asked why he called himself a founder, and he explained how the two companies were merged together and he became a founding partner. He offered Steve Huffman to stop referring to himself as a founding partner at Steve’s request. Steve never challenged Aaron’s claim while he was alive.
Why say something that is wrong, and easily can be checked? This wasn’t company A acquired company B. This is company A and B merged to form company C, “Not a bug” to which Aaron Swartz became partial owner of and founding partner of.
Also, saying Aaron was only an influencer (seriously, what is that?) is also very incorrect, Aaron basically refactored all their shit code and made reddit functional.
“Early the next year, he published a blog post that some took to be a suicide note, which scared his cofounders enough that Alexis called the police”
Maybe try reading your source before citing it?
Any code from that era of the internet could most likely be called shit… Shit code has levels. Steve and Alex struggled to have even functional code… Aaron’s code wasn’t the Mona Lisa, he hardly considered himself a programmer, but it was functional.
I know you can play the game at chrome://dino, but it doesn’t evoke the same nostalgic feeling of a 10yr old me turning on aeroplane mode and spamming space bar to try and beat my brother’s high score. Good memories.
I don’t know why but there’s some websites I frequently go to that either don’t work/load correctly with chrome or Firefox. I always made fun of my brother for using edge, but since I’ve started using it months ago I haven’t had any issues like I had before. Additionally, it seems to be better at managing memory because I’ve never seen it consume anywhere near the amount of ram that chrome does. Also, edge allows you to neatly put your tabs vertically on a side bar and allows you to group tabs without having to get 3rd party add-ons.
Making fun of edge is like making fun of internet explorer, but feature-wise it’s the same/better than other browsers. Props to Firefox but it’s just never worked well for me
what's the highest increase in salary you've had or seen?
I’m an 8 year data center network engineer who recently broke 100k for the first time. When I got asked my salary requirements I actually only asked for 90k as my highest previous salary was 80k with lots of travel, then I found out they gave me 100k because it was the minimum they could pay someone in my position. I’ve read...
is Rust really that powerful / intuitive?
Hello all,...
Rejected automation? (www.srcbeat.com)
Let’s share stories where your automation efforts have been rejected and you can’t quite understand why! Here’s mine.
$2 to cut a sandwich in half: The outrageous rip-offs targeting tourists in Italy (www.cnn.com)
An Italian holiday may be a priceless experience for those who have enjoyed all this country has to offer. But the summer of 2023 will go down as one of the priciest in history after a slew of price gouging scandals at cafes and restaurants that have affected foreign tourists and Italians alike.
School Spyware
Hi. My school just started issuing devices last year, and they have this Lightspeed spyware on them. Last year I was able to remove it by booting into Linux from a flash drive and moving the files to a separate drive and then back at the end of the year. This year I have heard from sources that they have ways of detecting...
Bleeding edge tech (lemmy.world)
Microsoft won’t say if Surface Duo is getting any more Android OS releases (www.windowscentral.com)
Open source contributions: Just do it (major.io)
If bullshit jobs are *really* bullshit, how do businesses justify the expense?
Businesses are in it for the money, employees tend to be one of the larger expenses, so maintaining some bullshit positions that would cost them money doesn’t make fiscal sense, so what’s up?
The Problem with Linus Tech Tips: Accuracy, Ethics, & Responsibility (www.youtube.com)
cross-posted from: lemmy.ca/post/3337820...
YouTube’s anti-ad blocking test gets even pushier with a new timer (www.androidpolice.com)
Zoom has “Zoom fatigue,” requires workers to return to the office (arstechnica.com)
Abe-sama gives advice (lemmy.ml)
Best I Can Do Is... (imgflip.com)
Meme Source: imgflip.com/i/7ued5h...
Aaron is no longer considered as cofounder by reddit. He fought for free speech. (lemmy.world)
Is software getting worse? (blog.ploeh.dk)
Best dad of the year (lemmy.world)
3 browsers (lemmy.world)
I know you can play the game at chrome://dino, but it doesn’t evoke the same nostalgic feeling of a 10yr old me turning on aeroplane mode and spamming space bar to try and beat my brother’s high score. Good memories.