botswana99

Well, I find this post looks good, but a like lot of 'data for developers' posts it's just a list of tools. As if a collection of tools banded together actually makes your customer successful. What's missing? 1. There's nothing about deployment. How do I take this collection of tools and code and actually deploy it into production, or actually regression test it functionally? How do I make a small change in a database table and not have a massive regression? How do you do that automatically? How do you do it quickly? 2. It's cursory on testing. One of the biggest differences from a software developer to a data engineer is that your data providers give you crap data all the time. It could break. How do you test data? How do you get adequate test coverage? These things are essential for software developers and are actually doubly essential for data engineers and building analytics systems. 3. It's what success looks like. It's not just about a collection of tech; it's about making your customers successful. What does it mean to deliver good insight? How do you do it? How do you measure customer success, and measure your success? As a team, you wouldn't talk about software engineering without mentioning DevOps or DORA metrics. There's nothing here about that.

sigh

I hope so, plumbers are damn expensive

The SAT, like general intelligence, is half hard work and half inherited ability, from what I've read. Characteristics that you have no control over, like height, intelligence, race, or sex, should not determine your wealth. It should really be about hard work and character; that's fair. At least in the U.S., there are too many industries like law, venture capital, or VC-invested startup founders, where the pedigree of your school is what matters to your success.

Neither statement is true, unfortunately. The reports that you read in the media don't reflect the state of the world. In the US, most plumbers and SWE make between 100-200K. The way to wealth is to start one's own business. Hence, hard work and character.

The dude has obviously never met a multimillionaire owner of an auto body shop, a house demolition business, or a plumber. Did they do well in high school calc class? No. Are they richer than the author? Yes

Blowing up the cognitive hierarchy is a gift that AI gives us. Let's move into an age where hard work and character matter more than your SAT score at 17.

Congrats from a fellow software boostrapper (12 years in, similar size).

For a laugh, here is our founder chat from this weekend:

GB: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/englishpaulm_just-heard-from-...

CB: I'm glad we don't have to deal with that shit.:hankey:

EE: arg. yeah. I think about the funding route at times, but then see threads like this, and it’s a lot of yuck.

GB: Terrible. They did invest, but they just squeezed the founder out.

CB: How is the new vacation home?

Many data teams often find themselves as 'tool jockeys' instead of becoming true engineers. They primarily learn some company data, and then rely on drag-and-drop or YML configuration functionality within the constraints of the tool's environment.

Their organization often insists they must use standard tools, and their idea of a good job is that the task works fine within their personal version. No automatic testing, no automated deployment, no version control, and handcrafted environments. And then they get yelled at when things break and yelled at for taking too long. And most DEs want to quit the field after a few years.

The real question is not that DE and software engineering are converging. It's why most DEs don't have the self-respect and confidence to engineer systems so that their lives don't suck.

My mantras in management:

Love Your Errors

It's not a failure, it's an opportunity for improvement

No shame, no blame

You should be proud…you’ve learn the difference between the pursuit of value vs. the pursuit of valuation. Congrats.

Jesus H Christ, the Universe is big.

So, this explains the average aging Trump voter's cognitive impairment? Well, at least it's not leaded gasoline or reality TV.

This is great. I have personally gone through a half a dozen toasters. It such a waste.

I want to buy one for my lifetime

I like brutalist architecture. And I am not the only strange one: r/brutalist has 174K members and the original fuckyeahbrutalism on tumbler.

Think of it like being a fan of 486 PCs or pixel art.

I do hate this architecture, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowellism

We'll check another website, no biggie

There was also a lot of other cool stuff happening in Vienna in that time period - Math, Philosophy (https://www.diplomacy.edu/blog/deep-roots-digital-era-five-v...), the Arts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Secession), music (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Viennese_School) and even physics (Boltzmann). Too bad they had to screw it all up by getting all nationalist, nativist, and anti-Semitic.

Why is Japanese software so bad? Chip shortage or not using the card purchase UI at train stations is confusing, even in English.

As a US software engineer, I can not figure out how a country that can make great hardware (e.g. high-speed trains), has a beautifully minimalist design aesthetic (e.g. wabi-sabi), and lots of talented artists and engineers can produce such crappy user interfaces. Or for that matter, beyond a few games is irrelevant in the world software markets. Does anyone have an idea?

read the book.

Overall, since the 1990s total global inequality (inequality across all individuals in the world) declined ...

In 1990, 36% of the world's population lived in extreme poverty. By 2019, this number had fallen to 9.2%.

It's not a fallacy ... it's reality

This is too full of Silicon Valley VC language. ugh

Go to the source materials.

- Rational Optimist. Matt Ridley

- The Better Angels of Our Nature. Steve pinker

- Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future. Johan Norberg

- the capitalist manifesto: why the global free market will save the world. Norberg

- Wizard and the prophet. Charles Mann

- Factfulness. Hans rosling

Or, just look at the data

  http://ourworldindata.org/

  http://www.gapminder.org/

It's no surprise -- being good at work is not the same as being good at school.

Optimizing for unit economics vs. top-line growth are opposites in building a company. In the years of free investor money (2020, 1999, etc), companies choose growth over unit cost because their boards and investors are trying to drive huge valuations. This is true in software, farming, and many industries.

Fiber. Dot.coms, housing, crypto, AI, ….

Bootstrap software founder here

This is just bullshit

Unlike many companies in the software industry, we have grown profitably for nine years without the need for any funding. Our success has been fueled by our ability to invest profits into our business, allowing us to improve our software and expand our operations continuously.

However, the 2022 Section 174 R&D tax credit changes have had an impact. This recent change affects many small, independent technology companies, including my company. We have been busy building products, making our customers successful, and making payroll. We are happy to pay our fair share of taxes on our profits. However, investing in software development is the engine that allows us to grow our company and hire more employees. Our tax laws must continue to reflect this reality.

the last thirty years of history: https://ourworldindata.org/is-globalization-an-engine-of-eco...

I took 6 months off in 1992 an it was the best decision. My wife and I did an around the world trip.

Work will always be there. I’ve been working for 45 years. But getting a chance to explore, learn, do whatever when you are young is the best. The most boring people I talk to at parties graduated at 22 and I’ve been doing basically the same job forever. If you saved that much money, you obviously know how to work hard … spend some time to make yourself an interesting person. You have a whole life to accumulate responsibilities.

Long term technology bootstrapping founder here. Paying yourself is very important. You may need to work for free for a while but when you get your first paying customer pay yourself a little salary. And when you get a second customer, pay yourself some more. Try to get a near market salary before you hire your first employee. Corporate and your own founder/personal longevity is the path to success.

This really shook up my worldview when I read it. American history as told in my schooling was about a vast empty with an occasional violent native.

This is not what happened

I read this book twice. I recommend 1493 and his latest book ‘wizard and prophet’ as well. His twitter is also interesting

I have had anxiety/depression too my whole life. Took me years to understand it and figure out a path forward. Therapy, meds helped a lot. And it took me decades to get the skill and perspective to start a company. Life is pretty long, if you spend 5-10 years dealing with depression -- you still have a 30 years of work to try new things once you learn to deal with your biology!

I am so sorry you feel bad. Want some advice from an older engineer turned entrepreneur? Be proud of what you have done. Not many people take risks in life. You did. Being the 'man in the arena' is enough. I read this quote from Teddy Roosevelt often:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

Perhaps I was a bit non standard. But worked at NASA and programmed networked Unix workstations in C. You had to worry a lot about memory management. The only source of information was other people’s code, man pages, and trips to the nerd bookstore.

Work wise it is still the same deal.

...and how much is still the same today: coding on networked UNIX machines with TCPIP, C and its variants, emacs, etc. Also, software engineering is still mostly male.