It is telling that the person arguing in favor of native C/C++ has to use a throwaway account for fear of going against the dominant force of opinion in our industry. We should be able to have these conversations openly without wondering if it makes us less employable.
Fair point. It's a thought that has gone through my head a few times. There are places that want you to conform to whatever it is we call "modern" software development, and I often find myself feeling uncomfortable about expressing an alternate viewpoint.
There's no conspiracy or anything going on here, and you're right it's wrong to assume. That's the general sentiment of what I was trying to say though.
Yeah, I have the same concern. This is great for those situations where declarative works but sometimes you really want to get low-level and do some custom stuff with imperative code. I suppose we can use the old frameworks for that?
I get the feeling that many elements of your story don't add up. How can you work 10-12 hours a day and only have $1000 saved up, especially if you're in a tech-related field? I know kids can be expensive, but they're not that expensive.
In life, unless you can learn to put away a huge pile of cash, people are just going to walk all over you. When you are vulnerable, it sends a signal and they pounce on it. Your boss will stop abusing you the moment he realizes he can't use it to control you anymore.
Save your money. Pick up new skills. Become less dependent on others. Bike instead of driving. Cook all of your own meals. Learn about investing. Get out of debt. Maintain your own vehicles. Plant a garden.
Take literally any step to make yourself more independent and your boss will lose power.
> I get the feeling that many elements of your story don't add up. How can you work 10-12 hours a day and only have $1000 saved up, especially if you're in a tech-related field? I know kids can be expensive, but they're not that expensive.
Welcome to the real world my friend. Most people working in IT earn way less than you think. Way, way less. It's scary outside the bubble.
I have never worked in a field more obsessed with talking about how it does its work. Today we're standing on one leg. Tomorrow we're programming in downward dog stance. Next week, we're gonna try the Red Bull diet and see how that goes.
This really doesn't have to be that hard. You talk to people. You figure out what's important. Then you do that stuff. Then you talk to more people again.
Seriously. Development phase or iteration is way better. It's also more of a flexible concept. It doesn't need to always be two weeks or whatever. We just decide what to do next and then do that.
Is anybody else a little creeped out by this recent insistence that we refer to everything being done as an "issue"? I never agreed to this. I don't know where it came from, but it's really weird.
Issue implies something is already wrong with what is being built.
How can we be wrong when we haven't even started yet? It's utter madness
Never take a code test until you speak on the phone with an engineer at the company. That way, they need to at least trade something valuable of theirs (expensive engineer time) for something valuable of yours (your time). When you adopt this policy, all kinds of B.S. magically vanishes from your life.
After all, you would never continue to try to win the affection of a guy/girl who wouldn't at least give you a first date? Why do the same for a company that can't bother to give you some of their time?
Yeah, depends on how you define "retire". There are plenty of people who hit financial independence and "retire" but still choose to work. I'd go so far as to say you should keep working after you hit financial independence or else life gets kinda drained of its meaning.
For me, "retirement" doesn't mean quitting work but rather having the ability to choose to only work on things I find meaningful. I'm also pretty horrible at dealing with authority and too insistent on knowing why people order me to do stuff at work. Most of the time, I can keep my irritation hidden from others but it would be nice to not have to deal with that irritation at all.
So long as the bulk of your money comes from one or two main "clients," you more or less have to do what they say, and they don't have to explain why. "Retirement" means having a diverse enough source of income that you no longer have to follow orders and can push back or simply decide not to work with them because you don't need the money.
TL;DR - we're obsessed with early retirement because we are human beings who crave autonomy mastery and purpose.
If there were a way to gain all of those benefits without having to pass through the process of accumulating vast sums of material wealth, I would certainly do that instead. And I am trying to find ways to get there without simply saving a ton of money. Having said that, even in the best of situations, human beings are gonna human and that means authoritarian leaders naturally emerge when money is involved. I'd rather have a giant sack of cash to shield myself from that inevitability.
Some of the geekiest people I know have become the best skiers/snowboarders on the mountain. I know a guy who used to regularly show up to the terrain park and do double frontflips over 60 foot jumps. He's got a PHD in physics now.
I know another guy who used to compete in big air competitions. Senior iOS developer.
My friend Brian does double cork 10s. Medical doctor.
This sport is for nerds. If you're nerdy, you have an even greater chance of being successful at it because you know how to focus on getting great at something.
There are definitely nerdy aspects to skaters, despite most skaters being non-argumentative and easy going about those aspects.
A lot of skaters are very particular about their wheelbase, deck width, wheel size/durometer, tail/nose style.
Skaters are also obsessed with archival of magazines and video parts, leading to some nerdy discussions of 30 year old events that the mainstream would consider trivial.
Yeah when I was skiing 3-5 days a week at Mammoth, I met a lot of physicians and business owners on the lifts. Some astounding conversations too, a middle aged group using a private jet to hop between resorts.
It's impossible to not notice the atmosphere of rich white people at any winter resort.
So expensive! Only the richest of my friends could go skiing / snowboarding as kids. I wasn’t able to afford it until I was 26. But, then again, in the 80s and 90s, computers were also expensive. I wasn’t able to afford my first computer until I was a junior in college. So, it makes sense that my friends who had computers also went snowboarding.
There are a lot of ways to greatly reduce the cost. You can buy some really great second (even third) hand gear very cheap. Lift tickets at smaller mountains or even hills that are not as challenging to advanced boarders are often very reasonable. If you can adjust your work schedule to free up the odd weekeday that too will save a lot on the lift ticket.
iOS Developer, ex-skater, and snowboarder here.
Skating is much more technical than snowboarding. There are many variations of the same trick as well as the entire flat-ground realm of skating. However, I have taken my worst bails snowboarding. The terrain park is on a different scale of "bigness" than a skatepark, creating more potential risk.
I dunno. I actually don't think it's all that expensive of a sport if you can invest in your equipment and keep it long term. Sure, you'll spend a few grand one season for a setup that will last you three or four seasons. The season pass will set you back another $600 per year roughly.
I've had my current setup for five seasons. Same board. Same boots. Same jacket, helmet, pants, etc. If I do a back of the envelope calculation, my sport probably costs me $1,000 per year on average.
There really is such a thing as competence, work ethic, and patience. These traits tend to lead to success in other areas of life, including the accumulation of wealth and advancement in one's career. Not everything can, or should, be explained by privilege. Great people really do earn their greatness.
Plus snow tires/chains, a roof rack to carry the gear, and gas and maintenance to drive 1-2 hours (each way) to the pass. Plus non-bulk-homecooked food/snacks to eat while you're out. Plus losing a huge chunk of hours every week, which matters when you're an hourly employee.
I bet a good number of people on HN are software engineers who have never had a job where they made less than $100K with "unlimited" vacation. For an hourly employee, the opportunity cost alone of skiing for a month can easily be $1000 -- I could be racking up overtime instead (and then go shoot hoops in the park, for free).
The average software engineer salary is roughly double the average salary, which in turn is about double the full time minimum wage salary. For a lot of people, "a few grand" is an insurmountable barrier. When you're living paycheck to paycheck, you're not even thinking about "accumulation of wealth and advancement" yet.
You only need snows when driving on day of storm. Unless you are doing a destination trip. that is avoidable. Any SUV or reasonable sized car does not require a roof rack to fit a couple of boards plus boots and bindings.
Pick smaller mountains for day trips or buy your pass when first on sale to a mountain that does not make snow. As just one example, an early pass to Homewood was $509.
I have sold equipment still in good working order for next to nothing. Probably the only thing you'll need to spend any coin on is boots that fit. Helmets can be had 50% (or more) off during the offseason.
...or you just go skate, play soccer, throw a frisbee in a nearby park.
Unless one happens to live in a skitown, snow sports are already more expensive than alternatives that don't require a roadtrip, let alone season passes.
If someone has an extra $250 a month to to spare for a hobby, they're already doing fairly well.
It's expensive but I did it in college when I made a spare $250 a month.
Old Volvo 240, used gear, waterproof running pants with sweats underneath that I already owned. Total cost of entry was a few hundred dollars.
It's much better with expensive top-notch gear but so is everything else. And it's still cheaper than skiing.
Twenty years later cheap gear is radically improved and there's a much bigger used market. And if you live near Seattle you can hitch a ride with me to Stevens whenever.
If you don't want to pay for lift tickets you can get used split-board and avalanche gear and take an avalanche safety class for about a one-time $1500 expense and walk up mountains for free instead, even at resorts.
lol, you invest a few grand one year up front but it smoothes out over the coming seasons to roughly one grand on average because you keep your gear and don't have to invest in new stuff every season.
Also that's not the super frugal version of this. If you really wanted to, you could just buy all of your stuff on Craigslist. I've done that with some of my stuff, and you can get a huge discount.
You wouldn't believe the kind of people who buy gear, ride like two days, and then sell it a few years later. The market is glutted with this kind of stuff.
I do a lot of expedition-style backpacking either alone or in a guided group. The groups are always full of tech people, mostly from SV. It's almost like the only people who can afford fun shit are the techies.
Nah, It's not even that much. $600 will get you a very good, 3 or 4-day guided trip to the backcountry in Oregon and Washington. You'd be hauling your gear, food and skies/snowshoes. I do think that techies can easily afford this stuff, but I also think what's more important is they can afford to take a lot of time off work (or just leave their jobs all together knowing they'll find another gig fairly quickly) to enjoy things like this.
Park is fun for me. It's relatively cheap too. You just need a ski pass and your gear. I would also qualify as a tech d-bag but I don't spend a ton of money on the sport and generally look like a dirtbag when I'm out and about
Not at all. There are high end touring and backpacking, i.e. full service guided hut/cat/heli drops and hut to hut style, all over the world in or near most major ski destinations. Most people I know who can afford to do these trips is within the STEM group or independently wealthy. Or they're younger with no overhead and they dirtbag it for a awhile to save up but this is the minority.
It's not that expensive unless you have to travel far enough warranting an overnight stay. I was able to afford decent equipment and lift passes from working a cashier job in high school. You could buy used equipment for a family of 5 for under $1000. Check out craigslist in some mountain towns, you can find higher end equipment that's a only a few years old for dirt cheap.
You're just going to ignore the other half of the post where I said the following?
>You could buy used equipment for a family of 5 for under $1000. Check out craigslist in some mountain towns, you can find higher end equipment that's a only a few years old for dirt cheap.
