Battery Management Systems: Turn on and off 324 single cells in a 200 kWh array, measure their voltages and temperatures and ensure they're cells are not engaged above threshold temperatures (asymmetric for charging and discharging), or below threshold voltages.
Electric Vehicle Chargers: Communicate with car, communicate with charge point operator.
LoRa transceivers: Configure transceiver, send and receive encrypted messages over LoRa.
It was all Rust, and all very interesting.
But as other commenters have pointed out, there is a pay loft compared to other industries.
> I would at least try the meds for a couple of months.
Whether or not you have ADHD, amphetamines will improve your life if you measure quality by how much you get done.
So I think the real question is: Are you prevented from functioning according to your expectations without daily amphetamine use, or not? And do you even see that as a problem?
I've used various (legal) amphetamines and modafinil variants for years, and they always made me very productive and happy, because I like getting things done. They also make me very high-energy.
Disclaimers:
- Amphetamines are physically addictive
- Being productive is psychologically addictive
- Take time off, or the productivity effect will even out, just like too much coffee.
Saying he is the problem is just as non-constructive as saying I'm the problem.
People aren't problems, they're people.
Rather, I have a "me and my CTO" problem.
Judging by how my senior colleagues handle this by saying "it's just a job" and not get upset, I can see how their "me and my CTO" problems are much smaller and don't overheat on a daily basis. However, since my ambitions don't align with saying "it's just a job", I am still looking for other options. Quitting is on the list, so thank you for spelling it out.
Well, you could just escape the situation and switch jobs but there are so many poor leaders out there that this same problem is probably going to manifest itself in your life again in some form, sooner or later. I would say it's more useful to learn to navigate such a situation. I would refer to Jocko Willink's advice on this as he's the real expert in leadership. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp4hvVZFnfg
you and your CTO problem is a you problem. From the POV of the CTO, your stubbornness might make him think you are responsible for the lack of results. You either quit or become cooperative if you want improvement.
I tell myself to be more stoic every week, but I can't.
If I just wanted a well-paying job with a good work-life balance, I'd be working in fintech.
I keep this mental image: I'm on a ladder, and my CTO is standing above me and won't move. If he could either move at my pace focusing on bigger problems than me, or get out of the way, I could make this work better for both my employer and myself.
If there was just a way to nudge him into place.
There is an Andrew Tate soundbite [1]:
> "There is a secret to the universe [...]: If you actually try your best, you can't lose. Not pretend to try your best, not try your best 90% of the time, not try your best with excuses. If you genuinely try your best all of the time, all day, every day, [...] it is impossible to fail in this life. [...] You cannot fail if you try your best."
Maybe when I have kids, I will feel like I won the lottery, and I won't be so competitive.
Until then, I don't know what will be my life's work.
But I know that cultivating a relentless attitude maximizes my impact.
> a lot of time it's political and really difficult
I can sense the political dimension in this.
Being a tiny startup made of awesome inventors, it's a lot less than most places I worked.
We need a CTO for CTO-y stuff. In many ways I'm happy this isn't my responsibility: Slides for board meetings, putting on a suit and shaking hands at conferences, hardware certification paperwork, and the really hard work: Be responsible for all software, hardware and material design.
The step I'm making (Senior to Lead) is much smaller than what my CTO is trying (middle management to CTO in a very technical industry), so he is expectably meeting more resistance than me. I can really understand and sympathise with his difficulties. But I cannot respect his coping strategies.
> advance my career [...] gain a new skill or improve existing ones
I agree that you should try your best 90% of the time, without pretending, and without excuses. I entirely agree with that statement. There's nothing wrong with being competitive, you absolutely should be competitive! You don't have to be nice about it either but you do have to be strategic.
You can still make a significant impact by putting all of your effort into the highest impact things that are in your control. I wasn't trying to say anything about work-life balance. And definitely was not suggesting you don't put your full effort and best ability into it!
> my CTO is standing above me and won't move. If he could either move at my pace focusing on bigger problems than me, or get out of the way, I could make this work better for both my employer and myself.
Inside every obstacle is a chance to improve your condition. However, is this the obstacle worth spending your time and effort on? Can you get him to move out of your way? Is there any way that you can control that? Maybe there is, maybe not? Maybe you have to do some schmoozing, maybe some office politics, is that worth the return? You can see it as a challenge to overcome or one to avoid so you can maximize other efforts in other areas.
> Until then, I don't know what will be my life's work.
Do you want it to have been wasted on arguing with a bozo? Or designing and building something world changing?
I don't have the answer I'm just offering some perspectives. Wish you the best of luck!
I think a more stoic approach could alleviate the suffering while still allowing you to brainstorm possible solutions or pathways - just with less turmoil.
Try your best, iterate, explore. Completely detached from success on a timeline. Expect failure and be pleasantly delighted by gradual success.
> I had more or less unrestricted internet access since the time I was able to use a computer, but it feels like it wasn’t overly harmful
I have the opposite experience.
- I've been addicted to pornography since I was 12.
- Late computer use caused me to never get enough sleep.
- Programming early started my career, but it also isolated me socially.
YouTube and Tik Tok scare me; as a grown-up, I can still waste hours just swiping and swiping. I suspect that getting this behavior early on will make you more docile. My siblings raise their kids with tablets, and it impacts their learning ability and sociability tremendously.
Anecdote: I'm the account manager for most family members. One day my sister was angry with me, removed me as the account manager, and some months later locked herself out of her account after having trashed her phone and forgot her password.
I have. The Kia EV6 has perhaps the most unintuitive capacitive UX in vehicle history. Linus took it for a test drive and legitimately could not figure out how to turn down the AC temperature. Maybe the EV7 won’t be such an abomination.
Can’t speak to the Hyundai version. I don’t know much about it other than it seems trivially easy to steal it. Hasn’t made my news radar outside of that.
I wanted to comment and say that you cannot just disregard the fear of harassment because there might be those two motives.
But I realised, I myself am afraid of being harassed if I don’t post from a throwaway account.
Maybe that fear is not justified — I never heard of KiwiFarms before Cloudflare booted them. I don’t mind people writing crazy stuff intended to offend.
Harassment is a pretty solid breach of the golden rule.
yeah but they have no reason to doxx you. you're just a regular person. if it turned out you supplied life changing drugs to minors behind their parents backs that were brewed in your bathtub, maybe then you'd have a problem. they dont just see a trans person and then decide to harass them
thats what is currently happening with keffals. not that kf is equivalent to HN or the like in terms of being nice, but this keffals isnt just a random trans person they latched on to and decided to harass. they (keffals) have done some seriously immoral stuff
Battery Management Systems: Turn on and off 324 single cells in a 200 kWh array, measure their voltages and temperatures and ensure they're cells are not engaged above threshold temperatures (asymmetric for charging and discharging), or below threshold voltages.
Electric Vehicle Chargers: Communicate with car, communicate with charge point operator.
LoRa transceivers: Configure transceiver, send and receive encrypted messages over LoRa.
It was all Rust, and all very interesting.
But as other commenters have pointed out, there is a pay loft compared to other industries.