comprev

During interviews I make a point about flexibility due to not having my own family, and can also dedicate significantly more time to learning outside of work that perhaps many candidates of a similar age (40-45 bracket) are unable to. I have the same "free time" as a junior dev in their 20s... but with 20yrs Ops experience on top.

It does pay off though and I am delighted when colleagues approach me with a difficult problem to crack. I never take on formal ownership of the problem though, but if I do crack it, my input is well documented (and bonus points: I learned something new).

Cracking some hard problems has earned me a good reputation among the senior engineers & engineering management, and hopefully my future career will benefit from these relationships.

A friend once told me "I'd rather arrive at the Heavenly Gates in a limo than on foot"

Money doesn't ultimately make you happy but it sure contributes to your happiness along the way.

Just like the vacuum business - the more it sucks, the better the product! /s

Companies often hire seniors to replace seniors who have moved on. They need people to hit the ground running and this comes with experience.

Juniors on the other hand have a much higher management overhead (which itself is a skill) and once they've been trained - gained experience - they'll likely move on for a pay bump significantly higher than a promotion if they stayed.

My employer takes on a handful of juniors each year and retains them due to lack of competition in a fairly large geographic area.

People stay because their options are limited when they prefer to live close to family. Many staff have 15, 20 even 30+ years service!

"Yes" or "Ask me again later" is a common Microsoft pattern. "No" is not even an option.

A patch is a change and for changes to be deployed they must go through the pipelines.

The new images are then rolled out in exactly the same controlled manner as any other new release.

Needs (2024)

A soft fork would still be able to merge changes in the upstream project and then add their own changes on top. The most basic example would be a soft fork that only changes the default search engine - everything else is the same.

A hard fork - as I understand it - means the development takes a new direction and integrating the original upstream code becomes more difficult as projects diverge, to the point where they are basically incompatible with each other.

100% this - just because a judge decided in your favour - actually collecting the debt is the hardest part.

My father once lent someone money in good faith towards education, who then later informed him they had no intention to repay. We're talking £8,000 here.

It took 4 years of legal process before he saw a penny as the other party tried to wriggle out of everything... even so far as fake lawyers and wrongly claiming to have moved out (which the judge did not look to kindly upon).

Recently he received a cheque for the remaining balance - 8yrs after he sent his first letter by registered post which is the first step in a small claims court.

Which is why the reward is £1 - because the demographic of their customers consider it worth their time.

In ASDA it might be £2

In Tescos it might be £4

In Waitrose it might be £10

Trigger's broom!

[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=56yN2zHtofM

Since Apple take a slice of the App store sale it's in their best interest to "feature" apps which are already popular and bring in good revenue.

Why promote an app with 100 sales over another with 10,000?

The stress in the Ops world is getting systems back to normal operation as quickly as possible because of lost revenue.

In the Dev world stress comes from the demand to add new features in unrealistic timeframes. The "product" has already been sold even if it's not finished yet. The business risks losing revenue by not delivering promised functionality.

Both Dev and Ops people experience equal stress from the same employer due to different reasons.

This is probably similar in UK - although this is pure speculation.

A limited company owning the "land" which is then leased to the "farm" business that works it.

Possibly a "group" parent company is owned by the actual farmer.

I'm sure there will be good tax and legal protection reasons to structure farms in this way, not forgetting various government schemes which bring in revenue via grants and tax breaks.

Netflix wants 100% of your attention on _their_ content.

Instead of "channel surfing" and picking a competitor's production they want to keep viewers inside their walled garden.

To counter this, I'm the only one out of dozens of colleagues who does not have an STEM background (I didn't do very well at school either).

During interviews my lack of degree is often brought up - usually asking if I accidentally forgot to add it to my CV.

At first it was tough but now I'm two decades deep into a career in Ops.

> code editor [with] high-performance collaboration with humans and AI

When investors are involved this immediately changes to:

> Our goal is to build a product which will hopefully return more than our financial investment.

I get the feeling many HN contributors to this discussion forget that Zed is not a software project like Neovim, Nano or Emacs (etc.) which rely on donations and/or sponsors to either pay developers or cover required infrastructure costs.

It's a product backed by investors who - one day - will demand their pound of flesh, and "features" like AI are added to market the product to _more_ investors.

Perhaps the use of AI itself inside the product will also be tracked to steer potential opportunities for the investors themselves.

Like many fellow HN'ers, I use Zed on a daily basis, and it's no different than Google search or Facebook - "If a product from investors is free, YOU are the product"

The wording implies that disabling a default feature is used by a handful of edge cases and Zed has done their best to accommodate these users.

From a business perspective, investors want to hear that AI is indeed part of the shipped product.

It's all about optics.

"disable_user_tracking: false" vs "enable_user_tracking: true"

"disable_adverts: false" vs "enable_adverts: true"

Fewer people would actively _enable_ user tracking or adverts compared to those who would take extra steps to _disable_ them.

As Chrome has slowly become the default browser in enterprise environments it makes sense to cater for the _paying_ customers of Slack, Teams, Jira, etc. and they become the focus of product development.

It didn't feel that long ago when Internet Explorer was the primary target for development.

Shovel-as-a-Service*

[*] Also known as "tool hire" and has been around since the dawn of mankind

My Dad always extends this quip to "After buying it and selling it there's always a third day - when I get to spend time with the family on the water - and that makes all the other days in between worth it"

He's now in his mid 80s and still gets excited about taking friends & family on the boat - if it's their first or hundredth time.

Private Eye might be humorous but they're also very respected for their journalistic integrity.

They will expose scandals and wrongdoing which many publications would buckle under pressure to stop digging.

No person or business wants be in the crosshairs of Ian Hislop! [0]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Hislop

NextDNS [0] has proven very useful for me on iOS. Firefox is 99% ad-free. Only for YouTube do I switch to Brave Browser.

I use Firefox on other devices and use the sync functionality so prefer to use it where possible.

My home router (Draytek) is also configured to force any connected devices to use NextDNS too.

Definitely worth the €20 annual subscription.

[0] https://nextdns.io

To clarify, I did grow up in what could be considered British middle class, but our one family holiday of the year was 2 weeks camping in France (Eurocamp, late 80s/early 90s). I think I was about 10 before experiencing an aeroplane after my 2 older siblings moved out. On the plus side (which I appreciate even more as an adult) there was always money available for education (i.e school trips), activities, musical instruments (including lessons) - even a PC to nurture my curiosity in technology! Financial security for the family was top priority and consider myself very fortunate in that regard.

Paywall removed: https://archive.ph/OZeED

From my experience living most of my life in the UK from birth there is an element of truth to class being immutable - being directly linked to money and the status of property ownership - for now anyway.

The Thatcher years created an opportunity for working class (who traditionally lived in rent controlled properties due to low income) to purchase their houses for pennies on the dollar.

Suddenly, millions of families felt they had moved up a class. They were no longer at the mercy of landlords and had moved up in society from a tenant to an owner.

The traditional three tiers of lower, middle and upper class changed to lower, lower-middle, upper-middle and upper.

From my observations the lower-middle class are still adjusting not to having money but rather _access_ to money previously denied. Having equity in a property as a guarantee of a loan opens up a world previously off limits by the banks.

A bit like when someone turns 18 and they have access to credit cards - lots of cash easily available!

I come from a family where (with the exception of a mortgage), if you can't pay for something in cash (and still have plenty in reserve), you can't afford it. My folks were very proud of raising a family with zero debts (minus the mortgage), and I'm forever thankful.

The families I knew (and by extension others living on the typical "cookie cutter" UK housing estate) were swimming in debt. What surprised me the most was how "normal" it was - 3yr (or less) car on the drive; massive flatscreen TVs (in 2007); multiple cruise holidays per year; flying off to a warm destination mid-winter.

Many of them said when they were younger they never experienced such things and told stories of growing up in near poverty. Going into debt for holidays and having a new car on the drive was normalised.

These were nurses, postmen, truck drivers, retail staff, hospitality etc. all traditional working class jobs with low salary expectations.

They were trying desperately to _appear_ like they were middle class at whatever cost.

I'm of the belief it will still take a few generations before the wave of lower-middle class learn that it's not about having a new car on the drive but rather having that cash in the bank as savings - and a significantly cheaper (& older) car on the drive.

And yet the UK school system doesn't teach pupils about sensible financial matters - we all rely on our parents to guide us - so escaping the "buy it now on credit" mentality will be easier said that done!

In the north yes, it's absolutely soeul destroying! /s

I've had 2 Audi TT mk1 over the years.

Love the design, easy to work on (not afraid of stripping the engine) and they're fun to drive. Plus it has a great commumity!

Still have loads of spare parts including the almost-unicor-status official roof bars :)

Platform/SRE/DevOps/etc by trade.

DATs are partly responsible for the huge resurgence in the sale of brand new/unreleased "old school" dance music.

There's a vinyl record label called Deep Jungle [0] which specialises in sourcing unreleased (or very limited pressings originally) 90s jungle/drum&bass straight from the artists - for a fair price.

Each release has a backstory often involving getting boxes of DATs down from the attic! The music is remastered with modern technology.

Demand is high (literally selling out within minutes!) as the label covers both older customers (who went raving in the 90s) and the younger generation exploring older music.

[0] https://www.discogs.com/label/31362-Deep-Jungle