The foreign programmer complained after drinking, saying everything he should and shouldn't say

赵玉田

The foreign programmer complained after drinking, saying everything he should and shouldn't say [Copy link]

From TopSemic Embedded, author Norman

Last month, a programmer with 10 years of coding experience got drunk and complained on the social networking site Reddit. Then it was forwarded and liked crazily. It can be said that it speaks out the voices of many programmers. There are also many versions in China. We also join in the fun and translate one. Let's enjoy it together:

Today I am a little high, so I want to complain to my friends. Will I regret it one day? Well, only God knows! This is my summary of my 10 years of work.

1. Are you still waiting for your boss to give you a promotion and a raise? Hurry up and change jobs, buddy. There is no god or emperor in the world, everything depends on ourselves!

2. Now everyone is talking about full stack engineers, are you anxious again? But it really doesn't matter. Take the software field where I work, for example, you can come up with 15 different tricks. In web programming or embedded systems, it may be different. But for everything, there are basically only 10 to 20 core principles, and the technology stack just makes it easier to solve problems. There is no need to understand the 16 ways to prove the Pythagorean theorem.

3. There are several reasons why people advise you to find a better job. If you are not happy in a place, you can consider leaving.

4. In some companies, I found good friends who shared the same ideals as me. But you can't always be so lucky. Sometimes you can be happy without good friends, and companies with good friends don't mean you won't encounter troubles.

5. I learned to be as open with my boss as possible, but of course you have to find the right balance, so that he can feel comfortable leaving things to you. What bad things will happen? Fire me? Spend two weeks looking for another job.

6. If you are pulled out of bed at 2 a.m. once or twice in a quarter, that's a serious matter. Either deal with it or leave.

Oh, let’s have another drink.

7. Good bosses and good employees always appreciate each other.

8. When I was a newbie, I was also crazy about technology, coding, and computer science. Now I don’t worry about it anymore.

9. Good code can be understood by a novice engineer, great code can be understood by students, and the best code is no typing.

10. As an engineer, the thing I haven't learned the most is how to write documents. Damn, is there anyone who can teach me? I'm serious, can anyone give me some good advice? I really want to spend money and find someone to teach me how to write a satisfactory and high-end document (it doesn't matter if it's expensive, is a thousand dollars enough?)

11. Continuing from the previous point, writing a perfect design change request may also be a high-tech job.

12. None of these wars have anything to do with me (vim vs emacs, mac vs linux, etc...), except for this one.

13. The older I get, the more I think dynamic languages are a good thing. Damn, I said that, so what? Come and bite me.

14. When I feel I am the smartest person in a place, it is time to leave.

15. I really don't understand why full stack web engineers are paid such a pitiful salary. Oh, no, seriously, even if these guys earn 500k USD a year, it's not that much. Damn, they have to understand the front-end, back-end, various browsers, networks, databases, cache, the difference between web and mobile, what, the company wants to use a new framework? Of course they have to understand this. Seriously, as the king of knowledge, why are the web masters so poorly paid?

16. We should hire more interns, it's awesome. These little guys have so many great ideas. And they give us some pointers, it's awesome. I love it.

Take another bite

17. Don't ever meet your idol. I spent 5,000 dollars to attend my idol's class. He was a dazzling star, but in the end I found that he was not much different from you and me. It was all just packaging and hype.

18. The technology stack is important. Oh, yeah, I think I just said it's not important, okay, listen to me. When you hear people talk about Python development and C++ development, you would say that there is a big difference, right? Because you have to use the right tool for the job. If you don't know what to use, then use Java. This programming language is terrible, but it can do everything.

19. The greatest programming language is lisp. I should learn it.

20. For a newbie, learning SQL is the only way to get rich quickly. Forget about other languages. You don't need to know anything else, just SQL. Payroll data processing expert? You can get $50,000. Payroll data processing expert who knows SQL? $90,000! A big shot who knows management structure in a big company? $40,000. A big shot who knows management structure and knows SQL? Then you can be called a project manager and get $150,000.

21. If we want to attach importance to testing, then we need to put test-driven development (TDD) on the altar.

22. Working in the government sector is not as lucrative as it is said to be, at least for engineers who are just starting out. $120,000 plus various benefits and pensions are indeed tempting, but are you willing to sell your soul and devote yourself to technologies that only insiders understand? I respect civil servants very much, but it is indeed a place for retirement. This advice does not apply to government contractors.

23. Third-party headhunters are parasites. That said, if you can find a tough guy and build a good relationship with them, it will be very beneficial to your career. How do you know if it is a good headhunter? Good headhunters usually don't stay in third-party companies for more than three years. They are often poached by large companies.

24. If the company has less than 100 employees, the stock option is probably a pie in the sky. On the contrary, it is possible to make you rich within 10 years.

25. Working from home is very comfortable, but it’s a bit awkward without a whiteboard.

26. I've never worked at a big company like Facebook or Google, so I don't know if I missed anything. But I recruited some (some useless) employees from these big companies, and they were also confused.

27. I think my personal compensation is a drop in the bucket compared to my worth. As you all know, it is sometimes foolish to measure a person by money.

28. A manager’s power is much smaller than you think. Think about it, why doesn’t the manager fire someone? Because he can’t fire someone.

29. Titles are the most useless. Chief of a big company, outstanding employee, all of them are useless. What you have done and what projects you have completed are what people care about most.

30. Let's talk about titles: In the early stages of your career, it's a good thing to have higher titles. From junior to mid-level, from mid-level to senior, and from senior to chief. If you're already a veteran, the lower the title, the better. That way, your salary will remain the same, and you can get a raise if you get a promotion. In other words, in the first 10 years of your career, rising titles represent an increase in skills and responsibilities. After that, lower titles make it easier for your salary to increase.

31. The pension plan must be fully paid.

32. Be kind to everyone around you. This isn't for the sake of a promotion or a raise (although that certainly helps), it's for its own sake.

33. If I haven't learned anything from newbies this past month, it's that I'm being careless.

Damn it, the wine is gone.

34. Paying for courses, books, and conferences is worth it. I've attended several conferences, several $1.5K courses, many, many books, and subscriptions. It's worth it so I can be more flexible at work.

35. Seriously, why don't web developers get paid more? They know what they are doing!!!

36. Carpal tunnel syndrome, back strain, these are no joke. Spend $1k on some good equipment.

37. One of the great people I met was a PhD in mathematics. I learned a lot from him. I hope he is doing well.

38. Once upon a time, in high school, I had a really great girl. I mean, we hung out together for a few years and talked about everything. Then rumors started to spread that I liked her and we did that and that. She couldn't put it in the right light and started to ignore me. It was a bit depressing. To use a fashionable term now, I was "blacklisted". But I didn't hold a grudge against her and still hoped that she would be full of vitality. If I could travel back in time, there should be a better ending.

39. I had a girlfriend in 8th grade, and even though I didn't like her much anymore, I didn't want to end it, so that's it. This is really a bit painful. Sorry, Lena.

40. You know what's the best thing about being a software engineer? You meet other people who are just like you. It's not like you all like sports or watch TV or anything like that. It's just that you all have the same obsessions, and that's awesome.

41. The technology field is keeping girls away. What kind of industry is this? This really needs to change, doesn't it? I have been enthusiastic about helping these female engineers at work, and I want to do more. How do you think we can start?

42. Black engineers, same thing. What the hell?

43. I often love a technology and then hate it. When I start to hate this technology, I often think it is not bad and always like to recommend it to others. What the hell is Jenkins? Even if I recommend this software to a new customer, it does not mean that I can reduce the disaster caused by its operation failure.

44. I'm going to continue to complain, git is awesome, I'm using it. But it doesn't matter, GUI graphical interface to hell, let me use the command line. 7 commands are so easy to remember, the rest can be Googled.

45. I said I work in data science, I'm going to take a data science course. Pandas, I've had enough.

46. My job is easy because I have a bunch of half-baked technical analysts. They know how to program, but they're not software engineers. Thank God, because if they see something wrong, they always say it must be a design problem. I love them. They're much better than the best engineers.

47. Dark tones are great. Until you are forced to use bright tones. That is why I use bright tones.

48. I know so much about encryption, and suddenly I realize I don't understand it at all.

Brother, why is the wine gone again?

49. To be a good engineer, you need to know the rules. However, to be a better senior engineer, you need to know that sometimes you need to break the rules.

50. If everyone agrees that all problems are caused by bugs, it's time to move on.

51. Many startups are keen to get their employees to open up and show their "true selves". Well, what if the true self's hobby is watching porn? It's better to keep work and private life separate.

52. It's nice to have a drink with coworkers on a good day, but I'd rather be with my kids, family and friends.

53. What is super leadership? It was clearly your fault, but your boss took all the blame. You must know that I would go through fire and water for her.

54. Yes, the best bosses I've ever worked for have always been supportive of my ideas and have done their best to explain things to me that conflicted with my ideas. I've always wanted to be like them.

55. Screw side hustles. If you like side hustles, that's great! But I'm more into rants on reddit.

56. Algorithms and data structures are important, to a certain extent. But have you ever seen a traditional Chinese medicine doctor interview someone with organic chemistry or something like that? Our professional interviews are really shit.

57. Those young boys and girls who were engaged in development were all smart. At least there was money to be made in some underground industry.

58. It doesn’t matter whether I do what I like or not, what matters is not doing what I hate.

59. The closer you are to the product, the more you can understand what it means to create value for the company. It really doesn't matter whether what you do has technical content. This is especially true in startups.

60. Linux was really important, even when I was a Windows programmer. Why? Because I better join the Linux camp. It was exciting to work overtime on the weekend to install Arch.

61. I've learned to be careful with fuzzy words like big data. WTF is that a sensitive word? I've dealt with Spark and Kafka streaming tens of thousands of rows every 10 minutes, and Python and MySQL streaming billions of rows an hour. Those damn labels are fucking terrible.

62. Not all the good jobs are in Silicon Valley. But most are.

Well, if you want to despise me, don't give me a bad review, I don't care about this. Just pretend you didn't see it. What makes me most depressed is that I talked a lot for a long time, but there was no response after posting it. If you think this is a bad post, leave it as it is.

The original text is as follows:

I'm drunk and I'll probably regret this, but here's a drunken rank of things I've learned as an engineer for the past 10 years.

1. The best way I've advanced my career is by changing companies.

2. Technology stacks don't really matter because there are like 15 basic patterns of software engineering in my field that apply. I work in data so it's not going to be the same as webdev or embedded. But all fields have about 10-20 core principles and the tech stack is just trying to make those things easier, so don't fret overit.

3. There's a reason why people recommend job hunting. If I'm unsatisfied at a job, it's probably time to move on.

4. I've made some good, lifelong friends at companies I've worked with. I don't need to make that a requirement of every place I work. I've been perfectly happy working at places where I didn't form friendships with my coworkers and I've been unhappy at places where I made some great friends.

5. I've learned to be honest with my manager. Not too honest, but honest enough where I can be authentic at work. What's the worse that can happen? He fire me? I'll just pick up a new job in 2 weeks.

6. If I'm awaken at 2am from being on-call for more than once per quarter, then something is seriously wrong and I will either fix it or quit.

pour another glass

7. Qualities of a good manager share a lot of qualities of a good engineer.

8. When I first started, I was enamored with technology and programming and computer science. I'm over it.

9. Good code is code that can be understood by a junior engineer. Great code can be understood by a first year CS freshman. The best code is no code at all.

10. The most underrated skill to learn as an engineer is how to document. Fuck, someone please teach me how to write good documentation. Seriously, if there's any recommendations, I'd seriously pay for a course (like probably a lot of money, maybe 1k for a course if it guaranteed that I could write good docs.)

11. Related to above, writing good proposals for changes is a great skill.

12. Almost every holy war out there (vim vs emacs, mac vs linux, whatever) doesn't matter... except one. See below.

13. The older I get, the more I appreciate dynamic languages. Fuck, I said it. Fight me.

14. If I ever find myself thinking I'm the smartest person in the room, it's time to leave.

15. I don't know why full stack webdevs are paid so poorly. No really, they should be paid like half a mil a year just base salary. Fuck they have to understand both front end AND back end AND how different browsers work AND networking AND databases AND caching AND differences between web and mobile AND omg what the fuck there's another framework out there that companies want to use? Seriously, why are webdevs paid so little.

16. We should hire more interns, they're awesome. Those energetic little fucks with their ideas. Even better when they can question or criticize something. I love interns.

Sip

17. Don't meet your heroes. I paid 5k to take a course by one of my heroes. He's a brilliant man, but at the end of it I realized that he's making it up as he goes along like the rest of us.

18. Tech stack matters. OK I just said tech stack doesn't matter, but hear me out. If you hear Python dev vs C++ dev, you think very different things, right? That's because certain tools are really good at certain jobs. If you're not sure what you want to do, just do Java. It's a shitty programming language that's good at almost everything.

19. The greatest programming language ever is lisp. I should learn lisp.

20. For beginners, the most lucrative programming language to learn is SQL. Fuck all other languages. If you know SQL and nothing else, you can make bank. Payroll specialtist? Maybe 50k. Payroll specialist who knows SQL? 90k. Average joe with organizational skills at big corp? 40k. Average joe with organization skills AND sql? Call yourself a PM and earn $150k.

21. Tests are important but TDD is a damn cult.

22. Cushy government jobs are not what they are cracked up to be, at least for early to mid-career engineers. Sure, $120k + bennies + pension sound great, but you'll be selling your soul to work on esoteric proprietary technology. Much respect to government workers but seriously there's a reason why the median age for engineers at those places is 50+. Advice does not apply to government contractors.

23. Third party recruiters are leeches. However, if you find a good one, seriously develop a good relationship with them. They can help bootstrap your career. How do you know if you have a good one? If they've been a third party recruiter for more than 3 years, they're probably bad. The good ones typically become recruiters are large companies.

24. Options are worthless or can make you a millionaire. They're probably worthless unless the headcount of engineering is more than 100. Thenmaybethey are worth something within this decade.

25. Work from home is the tits. But lack of whiteboarding sucks.

26. I've never worked at FAANG so I don't know what I'm missing. But I've hired (and not hired) engineers from FAANGs and they don't know what they're doing either.

27. My self worth is not a function of or correlated with my total compensation. Capitalism is a poor way to determine self-worth.

28. Managers have less power than you think. Way less power. If you ever thing, why doesn't Manager XYZ fire somebody, it's because they can't.

29. Titles mostly don't matter. Principal Distinguished Staff Lead Engineer from Whatever Company, whatever. What did you do and what did you accomplish. That's all people care about.

30. Speaking of titles: early in your career, title changes up are nice. Junior to Mid. Mid to Senior. Senior to Lead. Later in your career, title changesdownare nice. That way, you can get the same compensation but then get an increase when you're promoted. In other words, early in your career (<10 years), title changes UP are good because it lets you grow your skills and responsibilities. Later, title changes down are nice because it lets you grow your salary.

31. Max out our 401ks.

32. Be kind to everyone. Not because it'll help your career (it will), but because being kind is rewarding by itself.

33. If I didn't learn something from the junior engineer or intern this past month, I wasn't paying attention.

Oops I'm out of wine.

34. Paying for classes, books, conferences is worth it. I've done a few conferences, a few 1.5k courses, many books, and a subscription. Worth it. This way, I can better pretend what I'm doing.

35. Seriously, why aren't webdevs paid more? They know everything!!!

36. Carpal tunnel and back problems are no joke. Spend the 1k now on good equipment.

37. The smartest man I've every worked for was a Math PhD. I've learned so much from that guy. I hope he's doing well.

38. Once, in high school, there was thing girl who was a great friend of mine. I mean we talked and hung out and shared a lot of personal stuff over a few years. Then there was a rumor that I liked her or that we were going out or whatever. She didn't take that too well so she started to ignore me. That didn't feel too good. I guess this would be the modern equivalent to "ghosting". I don't wish her any ill will though, and I hope she's doing great. I'm sorry I didn't handle that better.

39. I had a girlfriend in 8th grade that I didn't want to break up with even though I didn't like her anymore so I just started to ignore her. That was so fucked up. I'm sorry, Lena.

40. You know what the best part of being a software engineer is? You can meet and talk to people who think like you. Not necessarily the same interests like sports and TV shows and stuff. But they think about problems the same way you think of them. That's pretty cool.

41. There's not enough women in technology. What a fucked up industry. That needs to change. I've been trying to be more encouraging and helpful to the women engineers in our org, but I don't know what else to do.

42. Same with black engineers. What the hell?

43. I've never really started hating a language or technology until I started becoming intimately familiar with it. Also, I think a piece of tech is good if I hate it but I simultaneously would recommend it to a client. Fuck Jenkins but man I don't think I would be commuting software malpractice by recommending it to a new client.

44. That being said, git is awful and I have choice but to use it. Also, GUI git tools can go to hell, give me the command line any day. There's like 7 command lines to memorize, everything else can be googled.

45. Since I work in data, I'm going to give a data-specific lessons learned. Fuck pandas.

46. My job is easier because I have semi-technical analysts on my team. Semi-technical because they know programming but not software engineering. This is a blessing because if something doesn't make sense to them, it means that it was probably badly designed. I love the analysts on the team; they've helped me grow so much more than the most brilliant engineers.

47. Dark mode is great until you're forced to use light mode (webpage or an unsupported app). That's why I use light mode.

48. I know enough about security to know that I don't know shit about security.

Crap I'm out of wine.

49. Being a good engineer means knowing best practices. Being a senior engineer means knowing when to break best practices.

50. If people are trying to assign blame to a bug or outage, it's time to move on.

51. A lot of progressive companies, especially startups, talk about bringing your "authentic self". Well what if your authentic self is all about watching porn? Yeah, it's healthy to keep a barrier between your work and personal life.

52. I love drinking with my co-workers during happy hour. I'd rather spend time with kids, family, or friends.

53. The best demonstration of great leadership is when my leader took the fall for a mistake that was 100% my fault. You better believe I would've walked over fire for her.

54. On the same token, the best leaders I've been privileged to work under did their best to both advocate for my opinions and also explain to me other opinions 'that conflict with mine. I'm working hard to be like them.

55. Fuck side projects. If you love doing them, great! Even if I had the time to do side-projects, I'm too damn busy writing drunken posts on reddit

56. Algorithms and data strictures are important--to a point. I don't see pharmacist interviews test trivia about organic chemistry. There's something fucked with our industry's interview process.

57. Damn, those devops guys and gals are f'ing smart. At least those mofos get paid though.

58. It's not important to do what I like. It's more important to do what I don't hate.

59. The closer I am to the product, the closer I am to driving revnue, the more I feel valued regardless of how technical my work is. This has been true for even the most progressive companies.

60. Linux is important even when I was working in all Windows. Why? Because I eventually worked in Linux. So happy for those weekend where I screwed around installing Arch.

61. I've learned to be wary for ambiguous buzz words like big data. WTF is "big" data? I've dealt with 10k rows streaming every 10 minutes in Spark and Kafka and dealt with 1B rows batched up hourly in Python and MySQL. Those labels can go fuck themselves.

62. Not all great jobs are in Silicon Valley. But a lot are.

Finally, if you really want to hurt me, don't downvote I don't care about that.Just ignore this post. Nothing makes me sadder than when I wrote a long post and then nobody responds. So if you hate this post, just ignore.

se7ens

It makes sense and is worth learning from

Thanks for sharing

qwqwqw2088

It turns out that foreign friends also complained after drinking

soso

Haha, we can have a group of engineers complaining about this. Haha

strong161

Isn't 10 years a newbie? The person with the lowest experience in our group has worked in the company for 9 years... a kid who has only worked for 10 years...

soso

strong161 posted on 2021-7-14 17:17 Isn't 10 years just a novice? The person with the lowest working experience in our group has worked in the company for 9 years... a kid who has only worked for 10 years...

I feel much better now that I've said that, haha. 10 years seems really old, I've been here for 15 years

bobde163

The truth comes out after drinking

freebsder

Damn, it’s in English. I can’t understand it at all.