As per title really. I started a new job late last year. Head hunted and went from a mega stable nothing ever really changes with a low stress environment where it would cost a lot to get rid of me with over a decade and a half of service to a extremely fast paced "lets do it" environment that is rather "make it work for now" and the technical debt is large. I joined partly because I had a real rapport with the guy who would be my boss. The money helped too :D

The day I joined the company it got bought out by another one. Ok, we carry on, integration ongoing. Stuck between two competing outlooks on infrastructure and different ways of working.

Then in the last month I have a diagnosis of the big C. Tests are completed (i think) but it looks to be the one you want to get if you had to pick one. Treatment plans inbound imminently...

A few weeks ago my boss resigned. Now I have a new boss in another country. He is pretty much an unknown quantity at this point.

To be fair my immediate team mates and colleagues (in both companies) are awesome and we get through it as best we can but for right now but I don't even know what to do. I feel so much of a spare part its horrible. The job itself, I am not even sure about. If only I had a time machine. Clear guidance and direction is a thing other companies do! I feel like i have made a huge mistake and I was unhappy before all the upheaval at new job.

At home, we did the maths and luckily, even in the worst possible scenario the bills are covered for the very long term. That's something to be very thankful for. It may not be pretty but no one is coming knocking at the door.

I am thankful we live in a country with socialised health care and that the outlook is apparently good (unless the doctors are lying to me, obvs <---- Autism at play). I'll be honest and say that doing any work is hard because not knowing if you are going to be alive in a year or two is kind of a drag on productive work. I hope I will be, the prognosis is good but being told that news is the loneliest feeling in the world at the time.

I am still very much the newb and I can see if they want to rationalise headcount I am a prime target so..... I realise they cant do it whilst I am ill but you know how these things can go. So my fellow geeks... There is not a lot of good going on right now.

Can anybody help me with an objective plan of action that may make work a bit easier. I am not sure if I made a huge career misstep here or am just over reacting a bit with everything that is going on.

As I am mostly at a lose end right now because I can't commit to being present any particular day because treatment and appointments, I am thinking of upgrading some of my skills, maybe a few certifications but that will take all my will power to do. I just need to be as up to date and have a plan if I am let go AND get through the treatment AND it works. Everything crossed :/

The new owners are ALL GCP. My skillset lies in Linux, Ansible, Docker, Technical writing and high performance clustering. I am also proficient in Azure as well as having (somewhat dated) VMware experience but to a good depth.- I know everyone is running away from VMware as fast as possible so "meh!" on that one.

Top and bottom of it is at a professional level, I have no idea how to prepare for what's happening and what's coming. Any advice is welcome.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47362796

Points: 21

# Comments: 18

We all lose.

After many years of making do with the small bedroom as an office I am finally getting round to spending some money decorating it and setting it up for an office/Man cave. I am looking for tips and advice. My budget (All in) is around $1000-1500. I am trying to avoid "Shoulda done X or Y" kind of scenario.

A bit about me and the setup

I spent a LOT of time in here being an official WFH employee and having a second gig as a freelancer for other companies. It is south/south east facing so gets the sun every day so I cant do face out into the garden or anything. The room is about 18ft by 8ft.

Some thoughts I am having: I am planning on making one wall (13 ft) my work desk because currently I run 2 * 32" 4K monitors for my work laptop and alongside those are my 2 * 24" Dell monitors. I thing the layout on these is sub optimal but I dont think I could ever get used to the "Look up to the second monitor" type of quad arm fits... but how do people with many monitors configure them?

There are also 2 sets of keyboard and mice (deliberately so not to risk contamination from one job to the other). Storage is also a big thing because I, like most geeks have a tonne of cables for every occasion, physical manuals etc?

Is there a colour scheme that works best for long hours and lots of night time work?

What do I need to consider/what tips could you give? One tip I think a lot of people will say is "You can never have a desk that is too wide!" but we will see.

Any advice appreciated.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41740358

Points: 1

# Comments: 2

I am just looking to the YC crowd to help me take the next leap in learning about AI. I am pretty good at prompt engineering and understand models in general, using AI systems to create plugins, proposals, create fairly complex scripts etc. I also work in a field where AI is already changing our products and how we do business (explosive simulations/destruction etc.)

I'd like to learn a lot more of what goes on underneath it all and take it to the next level but I am not good at maths. In fact, I am number blind (Just be thankful I don't do the models :D ). All the talk of P^2 in input filters or whatever goes right over my head!

Suggestions are most welcome as are any useful experience.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37649092

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

As per title, sometimes in life you don't realise how toxic something can be until you leave it behind, no matter that be a bad habit, a relationship or even work. Sometimes it can be so toxic that you'd consider ending it all (as i did) because there is no visible way out and keeping the money flowing in at the same time when people depend on you. I am here to say thats not the case. Good stuff can happen.

Under another name on here I wrote about my previous job and I felt stuck because if I left I walked away on a large chunk of stock options. That and my age made me feel really depressed and unwanted.

I was driven to actively contemplate suicide due to my boss and his shitty attitudes and issues but no one actually seemed to care. Even then I convinced myself with "aww, it's not so bad" when in reality it was absolutely horrific. Getting out of bed became a real battle. People bitch about people being too lazy to get out of bed but some of those people will not be able to get out of bed because they are so depressed they see no point in it because "it's still gonna suck". I was so sidelined that I could literally disappear for an entire day/days and no-one would notice.

I had a "top 10 dick of the year" award boss who didn't like me at all and proactively sidelined me so much it left me nothing to do on a daily basis. That said, in a large company you can cruise for years and that's what I did. The previous boss was a good guy but he left to pursue better options. Things where quite good back then actually.

Just doing nothing sounds awesome. It's not. It's crap. Imagine having to sit at a workstation for months and years, having to be "present" with nothing to actually do but make some some BS stuff to appear busy. Even doing training courses and such becomes boring after a while. It was a kind of mental prison and my boss truly didn't give a flying you-know-what. Imagine having nothing in your week to justify the normal desire to do something useful. I even wrote scripts to make life better but my boss wouldn't consider them because I wrote them.

Anyhow, it all came to a head and I ended up moving on... (cant go into that too much) and my new job pays much better money and is 500% more interesting and I get to play with cool new technologies. It makes you realise what crap you will really put up with and how from an impartial viewpoint you should have just "nope'd" out of it years ago but the status-quo is just easier to maintain.

Looking back at it I knew my time was up a long time ago but I didn't have the courage to jump. It caused me so much misery and anguish. Looking back on the experience, I wasted several years of my life working for someone who didn't nurture or appreciate talent with his sociopathic tendencies. It's only after all these things have happened that you realise the effects it had.

As an example, my faith in myself is utterly crushed. My new boss has recognised a lot of the mental snot has been virtually beat out of me and is understanding and I am grateful for that and is very helpful.

Recovery will take time but at least I know I wont get verbally berated every time something isn't perfect.

For those that this resonates with, I am not saying jump out right now but plan to just get out, even if a new job pays less or means going into a less demanding job. You can always make more money later but you can't get your time back. I suspect it will take years to get my confidence back but I am so glad to be out of a terrible situation.

It's only when you leave you realise how truly terrible it was. I am however still resentful over the lost years.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34455934

Points: 756

# Comments: 214

My first ask HN. I have worked in tech for over 20 years. One thing I am truly awful about is troubleshooting. Sometimes its obvious, ie the log or error message tells you what you need to do. Otherwise, Yes, I usually get there in the end but it's a long, drawn out process.

I am best at designing and implementing, not troubleshooting.

It's not that I don't understand the products I use every day. It's just my ASD (Autism) afflicted mind doesn't follow norms and paths (for example, the chop method of deduction) but jump from a to b, to f, to p, to b. Sometimes a semi-obvious fix can take me days to get there.

For example, a coworker fixed a semi obvious issue in twenty minutes today that took me hours and never got sorted because, well, I am not good at troubleshooting. It is something that does hold me back and need to try and fix.

How can one learn to become good at troubleshooting, if it learnable?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32827898

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

Those people moaning about price... If you have to ask the price you can't afford it. My F500 employer spends upwards of $30,000,000 a year with MS and somehow (Don't ask me, I just work here) everything goes cloud first now.

To state the obvious, the big boys pay nowhere near calculator pricing prices. The pricing is a different galaxy away. Living in a world where one small tweak can save $1,000 a day, its all about efficient planning of what your doing, ie design it right but Azure designers who are good don't come cheap.

What wasn't made obvious (and this is where a lightbulb may go on) is that MS is engaged in a hearts and minds war for Sysadmins like me. So much so that MS have a special program available to big spenders where:

1) Pretty much the entire Azure training catalog is available for free, ie AZ-401, AZ-5XX, AZ-2XX? When I say free I mean real attend in person courses with the full course content as you would normally pay $3,000 for. You can do it as many times as you like, as often as you like. 2) All personal labs are paid for with free credits (its a bit grey area this one) 2) All the exams are 100% free. All those Pearson Vue exams? 100% discounted. Did I also mention unlimited retakes?

As for the complaining about APIs and products being retired, well, the trick is to stay with the mainstream items offered.

In short I have had about $20,000 of training from MS this year alone and its not cost me one single cent. I really dislike MS but if they want to make me a very rich and in-demand person with companies who think cloud will save them from being dinosaurs, I won't bitch too loudly.

Dave was the man because he used to work for DEC on a project called Onyx and prism (A hardware/software combo to do essentially what NT does) was cancelled by DEC at the last minute.

MS wanted him that much that they brought his entire Development team to MS (not one person was left behind, at his demand. They where quite ...tribal...)

This is also part of the reason NT originally worked on DEC systems as well.

It's all in a rather fascinating book called Showstopper: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

For a few bucks it really is a most excellent read that goes into some techy and really fascinating issues they encountered. One of the biggest was Memory was so little back then.

Long time lurker but first time poster. Long story story, I write IT content as a side gig for several very well traveled IT sites Not going to name drop but odds are you are a weekly visitor to most, if not all of them. Have been doing it for 10 years plus but the issue...

The really interesting stories I have no one will buy because they are focused on privacy, digital freedom, the law and lawbreakers but I can't get a bite because its not "How to do XYZ in some SAAS" or "IT failures, how to avoid them", "The time I burnt down the DC"" I fought the tax man over IR35 and lost"/some standard IT related subject. I have written some of this and some places have taken it (and the unique visitors and comments sky-rocketed) but because it's not advertiser friendly, no one wants it.

I can sell the how-to's all day but my real passion is security, personal privacy and digital rights but they don't tend to go well with the data harvesting based sites for obvious reasons. I reach out to my usual contacts but if its not some hot new SAAS technology or such they are rarely interested. I have tried broader interest sites but half don't even have the decency to acknowledge you. Either that or they want the content for free.

For example, something that is super interesting to me is the non-kinetic war that is brewing in the background of Ukraine and beyond and how it will affect us, now and if it ends up going "limited kinetic". I believe it would redefine the internet that we know and love, for the worse.

I am happy to share some examples privately if people are interested but I don't want to go plastering them on here for obvious reasons.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30137763

Points: 3

# Comments: 4