1,066 karma · joined December 30, 2023
In your citation: In the public hearing today on Capitol Hill, members pushed for the full implementation of a program using new scanning equipment that creates a 3-D image of bags, giving screeners better ability to spot possibly dangerous items
Those new scanners are in 255 of the nations 432 airports
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2025/07/19/new-airport-scanner...
How long do you think it’s going to be before a pilot opens the door if a hijacker starts shooting people?
Airport security is by far not just in America with the only exception in my experience is that other airports don’t make you take your shoes off and some allow liquids in carryon
AirTran for instance went out of business because of one crash. If someone blew up a United plane, I can guarantee you that Delta would increase the security before you got on their flights to instill confidence on passengers.
And people act as if airport security and the TSA measures are unique to the US. My wife and I just got into a position where the stars aligned for us to fly a lot post Covid. But during that time the three countries that we have flown out of - London, Costa Rica and Mexico all have the basic same security measure with the slight difference that you can bring liquids on board from LHR because they have newer scanners that supposedly detect explosives.
And it’s not just airlines. We also had to go through the same type of security to get on the “Chunnel” from London to France.
The only thing that is really theatre is taking off your shoes in the US.
Ironically enough, that meant when I was working at AWS, I sometimes couldn’t access a site that I was working on for a client when I went into the office for a business trip (I worked remotely).
None of us are out here feeding starving children. Why not trade your labor for as much as possible? If I were 25 instead of 51, I damn sure would think the trade off was worth it.
Yes I did spend almost 4 years in BigTech and would rather get a daily anal probe with a cactus than do it again. But don’t underestimate the life changing difference in comp that a software developer can make in BigTech.
Yes I realize those are the types of jobs most developers had - and the same types of jobs I had from 1096-2020.
I was perfectly happy making $150K living in a 3200 square foot house I had built in the “good school system” in 2016 for $335K.
> I’m saying maybe you don’t have to join them. Get out of the mindset. Find jobs that value your time
Companies “value your time” by paying you to exchange labor for money. All other things being equal, I would rather trade my time for more money than less.
I have made the trade off in the last couple of years now that I’m out of BigTech to value working remotely and stress free over BigTech compensation. But let’s not blindly pretend that you aren’t making the trade off by refusing to post the game.
[1] A remote interview opportunity/job fell into my lap working at AWS Professional Services. My speciality was cloud + app dev. But the interview process was all behavioral. I’m not suggesting trying this route.
I can afford to leave that money on the table at 51, grown kids, downsized to a condo in central Florida with just me and my wife. But in my case, it’s not even a trade off between not grinding leetcode and not getting (back) into BigTech. It’s just that I refuse to ever work in an office again.
The “goal” is to make a lot of money in cash + RSUs (public BigTech), if I were younger I would definitely do it and I encourage all new grads to do whatever it takes to get into a high paying tech company and then give them advice on how to play the game once they are there.
There are only 9 car models as of 2024 that ship with CD players and not even all trims of all of those models come with a CD player
https://www.kron4.com/news/national/which-new-car-models-sti...
And people don’t walk around with boom boxes like in the 80s.
> Ripping them from a CD.
Most new computers don’t come with CD drives and you think that people are syncing music from their computers to their phones in 2025? The last computer I bought with a CD drive was around 2012. Do any of the major PC sellers sell laptops with CD drives? Apple stopped around 2012.
> Because Facebook and Google insert themself into unrelated websites, their monopoly is not just search
> Because Facebook and Google insert themself into unrelated websites, their monopoly is not just search
That has nothing to do with the laws the EU is passing and none of the remedies say anything about it Google Analytics or ads on third party sites.
> Nobody is going to tell you to use Spotify, because it screams "cheap"! That might fly for hobby musicians, but professionals will ruin their reputation.
Well two issues, selling CDs at concerts is a horrible method for mass distribution and CD sales are plummeting.
https://www.headphonesty.com/2025/07/cd-revival-hopes-crash-...
During the past year I’ve been to a dozen concerts. Most of them classic Hip Hop artist, two classic R and B, and two pop - Maroon 5 and Justin Timberlake. I’ve also gone to a see a punk rock band where my friend is the lead singer. They sell merch but definitely not CDs
I was in Seattle a couple of years ago walking around and someone was selling CDs of their music on the street like it was the early 2000s. WTF am I going to do with a CD?
Do people carry around CD Walkman’s anymore? But you’re not going to be a major artist and get wide appeal or even gain an audience without being on Spotify - more so in Europe than in the US where Apple Music has a larger market share.
There is a huge difference between “staff augmentation” where you are just another more disposable cog in the wheel and strategic consulting where they hire you for your specialized experience and you are in the room with people who contribute budgets. Staff augmentation is a shit show.
I have most of the prerequisites at this point to do alright at independent consulting - skillset, network, credentials, customer facing experience, a little sales experience, etc and I wouldn’t touch it with a 10 foot pole. I like having benefits, a steady paycheck, and the backing of an entire organization.
As a husband and a dad, do you really want the hustle, inconsistency and lack of benefits of freelancing? What special skillset do you have that would make companies want to hire you?
As far as my history - currently 51.
- 1986 - started coding as a hobby in the sixth grade in AppleSoft Basic and assembly
- 1996 - 2002 - first job out of college and changed jobs once in 1999 doing C but twiddling across multiple architectures
- 2002 - 2008 - career stagnated and became an “expert beginner” at my second job
- 2008 - 2016 - changed jobs three times and became a competent enterprise developer. Regardless of title, I was pulling well defined tickets off the board. I was a “mid level developer”. I stuck mostly in the .Net ecosystem.
- 2016 - led my first major initiative at my sixth job as the first technical hire by a then new CTO and led the integration of various acquisitions as the PE firm was trying to do the whole rollup small businesses and IPO. I belated discovered AWS. My first job with what I would consider “senior level responsibility” and dealing with strategy
- 2018 - I was the second technical hire of a then new CTO of a startup. Two non technical brothers founded the company and used an external consulting company. They found PMF and wanted to bring development in house and be “cloud native”. I became the de facto cloud architect + development and got all of my practical experience with AWS.
2020 - hired at AWS Professional Services - their consulting arm (full time) and pivoted to specializing in “cloud native development” consulting half strategy/half hands on in a mid level (L5) role.
2024 - staff consultant working at a third party cloud consulting firm (full time). Some pre-sales support, some doing everything myself from leading the project and doing the work (small projects), to leading larger projects and a little managing style consulting.
Both Google and Apple (ie any searches in Safari make money for Apple based on the Google deal) said there was no slowdown on Google searches and the “AI overview” by Google is “good enough”.
On the other hand, going from .Net Framework to .NET Core + Azure may be the path of least resistance to get into a modern ecosystem. Despite what you read on HN, most developers work in boring old enterprises.
As far as startups, ageism is real. But it is more nuanced. They will hire older developers. But only in if you have the experience “you should”. They offer me jobs when they want someone strategic, and knows the modern tech scene.
But understand, the issue with focusing on “in demand” skills is that everyone is doing it and it’s almost impossible to stand out - it’s a shit show out here right now. You’ll have a lot less competition in the Microsoft ecosystem and it will be a lot easier to convincingly tell a tale about using modern MS technologies.
I am not however discouraging you from leaning deep into the JS ecosystem, its table stakes and has been for 20 years.
After that it was to get my degree and after that it was to exchange labor for money to fund my life. There hasn’t been a time since 1996 that I haven’t had some outside interest that I would rather be doing than sitting down at a computer after work.
While my official title hasn’t been “software engineer” since 2020 and the last time I had to get a job based solely on my coding ability was 2012, I am still at 51 expected to know how to spit out production level code as part of my job. If AI can help me create code that gets me paid faster so be it. At 51, no one hires me based on my coding skills or even interviews me based on it.
First you learn the technology stack you want to go into really well on the side. Get to the point where you can explain the intricacies of how you “used the tech” (even though you didn’t) to the point where when someone ask you deep details of what you did on your job, what tradeoffs you made and what you like don’t like about the technology you can explain it.
I would have no ethical qualms about doing whatever is necessary to get a job in today’s environment.
Now is far certifications? They are meaningless and no one takes them seriously. They are multiple choice tests that any idiot can pass by memorizing a few concepts from ACloudGuru. Interviewers don’t take them seriously at all as far as having competence.
I have 7 active AWS Certs and at one point had 9 out of the then 11. I got my first one without ever logging into the AWS console and my next 4 within the first 6 months. They were never about getting a job. They served as a guided learning path to help me know what I didn’t know as I became the defacto cloud architect at a startup.
Not even AWS Professional Services (former employee) the internal cloud consulting arm at AWS cares about certification as a hiring criteria.
I now work as a staff cloud consultant specializing in app dev + cloud working full time at a 3rd party cloud consulting company. I got my start on AWS dealing with migrating from .Net Framework to .net Core on AWS at the startup.
No one is going to hire you because you studied MLOps on the side doing toy projects when there are plenty of people with real world experience looking for jobs.
Your other bet is working for a company that has a mixture of .Net framework and they are moving to .NET Core and other modern tech and then volunteer to work on more modern tech at your new job.
This isn’t rah rah AWS, it’s just the one I know from an architectural level - I was pure developer before I got into AWS seven years ago and before then I hadn’t had to manage architecture since 2003. I would say the same that I prefer the raw primitives of GCP, Azure, or on prem Kubernetes more than the equivalent leaky “easy to use” alternative.
Spotify has a much larger market share in streaming music than Apple has in smartphones in Europe.
Can I side load my own music in my Spotify library like I can with Apple Music? (True you either have to either use your computer or the iOS GarageBand hack)
No one can be an expert on everything. Even if you base your expertise on Kubernetes, someone still needs to know the underlying cloud infrastructure. Kubernetes is just an abstraction that maps to underlying infrastructure.
Two of the three offers in 2023 were from my network. But honestly, it might be harder now. It’s more of shit show now then even last year. On the other hand, I am at point in life where I’m good with just cost of living raises as long as I stay remote and I don’t have to deal with too much BS.