james_s_tayler (u/james_s_tayler)

james_s_tayler commented on “Who Should Write the Terraform?” zwischenzugs.com/2022/08/... · Posted by u/zwischenzug

Seen this at a couple companies and it doesn’t work well. The platform team becomes a bottleneck and the devs don’t want to have to deal with or learn the mess that is terraform.

It’s time for the ecosystem to move beyond the half baked config language known as HCL

james_s_tayler · 3 years ago

Pulumi

james_s_tayler commented on “Who Should Write the Terraform?” zwischenzugs.com/2022/08/... · Posted by u/zwischenzug

danwee · 3 years ago

Having a single "platform" team per company is a bottleneck as soon as the number of product teams is greater than N.

> ...you'll probably start having as many approaches to your infrastructure as there are teams, complexity will explode, and implementation/verification of compliance requirements will be a chore. Just a few people responsible for handling this will yield huge benefits.

Agree with the centralization of "how infrastructure should be managed/defined". A "platform" team composed of M platform engineers (where each platform engineer works 80% of their time for a given product team) can handle such centralization.

james_s_tayler · 3 years ago

You can have more than one platform team.

I think reality is more complicated than a one size fits all approach. It's going to be specific to your org, your project, the stage it's at etc. To add to that, the right thing to do is often in flux.

Dedicated capacity is necessary, as is embedding. Not always at the same time or in that order. That's where only the information found inside the walls of your organisation can help you decide what is necessary to solve your problem.

james_s_tayler commented on HTTP Cats http.cat/... · Posted by u/peterkos

CSSer · 3 years ago

One of my coworkers, a UX designer, used to work at a newspaper. They used Osama Bin Laden’s FBI most wanted photo as a placeholder image to avoid accidentally running prints without photos because it was funny and because, you know, who could miss that? Well, everyone, it turns out. Some poor guy got Osama’s photo in his obituary and that was the end of that.

james_s_tayler · 3 years ago

Hahah. Reminds me of the time I used to work at a place where the software's demo company was called ISIS and that didn't used to be a big deal until ISIS itself became a thing. Part of our solution contained a web-portal we could up-sell to our clients that their end users could manage their accounts through etc. Anyway I remember one fun afternoon hacking graphics of ISIS the terrorist organization into the web-portal of the demo org and showing it around the office for laughs. It never made it to a customer site thankfully and it was pretty funny at the time but my boss told me to cut it out pretty quick just in-case hahaha.

james_s_tayler commented on Why I left Google: work-life balance scottkennedy.us/balance.h... · Posted by u/rmason

muse900 · 3 years ago

Usually its the extremes that are having the same effects.

Atm I am in a super demanding job, requiring me to overwork, make decisions on the spot, work on problems etc.

On my free time while I want to sit down and watch some TV, go for running, enjoy a nice dinner or whatever... I FEEL EMPTY!

I am fixated with my work... its not healthy and its creating low motivation for me. It feels like work has taken away all pleasures in life for me. It is not HEALTHY at all (I am currently seeing professionals about it)

Generally anything in moderation is key...

P.S. I do overwork myself for someone else to enjoy the fruits of my labour... sad story.

james_s_tayler · 3 years ago

sounds like the beginnings of either burnout, depression or both. I'm in a job that's not quite demanding enough at the moment and it caused me to fall into a depression. It's good to catch it in time to do something about it.

james_s_tayler commented on Ask HN: How do you stick to projects? · Posted by u/trms

Crazyontap · 4 years ago

I've been through this and in my case it turned out to be clinical ADHD.

Unfortunately my diagnosis came at the very late age (40+) because whole life I thought it is just me being lazy and unfocused and seeking medical help / medication is the wrong answer to such problems - only to discover now that some of our brains are actually wired differently and it's not that we are being weak or unfocused but it's actually the wiring in our brain making us behave this way and you can freaking see this on an MRI too.

If you can't get an evaluation at least try to read this book called driven to distraction. One other book which I also read again and again is 'Finish' by Jon acuff. Has many useful tips which anyone can use.

james_s_tayler · 4 years ago

Same here. I would add if you experience what the OP does combined with looking around the house every day and seeing piles of unfolded washing and dirty dishes waiting for you that fill you with existential dread every time you look at them while you quietly ignore them and go back to whatever it is you're excited about at the moment then seek an evaluation.

james_s_tayler commented on Ask HN: Startup acquired by a large company and it sucks. What to do? · Posted by u/lopkeny12ko

james_s_tayler · 4 years ago

https://komoroske.com/slime-mold/

You're welcome.

james_s_tayler commented on The Big DevOps Misunderstanding wolfoliver.medium.com/the... · Posted by u/WolfOliver

recursivedoubts · 4 years ago

I'm frankly astounded at the complexity around modern development due to dev ops and how much worse developer experience is because of it. I used to develop in a great IDE with debugging, right click re-run failed tests, I could follow the console right there in a nice, clean window integrated with my IDE, click on stack traces, etc.

Now I'm running my app via multiple docker images, trying to get a buggy remote debugger protocol to work (no local variables, wtff?) where I have to coordinate the container and the IDE, command line wrangling / using print debugging in the container to chase down stuff, digging around through multiple log files, copying-and-pasting stack traces into my IDE to analyze, which kinda works in some cases since the file paths are different, and on and on.

DevOps came and took my nice dev environment away, and I am mad.

james_s_tayler · 4 years ago

I use containers in production and for local development dependencies but for exactly these reasons I run the application locally via the IDE like I always have, with the option to run it locally via Docker for the times I need to dip into making sure specific bits run there fine. So, I still have all those nice things.

james_s_tayler commented on Ask HN: How do you manage or avoid meltdowns? · Posted by u/solididiot

smoyer · 4 years ago

You're too old to be having melt-downs and it's a bad example to set for your relatively new child. I think there are a couple clues in the description you've added above though. Sitting in a chair for hours is necessary as a software developer but that shouldn't mean sitting in one position. If you can't stand for part of your workday, at least change the position you're sitting in. The terms "shitty job" and "dead-in-the-water career" are a more pressing matter - your attitude is going to be pretty well correlated to your feelings about your job. If you can't simply change jobs, try to find a way to "make it new". One of my tricks is to "see it with new eyes" which can be practiced by driving through your town and imagining it's your first time there (I've seen things doing this that I'd simply never noticed before.) Another thing you can do is find ways to do your job that result in you learning new skills. Finally, when you're not working you should get away from your desk. Doing housework can be cathartic and getting some exercise will definitely help.

james_s_tayler · 4 years ago

>You're too old to be having melt-downs and it's a bad example to set for your relatively new child.

Sorry, but this just comes off as so ableist.

james_s_tayler commented on Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness? · Posted by u/__all__

rodrigosetti · 4 years ago

My two cents: being happy most of the time in your career is an impossible goal.

Everyone struggles. Sometimes they are miserable, bored, frustrated, burned out, overwhelmed, confused, tired, etc. no matter what career you choose, how lucky or skilled you are.

This is not to say that attempts to improve are futile, but it’s better to dispel the illusion that career heaven exists, so we have a sober and liberating experience when dealing with its challenges.

james_s_tayler · 4 years ago

I'm OK with not being in career heaven, so long as I'm not in career hell.

james_s_tayler commented on What’s the jankiest piece of tech you’ve seen a company depend on? twitter.com/_brohrer_/sta... · Posted by u/fortran77

bokluk · 4 years ago

JIRA

james_s_tayler · 4 years ago

My previous team lead hated JIRA and would frequently rail on it during our agile ceremonies. Me who likes coming up acronyms would refer to it as that "Janky Irritating React App" during our ceremonies as a result. Good times.