wildengineer

> The only AAA game that I bought was "The Witcher 3" precisely for the back story, but after 5-10h of playing it just felt so repetitive that I gave up on it.

I went through the same thing with Witcher 3, but I tried again and once I got past the initial Baron storyline the game really hit its stride. That game has so many mini-stories that you can play for 100 hours and still have some interesting stories to engage with. I don't think I've played any game before or since with that many storylines.

AssemblyAI (YC S17) | Senior Backend Engineer | Full-time | Remote

We're building the Top Rated Speech-to-Text API for Developers.

Customers use our API to transcribe phone calls, meetings, videos, podcasts, and other types of media. Our accurate transcripts are used to power features like visual voicemail, call analytics, closed captioning, meeting summaries, and a slew of other features. We're growing fast, and processing millions of API calls per day in production.

We're a fully remote company and our development team is currently spread out across the US.

We're looking for a senior backend engineer with strong software and cloud engineering skills. You'll help us build highly scalable developer-centric APIs powered by state-of-the-art ML models.

Job description: https://www.notion.so/Senior-Backend-Engineer-187f72231e4946...

Website: https://www.assemblyai.com

You can reach me directly at: [email protected] (Please put "HN" in your emails)

SEEKING WORK | Troy, NY | REMOTE

At Papa Bear Software, we provide technical strategy, architecture, and engineering, and staff augmentation primarily for early stage b2b software startups.

What we've done lately:

- Redesigned a SaaS company's cloud infrastructure resulting in $45k/year savings

- End to end development of a new product for a successful marketing company looking to pivot into adtech.

- Designed and built a high traffic IoT data pipeline including data lake storage and time series visualizations

- Built out a business intelligence platform to help multi-tenancy startup visualize success metrics.

Recent Technologies:

  Languages: Python, Javascript, Java, Go, C#, Ruby

  Frontend: React, React Native, iOS, Android, Vue.js

  Backend: FastAPI, Express.js, Apollo.js, Spring, JEE, Rails

  Mobile: React Native, Native iOS/Android

  Testing: Cypress, Selenium, Jmeter, Pytest, Mocha.js, JUnit

  DevOps: Very deep on AWS, Some Azure, Terraform, Docker, Kubernetes, Ansible, Helm, GitOps

Website: https://papabearsoftware.com

Email: mike AT papabearsoftware.com

SEEKING WORK and FREELANCERS | Troy, NY | REMOTE At Papa Bear Software, we provide technical strategy, architecture, and engineering, and staff augmentation primarily for early stage b2b software startups. Seeking both clients and freelancers!

What we've done lately:

- Redesigned a SaaS company's cloud infrastructure resulting in $45k/year savings

- End to end development of a new product for a successful marketing company looking to pivot into adtech.

- Designed and built a high traffic IoT data pipeline including data lake storage and time series visualizations

- Built out a business intelligence platform to help mulit-tenancy startup visualize success metrics.

Recent Technologies:

  Languages: Python, Javascript, Go, Java, C#, Ruby

  Frontend: React, React Native, iOS, Android, Vue.js

  Backend: Spring, JEE, Flask, Node.js, Rails

  Mobile: React Native, Native iOS/Android

  Testing: Cypress, Selenium, Jmeter, Pytest, Mocha.js, JUnit

  DevOps: Very deep on AWS, Some Azure, Terraform, Docker, Kubernetes, Ansible, Helm, GitOps

Website: https://papabearsoftware.com

Email: mike AT papabearsoftware.com

SEEKING WORK and FREELANCERS| Troy, NY | REMOTE

At Papa Bear Software, we provide guidance, technical strategy, system design, and engineering staff for Early Stage B2B Software Startups.

Latest Results:

- Redesigned a SaaS company's cloud infrastructure resulting in $45k/year savings

- End to end development of a new product for a successful marketing company looking to pivot into adtech.

- Helped implement a big pivot for a well known media entertainment company.

- Designed and built a high traffic IoT data pipeline including data lake storage and time series visualizations

Current Technologies:

  Languages: Python, Javascript, Go, Java, C#, Ruby

  Frontend: React, React Native, iOS, Android, Vue.js

  Backend: Flask, Node.js, Spring, Rails

  Mobile: React Native, Native iOS/Android

  Testing: Cypress, Selenium, Jmeter, Pytest, Mocha.js, JUnit

  DevOps: Very deep on AWS, Some Azure, Terraform, Docker, K8s, Ansible, Helm, GitOps

Seeking both companies and freelancers.

Website: https://papabearsoftware.com

Email: mike AT papabearsoftware.com

SEEKING WORK and FREELANCER | Troy, NY | REMOTE

I am an Early Stage Software Consultant helping leaders find their way to market. I work closely with leadership to help them navigate through the dangers of early stage software. Some of my clients call me a Rent a CTO or Fractional CTO.

I also lead a team of highly skilled engineers to accelerate my client's progress. We do everything from focusing/shaping requirements to full stack implementation to cloud native devops to end to end testing.

Latest Results:

- Redesigned a SaaS company's cloud infrastructure resulting in $45k/year savings

- End to end development of a new product for a successful marketing company looking to pivot into adtech.

- Helped implement a big pivot for a well known media entertainment company.

- Designed and built a high traffic IoT data pipeline including data lake storage and time series visualizations

Current Technologies:

  Languages: Python, Javascript, Go, Java, C#, Ruby

  Frontend: React, Html, CSS

  Backend: Flask, Node.js, Spring, Rails

  Mobile: React Native, Native iOS/Android

  Testing: Cypress, Selenium, Jmeter, Pytest, Mocha.js, JUnit

  DevOps: Very deep on AWS, Some Azure, Terraform, Docker, K8s, Ansible, Helm, GitOps

Seeking both companies and freelancers.

Website: https://papabearsoftware.com

Email: mike AT papabearsoftware.com

I have to parrot what others say about playing slower chess. I was around 900 when I started on chess.com and peaked around 1600. I did regress though as I lost the obsession.

This is what I did over many years:

- Playing alot of slow chess. This allows you to explore and learn from the exploration, but also gives you a small amount of pressure.

- Studying openings with mobile apps

- Consuming everything chess through books, apps, and videos. I loved watching analysis of the masters.

- Focusing on tactics over strategy. I learned from a really good chess player that strategy is more of an experts tool. I was never going to be an expert.

- Chess puzzles. This helps with pattern recognition, especially in blitz.

I run a remote-first consulting company. So far everything is good. My clients are all pushing me to work for them. I even signed and started a new contract in the middle of all this. That said, it is unsettling to watch the world crumble around me while my business is growing.

I hate that word, self-made. I think of Bezos, Buffet, Gates and all three of them had investment from their parents or had a business relationship made possible by their parents. Of the billionaires I know of, all them came from at least an upper middle class family. Certainly they are a special kind of talent and a big part of their own success, but they were raised by nurturing families with significant resources.

> Yeah right it’s the government taking black men at random in the street and putting them in jail

Well not as cut and dry as that, but cops harassing black kids walking the streets is an old tradition of law enforcement. Mix in some stop and frisk and you have an unfair system. I remember I made friends with some black kids in high school. I went down to their neighborhood. It didn't take long for a cop to pull up and start asking questions. I never had a cop approach me before that. It was eye opening. I lived only a mile away.

> laws...which are the same for everyone.

Oh really? Are you sure about that? There are many studies showing that black people have higher incarceration rates for the same crimes as their cohorts.

Thank you. I will pick up that book. Perhaps I can send questions your way once I've digested all this advice and books?

I can't name it all but here's the main stuff...

Languages: Java, Scala, Python 2&3, Javascript/ES6/Typescript

Libraries/Frameworks/Middleware: Spring, Java EE, Spark, Flask, Pandas, Pyspark, Node, Kafka, Redis, Memcached

Databases: The popular SQL dbs (SQL Server, Oracle, Postgres, MySQL) and NoSQL (Cassandra and Mongo).

I also have alot of experience with Azure and AWS offerings, including serverless.

> This helps you create a target client list and start hammering the ground finding contacts in to them.

I don't have any experience in sales, but I'm eager to learn. Any advice on which content I should consume in this area?

1. I haven't picked an industry. I've been working with a startup in adtech and the other a significant player in the digital content provider space. Do you most clients expect extensive experience in their domains?

2. As for service, my technical focus is on all things backend, but also advise my clients on best practices at all phases of development. I want to eventually build a team to cover the full stack and QA.

3. Very good points and advice.

4. I currently work on these contracts. One of which should carry me through the year, but I don't have the cash to float myself for any longer than 3 months. I expected to work near full time while I work on sales. Also I don't know much about sales. Any content I should be reading?

5. Thanks I'll take a look.

I felt the "magic" of software as a teenager with my first programs. I've even faced long stretches of boredom over the years, but after 2 decades the awe of the magic has been replaced with the awe of my own mastery. I'm in awe when a elegant solution comes to mind, seemingly out of thin air. I find that magical.

It sounds like your org needs two things,

1. A data warehouse for this data

2. Awareness of software/data best practices

That being said, while I agree code duplication is bad, data duplication isn't as long as you are maintaining data lineage. In some cases data duplication good.

I also wouldn't care too much that you have 100Gb max in a big data architecture. So what? It's not like you're going to be able to get rid of it easily. A data warehouse built from a new set of pipelines seems like the biggest bang for your buck.

Very good advice all around. Thanks for the help!

In the java world this gets solved with gradle's incremental build system, which uses a build cache, a user configured dependency tree, and some hashing to determine what needs to build.

One of my biggest fears is being aged out of software development as I am almost 40. Over the last year I've been casually looking for a new job while currently employed. Yes I know its not the same, but bear with me. By November I had not yet found a new job and the culture at my current workplace had taken a turn for the worse. I began to worry that I was getting too old for the market. I never contemplated suicide, but I was scared. This is what I did.

1. Setup personally customized email alerts for all the job sites I could find.

2. Sent resumes out every day.

3. I worked on myself. Nearly every day since I've solved leetcode problems, wrote open source software, learned Kotlin, relearned the fundamentals of functional programming, sharpened my python, bought a book on ML and wrote a series of jupyter notebooks working through the standard ML models.

I had many interviews during this time. For some of them I was horribly unprepared, but I used those failures to figure out what I had to know the next time. Within the last week I've received 3 offers. Yesterday I accepted one making great money, working from home, for a company I believe in.

Please fight the fear and keep grinding.

Ended up learning kotlin, advanced my python skills, acquired some basic ML knowledge, and journeyed further into the rabbit hole that is brazilian jiu jitsu.

A football analytics website that I have been slowly building for years and learning ML.

IMO the ACA was an overreach that cost him the congress in 2010 and possibly Clinton's presidency. That political capital would have been better spent on getting higher taxes at the top and fixing social security.

I have yet to see a compelling argument as to how a Trump presidency leads that labor to a livable wage.

In 2006, the federal bureau of labor statistics under George W. Bush concluded the labor participation rate would continue to fall for decades. Labor participation rate is not a strong indicator given our aging workforce.

http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2006/11/art3full.pdf

This is spot on. To the low skilled worker class this is all they want and they feel like they have to scrape to get it.

PG could have saved us all some time if he led with #9 in his original post. Most of my family and friends are struggling to keep up with cost of living increases and these aren't considered poor people by government standards. If this trend of stagnant middle class wages continues long enough things will get ugly.

I am a supporter of redistributing wealth at the top for expanded education opportunities, which is why I do believe making the connection between income inequality and poverty is important. I don't understand why as a people we've accepted paying out of pocket for an education. We used to expect that public education provided everything you required to achieve a middle class lifestyle.

> Palpatine has real support of the public.

They showed many planets at the end of RotJ [1] where massive celebrations occurred, including Coruscant. I think these celebrations speak to the rebellion's support.

>It's just that arguments that you choose to prove that are not working.

There's nothing to prove. The belief that a people have the right to topple their dictators is subjective. I can only prove something if we share the same axioms.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiM5zEEI_Jo