dfcowell
Access control and permissions should be handled on the backend by enforcing IAM on well-defined principals, not with MCP middleware. Claude can already bypass MCP and call APIs or use CLIs if it runs into blockers using MCP, so it’s not an effective point to implement the control.
I’m proficient enough that I can work on anyone else’s machine well, and I have the comfort and speed benefits on my main workstation.
I’m glad you had an easier time than we did!
If we built the app with the stable branch the bundle size was orders of magnitude smaller: less than 200kb. Still a bit of a chonker, but more reasonable than the ridiculousness the experimental SSR branch spat out.
It could have been any technology. The silver bullet is choosing the right tool for the job.
I don’t have an attachment to any particular tech. At the time React was what I knew, and I was coming off the back of building a server side rendered React site when I joined this company. I had a team of JavaScript-focused engineers to work with.
Everything about this particular situation was exceptional. I focused on the decision to do a rewrite in the post because I thought it was the more interesting part of the story. In hindsight I might have gotten that wrong.
We wouldn’t have been able to hit such an aggressive deadline under different circumstances.
It also apparently requires double email configuration, meaning it has two places where you can configure your mailer. I had only set it up in one place, meaning the confirmations never got sent.
Bit of a facepalm moment.
In theory I could get up to double that with a different ISP, but my router doesn’t handle those kind of speeds.
There may be a resurgence of this kind of thing as people use social heuristics to decide if any given creator is likely to be producing generative content or not.
I self-host Ghost and Plausible Analytics (along with several other services,) on an Unraid box at home, fronted by Cloudflare, and it holds up well to load. Costs next to nothing, too, since it inherits hand-me-down parts from my main desktop PC.
Software Engineers Hate Code
My breaking point was when - as a premium subscriber already - Spotify insisted on promoting their family plan, Taylor Swift’s new album and whatever the flavor of the current week was via full-screen modal popups in the app with no way to prevent them. I asked support several times and was told they didn’t have a toggle.
I tried moving to Apple Music, but the discovery patterns in that app didn’t align with what I was looking for, and offline play has been nerfed so hard I can’t find any way to do it any more.
I’m now on Plex + Plexamp for music and happier for it.
It sounds like you’re in a company that only has Tech Lead and Right Hand staff+ roles available, and the responsibilities of those roles are at odds with what you want to be doing.
I would actively seek out companies that offer Solver or Architect roles. These tend to be non-tech companies with large internal technology teams, so you might need to look further afield than the organizations we typically see represented on HN.
Overall though, optimize for your happiness at work. If you suffer through a role you don’t find fulfilling you will burn out.
I wouldn’t worry about the optics of your CV. Any place with a decent culture (i.e. somewhere you would actually want to work,) will listen to your story and appreciate your self-awareness and candor.
I think you’d probably find that harder to shrug off.
Play with fire, get burned. If you don’t want these things to happen, stay in the regulated financial system where guard rails exist against market manipulation.
Personally, I’ve done my due diligence and decided that the crypto community is a raging dumpster fire that is speedrunning the last 200 years of centralized financial fraud and somehow failing to learn any of the lessons along the way. For that reason (and because I lack the time to exhaustively vet every project that looks interesting,) I’m staying out of it.
He’s also very good about sending only what he says he’s going to send, when he says he’ll send it and deleting the list afterwards.
Of course, you need to deal with the quirk of the material only being available by email, which isn’t the worst fate in the world.
Manager Tools is great for the “nuts and bolts” of management, regardless of industry. They have a book and paid membership, but start with the podcast hall of fame/HOF episodes to see if their methodology works for you: https://www.manager-tools.com/all-podcasts?field_content_dom...
More engineering-specific, The Manager’s Path (book) is fantastic.
Radical Candor (book) is excellent when working out how to build relationships, coach and communicate effectively with your team.
If you’re working in a multicultural environment The Culture Map (book) is very helpful.
I’d also recommend joining this Slack community to find a wealth of wisdom from experienced engineering managers, and to share your journey with other newcomers: https://engmanagers.github.io/
Good luck, and welcome aboard!
I was doing a group cycling tour with 3 friends, one of whom had a Di2 GRX shifter. He pinched the Di2 cable in the rear axle when reassembling his bike and shorted the whole system. Needed to replace everything. That ended the trip for him, had to go back into town and get it fixed.
The system might provide a better shifting experience, but from a durability and field-repair standpoint I think mechanical shifting still has the edge.